When July rolls around, that first flush of spring flowers is over, and even some of the early summer plants are finished too. If you haven’t planned ahead you may be looking at a lot of green right now, and if that sounds like your garden, now is the time to do something about it. After all, July is often the month you spent more...
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Pines are certainly the most easily recognized evergreen, with their distinctive long and thin needle-like leaves and large cones. For the garden they offer a wide range of trees and shrubs, that fit into many garden styles, and grow well even in poor, sandy soils. With all that diversity available, there is hardly a garden anywhere that can’t be enhanced with a pine tree, so...
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When we think of ‘home grown’, it is usually vegetables, or fruit, that most people think of. Yet there is a valuable food – nuts – that is often overlooked. Yet nut growing is certainly the easiest way to grow edible plants. No elaborate annual bed preparation, seeding and planting, as you do with a vegetable garden. You don’t have to followed detailed pruning methods,...
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Junipers can be confusing plants when you first start gardening. Someone will casually say, “It’s a juniper” when pointing at almost anything from a tall tree or a narrow, upright shrub, to something a few inches tall creeping across the ground. It might have fuzzy or smooth leaves, and it could be green, blue, yellow, gold or any combination of those colors. Naturally this is...
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We all want the best plants in our gardens – healthy bushes covered in flowers that bring color and often perfume for us to enjoy. Yet sometimes we are disappointed. A bush produces a few initial flowers and then stops for the rest of the season, or has a good flowering one year, and then little or nothing the next one. Instead of just being...
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In everyday talk around our gardens, we often talk about cypress trees, but that name seems to cover many trees that look very different from each other. So what is going on with all these ‘cypress’? The name is an old one, going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and was applied to trees that were evergreen, with green branches, but that didn’t have...
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When you start gardening, the biggest lesson is knowing what to do when. Good timing gives you plenty of blooms in their seasons, and makes planting go smoothly, with plants developing quickly. It prevents (or greatly reduces) winter injury and drought problems, and it makes your work much more effective. In different parts of the country there will be, because of climate, variations in timing...
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In a perfect world we would walk out into our spring gardens and be surrounded by beautiful flowering shrubs and trees, with a lush, green lawn, and the promise of another perfect gardening season. Too often, though, the reality falls short of our vision, and we instead find a tired collection of unhappy plants, with a few sporadic blooms – hardly what we had in...
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In this series of blogs, we have been looking at a different approach to designing your garden. Forget about drawing plans, and work instead right on the ground, thinking out your garden right in the garden, and laying it out directly on the ground. The great thing about this approach is you don’t need to learn the skills of drawing plans and using fancy software...
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In the spring garden, two flowering trees stand out – the flowering cherry and the flowering dogwood. Both have their fans, but while for flash, perhaps the cherry wins, nothing can match the charm and beauty of a dogwood tree in full bloom. These trees also win in the other seasons, with much more attractive and reliable foliage, brilliant fall color, and the possibility of...
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With smaller gardens, town homes and condominium living so much more common, many would-be gardeners find themselves with not much more than planter boxes and pots to work with. When most people think about planter boxes, they normally think annual flowers. But in these busy times flowering shrubs offer great alternatives that can be colorful and interesting for months, and that also need a lot...
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In the extended plant descriptions and advice which are a unique feature of The Tree Center website – and a great resource for our customers – we often describe a plant as being ‘suitable for foundation planting’. Experienced gardeners will know exactly what we are talking about, but new gardeners may be a little mystified. So let’s talk about this, and look at the features...
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Once warmer weather returns, and the days start to grow longer, the garden tempts up back into it, after a winter of rest, perhaps buried beneath snow. The early-spring garden can look sad, and some early work will pay dividends, as well as getting you out in the fresh air and spring sunshine. Here are some tips to bring your garden back into shape effectively...
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Would you like to have a garden with bright color for months and months, but your soil is poor, your winters cold, and you don’t really have much time available? If that sounds like you, then the Barberry is your friend. These tough shrubs grow well even in zone 4, they are resistant to dryness, they cope well with poor soils, and they are colorful...
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As spring returns to the outdoor world, spare a thought and a moment for your houseplants, which at this time are usually looking a little sad, after months of low light levels and dry central heating. Here are some tips and thoughts on how to bring them back to top health and vigor: Time to Re-pot Just as plants tire, so does the soil they...
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With the gardens of new homes getting smaller and smaller, and particularly with more and more of us living in town homes and apartments, there is a lot of interest in growing plants in planter boxes and larger pots. Perhaps you just have a patio, or a balcony large enough for a plant in the corner, or perhaps your garden is large enough to have...
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A couple of weeks back we started talking about designing your garden – something people often want to do in spring. If you read that first part – and if you didn’t, you can find it here – then you already know we are not going to get out the drawing board, or buy some fancy computer program, and then spend hours thinking about the perfect...
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If you live in southern parts of the country, you probably know the camellia, that gorgeous evergreen bush with large, often rose-like flowers, at different times during the winter and spring. If you live in more northern areas, you probably think they are not for you, with their need for mild winters and acid soil, but in reality, if you have a cool, bright place...
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With winter drawing to a close in most parts of the country – and flowers already showing on early bloomers in the south – it seems like a good time to put some thought into laying out your garden. Perhaps you have just moved into a new home, with an existing garden that you don’t like, and you picture something much better. Maybe your present...
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Encore Azaleas, with their continuous flowering from spring to fall, have become THE most popular azalea in warmer states, displacing the older types, that only flower in spring. Not only are the Encore Azaleas beautiful, they are also vigorous and fast-growing, typically adding 12 inches a year, and soon becoming large plants. Their final size depends on the type you choose but can be anything...
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Planting up your garden is a big project, depending of course on how big your garden is, and how complex you want it to be. Along with choosing sizes, shapes, evergreen or deciduous, and what will grow where, there are many possibilities to consider with color, from both foliage and flowers. When we go out to a garden center there is a tendency to be...
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The days are beginning to lengthen, and although we are still in the grip of winter in most areas, spring cannot be far away. Within a few weeks it will be time to hit the beach, and if you are fortunate enough to live on the coast, or have a beach cottage, then it is also time to do something about the surroundings – without...
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Over the last few years there has been an enormous growth in interest in preserving our natural environments. They are under threat from multiple directions, with everything from climate change and logging to too many visitors threatening the great natural areas of this country. In some areas there has been an additional threat – garden plants that are not native to America have escaped into...
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So many plants – so little room! The challenges in small gardens are considerable, but they all have to do with space, such as how to choose plants that won’t grow too large, and how to have continuous color and effect from a limited number of plants. There is one simple way to expand the range of plants being grown and add a whole extra...
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