One of my #gardengoals for this year is to pick more flowers from the garden. Even though there are actually lots of flowers growing there, the bouquets I picked during the past year could be counted on the fingers of…
When I was in high school I took dancing classes (all my friends did) and acquired never-to-be-used-again proficiency in waltz and polka. Every couple of months or so there was an official dance when the girls were given a bouquet…
As you can see in the photo above, a salad does not need to be just green. I have nothing against a green salad, of course. It is what I eat most of the time and I never get tired…
The rad thing about home-grown flowers is that you just cannot go wrong with them. You can combine the most clashing colours and, somehow, they always work. Today’s bouquet is a case in point. Doesn’t ‘yellow+pink+purple’ sound like a bad…
It is the kids’ spring break and tomorrow we’re leaving for France for a few days. I would like to take this opportunity to say how awesome it is to have kids who are big enough (and willing) to help…
Left to right: narcissus “Ice Follies”, Muscari armeniacum, hyacinth “White festival”, Scilla bifolia, Narcissus “Cragford”, crocus “Jeanne d’Arc”, blue hyacinth (might be “Blue Star”) April means the first cut flowers from the garden. A bit of beauty in the middle…
Truth be told, in early spring I do not spend that much time in the backyard. For this, the Dutch climate is mainly to blame (today for example it is cold and raining). I do get the necessary jobs done,…
I have been planting spring bulbs as long as I have had a garden but I still view them as prepackaged miracles: in the fall you put a bulb in the ground and in the spring, after you all but…
I used to grow lots cut flowers on our old plot – about one fourth of the plot was dedicated to perennial cut flowers (most of which I grew from seed) and I usually also filled several beds with annuals.…
On our allotment, there are edibles and then there are flowers. But sometimes these categories overlap because some of the flowers are edible and some herbs double as foliage for bouquets. Wading through the beds of our allotment and thinking…
Between our week in Oslo and visiting my parents in the Czech Republic, we spent two days at home. To do the laundry, have a break from driving and most importantly, check on the garden. Going to the allotment was…
Today is the last day Sebastiaan will ever attend primary school, so pardon me if I get a little sentimental. After the summer holiday, he’s starting high school and it will be a different building in a different part of…
Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica), Musk mallow (Malva moschata “Alba”), Heliopsis scabra “Giant Double”, Veronica longifolia “Blauriesin”, Silene coronaria, lovage (Levisticum officinale), Anthemis hybr. “Wargrave”, Canterbury Bells (Campanula medium), Verbena bonariensis It is easy to get wrapped up in the garden…
There was a time when I did not like peonies. Nowadays, I don’t really remember why, but probably because I considered them old fashioned and too showy? When we bought our house, there was a well established clump of peonies…
I grow lupins for many reasons aside from their being pretty cut flowers. Because permaculture thinks in terms of “functions” rather than “elements”, plants are selected and placed in a garden depending on what functions they can fulfill. Lupins are…