The beloved wildflowers of springtime—the trilliums, the mayapples, the Virginia bluebells—are probably gone till next year, but don't despair. Here comes the next cast of players, the wildflowers of summer. The acclaimed naturalist Carol Gracie looks beyond their surface beauty in her new book on the subject, into their life histories and even cultural uses of plants like cardinal flower, lupine, milkweed, asters, goldenrods, and more.
Carol Gracie, a former longtime educator at the New York Botanical Garden who also worked for The Nature Conservancy, has followed her own intense curiosity to become a leading expert on wildflowers. Now her second book, “Summer Wildflowers of the Northeast: a Natural History,” from Princeton University Press, forms the companion to her earlier spring volume.
If you think nothing’s on the to-do list in winter, fellow gardeners—that we’re all meant to be dormant like the cannas in the cellar...
Since I have lived full-time in a rural place the last decade, I find that probably not coincidentally, my reading list tends increasingly toward...
Like any gardener looking ahead to another growing season, I’m deep into the seed catalogs, dreaming of things to come. But many seeds also...