Pith + Vigor

10/01/2026

Woohooing Mt. Cuba Center today — because OMG, the planting right now. 😍

Late September and the whole place is doing that glorious end-of-season thing — asters, grasses, seedheads, goldenrods, layers upon layers of plants all looking ridiculously good together.

And Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Alma Potschke’ — the New England aster that apparently looked at the usual fall palette and chose HOT PINK. 💗 I’m obsessed.

Mt. Cuba is, of course, all about native plants — but mostly what I kept thinking today was just how beautiful and inspiring the gardens are. So many combinations I want to steal… errr, study carefully for professional purposes. 😉

Woohoo for really good plants and really good garden-making.

09/30/2026

Longwood rolled out the red carpet for AHS today. We saw two fountain shows from the front, the side and even the back, where we got a peek at the inner workings.

I thought seeing how the magic happens might make it feel a little less magical. Absolutely not. If anything, it made the whole thing more astonishing. Water has no business being that theatrical.

An extraordinary day at Longwood Longwood Gardens If you have a chance to see the fountains from more than one angle, take it.

09/27/2026

Woohooing our 29th anniversary at one of our favorite places, Armsby Abbey in Worcester. We’ve been coming here since the day it opened, and I’m pretty sure its Bloody Marys are the best anywhere.

Which raises a question. After a tomato season that made a banner zucchini year look restrained, why didn’t I think to make Bloody Mary mix? 🤦‍♀️ Next year…

Armsby is for sale, so a small plea to whoever takes over — please keep the mac and cheese, the bloodies, the beers and those excellent cheese boards. 🙏

Day 6/30 of woohooing the good stuff.

09/25/2026

Woohoo, day whatever-we’re-on: getting out for a walk.

I broke my foot last winter, and the walking habit I lost with it has been surprisingly hard to get back. Lately, though, these walks are helping me feel a little more like myself. Slow healing, in more ways than one.

Earlier this week I walked past Fannie Farmer’s house (which is very near my own), which I’d never given nearly enough thought about until Flora & Frost mentioned Fannie Farmer Day.
I know the cookbook. I didn’t know that a stroke left her unable to walk for years as a teenager. She went on to lead the Boston Cooking School, write the cookbook that made her famous, open a school of her own and build this very pretty house. I’ll share more of her story in my stories. She is kinda legend.

And then there are the turkeys . I’m not sure they’re asking for a woohoo, but they’re getting one. I didn’t grow up with wild turkeys in Colorado, and I remain absurdly delighted that these enormous, prehistoric-looking birds just wander around here.

I also never tire of hearing about one holding up traffic or harassing someone across Boston. Absolute badasses.

Anyway, here’s to walking again, noticing the houses, and giving the local turkeys the respect they clearly expect.

09/24/2026

Two more gardens from the Van Berkum event last week - and two completely different ways to approach the same little plot.

Owen Wormser Owen Wormser gave his plants room to breathe. His garden had the fewest plants of the four, which was a conscious choice. It also had, by my thoroughly unscientific count, the most bees by a mile. They were all over the Angelica gigas and Agastache. Owen, who runs Abound Design in western Massachusetts and wrote Lawns Into Meadows, knows a thing or two about making space for other living things. It was lovely to meet him and talk shop with a fellow Gen Xer who’s still out there designing. Owen- help with the plants if you can!

Julie Moir Messervy JMMDS made a landscape within a landscape. Drawing on her experience with Japanese garden design, she arranged low plants in front and taller ones behind to suggest the contours of distant hills. She told us she wanted to rotate the entire bed 90 degrees, so the real New Hampshire hills would rise behind her planted ones instead of the barns. Honestly, Julie, I can’t stop picturing it. I remember Amsonia among the taller plants, but I’m going to need you to remind me of what that ground cover was we were admiring down front??

I’ve known Julie for years, and I’ve long appreciated the way she leads and champions other women in design. A week later, I’m still basking in the reflected glory of spending time with this group. Go follow Owen and Julie. They’ll give you plenty to think about.

09/22/2026

09/20/2026

Day three things that bring me joy.

Today, it’s Thomas Farley, Thomas J. Fraley senior designer at Lombardi Landscape Architects, Lombardi Landscape Architecture and the utterly compelling little garden he created for the Van Berkum Van Berkum Nursery event.

Thomas has spent years designing high-end landscapes around Boston, and it showed. His planting had that wonderful confidence that makes everything appear effortless.

It was full and textural, loose but composed, and a good reminder that fall’s beauty isn’t merely about color but also seedheads, stems, density, movement and plants settling into their slightly unruly late-season selves. I wish I could remember any of the varieties.
Maybe, Thomas you can help? Especially that burgundy sedum?

And then there was the log, placed rakishly across the front because it was cool and why not? Not sure if you can see them- but he added sumac branches tucked into the composition — not rooted plants, just stems added for color and form also Because Why Not?

It made me wonder whether we should treat our gardens a little more like flower arrangements. Perhaps take ourselves a little less seriously.

We can add things, move them around and let certain gestures last only as long as they’re useful or beautiful.

I once dragged a discarded Christmas tree into my garden to test what a similarly sized evergreen might look like in a variety of spots. It stayed until it had surrendered nearly every needle, but it answered the question.

I’m not naming favorites among these gardens. That would be undiplomatic. I’ll only say that I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas, and am woohooing his collection of plants and every last artfully arranged twig.

09/19/2026

Meet Marissa Angell of Angell Landscape Architecture - As she says, obtuse, acute and right. (Not of the heavenly sort, just to be clear.)

Marissa was one of the designers I got to spend roughly 24 hours with earlier this week at Van Berkum Nursery, where she created one of the little 4-by-8-foot pocket gardens we were all there to see.

Her garden featured purple love grass (Eragrostis spectabilis), which is having its annual moment all over New England right now. I was recently driving down Route 3, admiring the great purply-red haze of it along the roadside. It’s one of those plants that makes you appreciate the beauty of the ordinary, untended landscape. Think pink muhly grass, but shorter, tougher and native to this part of the world.

Anyway, Marissa is delightful. She’s funny, she’s doing some really cool work with her all-women design firm in the Upper Hudson Valley, and she recently interviewed in VOGUE. Which, frankly, I don’t know how you make happen, but it’s on my bucket list, and I’m a little jealous that she’s already checked that box.

Also, you need to see her recent video about flopping grasses. 😂 (I’ll share in my stories)

And one more thing. THE DRESS. She was wearing the coolest dress with all these beautiful little embroidered details, and somehow I managed to spend an entire day with her without asking where she got it. Or even telling her how much I loved it.

Marissa, if you’re reading this, please help me out in the comments?

Go follow her for the gardens, stay for the geometry, the grass jokes and, of course the fashion. 😉

WOOHOO for cool women doing cool things.

Day 2/30

Other plants in this wonderfully eclectic mix included edelweiss, cranberry vines — which, somehow, I’d never realized were vines — Kirengeshoma palmata, fireweed and more. A disclaimer — these are mini show gardens, not planting combinations to replicate at home.

03/16/2025

Finally!
Does this spring feel long to you?

Ot maybe it’s just news lately.