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Last-Minute Gifts for Gardeners
I don’t know about you, but the actual getting-gifts-for-people part of Christmas kind of crept up on me, and I’m scurrying to find or make just the right thing for everyone I love. Gardeners can be hard to shop for, because so many people give us gifts that look pretty, but aren’t really that useful…
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Yay! It’s Christmastime!
Christmas is my very favorite time of year! I begin singing Christmas carols in July, and by September it’s all I can do not to annoy people with the minutiae of my Christmas plans. Creative and homemade is where it’s at – I love Christmas cookies, making wreaths, planting paperwhites, and everything else that happens…
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How to Prune Your Hardy Geranium or Cranesbill (Or: Ode to ‘Rozanne’) (Video Tutorial)
I am a huge fan of Geranium ‘Rozanne’. Here’s a plant that’s gotten tons of press in the last few years (tons of press for a plant at least!), winning all kinds of plant-y awards and generally being the plant world’s Paris Hilton. Except ‘Rozanne’? She actually deserves the attention. She blooms gorgeously from her…
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December Maintenance Tasks for the Pacific Northwest
If you’ve been finding the time to work in your garden in the last couple months, you probably have most of your fall trimming done – deadheading Lavender, Scotch and Irish Heather/ Heath, and Hydrangeas; and cutting back your Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, Astilbes, Hostas, and other hardy perennials which lose their leaves.
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Rhododendrons – Little-Known Favorites for Winter
If you’ve been following my Fall Planting Series, you’ll know why fall is such a great time of year to plant! This is also the perfect time to see where your garden is lacking in winter interest, and to add some year-round stars to perk things up. Rhododendrons are one of my favorite plants now,…
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How to Prune Heath and Heather
Heathers are one of my favorite winter-interest plants. There are Ericas (Heaths) which bloom around November and December, Daboecia (Irish Heath) which bloom spring to late fall, and Callunas (Scotch Heather) which bloom in summer but often have vibrant winter foliage. They are very low-maintenance plants, but they do need pruning once a year after…
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The Enabled Garden; Gardening For Those With a Disability
I read an inspiring post by Fern over at Life On The Balcony this week with some tips for how to enjoy container gardening with physical limitations. She covers some great ways of training your plants to suit your needs, reducing watering, and choosing tools to make gardening easier. Fern makes an excellent point; containers…
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Cheerful Grasses Add Color and Movement to Your Winter Garden
If you’ve read a gardening magazine in the last ten years, you know how hot ornamental grasses are. We rely on them for a bold foliage accent, but so many go dormant in winter, just when we most want their striking foliage display. The solution? Check out these five favorite grasses that DON’T go dormant…
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Full Sun, Part Shade; Some Basic Insights On Light
Have you ever read a plant tag and wondered just how much sun “part sun” is? Or tried to figure out if a plant wanting “full sun” would make it in the spot that you have? Plant tags and gardening gurus spit out these terms and assume that we’ll get it right – but in…
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Small Plants to Enhance Your Winter Garden
While the twigs and branches of dormant shrubs have their own interest, if your garden doesn’t have much variety in winter, things can be dull. A quick fix for those bare areas is to tuck a few winter-interest fillers in the foreground, to bring a prettily arching form, bright foliage color, or some cheerful blooms…
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Garden Q&A; Why Transplant Into Larger Pots in Stages?
An excellent question posted by Fern of Life on the Balcony, a fun blog which shares her adventures in container gardening: Why is it better to transplant a plant into a series of progressively larger pots? I’ve seen that recommended in books, but they never say why it’s better than a small plant potted in…