SHARON WHITE

I moved to Philadelphia twenty years ago.  It was a hot, dry summer day and I felt far away from the cool shade of my yard in Massachusetts. I knew nothing a...

I’ve been thinking about birds a lot as I shovel. We’ve had two big storms in a row and my job’s been to shovel the snow off the third floor deck with my ava...

I went to the flower show yesterday and felt a little depressed until I got to the bonsai exhibit. I had seen Jane Pepper in a slim blue suit disappear into ...

I’ve been forced to rest the past week after surgery. While I’ve been going from my house to work and back again the world has exploded with buckets of daffo...

I’ve walked away from lots of famous gardens. One spring a couple of years ago, I visited my friend Felicity in Virginia. I took the train from Philadelphia ...

I just came in from snipping the bodies of tulips. The ones blooming are creamy yellow streaked with red flames. One of my neighbors coming back from the cle...

I gave a reading last week at an old house in the green suburbs of Philadelphia. We drove past hollows full of trees just barely leafed out. Later, I could s...

I went to Bermuda last June after not going there for more than twenty years. To me, the whole island is a garden, filled with secret paths and tiny fields o...

I've been reading Our Life in Gardens by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd. It's a wonderful book and it's taken me through a difficult week here in Vermont. My m...

I admit it. I have red lily bug blood on my hands this morning. Or at least I did a few minutes ago. I actually have Asiatic lilies blooming here this year, ...

A man who grows strawberries near here for a little extra cash shot seven cedar waxwings and a chipping sparrow. They were eating his fruit, he said, and it’...

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen describes the way songbirds are hunted in Europe. They’re caught on lime sticks “straight switches, abo...

I bought five tomatoes on a vine a couple of days ago at Super Fresh on the banks of the Delaware River. They were bright red and firm. Each tomato cost abou...

I just planted the last of my tulips, frilly Green Wave, Blue Spectacle, Foxtrot--a peony tulip with white and pink petals--Analita. I’m soaked, it’s pouring...

Once a trailer park. At the entrance to Heathcote Botanical Gardens, a screw pine was thick with gold bees on the fluffy inflorescence. The Palm and Cycad Wa...

I’ve been skiing in a garden planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression over 80 years ago. Through clusters of fir trees puffy wi...

When I was just a bit older than my son is now, I lived in a cabin in Maine for a month. Or I was supposed to live in a cabin in Maine. My friend Nina and I ...

I walked on slippery sidewalks through tunnels of snow yesterday with the movie Into the Wild perched in my purse. No buses were running and the streets were...

A couple of weeks ago I went walking along the Wissahickon Creek with Scott. I’d been feeling cooped up and it was a pretty warm day. I hoped that some mirac...

I’ve been skiing on Thomas Penn’s garden. It’s a ballpark now, but once it was filled with sparkling ponds full of goldfish