Bruce Crawford

In this age of readily disseminated literature and specialty nurseries delivering novel and little-known plants to your doorstep, logic would have it that all the intriguing and easily grown plants would be well-known and readily available for purchase. Should a gardener needed to evaluate a plant further, they would need only visit their local public garden where they could see these unique gems firsthand. However, some very good plants have managed to sidestep public gardens and literary...

I am not certain if it is forgetfulness or simply a lack of patience, but I am always astonished at the number of times I have grown a plant unsuccessfully and opted not to try it again until many years later. A case in point is Bowman’s Root, botanically known as Gillenia trifoliata (as seen below in late May with a backdrop of Physocarpus Coppertina®). I remember exactly where I planted it in 1987 at a garden in Hawthorne, NJ and I did not give the plant much consideration again until...

By and large, spring ephemerals require a bit of trial and error before a gardener can understand how best to use them in the spring garden. By definition, this group of plants emerge in early spring, flower, set seed and enter dormancy all before or around the start of summer. Their strategy is to complete their annual reproductive cycle before the tree canopy is fully leafed-out and competition for sunlight and water becomes more intense. For the gardener, the challenge becomes how to...