Allium Love

Alliums are my favorite bulb especially big showy ones like this Globemaster that graces the most recent cover of Organic Gardening magazine. I especially like the way the AD layered the type above and below the image for a more dimensional look. OG becomes more beautiful and more relevant with each new issue and I salute the passionate staff led by Editor Scott Meyer. Photographed at Keukenhof in Holland, a mecca for bulb lovers worldwide.

Awards

A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region garnered TWO GOLD AWARDS (BEST PHOTOGRAPHY and BEST BOOK) at the annul Garden Writer's Annual Symposium in Portland, OR last September. I don't know why it took me so long to post about this but I still feel quite honored every time I walk by these two handsome trophies.

Fordhook Farm

For ten years now, I've had the privilege of shooting at Fordhook Farm for the Burpee catalog. Their seeds and plants are terrific in large part because they field trial and evaluate hundreds of varieties each year at their historic farm site in Doylestown -- just twenty minutes from my home. The Burpee empire now includes both the famed Heronswood and Cook's Garden catalogs and is helmed by George Ball whose own blog profoundly examines a wide range of topics.
Once just row upon row of vegetables and annuals, the 60 acre farm has been slowly transformed into a showcase of plant diversity under the guidance of crackerjack plant breeder Grace Romero. Increasingly, you'll find corners filled with exotic perennials and woodies (many from the Heronswood collection) where only tomatoes and impatiens fared in past years. Still, food crops are the major players here and I've spent many a hot summer day shooting unbelievably fresh produce with sharp-eyed Michele King, the Burpee AD, and her talented staff. My real payoff is when I get to bring home armfuls of leftovers. A flurry of soups and stirfries usually ensues but we still haven't found a recipe for ten heads of leaf lettuce.

Gale Nurseries: Four Generations of Garden Excellence

Many of the Philadelphia region's finest gardens were designed by the Gale family and this new book showcases some of their best work. Chuck Gale, third generation landscape designer, envisioned this book years ago after seeing some of his father’s garden creations fade away when properties changed hands. He called in Adam Levine, a regular writer for Martha Stewart Living to not only write the garden essays, but also to manage the project from beginning to end. The book was meticulously crafted and designed under the careful eye of Charles Nix and George Scott of Scott&Nix and printed by The Studley Press. Finally published late in 2008, it has been a holiday hit with everyone who’s paged through the 35 profiled gardens. Don’t know if and when it will be available for purchase but it does offer a window into some gorgeous Main Line backyards that few will ever see otherwise. Here are a few favorite views:

'Twas the Day After Christmas

Ginny Smith, ace Gardening Writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, profiled me for their December 26 edition. Here's the online version. She spent a few hours interviewing me earlier this month and even called my dear old Dad for a quote or two.

Michael Perez, one of the paper's top shooters, had a tough job finding a suitable background for a winter portrait but got creative with the framing. They also ran six pictures of mine.

Some of my blogging friends (Susan , Nan and Christa) picked up on the interview and gave the story an even bigger boost.

Les Knuckleheads

Welcome to our two new rescued friends! Romeo (top) and Sasha, resulted from Sue visiting a PAWS storefront shelter just to make a few inquiries. We were looking for a pair of dogs that had lived together and there they were stuck amongst the two dozen cats and kittens. Romeo is a Cocker Spaniel but Sasha's pedigree has defied everyone's attempts to unravel -- head of Boxer, chest of a Pitbull, legs of a Bassett and ears of a bat! She also gets these groovy Sharpei forehead wrinkles when she's puzzled. Both lovable as all heck but they have their issues. LOTS of energy expressed through running, chewing and barking -- the local squirrels are getting a workout and our cats are talking to their lawyers...

The Princess and the Bulb

Just before Thanksgiving, I had the honor of documenting a celebrity gardening event at the NYBG. Their Seasonal Walk, a long border just outside the conservatory, has been thickly planted with a sophisticated mixture of flowering bulbs and perennials following a plan generated by two of the world's top garden designers, Piet Oudolf and Jaqueline van der Kloet (above), both of the Netherlands.
Borders within the bed were marked off by colored ribbon and thousands of bulbs were expertly distributed amongst the already planted perennials by Jaqueline and Frans Roozen, Technical Director of the International Flower Bulb Center. Despite the freezing temperatures, the garden crew followed behind and dug the rich mix of major and minor bulbs into the hard crusty soil.Tovah Martin, the demigoddess of horticultural writers, was also in attendance proving that frozen fingers and lips are still capable of asking good questions and taking notes.

The real media event followed the next morning when Princess Margriet of the Netherlands arrived with her husband Pieter van Voallenhoven and Todd Forest of the NYBG. Kneeling on clean burlap and using a trowel engraved with the royal crest, the Princess cheerfully popped a few tulips into the ground. This picture was quickly emailed to de Telegraaf in Holland to make page three that evening.