Everything You Need to Know About Gardening – A Guide to Our Blogs
The end of the year is always a time for reflection, and I am reflecting on my writing over 300 blogs on our site. No world-record, but enough to mean finding your way…
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Get all the latest insight into the world of plants, from experts.
Dwarf Crape Myrtles Fit in Every Garden
There is no question that crape myrtles are among the most colorful of summer-blooming plants – that’s something that has been agreed on for 250 years, since the first plants arrived in Charleston,…
All You Need to Know About Gardening with Ferns
Valuable solutions for shady parts of your garden, ferns offer us an enormous variety of forms. Large or small, bold or lacy, there are fern solutions to most gardening problems, and they add…
5 New Plants For Your Garden
There is nothing so much fun as planting something new in your garden. The planning and thinking about it’s suitability; the waiting for its arrival; unpacking that box; choosing the perfect spot for…
Is It Too Late For Fall Planting?
“Am I too late to plant?” Seems like a simple question, so what’s the answer? It’s complicated! Factors like the type of tree, where you live, if the tree is in a container…
Arborvitae Privacy Trees – Pick the Right Tree
Privacy trees are almost always at the top of list for gardeners moving into a new home, or when new buildings go up around you. We all want to feel our house and…
Choosing Screening Trees and Shrubs
Most of us want privacy in our gardens, so we can relax and enjoy ourselves, free from the noise and dust of a highway, the curiosity of passersby, or the scrutiny of neighbors….
Choosing a Small Tree for Your Garden
As gardens have become smaller, planting trees has become harder. There is an irony to this, as a time when everyone is being urged to plant more trees, but it is important to…
Shrubs Beside Water (or in Wet Soil)
One of the most common instructions we find ourselves giving is to grow a certain plant in ‘well-drained soil’. That is fine, but what if you don’t have soil like that, perhaps because…
How to Create a Garden in the Japanese Style
For many people, the Japanese are the greatest garden-makers in the world. So for many gardeners, creating a Japanese garden is their greatest ambition. Some study the different types of Japanese gardens for…
The New American Garden: A Home-Grown Garden Style
Without realizing it, many of us create gardens in styles that we bring from other countries. This is obvious when you are inspired by Japan or Asia to emulate their beautiful gardens, but…
The English Flower Garden
After our last ‘Garden Styles’ blog on the Classic American Garden, we are going to step outside the US for a moment to look at the most influential garden style of the last…
Garden Styles – the Classic American Garden
For the first style in our series, we will start with a garden look that is seen almost everywhere in the country, but perhaps especially in the east. Houses that are now around…
Garden Styles – How to Get the Garden Look You Crave
In this era of computers, there is an app for everything. When it comes to doing your own design for the garden around your new home, or making improvements to an existing garden,…
Beyond the Mop-Head Hydrangea – Other Types and Species of Hydrangea Plants
Say “Hydrangea”, and most people think of those big, floppy heads of flowers in summer, in pink, white, or blue. That is the big-leaf hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla, that came to us from Japan….
How to Water Your Plants – Part 2, Watering Planters, Pots, Boxes and Indoor Plants
Last week we starting this topic off with some basic principles of water and plants, and some tips on watering in your garden. If you stumbled on this blog without seeing that one,…
How to Water Your Plants – Part 1, Basic Principles and Watering Outdoors
Some of the most common gardening questions revolve around watering. We might think nothing could be easier that pouring some water on your plants, but it doesn’t work out that way. In the…
Meet the Belles of the Bowl – a New Range of Ornamental Strawberries to Enjoy
Growing edible plants in your flower garden is a hot trend right now, and everyone is planting everything from zucchini to potatoes in their beds. We have been doing this for years with…
Ring the Bell for Coral Bells
When they come into our gardens, some plants stay pretty much the same as they are in the wild, but others are changed dramatically by keen growers, who see some potential and go…
Catmints – Great Plants for More than Just Cats
If you have ever seen a cat lost in the ecstasy of rolling around in a plant of catmint, you will know just how attractive these plants are to them. You might then…
Lavandin or Lavender – What’s the Difference?
So you want to grow some lavender, but when you Google for some more information you start seeing this word ‘Lavandin’. Ah, you think, maybe it’s the French name for it? Hm, nice…
Coneflowers – Flowers of the Prairies for every Garden
The prairies are deeply embedded in the American psyche, even for people who live a thousand miles from them. Accounts of settlement and Native American hardship can complicate things, but one thing remains…
Daylilies – the Best Summer Flower for Your Garden
The old-fashioned orange daylily, with its tall stems and narrow orange trumpets, has been grown in gardens for many, many, years. It is often seen in old, neglected ones, or growing along roadsides,…
Grow a Flow of Seasonal Color with Perennial Plants
When you first start gardening, one of the most difficult things is to keep your garden interesting all year round. For most of us that means blooms, although of course fruits, fall color…