One of my mom’s, Sonja Behnke Festerling favorite things to do after retiring from Behnke’s was ringing the Salvation Army bell at Behnke Nurseries. As a member of the Beltsville Rotary Club, which organized bell-ringing shifts from Thanksgiving through Christmas…
Happy Thanksgiving Out here in Wisconsin we have a lot of wild turkeys. Here is part of a group of a dozen well-fed wild turkeys at my sister-in-law Nancy’s bird feeder in central Wisconsin. We see them regularly here in…
Paint Branch Garden Club Talk This past Monday, I was invited by the Paint Branch Garden Club to give a talk about Behnke’s Early Years at their meeting. I had been looking forward to this ever since they told me…
Grainy photo of the week. Have you ever wondered what’s walking around your yard at night? I’m probably out of date as I don’t have any of those smart apps connected to cameras all around the house, but back in…
Stephanie usually writes about Behnke’s at Beltsville. I thought I would do a “shout out” to the retail store that we had at Largo, MD, which opened full-time in the spring of 1985 and closed in around 2008, when the…
One of my favorite shrubs I bought from Behnke’s is this Limelight hydrangea. Each summer I would see a giant plant blooming at Behnke’s as I walked from the back parking lot to the selling area. I just loved it…
Starting to think about Christmas decor. A couple of weeks ago I was visiting relatives in the U.P., which is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the part of Michigan that is sandwiched between Wisconsin’s northern border and the southern shore of…
I live next door to these beautiful maple trees, and I’ve enjoyed watching them change with the seasons for many years. My in-laws, Jane and Marshall, originally planted the trees in their backyard, and we spent many wonderful times under…
The other day, I was trying to explain Behnke’s Oktoberfest in the ’80s and early ’90s to someone. If you were there, you know how special this event was to everyone who came out to Behnke’s in Beltsville year after…
As many of you know, the late singer Eva Cassidy worked at Behnke Nurseries for a number of years before she left to devote herself to her full-time music career. We worked together at Behnke’s Largo location. In…
Fall is the time for harvesting, and October is packed with so much going on! Just last week, I shared about the Northern Lights, and now, a few days ago, many of us were lucky enough to spot a comet…
This photo is at my former Maryland home, taken November 5, 2006. It’s a Laceleaf Japanese Maple, Acer palmatum variety dissectum ‘Waterfall.’ A plain green cultivar, but with pretty golden fall color. I grew this as a container plant. It was potted in 2000, and…