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The Military Flat-Top: How To Prune Your Astilbe (Video Tutorial)
Feathery Astilbe plumes in spring are one of my favorite seasonal shows, and even though I’m a big proponent of year-round interest, I’ll forgive a species that goes dormant if it does so with either: A. Loads of fanfare and splashy color, or up-to-the-last-second blooms. B. Such profoundly fast dieback that one day you are…
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Showy Trees for Winter Interest in the Pacific Northwest
It’s getting pret-ty darn chilly outside, and I don’t know about you, but most of my gardening activity in the last couple weeks has been planning, dreaming, and viewing my garden from indoors, thank you very much. Even my chickens are resting in their toasty coop a good portion of the day, and they have…
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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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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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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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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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Five Often-Overlooked Shrubs for Gorgeous Winter Color
So we’ve talked about why you want to plant in fall – you don’t have to water as much, plants get their roots well established through the winter, and there’s less transplant shock – meaning those plants you paid top dollar for will be glowing with health in the spring! But it can be rather…
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Winter-Blooming Annuals to Help Your Garden Shine
Winter can be dull if we haven’t prepared for it, with the gray skies and so many plants dormant. Much as I am a fan of shrubs and low-maintenance perennials, annuals can be a fantastic way of filling in the time between fall dormancy and spring with sparks of cheery color. You can set out…
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‘Tis The Season To – Wait, What? Plant?
I know it may seem counter-intuitive to get moving in the garden just as the weather starts becoming dreary, but for the northwest, this is an ideal time to get new shrubs and trees established in the garden. You can skip the watering for the most part, and no need to worry about transplant shock…