Author: Lili LeGardeur

With New Orleans looking toward a more hopeful future, it’s time for a new gardening aesthetic.

Between subsidence and rainstorms, both of which we have in abundance here, rain gardens make great sense.

Gardening without watering — in this climate? Architect Susan Neely proves it’s not only possible but also easy.

Indoor herb gardens are lovely, but serious cooks who want herbs on hand to punch up their recipes will have to look to the great outdoors.

Rain barrels are must-have items for eco-friendly gardeners.

Marilyn Yank of Little Sparrow Farm in Mid-City has transformed a vacant lot into a community garden worth watching.

Container gardening is catching on in urban areas, and Mid-City Community Garden is flourishing as a result.

Twin needs prompt a flurry of March activity in the garden.

The lemon grass was a guess, but it was a good guess.The problem we were addressing was cats. I am not one who rejects cats out-of-hand. Their grace and stealthy affection intrigue me. In our yard are headstones memorializing two…

Sometime last winter, our neighbor Chris wandered over and squinted critically at our lawn.“Yep,” said Chris, who runs a gardening and landscaping service. “You ought to plant some annual grass. Looks pretty, and it would do good for the lawn.”…

Monique Pilié has planted a lot of trees. Let’s be more precise: Through her nonprofit organization, Hike for KaTREEna, Pilié has planted more than 2,175 trees in greater New Orleans. That would be one tree for every mile she hiked…

The last article I filed before I left for Natchez, Miss., on Aug. 27 looked at The Farm-Yard Project, a community-based effort to help people build kitchen gardens in their yards. The lead organizer, Macon Fry, got me all fired…

The morning after Hurricane Gustav, my husband hauled out the lawn mower and churned the fallen oak debris around our house into compost. It would have seemed comical to an outsider, or perhaps poignant — the thrum of the suburban…

Around about July 10, the heat defeated me. Instead of spending eager hours in the garden, I retreated inside to seed catalogs and Web sites and my imagination. I started dreaming about the garden that might be possible when the…

The thyme is threadbare. The maidenhair is bald. The nasturtiums look like they’ve been hit by a blowtorch. But the tithonia is giddy with blossoms, and helianthus disks sway in the heat.It must be August in New Orleans. And sunflowers,…

Every week now, I either begin or end the weekend by moving the compost pile behind my house from one place to another. I start by laying some sticks and bamboo shoots in a square about 3 feet by 3…