Pick up almost any perennial, shrub, or tree at a garden center and you’ll find a small line on the tag that reads something like “Zones 4–8.” It’s one of the most useful pieces of information on the label, and one of the most often ignored. Buy a plant rated for zones warmer than yours…
For generations, a well-thumbed almanac hung on a nail in farmhouse kitchens and garden sheds across America. Before sowing peas or setting out tomatoes, growers checked its pages for two things: how late the frosts were likely to linger, and which days the moon favored for planting. Plenty of gardeners still do exactly that, now…
There’s a morning every year when the air smells different. The soil has thawed, the first daffodils are open, and somewhere a neighbor is already out turning a bed. It’s tempting to rush straight to the garden center and fill the car with tomato plants. Most experienced gardeners hold back, because spring rewards timing and…
Every week, most households throw away a small mountain of material that gardeners would happily pay for: vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, eggshells, grass clippings, fallen leaves. Sent to the curb, it’s waste. Piled in a corner of the yard for a few months, it turns into dark, crumbly compost, one of the most valuable things…
Plant a tray of bright bedding annuals and you’ll get color for the summer. Plant a patch of native milkweed and something different happens: within weeks, a monarch butterfly arrives to lay eggs, striped caterpillars start munching the leaves, and you realize your garden has become part of something much larger than a flower bed….
Almost everyone who says they “kill every plant they touch” has made the same few mistakes. A fern tucked into a dim corner. A succulent watered every day out of kindness. A tomato seedling planted into cold, soggy ground in early spring. None of these failures had anything to do with a lack of talent….
There is a moment at every good holiday party when someone drifts away from the crowd, finds the drink station, and just stands there happily making themselves a perfect cup of something. A well-styled coffee bar or bar cart does that: it gives guests a place to land, it gives the host a break from…
The dining room has an identity crisis in most homes. Eleven months a year it is the room where mail piles up and kids do homework. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas arrive, and suddenly it has to transform into the setting for the most important meals of the year. If your dining room only looks good…
There is a specific kind of letdown that hits on January 2. The tree is on the curb, the ornaments are back in their boxes, and the living room looks suddenly, starkly bare. After a month of twinkle lights and garlands, the house feels like it is missing something, and the instinct is either to…
Every December, I watch the same thing happen: friends book expensive NYE parties, pay a cover charge, wait in line for drinks, and leave by 12:30 wondering why they bothered. Meanwhile, the best New Year’s Eve parties I have ever been to were in someone’s living room, with a balloon garland taped to the wall,…
