Author: Jennifer

Rodgersia and swallowtail butterfly
Critters

Visitors Early Summer 2025

Front yard filled with golden alexanders and serviceberries and elderberries and other virtue-signalling native pollinators and my friends here have chosen Rodgersia (compliments of China) and a snake plant (compliments of west Africa.) I plant a lot of non-natives/non-invasives I’m comfortable with, but this is a bit like cooking a […]

Messy garden
Plants

The Hostas

I think I’m making this post entirely because I’m in the mood to shop for hostas, feeling inspired having just picked up some for L (shopping for others is absolutely intoxicating.) So I am making this post as an excuse to take inventory, learn names of the ones I’ve inherited, […]

Virginia bluebells
Plants

Spring 2025 highlights (March to May 1st)

This gorgeous creature (below) showed up a couple of years ago under a random viburnum in a nowhere place in the yard, where no one would ever see it, and I told myself firmly that I would move it and of course I didn’t for two years. But this is […]

ferns and flowers
Design

Blank canvas in Leeds

L. is interested in planting southern border of her back yard in Leeds.  The area, conveniently located below a slightly terraced sloping lawn, has good baseline soil moisture and is relatively flat and stable. In our wooded grove, a small wooded hill of boulders and dense tree cover is constant […]

Snake plant
Houseplants

Snake plant gets fancy

The 25-year-old snake plant/mother-in-law’s tongue/sansevieria has decided to put out a flower. I hear they smell lovely in bloom; guess we’ll find out.  Nice end to the houseplant-focused season. In a month or so they will all be outside, or most of them, which is great because by March I’m […]