About this Blog
Kristina MacPherson
Kristina’s interest in the horticultural industry started at a young age. She attended an Agricultural High School where she focused on Arboriculture — the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. She then continued on to get her bachelor’s degree Ecology & Environmental Sciences, with a concentration in Entomology, at the University of Maine in Orono. She also completed a minor in horticulture & botany.
Kristina has worked in the organic industry for the past 10 years. She has had some amazing opportunities to work with some of the leaders in the industry. She has completed internships at the UMass Cranberry Station, the Skillins Greenhouse in Falmouth, Maine, Briggs Nursery in North Attleboro MA, and at the UMaine Experiment Station in Presque Isle, Maine. She has also had the opportunity to orchestrate the renovation and conversion of a 2 acre plot at the National Mall to an organic lawn care program.
Kristina’s certifications include: MCLP(Mass Certified Landscape Professional), NOFA AOLCP (Accredited Organic Lawn Care Professional), Mass Commercial Applicators Certification Category 36 & 37.
She currently lives in Maine with her husband and son. She loves to garden organically and cook and can the fruits and vegetables she produces.
Thanks, Lawn and Garden Retailer Magazine~!
From the Department of Patting Ourselves on the Back comes a quick quote. Peter Mihalek, editor of Lawn and Garden Retailer Magazine wrote to tell us:
I’m not the world’s biggest blog advocate, but I have to admit that you guys do an amazing blog at Mahoney’s. It offers a wealth of useful information and a wealth of variety, which is really why I like it so much. Your ability to keep things up-to-date and populated by multiple authors is awesome.
Well, he may not be a big blog-reader but he sure GETS us! Thanks to Peter and the gang at Lawn and Garden for their vote of confidence, and for their upcoming article about Mahoney’s Blog.
And readers, stay tuned. We have big plans for making this blog even more helpful to New England gardeners - yet fun to read. We’re on a mission!
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PDFWelcome to the Mahoney's Blog!
Yes, Mahoney’s Garden Center has a blog, but it’s for you, the gardeners of New England. It’s for beginners and experts, for gardeners who grow food, gardeners who grow plants for their beauty, and wildlife gardeners, too. The Mahoney’s team is using the blog to promote the great gardening and greening going on around us, and sometimes we just have fun. (Contests!)
Here you’ll find stories about:
- Timely gardening how-to information
- Tips and staff favorites from our in-house experts, plus “Meet the Staff” profiles of the Mahoney’s team
Mahoney’s Brighton Staff - Great gardening and greening programs and events in our region
- Favorite public gardens to visit
- Reviews of gardening books, magazines, websites, podcasts and TV shows
- New research findings that’ll help readers
- The latest ideas for gardening sustainably
Here’s what you won’t find here
- Advertising copy.
- Hard sell.
Our Blogging Team
- Mike Mahoney, who heads up our vegetable-growing operation, and Peter Vera, our visual merchandiser (a/k/a “style guru”)
Blog contributors Peter Vera (L), and Mike Mahoney - Sara diPalermo in our Brighton location.
- More Mahoney’s folks will be contributing soon - Paul Mancuso, garden products manager James Redding, James Hohmann of our Brighton location, and head grower Dan Cousins.
- Weekly local blogger is Layanee DeMerchant.She’s well known to New England gardeners as one of the Garden Guys on Boston radio.
- Our regular national blogger is Susan Harris, co-founder of the popular national team blog GardenRant. Susan’s also a gardening coach, so you’ll be seeing lots of her coaching here.
- Monthly we feature Special Guest Bloggers - well known, respected writers and other authorities in gardening, horticulture, or design, most of them New England-based.
Help us Make this Blog Serve YouBest! (Leave your Ideas in a Comment)
- Tell us what topics you’d like us to cover.
- Send us links you’d like to see added to our “blogroll” in the right sidebar.
- Subscribe to our updates (3-5 per week) by email or by RSS,
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- Tell others about us.
Get conversations rolling by leaving comments to our posts.
Uncle Mike Mahoney
The Guy
Mike’s 41 and married with 3 kids - a boy 12 , a girl 7 and a boy 5.
The Gardener
Mike loves all gardening but says he’s known for the veggies.
Peter Vera
Peter Vera has been in the garden-center business for 25 years now, 20 of them with Mahoney’s, and he’s now our “Visual Merchandising” manager. (And sometimes we call him our “style guru”.)
How Peter got into gardening is a familiar story - he was raised on it. As a kid he helped his parents garden at their summer cottage on the Cape, where his dad was into land “shapes” and his mom was into plants, but Peter says they worked well together as a team.
About his work at Mahoney’s, Peter says it takes up most of his time (and not complaining - he loves it!), so at home he just has time to plant up containers on his deck.
Peter loves to experiment and figure out solutions for gardening, and is into bio-diversity in the landscape. “I believe that the more diversity we have, the stronger our environment will be.”
Sara DiPalermo
Meet Sara DiPalermo, blog contributor and the greenhouse buyer and merchandiser at the Mahoney’s Brighton location.
About Sara
Sara grew up in Woburn and has 17 years experience in the garden center and floral industry around Boston. She is passionate about her job and loves plants and nature. She specializes in custom designs and container plantings.
When she’s not working or gardening, Sara can be found bird-watching, hiking nature trails, traveling far and near, and watching her favorite TV shows on the Discovery and History channels. (She writes, “I’m really into the show ‘American Pickers’.) She also has a green cheek conure parrot named ‘Houdini’ (photo right) which she brings into the Brighton store on occasion.
Sara’s Garden
It’s a combination of both sun and shade perennials, with annuals peppered in for added color in between bloom times. The sunny side contains summer phlox, rudbeckia, coreopsis, yarrow, euphorbia and stonecrop, and she’s recently added a buddleia for its delicate fragrance and butterfly-attracting qualities. The smaller, shady patch of 
her garden holds a carpet of sweet woodruff and lysmachia, plus goat’s beard, astilbe and houttuynia. Every year she plants a window box filled with her very favorite flower, sweet peas. She describes the fragrance as “transcendent”.
What Sara blogs about on the Mahoney’s Garden Blog
- Creative container plantings
- Seasonal tips aimed to inspire
- Her personal favorite plants
- Houseplant recommendations and advice
About Layanee DeMerchant
Layanee’s Background
Layanee DeMerchant is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a degree in Landscape Architecture and a Certificate of Horticulture. She has worked as a sales manager for a wholesale perennial grower and as an independent sales representative for many years, calling on garden centers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Currently, Layanee answers gardening questions on The Garden Guys Radio program, which airs each Sunday on 96.9, WTKK, in Boston from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. She also works as a Garden Coach/Consultant.
Layanee’s Garden
Layanee gardens on 10 acres of rocky and ledge-filled land in Northwestern Rhode Island. Her garden is a Zone 5b garden. She maintains extensive perennial borders, shrub borders,a small fish pond, and a modest vegetable garden. Plant combinations, both native and newer introductions, are welcome in her garden but she does draw the line at invasives. The gardens are surrounded by a very low-maintenance lawn, which contains so much more than just grass. (Clover is welcome.) Layanee has been blogging about her garden for the past three years at Ledge and Gardens.
What Layanee blogs about on the Mahoney’s Garden Blog
Her weekly posts will cover the following topics:
- What is currently blooming in the garden
- Plant profiles
- What is going on at local public gardens
- Local gardening news
- Local Farmer’s Markets
- Her favorite gardening tools, methods and techniques
- Garden pests and diseases
- The trials and tribulations of a real gardener
- Containers and windowbox plantings
- Vegetables, annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees
About Susan Harris
Blog editor and frequent contributor Susan Harris is a garden writer, blogger, and teacher. 
Susan’s Writing
- Susan’s a co-founder of the popular, award-winning team blog GardenRant, and on her own blog and website she covers Sustainable and Urban Gardening.
- In print, her articles have appeared in Organic Gardening, Fine Gardening, Landscape Architecture and others.
- To learn more about her writing services for independent garden centers, click here.
Susan’s Garden
- Her garden is all about low-maintenance, sustainable plants and practices used in the pursuit of beauty. (Being eco-friendly doesn’t require abandoning all hope of design success, or eye-popping results.) Mainly shrubs, the easiest perennials available, and an on-going experiment with short creeping groundcovers that she’s using to replace her lawn.
- A lifelong “ornamentalist”, Susan caught the veg-growing bug in 2009, producing a crop of edibles from containers on her deck (away from the critters). So expect some veg-in-container as well as newbie-veg-gardener stories.
- Help yourself to a tour of her garden.
What Susan Blogs about on the Mahoney’s Garden Blog
Her twice-weekly posts are full of seasonal tips (your virtual garden-coaching) and features about the coolest gardens and gardeners. Book reviews, garderning-in-movie reviews, and whatever looks interesting. And she’s always on the look-out for potential guest bloggers from among the best garden writers in New England.
Photo by Rob Cardillo for Organic Gardening Magazine.
