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By JACOB NELSON

Sometimes, medicine comes from a pill bottle. Other times, it grows right in your backyard, if only you knew how to access it.Blending modern chemistry with traditional wisdom, Blue Crow Botanicals puts locally grown herbal medicine right at people’s...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Many gardens go drab this time of year after summer flowers have faded away. But in fields and along roadsides, swaths of native asters add explosions of color to the transitioning landscape, with their golden centered, star-shaped flowers ranging...

By RACHEL QUIMBY

Shortly after we moved into our new (old) house in Holyoke, I noticed a shrub in our neighbor’s yard. It was covered in purpley-red fruits that looked like big blueberries, but attached by much longer stems. “Serviceberry,” said our neighbor, “because...

By BILL DANIELSON

One of the hazards of working in a school is the annual reunion of large numbers of people in small, confined spaces. The students get antsy and the adults get antsy, but this is just a temporary annoyance. The bigger problem is the confinement of...

By DAVID SPECTOR

In summer, many New England roads are lined with clouds of magenta flowers atop the tall stems of several species of Joe Pye weed, especially where the roads are bordered by damp ditches. Who was Joe Pye? A perusal of popular botanical sources reveals...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Anyone with a passing knowledge of art history is familiar with the acanthus plant, whether they know it or not. The acanthus leaf, broad and serrated, is the decorative motif on the capital of the classical Corinthian column, more ornate than the...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

After long weeks of yearning for gardening weather, we’re suddenly inundated by spring. Endless outdoor chores beg for our attention — composting, mulching, edging, scrubbing birdbaths and, at least in my garden beds, pulling out multitudes of maple...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

The word “herbarium” sounds a bit quaint, even antiquated. We may think of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, which she created during her year at Mount Holyoke in 1847-48. Although she had begun studying plants at age 9 and was helping her mother in the...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Most of us humans assume that other creatures experience the world through their senses of sound, taste, smell and touch, the same way we do. But we couldn’t be more wrong, as science writer Ed Yong explains in his fascinating new book, “An Immense...

By MADDIE FABIAN

Ask almost any conservationist about an Endangered Species Act (ESA) success story and they will tell you about the bald eagle.“Growing up, I would have never seen a bald eagle in western Massachusetts,” said Jeff Collins, senior director of...

By Colin A. Young

State agriculture officials are moving to prohibit the importation, sale and trade of two plants thought to be invasive to Massachusetts, including one that “is well known for having nasty smelling flowers.”The Department of Agricultural Resources is...

By MADDIE FABIAN

EASTHAMPTON — Use of Nashawannuck Pond will be restricted until Saturday after its annual chemical treatment to control the growth of nuisance vegetation.The city of Easthampton contracted Solitude Lake Management to treat the pond with herbicides...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

When I wrote a death notice in this column a few months ago for my three Little King river birches I was feeling pretty miserable. These nice young trees were forming the architectural spine of an evolving garden behind the house that had been a...

By LAWRENCE WINSHIP

Each spring the Connecticut River Valley is flooded with fresh colors and smells as leaves and flowers burst out of dormant buds on trees and shrubs. Green shoots push up through the last snow and over-top last year’s brown leaves, covering the ground...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

It’s February. A few days ago, the temperature outside was an untoasty -10 degrees, weather that challenges the reaches of our imaginations to conjure images of newly planted vegetable seeds sprouting in our gardens. But it’s never too soon to start...

By JOSHUA ROSE

’Tis the season of mistletoe, sort of. Mistletoe is evergreen, meaning it’s present year-round. However, winter is the season when we think about mistletoe most often.In the southeastern U.S., where I am writing this piece, mistletoe is hidden among...

By BILL DANIELSON

In keeping with my New Years resolution to focus some more attention on the plants that live around us I decided to look for a list that I was convinced must exist somewhere. You see, I am a compulsive list-maker. The blood of a scientist runs through...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

A few years ago I was having coffee with my two sisters-in-law at a family gathering in North Carolina. Both of them had recently built new houses and were quizzing me about how to create gardens in the bare dirt surrounding their homes. The question...

By Norman Winter

If I told you to let deadnettle liven up your mixed containers you might think that it is an oxymoron or perhaps I was just a moron, as dead and nettle sound none too lovely in the landscape. As they say in France, au contraire, deadnettle is the...