Deep in the Undergrowth

Back from Hiatus

tomfischer — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:39:15 +0000

I’m happy to report that all those unpleasant rumors about my being indefinitely detained over some silly misunderstanding involving hostile governments, endangered plants, and the USDA simply aren’t true. Yes, Overplanters, I know I was away for a very long time; all will be revealed when I publish my memoirs (although I may need to [...]

Hello from China!

tomfischer — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:48:34 +0000

You may have noticed a dearth of postings in recent weeks, OverPlanters. It’s because I was getting ready for a two-week trip to China, where I’m taking a cooking course at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in Chengdu. If you want to follow my adventures there, go to tominsichuan.wordpress.com. I’ll be back soon!

Elymus magellanicus: Bluest of the Blue Grasses

tomfischer — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:18:22 +0000

Lately I’ve been on a blue foliage kick. Of course, by “blue” I mean the slightly chalky blue-gray-green you see in “blue” hostas, “blue” conifers, “blue” hebes, and so on. Among ornamental grasses, the adjective is most often applied to blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens), various fescues (Festuca species and cultivars), and selections of switchgrass [...]

Irises of Winter

tomfischer — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 01:44:13 +0000

Yes, OverPlanters, it’s been a long time. One has been very, very naughty; but on the other hand, one has been very, very busy, and one will try one’s best (really!) to post regularly. So, irises. I think it’s safe to say that midwinter is not usually thought of as prime iris season. But there [...]

When the Goddess Smiles

tomfischer — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:44:29 +0000

We all do it: we buy plants that aren’t remotely suited to the conditions in our gardens, plunk them in the ground, and hope for the best. And 99% percent of the time, the results are utterly predictable—yet another slaughter of the innocents. (As the saying goes, if you’re not killing plants, you’re not doing [...]

Changing My Mind

tomfischer — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:36:33 +0000

No one will ever accuse me of being a consistent gardener. No sooner have I settled on a color scheme or plant combination than a dandy new idea occurs to me and I want to change the whole thing. Maybe it’s a horticultural version of ADD. Its effects on the garden are probably not altogether [...]

The Lurie Garden: An Urban Masterpiece

tomfischer — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:51:28 +0000

Last summer I got my first glimpse of Chicago’s Lurie Garden, which nestles downtown in Millennium Park. It would be hard to imagine a more spectacular urban setting, with skyscrapers both old and new ringing the park, not to mention Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing of the Art Institute rising in austere splendor along the garden’s [...]

Espionage among the Shrubbery?

tomfischer — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:15:48 +0000

From the New York Times, June 29, 2010: 10 People Arrested Inside U.S. as Deep-Cover Russian Agents “Neighbors in Montclair, N.J., of the couple who called themselves Richard and Cynthia Murphy were flabbergasted when a team of F.B.I. agents turned up Sunday night and led the couple away in handcuffs. One person who lives nearby [...]

The Rare and the Common

tomfischer — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:19:41 +0000

It’s an affliction that besets most plant lovers: the desire to obtain specimens considered “rare and choice.” Sometimes these plants are beautiful; sometimes they’re merely odd (or “bios”—of Botanical Interest Only). Their most important characteristic, however, is that no one else you know has them. (Wilfrid Blunt, author of the landmark study The Art of [...]

Gin: The Gardener’s Friend

tomfischer — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:04:16 +0000

Summer, OverPlanters, has its unofficial start today, and you know what that means: gimlets, rickeys, martinis, Ramos fizzes, g-and-t’s, aviation cocktails, pegu clubs, tom collinses, Long Island iced tea, corpse revivers, and tipsy parsons—all of them concocted with that divinely limpid liquid, that nature’s balm, that friend of the hot and weary gardener: gin. Truly, [...]