In late May, a foxglove spike can look as though it is keeping two calendars at once. The lowest bells are open, freckled, and deep enough for a bumblebee to disappear into. Halfway up the stem, the flowers are still folded tubes. At the tip, a queue of green buds waits, as if the plant is saving tomorrow’s color for…
A phenology garden is a garden designed to tell time biologically. Not clock time, and not the tidy time of seed packets. It tells the time of bud swell, first flower, pollinator arrival, fruit ripening, leaf color, seed release, and dormancy. The USA National Phenology Network defines phenology as the study of timing and cyclical patterns in the natural world,…
