About this site

Eleven years ago today I wrote my first blog post. Eleven years in web time is a looong time. A lot of things have changed. When I first started writing, digital cameras and scanners were relatively rare and photos were not expected on blog posts. My first blog post with an image celebrated my first [...]

Thanks to Mary Ann Newcomer, the Dirt Diva of Boise, ID, for mentioning our post about the difference between a frost and a freeze on her radio spot.

On this day in 2002, I wrote my first blog post. I had a half-baked idea that I wanted to share what I had learned about gardening in a cold climate online, and my original plan was to create a website. I realized that a blog was far easier to set up, thanks to help [...]

Today, Cold Climate Gardening turned nine years old. My very first blog post was a list of goals for this blog. After that, I didn't mention my blogiversary until 2006, when I wrote a six part series on Garden Blog Pioneers in honor of my fourth blogiversary. The following year I invited my readers to [...]

I was just helping out a gardener who moved from California to upstate NY. (I think she's over the shock.) It made me realize that not everyone who stops by thinks to look at the top menu bar to see what else is here. So come along and take a tour with me. And just [...]

In May of 1999 I opened up my new issue of Horticulture and started reading "In Search of a Mowable Groundcover." Canadian author Brian Bixley described an ingenious planting scheme that involved interplanting colchicums with hardy geraniums. In the middle of August, he mowed down the geraniums. Two weeks later, they were the perfect height [...]

Yes, I started blogging on this date eight years ago. So much has changed. I've been through three different publishing platforms, adopting WordPress in 2005. Felt so alone when I started, so began a blog directory to keep track of other garden blogs. Now my directory is only the tip of the iceberg! Zanthan Gardens [...]

I join Helen Yoest of Gardening With Confidence this week to talk about Colchicums on Web Talk Radio. They will be blooming in about a month, you know.

Cold Climate Gardening has a tiny bit-part in House Beautiful's June issue. If you happen to subscribe or see a copy for sale, turn to page 40 and check out the top right part of the page. If you don't manage to get hold of a copy, no worries. It is a shortened version of [...]