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By MICKEY RATHBUN

 Amherst officials have repeatedly ignored their duty to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and Section 106, a federal regulation meant to prevent “adverse effects” to historic buildings to the fullest extent possible. These...

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 MICKEY RATHBUN

Late summer isn’t a pretty time in the garden, at least not in my garden. The recent mini-drought has bleached out what passes for lawn, several large hydrangeas are drooping as they beg me for water, the daylily borders are shriveled and brown....

By MICKEY RATHBUN

It’s August and in my household that means one thing: local tomatoes. For much of the year, our grocery stores offer tomatoes tough enough to endure machine picking followed by days or weeks in cold storage. Even the more expensive, so-called...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

 Reporter Scott Merzbach’s article of July 11 regarding the Jones Library project’s loss of approximately $2 million in historic tax credits due to its continued failure to meet state and federal historic preservation standards missed a critical piece...

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

I recently heard about a practice called Forest Bathing, which involves spending a few hours in a forest, or at least a sheltered patch of trees, and allowing one’s awareness to settle on all the immediate sensory surroundings. Forest Bathing is...

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 MICKEY RATHBUN

As the calendar page flips to the short but cruel month of February, I suspect that many gardeners, like me, are getting tired of the somber palette of gray and brown.Just in time to rescue us from seasonal ennui, a wonderful documentary, “Painting...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

There’s not a lot going on in my garden, now blanketed under a foot of snow, to inspire this month’s column. So I took a break from dreaming over the spring promise of seed catalogs and went in search of a soul-satisfying poem about the garden in...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

A recent headline in the New York Times caught my eye: “Mars Needs Insects.” As the article explained, if we are to create a human-friendly habitat on Mars, we will need to grow food there.Unlike the nutrient-laden soil that covers the earth, the...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

All the gardeners I know have their favorite garden writers. Allen Lacey, Katharine S. White, Elsa Bakalar, Henry Mitchell … the list is long and endlessly fascinating. But I suspect that few of us take the time to seek out poetry about gardening....

By MICKEY RATHBUN

When I was growing up in Virginia, the roadsides in summer were lined with orange daylilies. These are sometimes called “ditch lilies,” an unfortunate moniker for these tirelessly cheerful flowers that never flag in the face of relentless heat or...

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 MICKEY RATHBUN

I’ve always thought that a truly successful garden is one that feels like it’s always been there, so natural that it seems inevitable. When you step into the artist Robin Freedenfeld’s garden, one of the six locations on the Forbes Library Annual...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Earlier this week my friend Lisa, a demon flower-designer, mentioned to me that she had agreed to provide the floral decorations for her cousin’s birthday party in New York. She lamented that there weren’t many flowers for sale at this time of year...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

I noticed our new puppy, Luisa, checking out the compost bin in the corner of the yard. She was jumping into the air, batting her front legs and snapping her jaws. I tried to call her off, but she might as well have been closing in on a squirrel for...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

One of the many casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic was the series of annual spring gardening symposiums hosted by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardeners Association (WMMGA). These popular events helped gardeners of all abilities expand their...

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...