Garden Blogs of the Month: November 2010

During the first week of each month, I peruse newly discovered garden blogs (usually newly listed on Blotanical) and choose a few to recommend. This month, I will highlight two, one from the United States and one from Australia.

Sometimes, as I peruse blogs trying to choose which ones to focus on, one will draw me in, absorbing my attention as I scroll from post to post and forget what I was supposed to be doing. This month, Hazel Dene was such a blog. This is the journal of “a recently retired fifty-something” embarking on a new life in Victoria, Australia. In the words of the blog’s author, “My goal is to live simply as possible on one third of an acre…growing food, using as little energy as possible, refusing/ reducing/ repurposing/recycling, making things, sewing, eating healthily, cooking from scratch.” I love the diversity in this blog as the author chronicles her adventure. She includes accounts of how she is gardening on her land, the vegetables she is growing, the flowers she is enjoying, the trees she is planting. There are also recipes, posts about birds and wildlife, discussions of sustainable living, and posts about the antics of her pets and about raising chickens. Hazel has a puckish sense of humor that often infuses her posts, especially when she blogs about the chickens. I had to chuckle at the image of chickens being trained to jump into the compost bin and feed themselves from the food scraps (presumably aerating the compost and adding some useful manure while they’re at it). Whatever your garden interests, you will almost surely find something that appeals to you at Hazel Dene.

Sierra Foothill Garden also focuses on the development of a new home and garden, but this time in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, near the Sierra National Forest and Yosemite National Park in California. Sue Langley, the blog’s author, is a passionate gardener, a professional photographer, and a garden writer. This blog is well written and beautifully designed. I particularly like the use of pages to provide easy access to information about the author and her her garden inspirations, about her home-building adventure, and about native plants. The blog archives go back more than ten years, and readers who would like more of the back story about how Sue and her husband acquired and developed their seven-acre property can find it there. In the early years, Sue blogged sporadically, with five or fewer blog posts each year. Then, after a three-year hiatus, she began to blog in a more sustained way this summer. Sue’s blog posts include plant profiles, seasons in the garden, ‘How to’ instructions and discussions of home building. They also include a wealth of interesting and useful information (like how to plant in fire-prone areas). Sue tends to write longer posts and to post less frequently, so it is well worth subscribing to this blog so that you don’t miss the posts when they appear.

I hope you’ll take time to check out these great blogs.