Category: Presenting “The Curious Gardener”

I am giving my neighbor, an ecologist and avid gardener, the Womanswork Houseplant Kit for Christmas.  I wanted to make her gift pop with a paper dahlia instead of a bow.  Here's how I made it. Supplies needed: Scissors Paper - Scrapbook, Cardstock, Construction Paper, etc. Hot Glue Gun & Glue Sticks Step-By-Step Instructions: Step One: Cut a circular base out of paper.  You can use the same paper as the petals or a complimentary color/style.   In the example I used…

A friend sent me an email last week saying "you will love this" with a link to a website that shows how to make festive paper ornaments.  I followed the instructions and added a few steps of my own, and here is my tutorial on making these pretty paper ornaments. My friend Amie Rennolds was right-- I love this! I used gift wrap that I had purchased from Kate Blairstone. Kate is the Oregon designer who created the "Heirloom Garden"…

This year I purchased three popular tropical plants for outdoor containers: canna lilies, Colocasia and Alocasia (aka Elephant ears).  I was happy with all three, though the canna lily was the star performer for me. I love plants that come back each year, even if it means digging them up in the fall and storing them away for the winter.  These plants can be left in the ground if…

Dominique Charles is a woman with a mission. A busy professional living in Washington, DC, she first began gardening in 2014, after her friend Lauren built her a starter garden as a gift. Despite having grown up in New Orleans, and spending summers helping her grandparents - Emmitt and Thelma Muse of Greensburg, Louisiana – with their farm, where her favorite activity was picking blackberries and snapping green beans, Dominique didn’t really believe that she had a green thumb. It…

Natasha Bowens Blair didn’t believe you could grow plants in a meaningful way that weren’t edible or medicinal until she experienced the joy of growing and arranging flowers at Native Mountain Farm outside of Frederick, Maryland. The farm, situated on a lush piece of landscape at the base of South Mountain in Boonsboro, is operated by Natasha and her mother-in-law Julie Blair on land Julie and her late husband Billy purchased 32 years ago. Natasha on…

Growing up in Colorado Chelsea Willis’ mother would tell her “get your hands in the dirt. It grounds you.”  Chelsea recognized the wisdom of these words at a young age, and never forgot them. After completing a degree in somatic psychology, a discipline that focuses on processing trauma through movement (body-based therapy rather than talk therapy), Chelsea moved to Oregon and began working with teens who had been incarcerated and were transitioning to semi-independent living. She was also doing some…

Rebecca Webster is not your average attorney, teacher, activist, farmer and mom. She’s a proud citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin whose passion to reignite the traditions of her forebears is evident in everything she sets her mind to. Soft spoken and upbeat, Rebecca tells me in a phone interview that she grew up on the reservation but was bussed to public schools off the reservation. At that time there was not a lot of interest in understanding the…

Bruce Baker has been working on one bonsai project for 12 years -- and he’s just getting started. Taking the long view is part of being a bonsai artist or practitioner. “Bonsai trees can live hundreds of years and they’re always changing,’ he says. “They’re never done,” he adds. The process, as Bruce sees it, is about gradually revealing what is already there, and enhancing or sometimes exaggerating it.  It takes patience, planning and plenty of solitary contemplation—just you and…

You volunteered to participate in your local plant sale fund raiser or plant swap, and now it's time to make good on your promise! Many plant sales that were scheduled for spring were postponed until fall, which gardeners know is one of the best times to plant! So go into your garden and dig up some perennials or bulbs, divide them, and pot them up. You can even propagate some houseplants if you leave enough time. The night before you…

Reprinted from a story first published in July, 2019. You can't beat an annual plant for its desire to please the gardener. It has one season to live and it puts all of its energy into producing flowers. If you plant a seed, either indoors or directly in the garden, some annuals will germinate and grow to maturity, producing a flower in as little as 8 weeks. Cut that flower and it takes it as a mandate to produce more…