Author Archives: talesofanashvillegardener

We in Southern New Hampshire are looking towards temperatures in the 50s for most of the next week after 50s in this one. This will banish the last snow pockets and dry up the mud. The robins will come to the front lawn and the song sparrows will return to their favorite rhododendron. And theContinue reading ““Goodbye and Keep Cold””

Years ago, when I lived in Nashville, I belonged to the Middle Tennessee Perennial Plant Society, and I remember best a garden designer named Duncan Caldecott who finished his talk with a reminder I have never forgotten. “If someone visits your garden and makes fun of you for planting lowly common orange daylilies, you tellContinue reading “Remember Whose Garden It Is”

I am a Volunteer, an unpaid, unlicensed worker, who like millions before me on every continent and in every age finds a mission they feel they must undertake because they value their precious time as worth more than money. Someone or something needs them. Some of us are heroic. We are the Cajun Navy, rescuingContinue reading “Volunteers”

After 20 years, the USDA has confirmed what I have suspected for the last year or so. Southern New Hampshire is now Zone 6a with pockets of 6b. I now live one hardiness zone from Middle Tennessee, where I lived for almost 40 years. Last Saturday I, and Marian, another Goffstown Historical Society volunteer, wentContinue reading “Zone 6”

I regret not posting more this past summer. I used Facebook for photos and short commentary, but found it limiting for my purposes. Facebook is fine as a bulletin board, but for serious writing on gardens it is deficient. Some things only a blog can do. Above is the fall border of asters at theContinue reading “Return”

This was photographed today just before our now daily rain started. Once these steps led to a small courtyard behind the Historical Society building. The courtyard has now gone under a smothering blanket of barberries, weeds, and creepers. The steps were cleared of weeds, and white wood asters, heart leaved asters, and the blue stemmedContinue reading “Old Forgotten Steps- Goffstown Historical Society Today”

Years ago at a Perennial Plant Society meeting in Nashville one of the high end local designers gave a talk, and the most memorable thing he said was ” If someone makes fun of you for having orange daylilies in your garden your response to this should be ‘It’s MY garden’. “ This is true.Continue reading “The Daylily Hegemony”

The freest plantings in the Goffstown gardens are the Sunset color gardens along the main porch of the museum and the Wait Station garden on the property line. There are no rules there, no ideologies, no plant politics. No color is forbidden. I do not care if a plant comes from New Boston’s fields orContinue reading “A Dream Garden”

Only one word for this old fashioned daylily that came out of the garden of a beloved coach from Goffstown- Perfection.