Plants and Trees

This exotic beauty is all too often treated as a disposable plant.  Why?  Because most people manage to kill this flowering plant within a matter of weeks, and throw it away (hopefully in the compost). So why do they die off so quickly?  Well, if you study the plants’ growing needs, you will find out that this plant likes it …

Pizza isn’t Italian, French horns aren’t French and the Dutch tulip ain’t Dutch! Not Dutch?  Absolutely not — (Although my Dutch heritage and pride wished they were….)  The present day hybrid tulip bulbs we plant, or the cut flower tulips we put in vases, are descendants of the wild tulip that once grew in Persia (now Iran), northern India, Afghanistan …

This is the perfect time of the year to slow down, no, stand still and smell the stunningly beautiful buttery yellow “Cup-of-Gold-Vine”, also known as “Golden Chalice Vine”, and in Hawaii called “Hawaiian Lily”. Its Latin name is Solandra maxima (named after the Swedish botanist Daniel C. Solander) and it belongs in the nightshade family, Solanaceae, which also tells us …

Now that the holiday season is behind us and a new fresh year is almost upon us, there are many holiday ‘remnants’ still growing and blooming. I am thinking of the beautiful new Poinsettia varieties that we were treated to this season, as well as the Christmas cactus, cyclamen, azaleas, orchids, and mums. Usually at this time of the year, …

I am spending some time in my native country the Netherlands, bicycling every day (when it’s not raining) while exploring the incredibly creative Dutch style gardens.  Everybody here has a garden, small or large, intensive or simple.  There are even weed-gardens here (not the one they smoke…) when people are too lazy to pull the weeds and they just let …