Using Ornamental Grasses in Your Garden
Older gardeners will remember a time when ‘grass’ was just that green stuff you had to mow every week, but for today’s gardens it means so much more. With their unique look, their…
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Choose the Right Red Maple for Your Garden
There was a time when our streets were lined with elm trees, but those days are gone. Much more likely today is to find streets lined with Red Maple, Acer rubrum, a native…
How to Choose a Flowering Dogwood Tree
Flowering Dogwood Trees are among the most spectacular flowering trees there are, and they are top choices for any garden. Grown as a lawn specimen, planted as background trees for your garden, or…
The Basics of Tree Trimming
In our previous blog, Should I Trim My Trees? we talked about how to look at a mature tree and decide if the time has come for some trimming. On a larger tree…
Dark Foliage in the Garden – Use it Effectively
Everyone is using colored leaves in the garden these days – colored something other than green that is. Perhaps it is precisely because green is so ubiquitous that there is an eternal fascination…
Rebloom or Encore Azaleas – Which Should I Grow?
Evergreen azaleas are among the most attractive and colorful flowers we can grow in our gardens. It used to be that spring was the season for them, and they brighten our beds and…
Eastern Arborvitae – the Tree for Cold Seasons
North America is a vast land, and the seasons are very different, depending on what climate zones you are. This seems obvious, but when it comes to gardening, that variation means making different…
Japanese Maples – Bark Can be Beautiful Too
One of the best features of Japanese Maples is their fall color, but after that there is not so much to see, and during winter many are brown or perhaps green. The idea…
Trees and Shrubs for Winter Bloom and Berries
Most gardens look their best in spring and early summer. That is when the majority of plants flower, so is easy to have flowers then, and if you don’t plan your planting, you…
Everything You Need to Know about Cityline® Hydrangeas
As more and more of us live in towns and cities, gardens get smaller. For many, a balcony or terrace is all the outdoor space we have available to grow plants and get…
Fringe Flowers – Everything You Need to Know About Loropetalum
I remember well the first time I saw a red Fringe Flower bush. Even as a pretty knowledgeable gardener I was blown away, so I understand why this plant has become such a…
How to Choose the Right Boxwood for Your Garden
Boxwood bushes are garden standards – evergreen bushes with many uses, from the traditional boxwood hedge to less formal shrubs in modern gardens. Because they have such a well-known name, new gardeners can…
Which Spruce Tree Should I Plant?
For most people, a ‘spruce tree’ is a silvery-blue pyramidal tree on a lawn in front of your house, that is also good for a Christmas tree. Very true, but there is a…
Understand the Many Types of Roses
About one billion rose blossoms find their way into florist shops around the world, and in America alone about 30 million are sold on just one day – February 14. These specialized blooms…
The Garden In August
The peak month of summer is also the pivotal month in the gardening year. Although a tradition has developed that puts spring as the time to get your garden going, a far better…
July in the Garden
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…
Grow Your Own Nuts
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…
Junipers – Tough and Rugged Evergreens
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…
Understanding the Cypress Trees
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…
What to Do in Your Garden in June
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…
Kick Start Your Garden this Spring
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…
Design Your Garden – Part 3
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…
The Eternal Charm of the Flowering Dogwood Tree
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…
Flowering Shrubs for Planters and Boxes
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…
The Tough and Colorful Barberry
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…
Spring Care of Houseplants
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…
Shrubs for Planters, Pots and Boxes
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…
Design Your Garden – Part 2
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…
Months and Months of Camellias in Bloom – It’s Easy!
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…
Design Your Garden – Part 1
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…
White in the Garden
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,…
Cypress Trees – The Complete Guide
Introduction Gardeners today have access to a wide variety of evergreen trees, both those with broad leaves and those with needle leaves. These are used in a variety of ways in the garden…
Plants for the Beach
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…
The Butterfly Bush Debate
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…
Native American Holly Trees
Winter is the time when evergreen trees are most noticeable in our gardens, and few stand out more than holly does. These handsome trees and bushes, with their rich-green leathery leaves, bring structure…
Classic Trees for a Japanese Garden
The Japanese style of garden is enjoying huge popularity in the West. Perhaps it’s the huge interest in mindfulness and Zen, the desire for simplicity, or maybe the realization that it is the…
Holly – the Perfect Tree for Christmas
While the perfect Christmas Tree might be a Spruce or Fir, the perfect tree to have growing in your yard at Christmas is a Holly Tree. This classic tree for Christmas is perhaps…
Growing Grapes at Home
So you want to grow some grape vines? Perhaps you are interested in making wine, or perhaps you want to enjoy top-quality grapes for the table, picked right from your garden. Perhaps you…
An Easy Approach to Planning Your Garden
The layout of your garden is as important as how you decorate inside, but it often doesn’t get the same attention, or budget. Yet the garden is often the main focus of life…
Growing Peaches in Your Garden
Peaches are such luscious fruits, and so delicious to eat, that it seems hard to believe they are also among the easiest of fruit trees to grow, and ideal for smaller gardens, since…
Crab Apples – the Best Flowering Tree for Cold Climates
Spring and flowering trees go together – it wouldn’t be spring without them. But the classic flowering trees like cherry trees and magnolias are hard to grow in colder climates, below zone 5…
Pick Figs from Your Own Garden
Figs hold a special place among the many kinds of fruits we eat. They have a unique quality that goes well with savory foods, especially ham and soft cheeses, or added to salads….
How to Grow Berry Bushes – What Ones Should I Grow?
Fresh fruit is one of the great pleasures of life, and home-grown is always superior in just about every way. But growing fruits like peaches, pears, and even apples is not easy, and…
5 Steps to Better Soil for Fall Planting
Now that fall is beginning, this is prime planting season for trees and shrubs. Planted now, rather than in spring, they will establish roots over winter – even in the coldest areas –…
Fall – The Ideal Planting Season
Somehow, over recent years, the gardening year got turned around. Today everyone rushes into their garden at the first sign of spring, and immediately starts planning and planting for the best garden ever….
Are You Growing These Fall Blooming Plants? You Should Be!
We tend to think of garden flowers as something that happens in spring and summer and having blooms at those times is relatively easy. Too many gardens though, are finished by Labor Day,…
Plan Ahead for Winter Interest in the Garden
While we enjoy the last balmy days of summer, it is hard to think of the winter to come, but it will come, and our once-green gardens will be a lot barer when…
Time to Plan for Fall Color
Summer is at its height, but the smart gardener is always thinking ahead. Fall will be with us all too soon, and if you want to continue the garden fun and beauty into…
Pick the Right Boxwood
Boxwood shrubs – as hedges of different sizes, clipped shapes or growing naturally – are the backbone of the structure of many gardens. Boundaries and edgings are the easiest way to bring order…
Flowers All Summer with the Butterfly Bush
As we enter the hot days of August, our gardens can begin to look a bit tired. The heat and drier conditions mean that the flowers of spring and early summer have faded,…