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….
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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…
Chinese Astilbe – Top Choice for Drier Gardens
Perennial plants add an extra dimension of beauty to any garden, and ones that are pest-free, long-blooming and low-maintenance are the best ones of all. Add in weeks and weeks of summer blooming,…
Let’s Sort Out Jasmines and their Friends
There is nothing new or unique about botanists and ordinary folk having different names for plants. If you look at the plants gardeners call ‘cypress’ you find a whole host of very different…
Meet the Viburnums – Some Of Our Best Flowering Shrubs
If you want to know the secret to creating an attractive garden, there is a one-word answer – ‘structure’. I don’t mean pergolas and gazebos, but structure from shrubs and small tree. A…
Growing Peaches on Walls – Espalier Fruit Trees
Who doesn’t love peaches? Melt-in-the-mouth, buttery, sweet and fragrant – nothing beats that bite into a ripe peach, and no ripe peach tastes like one you grew yourself and just picked, still warm…
Kathleen Meserve – the Holly Lady
Plant breeding is one of the few areas where amateur, hobby gardeners have made at least as much of a contribution to the plants we grow as professionals – and sometimes even more….
Neem Oil will Kill Your Garden Pests
When you start growing plants – indoors or outdoors – it doesn’t take long before you see a few creepy-crawlies on them. That isn’t reason to panic, because most insects on plants are…