Gardens

Most people in the ABC islands plant when they feel like it. A free Saturday, a new house, a nursery sale. The plants go in during the driest, windiest stretch of the year, and by March half of them look like they regret the decision. Here is the answer: the best time to plant in

Watch someone water a garden here at eleven in the morning and you will see the same scene every time: a hose, a steady trade wind, and half the spray heading for the neighbor’s wall. Short answer, up front. For most gardens in the ABC islands, drip irrigation on a tap timer, buried under gravel,

Six months. That’s roughly how long it takes a big-box solar spotlight to give up out here — the plastic lens goes cloudy, the battery swells, and the stake snaps off in your hand the first time you try to move it. We’ve watched it happen to three different gardens on three different streets, and

You plant the bougainvillea hedge the landscaper showed you in the catalog. Three months later it’s alive but sulking — half the leaves gone, blooms thin, and you’re running the drip line twice a day just to keep it upright. Meanwhile the divi-divi tree nobody planted, the one that’s been leaning sideways at the edge

Vertical gardens promise more green in less space. In a trade wind climate, the pitch needs three honest caveats before you build one.

Everyone can spot bad artificial grass instantly. It is uniformly bright. It has a faint plastic sheen in sunlight. It sits flat like carpet. And it announces itself from across the street. Good artificial grass is genuinely hard to identify at a glance — and the difference between the two is not price alone. It

Let’s be honest about something the gardening world rarely admits: most of us don’t want to garden. We want to have gardened. We want the green, the shade, the birds, the courtyard-jungle feeling — without surrendering every Saturday to it. Good news: that garden exists. And the first thing to get straight is that lush