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Victoria, B.C.- Style Hanging Flower Baskets
The city of Victoria, British Columbia has the most decadent flower baskets hanging from the lamp posts in the shopping district all summer long. They’re bright, they’re cheerful, and most importantly, they guide tourists down the streets and show shoppers which areas they’re likely to find most interesting. How can you use this idea at…
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Selling Your Home? Four Steps to a Fast Garden Makeover
Thinking of selling your home, or having a party? While a garden makeover may seem like an overwhelming task, if you know where to focus your energy you can get great results without having to fix everything. Use these four tips in the garden areas most likely to be seen first – near the front…
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Podcast on Natives with Doug Tallamy
Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, wants to change the way we landscape- radically. He’s a native plant buff and makes a scientific case for planting more natives in our gardens to preserve biodiversity. This five-part podcast (it’s only about 45 minutes long all put together) presented some game-changing info that’s making me really…
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Disease-Resistant Roses for Damp Coastal Climates
It’s bare-root season, guys, and the roses are cheap and plentiful! I’ve written before about how to select a bare-root rose and about some disease-resistant rose varieties for the coastal Pacific Northwest. I wanted to follow up with some additional suggestions that our local rose expert, Cynthia Graebner of Fickle Hill Old Rose Nursery, left…
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How to Make Your Region’s Plants Pop
I hear it again and again: folks think that natives are boring, that they have a short bloom season, that their foliage is dull; in short, that you’d have to be some kind of environmentalist zealot to want to garden with native plants. We’ll set aside the arguments for supporting biodiversity and feeding local birds…
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Do Landscapers Listen to Our Own Advice? Plants We’d Never Plant at Home (Part Two)
In part one, I discussed some of the beautiful and useful plants that landscapers recommend or maintain for clients, that we wouldn’t plant in our own home gardens. Whether hard to maintain, prickly, or just overused – these are perfectly good plants in many ways – but often have one fatal flaw us pro-gardeners just…
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Do Landscapers Listen to Our Own Advice? Plants We’d Never Plant at Home (Part One)
I was gardening recently with one of my employees, and she groaned in the middle of pruning a Mexican Feather Grass and said firmly, “I will NEVER plant these things at my house. Never!” It’s not a bad plant – in fact, it’s fantastic – it has seasonal interest, adds a sense of motion and …
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Delicate Flowers: What NOT to Plant in Fall
Recently I read an article on Sunset’s website, suggesting that we all rush out and buy those discounted perennials to plant for fall. We all know by now that fall planting is a great idea, but is fall really the best time to plant everything, even perennials? Many perennials don’t actually live all that long…
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Forget Halloween: Try These Dark Beauties Year-Round
I always wanted to be a goth girl – wearing all black, dying my hair purple, and listening to moody music while pondering the deeper mysteries in life. Sadly, I had three strikes against me: I’m a total wuss, so piercings were out, I’m ridiculously cheerful, and since I started my landscaping business when I…
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Fall Color Container Planting Idea
A client came up with this pretty container planting idea for summer and fall. The spiky Phormium/ Flax Grass makes a vivid centerpiece, then she used red Coleus and orange Impatiens to pick up on the Flax’s colored stripes. Last, she used some purple trailing Petunias to cool down the combination and spill over the…
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Fall-Blooming Heathers for Autumn Color
In all the time I’ve been designing gardens, I have never had anyone tell me, “please, no heathers!”. Thank goodness, because heathers are my secret weapon for extending any season’s interest. By the end of summer many perennials have stopped blooming, but the winter bloomers and fall colors haven’t started in earnest to continue the…