The Mysterious Garden Muse

THE BIG DIRT NAP is the sequel to PUSHING UP DAISIES by author and Master Gardener, Rosemary Harris.  Rosemary visited BN.com's Mystery Book Club last year when her debut mystery came out.  With the release of her second in the Dirty Business series, Rosemary is back for an encore. Who else but Rosemary could center a plot around the noxious-smelling corpse flower?  Join us to talk to Rosemary about her gardening experiences and her books.

This fascinating book is one of our features at the Garden Book Club for April at BN.com.

Durable Plants for the Garden is one of our featured books at the Garden Book Club in April.

John Buchan's 1915 classic, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is one of the featured books for the Mystery Book Club at BN.com in April.

The rose is 'Zephirine Drouhin'.  I always wanted to plant this rose after reading Agatha Christie's Sad Cypress.  Clematis 'Henryi' grows up through and above it.

I've been traveling a lot in recent years, so I've put more effort into container plants on the deck than into borders.  I've always had a fondness for woody plants and interesting foliage -- not just flowers. The back part of my yard borders a big field, and I let it grow wild: no grass to cut, just wild violets and plants that grow naturally.  It does need to be weed-whacked in the middle of the growing season, but it's very low maintenance, since I'm gone a lot in the summer.

Here are some pictures from my garden.  These are old pictures, since this year's flowers have only just begun to bloom.

             Those who work with plants inevitably develop a shorthand for describing them: “We’ll need a dozen Stellas for the front border, a couple of Vera Jameson’s and maybe a nice Constance Spry against the wall.” Stella, of course, refers to Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’, ‘Constance Spry’ is a very famous rose, and Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ (sometimes listed as Hylotelephium ‘Vera Jameson’) is a popular relation to Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (also sometimes listed as Hylotelephium ‘Autumn Joy’). The names are familiar. The plants are familiar. But who are the people whose names have become synonymous with the plants that honor them?             British plantswoman Vera Jameson (1899-1989) was married into the Jameson’s Irish Whiskey dynasty. She discovered the dark-foliaged seedling that now carries her name in 1968, growing in a bed along with Sedum cauticolum and Sedum ‘Ruby Glow’, as well as Sedum telephium maximum ‘Atropurpureum’. The plant was first exhibited at the Royal Ho...

St. Patrick's Day Glitter Graphics