Tag: Summer

  • Pruning Ornamental Grasses: The Ultimate Guide

    Pruning Ornamental Grasses: The Ultimate Guide

    When it comes to pruning ornamental grasses, even an ordinarily confident gardener can feel some confusion. Each type of grass has different requirements, which makes it hard because there’s not one rule of thumb which fits all. While some varieties look shaggy and sad if not whacked to the ground each January, for other types of grass this…

  • The Many Faces of Coreopsis: New Varieties to Love

    The Many Faces of Coreopsis: New Varieties to Love

    Coreopsis is a staple of the traditional flower garden because it’s long-blooming, easy to grow, and the profuse little daisy-like flowers can cheer up anyone if they’re having a bad day. Yet most people haven’t looked beyond the old-school varieties to learn about the wide array of colors available in this favorite, adaptable plant. These…

  • Summertime Cooking: Mustard Butter Pasta with Fresh Garden Vegetables

    With summer’s toasty temps, I don’t want to be standing over a hot stove any longer than necessary. That’s why I love simple meals that can be made with a minimum of fuss and can be easily reheated, or even eaten cold. When I went to P. Allen Smith’s Garden2Blog event, one of the sponsors,…

  • Grow Your Own Microbrew! How to Grow Hops

    As an ornamental gardener, I’m used to growing hops as a summer screen for chicken coops, bare walls and other elements in the garden that can be unsightly. It’s easy to grow, but needs to be sited just right, as it has an eat-your-home style of rapacious growth that can be either exactly what you…

  • Doofus-Proof Watering: Adjustable Sprinkler and Timer from Dramm

    The initial plan for my home garden was to set up an automated drip irrigation system, but as my garden evolved, I realized how difficult it would be to make that type of setup work for me. Drip systems work best on gardens that have lots of individual shrubs and plants, and I have the…

  • How to Plant a Hanging Basket With an Angel Moss Liner

    How to Plant a Hanging Basket With an Angel Moss Liner

    Years ago, when I worked at a local independent garden center, one of my favorite winter activities was creating moss baskets to sell. We used loose sphagnum moss to line the baskets, and stuffed the sides and tops with lettuces, annuals and herbs. It was a blast! So when Discoveries in Gardening asked if I’d…

  • Alpine Strawberries – Nature’s SweetTarts

    Pictured: a normal strawberry, ‘Rugen Improved’ alpine, ‘Yellow Alpine’, and ‘Golden Alexandria’ berries Alpine strawberries. Seriously, have you guys tried these things? They’re like little red garden crackberries. They’re definitely one of my favorite things to grow at home, not the least because you can’t actually buy them in stores. Mine start going downhill as…

  • Mediterranean Plants to Rock Your Waterwise Landscape

    Recently I wrote about how to design a Mediterranean garden, but I left out one major component – which plants to choose! I just did a follow-up article over at the Christian Science Monitor which discusses just that. And yes, there are more photos of that lovely, lovely garden.  Head on over to read more.

  • The Envelope Please! The Winner is-

    Guest post from Stephanie Cohen, plant maven and co-author of the deliciously readable The Nonstop Garden: Every year new perennials tempt us to buy them. Some become instant successes, others never achieve notoriety, and some really bad plants hang around forever. It gets more and more difficult to pick the winners and losers. I am…

  • Mediterranean Garden Design: How to Create a Tuscan Garden

    Mediterranean Garden Design: How to Create a Tuscan Garden

    Recently, I was lucky enough to visit the Mediterranean garden of Lynda and Jack Pozel in Eureka, CA. Lynda’s a writer and artist, and until five years ago, owned a gorgeous cottage-style garden that was on our local garden tour multiple times. So when they moved and Lynda had a whole new garden to create,…

  • Ditch the Sunhat: Sun Protection Tips You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

    Hold up, don’t report me to the Melanoma Society just yet. You probably shouldn’t actually ditch your sun hat. But if you’re like me and have never been able to get into wearing hats while gardening, here are two odd things I do to get a bit more protection than the average “slather self in…