Gardenig in New York. Tips & Guides

The Reform Club

Julie Soefer

IT’S THAT TIME of year when we gardeners are shopping, shopping, shopping, often in hot pursuit of just the right plant that will make the design of a bed or the larger landscape hang together—that elusive missing ingredient. But what if the answer isn’t a plant sometimes, but a pot or a sculpture or some other non-living elements strategically placed?

This week we’re going to do something a little different on the GPOD: We’re going to be looking back over the years of gardens we have shared and pull out some of our favorites to visit again. And today the posts are all going to be stunning shade gardens. Gardening in shade can feel a bit like a challenge or limitation, but lots of GPOD contributors have turned that challenge into an opportunity and made beautiful gardens.

I CONFESS to something of a weakness for Japanese maples, and I suspect I’m not alone. Now, thanks to breeding work by experts like today’s guests, there are more and more varieties being made available that are suited to a widening range of climate zones and garden conditions, meaning the circle of maple lovers can keep on growing.

Gardeners often find ingenious ways to solve problems. Below you’ll find tips from our readers that repurpose common household items to great effect. Get an edge on gardening and peruse all of our past gardening tips here.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Today we’re visiting with Lee, who gardens in central New York State. We’ve visited Lee’s garden before (Early Spring Blooms from the Mohawk Valley).

WHEN SHOPPING the seed catalogs, I realize I’m probably more likely to consider a tomato or pepper I haven’t grown before, or some unusual annual flower, than to try some new-to-me herb. But what a shame. I need to modify that behavior and spice things up a bit.

Left: James Devaney; Right, Rob Kim / Getty Images

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WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE about zinnias? Organic seed farmer and breeder Don Tipping of Siskiyou Seeds and I both vote an emphatic “yes” in favor of making zinnias a part of every garden year.

We’ve been to our fair share of local Manchester parks and gardens, that’s for sure! But which do we recommend?

In their quest for the world’s heavyweight champion, some pumpkin growers will do almost anything.

Jonathan Steinbeck / Getty Images

A giant invasive plant known as “Millennium Madness” sprouted worldwide last year. It was particularly bad in the United States and positively egregious in the New York metropolitan area. And, as if Millennium Madness was not bad enough all by itself, there were rumors that it was infested on a grand scale with the dreaded Y2K Bug. While professionals in a host of countries spent months trying to think of ways to eradicate the Y2K Bug, ordinary people were rumored to be aiding the rapid growth and spread of Millennium Madness by watering local specimens with vast quantities of bottled water that they had stored in their basements.

LIKE EVERYONE around this time of year, I get into a “looking back while looking ahead” combined mindset. Today I want to do just that, but with a sort of ecological filter, taking stock of how things in the garden fared in the bigger environmental picture and what opportunities lie ahead for me to read nature’s signals even more closely and be an ever better steward of the place.

The Haw River cuts through North Carolina’s Piedmont region from its source in Forsyth County. Below Jordan Lake, it joins the Deep River to form the Cape Fear River, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean near the southernmost tip of the state.

Luiz Jiménez, 39, has been working on American dairy farms for 20 years. He is used to working long hours for little pay, fearful of losing a vital source of income for his family. A father of three, Jiménez is originally from Oaxaca, Mexico and came to the United States undocumented. He is one of an estimated 238,000 undocumented agricultural workers in the US. Like many others, he is without a visa, credit or health insurance, making it difficult to safely advocate for better working conditions without putting his livelihood at risk. 

Deck the halls with boughs of holly—or don’t. Decorating for the holidays the traditional way, with lights, wreaths, and a tree full of ornaments, isn’t for everyone.  If you want to bring the seasonal spirit into your home without dragging boxes of holiday knick-knacks out of storage, you’re in luck. There are plenty of ways to get your home feeling festive, and not a single bough of holly is necessary.  To learn how to execute a holiday-inspired home design—one without Santas or stockings—we tapped designer Gideon Mendelson for his expert advice.

Words by Phil Clayton

LET THE seed shopping season begin. The 2024 offerings are being loaded into seed-catalog websites, and the earliest print catalogs are already arriving in our mailboxes, as if to help soften the separation anxiety we may feel if we’ve already put our gardens to bed for the winter.

This holiday season, you might have the urge to get rid of everything you’ve ever owned. Clutter is the enemy, you might think, and having anything around that doesn’t work for a specific purpose is just in the way.

21 of the Best Houseplants for Bright Light

Buying furniture can be an overwhelming process, especially if you know what you need but aren’t quite sure what you want—and the challenges only grow from there. Once you finally figure out your preferences, where do you begin?

I DON’T THINK I’ve read a mystery novel since the “Nancy Drew” books of my long-ago childhood, though I will confess to having watched more than a few who-done-it TV series over the years, most of them from the BBC. But I never noticed how many mystery writers from Edgar Allen Poe to Agatha Christie incorporated elements of the garden into their tales of intrigue.

My name is Darlene O’Neil. I live in a small village in Moravia, New York. I had volunteered and donated my time with the VFW Auxiliary for years. This kept me busy year-round, and I would squeeze time in for everything else. I finally decided I needed to step away and spend more time with family, friends, and my home, but first I needed to focus on me. I’d forgotten how important it was to do that. How do I heal?

MOST OF US may automatically think “monarch” after hearing the word “milkweed,” or vice versa. And that’s in fact a critical and intimate relationship, the one between monarch butterflies and native milkweed plants.

REDUCING THE footprint of our lawns has been a key environmental message for gardeners in recent years, since lawns lack biodiversity and involve huge amounts of pollution between fertilizers, herbicides, and the gas used in mowing. But what to cultivate instead? That is the subject of a nearly 15-year native lawn research project at Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, New York, with some interesting insights.

Joyelle West

When you dine in or order delivery from a pizza parlor, you’re likely doing so for the pies. Whether it'sDetroit-style, grandma, deep-dish, New York-style, Neapolitan, or pan, chances are that the pizzas themselves are luring you in.

MY, HOW TIMES have changed. That’s what I keep thinking, looking around my own garden in recent years. I’ve been struck by the same thought over and over as I read “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” the latest book by Margaret Renkl (illustrated with gorgeous collages by her brother, Billy Renkl, like the one above), which takes us through a year in her garden 1,000 miles to the south of mine in Nashville.

There are few times in life when we feel comfortable embracing chaos. Ideally, our schedules, homes, and email inboxes are fairly organized, as are our kitchens. But a growing food trend focuses on welcoming a pleasant amount of mayhem into your meal plan. 

Back in May, Lex Madden, bar manager at Point Easy in Denver, Colorado, told BHG that “the spritz is absolutely the drink of summer!” 

Expecting a baby? There are so many gender reveal ideas out there, many of them adorable, some of them dangerous, and some less than environmentally friendly. If you’re looking for sustainable gender reveal ideas you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn how to make or source your own environmentally safe gender reveal in the form of gender reveal seed paper.

THE WORDS joy and delight figure prominently in writer Ross Gay‘s work, and so do moments he spends in his garden and descriptions of his relationship to plants. Now is that a coincidence that the garden is a main character in his books, books with the titles “Inciting Joy” and “The Book of Delights” and the latest, “The Book of (More) Delights”?