Trout Cove

Even by tempestuous mountain weather standards, this has been a wild month to close out the year. At the end of last week, temperatures dipped to zero, with a blustery wind chill of minus 25. This must be hard on wildlife, and to be honest is not my favorite walking weather. This week it ranged… Continue reading Toothwort’s Winter Leaves

At first glance, this looks like a Christmas tree with an unusual holiday decoration. But this eastern hemlock does not make a good holiday tree since it tends to lose its needles soon after it is cut. And the fluffy white balls are not ornaments but the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive species quickly leading… Continue reading Unwelcome Christmas Guests

Every year at this time the North American Rock Garden Society seed exchange list arrives, and I always pore over it way too long making a wish list of plants to populate my garden. Over the years I’ve found many treasures, an inexpensive way to try assorted plants in my many gardens. Earlier this week… Continue reading Exuberant Endangered Petunia

Though my garden has been pretty quiet lately, one of my Camellia shrubs is just beginning to bloom this week. Although the majority of my plants are native, my interest in camellias goes back to my first garden. I had no idea when I moved to central North Carolina in the early 1990’s that it… Continue reading December Blooms

In a forest full of bare branches, beech and oak trees are the exception, clinging to slowly tattering tan leaves. On windy days, their leaves blow back and forth like tiny banners. In this photograph these dry beech leaves clinging to branches hold on in a process known as marcescence, and the trees are called… Continue reading Marcescence

After five years since planting an assortment of milkweed seeds, they are ready this year to complete their life cycle. They were slow to germinate and then slow to settle in after transplanting the seedlings. Over the past week, the seed pods of my common milkweed slowly opened from a sliver to fully split. They… Continue reading Mystery of Milkweeds and Monarchs

My aunt, Ruth Smiley, spent over half a century helping shape the gardens and wild areas of Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills of upstate New York. Though she spent much of her time on the formal gardens, she also enthusiastically explored the plant life of the surrounding woods and meadows. My family spent countless… Continue reading Rattlesnake Fern

Violets are one of the first flowers in my woods, a number of species emerging when it is still winter here. I have at least half a dozen species, flowering from late winter well into spring. Now all the forest violets are dormant, but for months now a small white violet has been flowering in… Continue reading Tenacious Violets

The American chestnut was once the dominant tree of forests in the eastern United States. There were around 4 billion trees, important to wildlife and also for lumber, preferred for its high-quality wood for everything from houses to railroad ties and telephone poles. They also provided seasonal chestnuts which were a treat for people. When… Continue reading Bringing Back Chestnut Trees

My aunt spent much of her life nurturing the gardens of Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills of New York. She kept lists of plants for various display and wild gardens. Over the years she showed me around the gardens with pride, helping to initiate my own interest in gardening. On one of our many… Continue reading White-Tailed Deer

Classic garden advice suggests you choose plants for their flowers, fruits, or foliage, or all three. When selecting plants for my garden I consider their value to wildlife, including flowers for pollinators and fruits as an important resource for animals that share my yard. But after the flowers and fruits are gone, you still have… Continue reading Go Big With Foliage Plants

I have two species of lobelias growing naturally in my yard, cardinal flower, and the great blue lobelia. Between the two of them they flower for much of the summer and well into fall, both among my longest lasting flowers. The cardinal flower begins to flower in early summer and has only finished flowering a… Continue reading Great Blue Lobelia

At this time of year, I have several species of goldenrod flowering in my yard. Whenever I look at them, they are full of pollinators, including this fly. They are one of the few flowers left now, so provide one last source of pollen and nectar for the remaining insects. They often get the blame… Continue reading The Importance of Goldenrods

This time of year, there are quite a few asters flowering, both in my woods and in sunnier areas near the creek. They provide food to lingering pollinators like flies, wasps, butterflies, and this bee, shot with a slower shutter speed to catch its busy blur. Asters provide welcome sources of pollen and nectar as… Continue reading Aster Season

There is a roost of black vultures in the park next to me, and a few times a year they venture into my yard. They just made one of their infrequent appearances, around thirty birds resting and sunning near the creek. As the day warmed, they slowly took off in small groups to fly in… Continue reading Vulture Visitors

The first time I remember seeing ironweed was on a walk with my dad in the Adirondacks. We were walking near what was locally known as the Old Iron Bridge and since he liked to joke he mentioned something about the plant liking to eat iron. I was very young, and for years after whenever… Continue reading Ironweed

I most often visit my garden by day, but night can be magical too. There are quite a few pollinators out and about, but what I enjoy most in summer are the sounds. For part of my academic research I recorded primate vocalizations, and for years after leaving academia I traveled the world recording nature… Continue reading Garden Night Life

As the name suggests, many people consider jewelweed to be a weed. I consider it a beautiful wildflower, prized by pollinators. Over the years I have encouraged them in my yard. Right now, I have two species in flower. The spotted jewelweed shown in this photo with a fly visitor is more common. The pale… Continue reading Jewelweed

When I bought my first house, in central North Carolina, my gardening instinct immediately kicked in. My dad and aunt nurtured my love of plants, and after more than a decade of dorm and apartment living, I was thrilled to have room for a garden. With six acres, my interest rapidly turned to obsession, and… Continue reading Oxblood Lily

In my first garden in central North Carolina I grew both Franklinia alatamaha and Gordonia lasianthus. One winter a major ice storm coated the Gordonia leaves which persist through winter. The tree started to bend from the weight, and I was afraid branches might break off. In dedication bordering on obsession, I ran an extension… Continue reading Fried Egg Flower

I have always been fascinated by animals. It took longer for my interest in plants to develop, though my dad and his sister were both very focused on flora. As a kid, they would convince me to join their nature walks with the promise we might see a turtle. Inevitably we only saw flowers, and… Continue reading Box Turtle Feast

On summer hikes in the forests of upstate New York, my dad and I would frequently encounter a beautiful billowing pink cloud of blooms. He introduced me to Joe Pye Weed, pausing between each word, and pronouncing it in a deliberate way. It reminded me of how he introduced a friend, formally including the middle… Continue reading Joe Pye Weed

Though most people think of orchids as denizens of tropical forests and grocery stores, they are quite common in my yard. The cranefly orchid first makes its presence known in autumn and winter with two toned leaves that are green above and purple below. Each plant has just one leaf, which persists through the coldest… Continue reading Cranefly Orchid

When I first moved here over a decade ago, there was a patch of swamp milkweed growing wild along the driveway, at the edge of the creek. As a park was developed upstream, plans included shifting the flow of the creek and since then this patch has died out. Fortunately, I still have fourleaf milkweed… Continue reading Fuel For Monarchs

I have been fascinated by these ethereal flowers for a long time. On hikes in the Adirondacks, I would often find large clusters of them growing deep in the north woods. I’ve also seen them in nearby parks, but this year is the first time I’ve seen them in my yard. The cluster in my… Continue reading Ghost Flower

Growing up, before knowing how they were taking over the country, I loved honeysuckles. As a child, I enjoyed sipping the flowers, a tiny taste of honeyed sweetness. In middle and high school they always flowered around the time I was taking my final exams, and after hours of study I would step out into… Continue reading Major Wheeler Honeysuckle

Although most of my garden is either native with plants growing wild here, or introductions I have made with plants that would grow here if it was a less disturbed forest, occasionally I add plants that have value either to pollinators or to my preferences, or both. Growing up I remember fondly a small stand… Continue reading Diving Into Summer

My garden is designed to create a welcoming habitat for a variety of wildlife, so I was pleased this week to have an amphibian visitor, this pickerel frog. My love of frogs goes back to early childhood. My father, aunt and I would make an annual pilgrimage to the swamps of upstate New York in… Continue reading Pretty But Poisonous

Black cohosh is flowering now in my forest, apparently enjoying the string of 90-degree days and high humidity as summer approaches. It has an assortment of colorful names. My favorite is fairy candle, because when the last light hits them in the forest they seem lit up like fanciful candles. My first memory of this… Continue reading Fairy Candle

The first time I remember seeing wandflower was at Duke Gardens. I was visiting there with my aunt and uncle, who retired to Durham while I was living nearby. I would go on walks and hikes with them every weekend for the four years we overlapped, except in summer when they escaped the North Carolina… Continue reading Wandflower

The meadows at the tops of some higher peaks in the southern Appalachians, locally known as balds, have spawned many theories. Possibly no one explanation fits them all, ranging from lightning fires to soil conditions. One of the more intriguing ideas is cold weather during the Ice Age prevented trees from growing on some summits,… Continue reading Gregory Bald Azaleas

I first remember seeing mountain laurel as a child on a June visit to my aunt and uncle, at Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills of New York. We visited at least half a dozen other times over the years to see laurels at peak bloom, alerted by my aunt to especially good seasons. Every… Continue reading Fastest Flower in the East

Last week I mentioned my fondness for true Solomon’s seal. My dad’s early explanation of the names for the true and false Solomon’s seal, suggesting the true was a better plant than the false, imprinted a prejudice that still lingers. This week I worked hard to overcome my bias as the false Solomon’s seal started… Continue reading True Purpose of False Flowers

My dad would always bring along his trusty flower field guides when we headed north for the summer. Upstate New York is full of amazing flora, and we found everything from carnivorous plants in lonely bogs to alpine flowers on the highest Adirondack peaks. There were also many flowers we saw each year in the… Continue reading True or False?

Every year around this time, the native dwarf crested iris bloom in my woods. They are most prolific on my steep rocky hill, though also flowering in a few other spots scattered through the forest. In my garden, I am enjoying the flowers of Iris cristata ‘Montrose White’, a domestic variety. It is an elegantly… Continue reading Montrose Memories

This week is the culmination of a long wait. Finally, a pinkshell azalea is flowering in my garden. I grew a couple in my first garden in the early 1990s. They grew but never flowered in the five years I was there. I hadn’t tried again in my assorted gardens until last spring. When my… Continue reading Memorial Flower

When I was growing up in suburban New York, my dad seemed especially fond of dogwoods. Though we didn’t have any growing wild on our small lot, he added two of the white native trees and a pink cultivar. This dominated the view out my bedroom window, and their profusion of flowers in spring always… Continue reading Dogwood Winter

I first became familiar with foamflowers as part of a nature trail my dad maintained in Lake Placid. My mom played in the Sinfonietta there every summer for over 50 years, and when I was a teenager, they bought an old house with a couple acres of mostly woods. As a professor, my dad had… Continue reading Foamflowers

Trilliums are among the gaudiest flowers in Tennessee forests. With around 50 species ranging from the western US to Asia, the highest diversity is in the southern Appalachians. One of the most recent discoveries was Trillium tennesseense right here in east Tennessee. It was found less than 10 years ago, in a park I hiked… Continue reading The Cutest Trillium

This week is the height of bloom for bloodroot both in the woods and in my garden. As the plant emerges, the new leaf wraps around the flower bud, then the flower rises on its own stem, leaving the sheltering leaf behind. They are the Goldilocks of flowers, only opening if the day is not… Continue reading Goldilocks Flower

Last week my town had a record high of 79. At the start of this week, the low tied the record of 14 and dropped even lower in my yard. This extreme fluctuation is tough on plants, both wild and in the garden. There was 4” of snow which helped protect the shorter plants, but… Continue reading The Other Pachysandra

I imagine most gardeners have a favorite flower. For me it is the unassuming Shortia, also known as Oconee Bells. I have grown it in all my gardens, and this week one of my plants here flowered. For me this is always the high point of every gardening year. My photo shows the flower backlit… Continue reading Enchanted by Shortia

The first trout lilies have started to flower, just a hint of the thousands that will bloom in the coming month. They are part of the reason I named my garden Trout Cove. I was inspired both by the trout stream running through my property with its tiny coves, and these beautiful blankets of wildflowers… Continue reading Trout Lily Lessons

Though I have planted a variety of daffodils since moving here, the first to flower are always the ones that came with the house. They are the classic showy bright yellow blooms, and either the previous owners were wildly ambitious, or they have seeded themselves into many new clumps. The first blossoms opened this week,… Continue reading Sunny Daffodils

Hellebores come from Eurasia but have happily settled into gardens across the world. Mine came with the house, several plants flanking the sidewalk and largely shaded except for a few hours of angled sun. Though showing buds for nearly a month, the first flowers just opened this week. Their blossoms are highly specialized, and not… Continue reading Hardy Hellebores

In winter I am always impatient for spring. No garden can equal the tide of new life provided annually by nature, but I try to offer flowers when nothing is available in the forests or fields. One of my garden goals is to have something blooming every day of the year. Already I have seen… Continue reading Eye-Catching Dwarf Iris

My property is bisected by Sinking Creek, a 10-mile tributary of the Watauga River. The Watauga River originates from a spring at Linville Gap in North Carolina. It starts from the western side of the Continental Divide and ultimately its waters flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the Linville River on the opposite side… Continue reading Great Blue Heron

I visited Cuba in 2016 on a botanical trip, visiting beautiful gardens and searching for endangered plants. One of our destinations, Viñales, is known for amazing geological formations. Limestone hills called mogotes rise steeply from the valley. With their isolation, they have many endemic species. A week into our trip, I arranged with our local… Continue reading Seeds of Friendship