Well, I’ve not posted much this week because I’ve been über busy with our Master Gardeners’ sponsored Heirloom Plant and Herb Sale. Today was the big set-up day. It’s amazing, actually, 11,000 plants doesn’t look like that many in an enormous gymnasium. I love this sale. I shopped at it a long time before I started helping at it. It’s ...
I never used to care much about the name of a plant. Cripes, who can care about names when you’re worried about whether it will grow or not? Then I started to read a lot about theme gardens. A lot of people make gardens in honor of someone. So they try to find cultivars of plants with that person’s name ...
Last time I focused on some of the great annuals that are new. This time we’re talking perennials. The first one on my list HAS be this beauty which I cannot find anywhere but if I do find one (at a nursery) I’ll snatch it right up and figure out where to put it later. It’s the Incrediball hydrangea (Spring ...
So very excited to be participating in my first Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Things are pretty slow in my zone 5 garden. Because of our proximity to Lake Michigan we’re a good week to two weeks behind any zone 5ers to the west of us. I expect the Serviceberry will bloom next week (and then it will rain the next ...
There are a couple nurseries I shop at regularly where the staff are extremely well versed in plant care and selection. I know when I go to these places that the plants I’m buying have been well cared for and provided I don’t do anything stupid, they should be fine in my garden. But there a couple other places I ...
I love finding new cultivars of plants. It’s just interesting to see what plant breeders are coming up with. I hope to have some of these in my garden this summer but often they are in limited supply when they are first released. If I don’t get them this year, I’ll grab them next year. First, the annuals (these all ...
The past couple of weeks have been great for bird watching. It really is the best time of year to keep an eye on the feeders, as the migratory birds make their way through. Most of the year we fill the feeders once a week, but this time of the year it’s about every two days. They are a hungry ...
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Thank you to Wave Petunias for partnering with me on this post. I’m often asked a question that is perplexing to me: “Do you grow annuals or perennials?” I don’t fault the people asking the question as I think there are some people who grow one or the other, and perhaps that was more typical […]
Nothing stops me in my tracks more than when I’m looking at a garden jam-packed with color and texture and come across a spot of bare soil. It puts a screeching halt to well-planned flow. Gaps in the garden happen because the plant that was supposed to be growing there didn’t, or perhaps because other […]
What more can we ask from a gardening book than to be inspirational and education? Two new books with more than a little in common manage to strike the right balance of both, complimenting each other, much as the personalities of these enthusiastic and generally delightful gardeners do. Claus Dalby, the Danish gardener known for […]
Thank you to Park Seed for partnering with me on this post. As always, all words, thoughts and seed choices are my own. The hardest part of growing plants from seed is keeping the amount I grow in check. I can’t be alone in this. It can be so tempting to plant just a few […]
If there is a support group for planter addicts, let me know, because I need it. I love a good container, but finding one is a different matter. I have two non-negotiable requirements for most planters: they need to be big and they need to look good. Weight, style and even cost are all things […]
Is there any task that has so many rules and yet so many people tackling it in different methods more than growing plants from seeds? It can make the whole process even more confusing. Each way to start seeds has its pros and cons, and although some are better than others for starting particular seeds, […]
There’s a well-established garden-making process around here: Every other year I make a new garden space. It is a lot of work, puts me behind in other areas of my arguably already too-large garden and takes a bit bite out of the plant budget. By the end of the project I swear I’m all done […]
What can I say about the 2021 garden? I have been putting off thinking about it too much because well, I have regrets, and when we are only given so many summers in this lifetime, it stinks to use one on a garden that you don’t love. Don’t get me wrong, I am way more […]
No matter how much I’d like to be one of those people who makes notes throughout the year of gift ideas for family and friends, I am but a mere mortal who, in the throes of a panicked gift-buying season, ends up scouring online gift guides that claim to know the innermost desires of the […]
At a time of year when there’s no shortage of faux decor—faux trees, faux berries, faux garlands, faux mistletoe, for starters—it’s nice to have a few real plants around. The plants we typically think of as “holiday” plants don’t usually bloom at this time of year. Rather, they are forced (although perhaps “t
Growing oddball plants—those plants that aren’t commonly grown in the area—is almost always rewarding. Since there is no real way to measure success, any sign of a plant doing what it’s supposed to do is chalked up in the win column. In other words, I keep my expectations low and hope to be pleasantly surprised. […]
Thank you to Inside Outside House & Garden for partnering with me on my post. As usual, all words and thoughts are mine. Check out the promo code at the end for a free trial. “No new gardens.” Perhaps you’ve heard me say this a few times before, but it turns out no matter how […]
I’ll admit it: My gardener brain switched into fall to-do list mode awhile ago. But somewhere along the line in between planning where bulbs will go and remembering which plants need to be moved, I looked up and found some great plants showing off in the garden. It was, once again, a good reminder to […]
This time of year is all about soaking in the garden and making mental (or more likely, photographic) notes about what worked and what didn’t. Some things are as simple as a plant that just didn’t perform or as complicated as being happy with how a design sketched on paper came to fruition. But somewhere […]
