Something special is growing in my garden, an unexpected treasure. I love seed packets for their retro beauty, so I'm often extracting the seeds (without damaging the package) and planting them in my ...

References to the plant genus Dianthus go back as far as the Greek botanist Theophrastus. He named these plants from the Caryophyllaceae family “divine flower” (dios = divine plus anthos = flower).

I’M PRETTY SURE I became a gardener so I could pick flowers with impunity. Once, on the way to school in the second grade, I gathered a small posy of pinks for my teacher. Rather than graciously ...

The ancient Greeks were absolutely right to call dianthus the divine flower. While feasting my eyes on a bed with magnificently flowering iris, hemerocallis and a stunning Guinee rose, they’re drawn ...

As with dianthus, fragrance varies from one type to another. Breeders often ignore fragrance when developing plants with larger more colorful flowers, and it gets lost along the way. Some types of ...