Inner Nature: Natives vs. Non-Natives
By Vidya Rajan, Columnist, The Times
Now that gardening season is underway, gardeners are drawn to plant sales and nurseries like a bee to honey. The general advice is to shun “invasives” and “exotic” plants, selecting instead “native”” plants to support local fauna. But what makes a plant, animal, fungus, a native? What is the generational number for drawing the demarcation line...
Inner Nature: Plant poisons
By Vidya Rajan, Columnist, The Times
Plants can be just as deadly to animals as animals are to animals, and this is not hyperbole. In order not to be eaten, plants abound with an alphabet soup of chemicals designed to make the predator so uncomfortable as to leave them alone, or to really make a point by killing them stone cold dead. Here, I want to spend a little time looking at plant toxins and...
Longwood gears up for Christmas with a French accent
A Longwood Christmas runs November 23–January 7. Photo by Daniel Traub.
EAST MARLBOROUGH — There is only one way to describe Longwood Gardens French-inspired holiday display . . . c’est magnifique! Explore the warm 4-acre conservatory and be enchanted by fanciful topiary and more than 50 trees adorned in classic holiday tones boasting sparkling crystal ornaments reminiscent of the splendor...
