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Plants to Love: Neon Flash Spirea (Spirea ‘Neon Flash’)
Spirea ‘Neon Flash’ (USDA Zones 4-9) is a Bright! Magenta! Pink! flowering shrub to about 4’ tall, which loves full sun and blooms off and on throughout the summer. It does lose its leaves in winter and gets a bit of reddish-yellow fall color, but the fall color isn’t anything to rave about. I love…
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Guest Post Over at Studio G!
Rochelle over at Studio G has been on vacation this week, and so invited me and some fellow landscape designers over to guest post on our favorite things! Mine is here, and I had a blast ranting about the importance of good tools, the similarities between creating mosaics and designing a garden, and the mistakes…
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Plants to Love: White Parahebe (Parahebe linifolia)
White Parahebe (USDA Zones 8-11) deserves to be one of those plants like Geranium ‘Rozanne’; a plant that’s totally overused but nobody’s actually sick of because it is so ridiculously charming. It has deep green, glossy foliage that’s evergreen and very attractive, its delicate white blooms are lacy yet sturdy and incredibly profuse – and…
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Plants to Love: Purple Pixie Hebe (Hebe ‘Mohawk’ or ‘Purple Pixie’)
This Hebe is a lovely little evergreen thing which gets to about 3’ around and blooms off and on a good part of the year. It takes shearing well and usually comes back well from hard pruning during the growing season, though I try to avoid pruning into the wood if I can avoid it.
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Shamelessly Tropical: Hawt Plants for a Variety of Climates
I admit it. I’m in zonal denial. I love the huge tender leaves of bananas, the glorious hanging trumpets of Brugmansia, and anything so wild and lush that it makes me feel like I’m on vacation to the kind of rainforest-y tropics that have monkeys and great winding green snakes and crazy bugs that remind…
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Monday Miscellany: Pacific Northwest Plants, Homemade Deer Deterrent, Book Rec’s, and MORE Garden Cocktails
Great Plant Picks This week I’ve re-discovered a fantastic resource for Pacific Northwest Gardeners: Great Plant Picks. Plant info online can be hard to rely on – either nurseries are stretching the zones and touting a plant’s greatness so they can sell more of them, or home gardeners are giving anecdotal information that is useful,…
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Plants to Love: Autumn Fern (Dryopteris erythrosora)
I LOVE the Autumn Fern. Orangey foliage in spring and summer? Cinnamon-colored spores on the underside of the plant? A neat habit and a plant that’s simple to prune down in winter? It’s got it all.
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Monday Miscellany: Strawberries, Succulents, Fellini Baby and Energy-Efficient Landscaping
Loads of cool stuff kicking around the internet this week, from ideas of what to do with all your excess strawberries, how to create your own succulent container design, to some great podcast interviews. DIY Strawberry Jam – with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper! Stevie over at Garden Therapy has a fantastic tutorial for those…
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Do Now: Pruning Suckers off Tomatoes
Just found this excellent tutorial from Mr. Brown Thumb about how to prune the suckers off your tomatoes to contribute to a good form for your plant and better production. Here on the north coast, we can start doing this right now! You can follow Mr. Brown Thumb on Twitter for some funny gardening insights…
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Plants to Love: Fragrant Sweet Box (Sarcococca ruscifolia)
This unassuming little shade shrub is one that people often don’t notice at first. There’s nothing particularly showy about its graceful arching stems, deep green leaves, or the tiny white flowers that hang from its branches in winter. But when those small blooms open, people walk around sniffing all the big, showy flowers in the…
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Monday Miscellany: Crafts, Cocktails, and Snappy Repartee
Summer’s here and you know what that means – summer cocktails, reading and lots of fun craft projects. At least that’s what it means to me! 🙂 Gotta let the body rest from all the gardening we’ve all been doing, right? Simple Paper Flowers, DIY Birdbaths and Scanned Flower Portraits The DIY Wedding has a…