Search
Close this search box.

Your Cart

No products in the cart.

Search
Close this search box.

Your Cart

No products in the cart.

Letters from the Garden

Other

Things I learned from Sarah

It’s no secret that I have a massive girl crush on Sarah Richardson. I try not to talk about it too much here because I hate to just show you pretty pictures of rooms that other people have created. There are a lot of blogs that do that very well and this one will never been one of them. But …

Read More
Garden

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Here’s a bit of randomness for Friday (yay Friday!). First off, in case you missed it on the Facebook page yesterday, the chair I was (and still am) in love with at the thrift store turns out to be eerily similar to my favorite chair in our house. Like someone said … you like what you like. Guess we know …

Read More
Cottage

Step away from the chair

I happened to be driving past the local thrift store this weekend and just popped in for a quick run through to make sure I didn’t need anything (ha, need, that’s funny). Things were pretty well picked over, which seems to be the usual state of things at this particular store as I understand the employees usually grab the best …

Read More
Cottage

Lamp lament

I took a little heat from a family member last week (just a tiny little bit) when I said on the blog that I don’t do placeholders. It was in reference to the vintage botanical charts I recently hung in the kitchen, which I was so thrilled to have hanging there because that wall was empty for about three years …

Read More
Cottage

Vintage botanical chart giveaway

OK, folks, today is the big day. I am SO excited to be offering this amazing giveaway from Bonnie & Bell. You might remember that I spent three years staring at a giant blank wall in the kitchen while I searched for the perfect art. I absolutely fell in love with some of the photos I was seeing of vintage …

Read More

The Impatient Gardener blog was started in 2009 and its library of posts includes practical how-tos, plant guides, favorite garden gear, successes and failures and much more. If you’re looking for something specific, the search function at the top of the page can help.

Thank you to Wave Petunias for partnering with me on this post.  I’m often asked a question that is perplexing to me: “Do you grow annuals or perennials?” I don’t fault the people asking the question as I think there are some people who grow one or the other, and perhaps that was more typical […]

Nothing stops me in my tracks more than when I’m looking at a garden jam-packed with color and texture and come across a spot of bare soil. It puts a screeching halt to well-planned flow.  Gaps in the garden happen because the plant that was supposed to be growing there didn’t, or perhaps because other […]

What more can we ask from a gardening book than to be inspirational and education? Two new books with more than a little in common manage to strike the right balance of both, complimenting each other, much as the personalities of these enthusiastic and generally delightful gardeners do. Claus Dalby, the Danish gardener known for […]

If there is a support group for planter addicts, let me know, because I need it. I love a good container, but finding one is a different matter.  I have two non-negotiable requirements for most planters: they need to be big and they need to look good. Weight, style and even cost are all things […]

Is there any task that has so many rules and yet so many people tackling it in different methods more than growing plants from seeds? It can make the whole process even more confusing. Each way to start seeds has its pros and cons, and although some are better than others for starting particular seeds, […]

There’s a well-established garden-making process around here: Every other year I make a new garden space. It is a lot of work, puts me behind in other areas of my arguably already too-large garden and takes a bit bite out of the plant budget. By the end of the project I swear I’m all done […]

What can I say about the 2021 garden? I have been putting off thinking about it too much because well, I have regrets, and when we are only given so many summers in this lifetime, it stinks to use one on a garden that you don’t love. Don’t get me wrong, I am way more […]

No matter how much I’d like to be one of those people who makes notes throughout the year of gift ideas for family and friends, I am but a mere mortal who, in the throes of a panicked gift-buying season, ends up scouring online gift guides that claim to know the innermost desires of the […]

At a time of year when there’s no shortage of faux decor—faux trees, faux berries, faux garlands, faux mistletoe, for starters—it’s nice to have a few real plants around. The plants we typically think of as “holiday” plants don’t usually bloom at this time of year. Rather, they are forced (although perhaps “t

Growing oddball plants—those plants that aren’t commonly grown in the area—is almost always rewarding. Since there is no real way to measure success, any sign of a plant doing what it’s supposed to do is chalked up in the win column. In other words, I keep my expectations low and hope to be pleasantly surprised. […]

Thank you to Inside Outside House & Garden for partnering with me on my post. As usual, all words and thoughts are mine. Check out the promo code at the end for a free trial. “No new gardens.” Perhaps you’ve heard me say this a few times before, but it turns out no matter how […]

I’ll admit it: My gardener brain switched into fall to-do list mode awhile ago. But somewhere along the line in between planning where bulbs will go and remembering which plants need to be moved, I looked up and found some great plants showing off in the garden. It was, once again, a good reminder to […]

This time of year is all about soaking in the garden and making mental (or more likely, photographic) notes about what worked and what didn’t. Some things are as simple as a plant that just didn’t perform or as complicated as being happy with how a design sketched on paper came to fruition. But somewhere […]