April has to be one of the most dynamic for the garden - at least, it’s definitely one of the busiest!

I remember the intimidation I felt before planting my first vegetables (just!) two years ago, but the only way to get over that initial reticence is just to dive in and try things.

I became an accidental gardener through grief. I remember like it was yesterday: this same time of year, 5 years ago, approaching Mothers’ Day.

Someday, this post is really going to date this time: spring 2020, the strangest one a lot of us have lived through.

The garden is a laboratory, a learning process, a living thing. Since March just ended, I’ll summarize a few things that happened last month.

Because the interplay of what’s blooming when is so specific to place and even to season, I wanted a way to see at a glance what was happening.

This is a personal essay I wrote for TOWN Carolina’s March 2020 issue about the time I spent at Great Dixter House & Gardens last summer.