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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…
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Fabulously Fastigiate: Narrow Plants for Skinny Spaces
Most gardeners have one of “those” spaces: an awkward, skinny location where you need that most unusual of plants, one that grows much taller than it does wide. We call these plants “fastigiate”, which means tall and narrow, or tower-like. Usually these spots in the garden are created by fences or walls, but you can…
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Fabulous Fountain Grasses: “Temperennial” New Varieties
While many in the perennial world seem to think that annuals have gone out of style, the “wow” factor they provide is undeniable. Tropical plants and annual flowers are perfect for temporarily filling in the spaces between slow-growing shrubs and trees, which is one of the many reasons books like Stephanie Cohen and Jennifer Benner’s…
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New Hellebore Flowers Hold Their Heads High
I’m a big fan of hellebores, since in my rainy climate so many flowers are dashed to the ground at the first rough rain shower. Plus, some types of flower and color just don’t stand out boldly enough to be visible from a window. Hellebores are tough as nails and shine brightly in the winter…
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Bored of Your Winter View?
Perk things up this winter by adding some winter-interest plants, attracting birds, and creating colorful containers out of cut stems and evergreen boughs. That’s my advice over at Landscaping Network, where I talk about some superstar plants and some non-intuitive ways of bringing birds to your winter garden. A special tip o’ the nib to…
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Perennial Plant Pick for 2012: Jack Frost Brunnera
I have mixed feelings about the Perennial Plant Association’s plant pick of 2012. I mean, I love it and all. Jack Frost Brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’) is one of those shade plants that seems to thrive wherever you stick it, looks elegant and classy in a variety of gardening themes, and is unusual enough…
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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.
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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…
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Deer-Resistant Plantings You Can’t F*** Up
Planting for deer can be hard sometimes. You read all the books, buy “deer-resistant” plants, and the buggers still munch everything to the ground and give you that blank-eyed “what? I’m a deer!” stare when you shake your fist at them. No, it doesn’t always go as smoothly as the books would have you believe.…
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Top Landscape Plants (Excerpts from Experts)
When the Garden Designers Roundtable chose Top Landscape Plants as this month’s topic, I thought to myself, “Hey, no problem, I can write that in my sleep.” I mean, enthusing about plants is kind of my thing, you know? But given that this is book excerpt week here at North Coast Gardening, I thought it’d…
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Amy and Gen Tropicanna the Garden: a Giveaway!
***Giveaway below*** Outside of the garden, I’m attracted to cool, subdued colors, like purples, blues, blacks and greys. But lately, in the garden? Give me some color! Wild, exuberant color, that shocks the eyes and cheers the soul. So when the kind folks out at Tesselaar Plants offered to send Amy Stewart and I some…