. . . wherein I try to provide current and useful information about gardening in alkaline clay soils, with special emphasis on the selection, care, and cultivation of roses.  Also included is a short list of roses specifically recommended for Texas gardens.  On the Rose Rosette page, in addition to a discussion of that dreadful disease and its remedies, you will find photographs of typical symptoms and of the eriophyid mite believed to be responsible for transmitting it.

For anyone interested in organic gardening, I include information regarding the proven, common-sense practice of that worthy endeavor.  Unhappily, though, not all sources for this kind of information adhere to scientific principles and practices or even to fundamental rules of professional ethics.  And there are a few outright charlatans flinging around a lot of nonsense (or worse) in the name of organic gardening, which often makes it difficult for the average gardener to separate the wheat from the chaff.  So, heeding the words of Dr. Marianne Jennings, who once said,

I devote the second portion of this website to informing the visitor about our local source of chaff -- and to the curious and often ludicrous pronouncements of Dallas’ own mountebank of misinformation, John Howard Garrett, the self-anointed and self-serving "Doctor of Dirt."