Get to Know the Different Groups of Japanese Maples
Perhaps the most adored of all trees, Japanese maples have an aura around them – a flavor of the exotic, the special, and the desirable. For many gardeners they are their most valued…
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Are the Pests & Diseases on My Plants Serious?
We live in an time when life has become medicalized. Despite living longer and more healthy lives than any human beings who came before us, we are intensely focused on the dangers of…
Pruning Young Trees for Future Strength and Long Life – Part 3, Getting the Job Done
This is the third part of an extended blog about the pruning of young trees. Many people just plant a new tree and expect it to develop perfectly all by itself. Sometimes that…
Pruning Young Trees for Future Strength and Long Life – Part 1, The Basics
This is the first part of a three-part blog on tree pruning. Not the big stuff, handling mature trees, but what to do with that young tree you just planted, or maybe you…
How Fast Will My New Plants Grow?
Buying plants for your garden, anything from a load of hedging bushes to a single perennial, always has a little bit of nervousness with it. The newer you are to gardening, the more…
Keeping Shrubs & Trees in Planters Alive Through the Winter
Many gardeners think no further than annual flowers when they think about planting containers. Others see it as a great way to grow shrubs and trees, especially if you have a courtyard garden,…
How Big Does That Tree Really Get?
I was talking in a previous post about planting trees with the future in mind, and some thoughts on how to have a better chance the tree you plant today will reach its…
Plant Trees for the Future – Here’s How to Succeed
Economists tell us that the further away a reward is, the less we will pay for it today. Our world, and modern economy, is built on having it now, as soon as possible,…
The Pine Trees of America #4
PART 4 – THE 2-NEEDLE PINES OF AMERICA In this series of blogs we are taking a deeper look at our native pine trees, both in the wild and in our gardens. In…
The Pine Trees of America #3
PART 3, THE 3-NEEDLE PINES OF AMERICA In this series of blogs we are taking a deeper look at our native pine trees, both in the wild and in our gardens. In the…
The Pine Trees of America #2
PART 2, THE 5-NEEDLE PINES OF AMERICA In the first part of this look at our native Pines, we talked about how to identify pine trees with a reasonable degree of accuracy. In…
The Pine Trees of America #1
PART 1, IDENTIFICATION Pine Trees are everywhere, in city and country, and their distinctive long needles make them a tree that is almost as widely recognized as maple. As garden trees, pines have…
Twining Plants – Which Way Do They Twine?
Once you start to look a little more closely at plants, and work with them in your garden, you start to notice all sorts of curious things. One that has always attracted a…
Using Organic Material When Planting Trees & Shrubs
Back when I was a student of horticulture, the use of synthetic chemicals for gardening was widespread. Since then most home gardeners have moved away from them, and for many today they are…
Winter Protection for Rose Trees
Almost everyone loves roses, and with today’s easy-care modern varieties, it’s easy to care for the things you love. Besides the huge number of different varieties, divided into different types – landscape roses,…
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…
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…
Some Harmless (but interesting) Garden Pests
I’m sticking with it, but looking back at the title I just wrote for this blog, I see right away a classic oxymoron – if they are ‘harmless’ they can’t be ‘pests’. But…
The special Story of a Special Plant, the Pillar Hibiscus
The Hardy Hibiscus, or Rose of Sharon, is a shrub that’s familiar to many gardeners. It was once wildly popular but then fell from favor, returning recently with many new varieties. For long-blooming…
Climate Change and Your Garden
Much of the world has been looking in alarm at recent events in Texas. No lights, heat or water for days for millions of people doesn’t sound like America. We can point the…
Jean Iseli – King of the Conifers
The world of conifers is an enormous and diverse one, from the many hedges of Green Giant to the tiniest miniature collector’s tree, and from towering redwoods to flat groundcovers – there is…
Trees and Shrubs for Alkaline Soils – Part 1
The Right Plant in the Right Place is a slogan that you will often hear from professional landscape designers and horticulturists. It’s a simple principle, but one often ignored in the rush to…
The Weeping Willow
In today’s global world we can easily make the mistake of thinking that international trade is something new and exciting, that ‘we’ recently discovered. How wrong we would be! The volume may be…
Nothing Says ‘Holidays’ like a Citrus Tree
I’m fortunate. I spent years living in zone 3, but today when I look out my window I see golden balls hanging from a green tree in my small yard. No, I haven’t…
Beautiful Trees for Wet Ground
It doesn’t take much looking for plants to meet the dreaded phrase – grow in ‘well-drained’ soil. It sometimes seems like every tree or bush needs these mythic conditions. Look at many gardens,…
Why Does My Holly Tree Have No Berries?
There is no doubt that holly bushes are super-popular, not just for their dense, glossy foliage, but especially for their bright red berries, that brighten the holiday season. Yet in garden after garden…
White Birch is Back, and It’s Borer Proof
Back in the days when throwing chemicals at your garden was the standard way to deal with any problem, from lawn weeds to tree diseases or pests, you used to see many white…
Miniature Roses Come to Town
Most gardeners have some idea of the main groups of rose – hybrid teas, floribunda, climbing roses, and so on – even if with new varieties those old borders have become a little…
How To Prune Your Wisteria
A Wisteria is a gorgeous plant when it is in bloom, a highlight of spring and a truly wonderful sight. But a lot of people buy one and within a few years become…
April in the Garden
By April, wherever in the country you live, spring has arrived in some form. In the north it is still tentative, and there may even be persistent patches of snow lying in deep,…
Montezuma Cypress – a Gift from the Aztecs
If asked what the largest living thing on the planet is, most people will answer, “Whales.” The more adventurous might talk about the enormous soil fungi that cover acres of woodland, as wispy…
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…
Should I Trim My Trees?
Trees are great to have on your property, bringing beauty and shade, cleaning the air and removing CO2 from the atmosphere – we should all be planting more of them. Older trees, though,…
Grow Versatile Tree Roses in Your Garden
There are many kinds of roses – Hybrid Tea, Floribunda, Landscape Rose, and many more – but the same rose can come in different ways too. Typically, they are grown to produce stems…
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…
Time to Plant a Cherry Blossom Tree
It would be hard to find a flowering tree more spectacular than the Flowering Cherry. Every year, at around this time in spring, the streets and parks of many of our cities burst…
Save Space and Add Beauty – Grow Shrubs Against a Wall
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,…
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…
Nuts About Pecans? – Then Grow Your Own
These days it seems everyone is talking about – and eating – nuts. The peanut – not a nut at all, but a type of bean – is of course central to American…
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…
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…
Give Them Room! Spacing Trees Correctly
A drive around any older neighborhood will quickly show you giant trees right up against houses, blocking windows, damaging foundations and drains, and making rooms dark and gloomy. Bad decisions about planting distances…
7 Top Plants for Japanese Gardens
Japanese and Asian-themed gardens are amazingly popular – and no wonder. They combine beauty with serenity, and by using just a few carefully chosen plants they create low-maintenance gardens, turning a few plants…
The World of Japanese Maples
Spring brings life back to our deciduous trees, and the delicate unfolding leaves are beautiful, no matter what the tree. But the most beautiful of all are undoubtedly the new leaves of Japanese…
Native Trees from the Four Corners of the Country
A big trend in gardening is growing native plants. This began with wildflowers, but it has spread to trees and shrubs too, especially with all the alarming stories of invasive species escaping gardens…
Jump-start Spring with These 5 Early-blooming Shrubs
Especially in colder parts of the country, it can be a long wait for spring. When the snow begins to melt, and the days lengthen, we can become impatient to see some signs…
5 Trees That Make the Perfect Gift
Gift-giving is a big part of the holiday season. Besides family and friends, it is common to give gifts to pets too – a bone for the dog, a catnip mouse for the…
Tips on Overwintering Patio Trees
One of the pleasures of gardening is growing plants from outside your hardiness zone. There are many trees and bushes that will grow happily for most of the year, but in winter your…
5 Ways to Give Your Trees Their Brightest Fall Colors
As the days shorten, and the weather becomes cooler, the grim prospect of winter is softened by the glories of fall. For a short time, our trees surrounded us in the brilliance of…
Trees in Containers – Perfect for the Smaller Garden. Part 2
When we started talking about growing trees in pots and planters, there was so much to say about choosing a container, soil, planting and pruning, that we never got around to looking at…