One of my favorite parts of being part of Proven Winners testing program is that I have the opportunity to grow plants I might not otherwise pick up. I’ll admit that when I pulled Superbena ‘Royale Peachy Keen’ out of the box I had flashbacks to my teenage bedroom, decorated in the latest hot colors of peach and forest green ...
Sometimes plants work together. Sometimes they fall a bit flat. In general I find that plants that work best together exhibit contrast, either in color or texture. Here are a few combos I found in the garden this weekend. Here is Proven Winners Superbena Royale Peachy Keen with purple ruffles basil (and you can see Blackberry Punch in there too). ...
You know I’m all about keeping it real here, which is why I sometimes show the bad and the ugly as well as the good. As I mentioned last week, here in the Midwest we are suffering from a truly cruddy spring. Most plants are stuck at whatever size they were when they were purchased at the nursery. The window ...
The rain continues here, making southeastern Wisconsin just one of many places with totally depressing weather this week. At least we’re not experiencing the storms and flooding that so many other areas are.Anyway, it’s putting a major damper on my ability to take some pictures of what is happening in the yard, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to ...
Far be it for me to tell the producers of a successful PBS show how to do their jobs, but I think the people who make “P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home” are missing out on a golden opportunity. Turns out the guy is funny. Really funny. And trust me, after watching almost every episode of the show ever made (and ...
You all know I have kind of a thing for Tim Wood, right? I certainly mention him enough here. Well, that’s not entirely true, even though he seems to be a very nice, intelligent and sort of funny guy. I really have a thing for his hydrangeas. (Honestly, Tim, I’m not stalking you … just your plants.) Little Lime looking ...
Who wouldn’t want to be standing on that bridge overlooking this amazing garden? Now that we spent last week dreaming about gardening (you were dreaming, right?) you can continue the dream by going to a flower show or gardening seminar, which have a tendency to pop up all over the place starting next month or so. If you can’t garden ...
The Impatient Gardener blog was started in 2009 and its library of posts includes practical how-tos, plant guides, favorite garden gear, successes and failures and much more. If you’re looking for something specific, the search function at the top of the page can help.
When the world was busy panic-buying toilet paper, I was busy panic-sowing. As it became clear that the novel coronavirus pandemic was going to change life, at least for awhile, I was in the middle of my regularly scheduled indoor seed starting. I had made a quiet promise to myself that this year, for once, […]
As you probably know, I live in the land of the delayed spring. So when I started getting questions from a couple people asking about why their tulips and other bulbs were short I didn’t think much of it. Maybe they planted them too deep or had something funky going on with the bulbs they […]
In a very random Instagram moment over the weekend—a hastily shot story made while practically running past the compost as I dashed around trying to get a few jobs done before it rained—I showed an exciting compost-related development: a second bin! OK, very few things related to compost can possibly be classified as exciting, but […]
Hi there, homebodies! I feel obligated, as I do from time to time when I disappear for a few weeks at a time, to apologize for being a bit scarce. There was a reason for it a couple weeks ago and then, well there wasn’t and now in this new world we live in I […]
Do I dare? Do I dare even get my hopes up that we may indeed be having an early spring and trust that we will roll right into a warm spring and a “normal” summer? You know the answer to that. I absolutely should not do that and yet I will. I am. This year’s […]
Last spring a trip to Pennsylvania provided inspiration that I continue to draw on now, especially on these cold winter days. I consider my visit at Chanticleer Garden to be the most influential garden tour I’ve ever taken, but just the day before I was at Longwood Gardens and it was no less inspiring. In […]
Annual vines are some of the hardest working, best problem solving plants in the summer garden. And with a grow habit so vigorous, when warm days turn to hot days and warm nights, you can almost watch them grow in front of your eyes. Vines are great for screening the less attractive bits in our […]
After you garden for awhile, you start to get a pretty good idea of what kind of gardener you are. Your style and approach to garden tasks becomes pretty clear. And after two decades of gardening in some form, I think my weak point is clear: restraint. As much as I know that restraint is […]
This post is sponsored by Jung Seed Company but, as always, the words and opinions here are my own. Is it just me, or are more people into growing plants from seed? In the past couple years I feel like so many people have asked me about seeds or shared their seed-starting tips and stories. Whether […]
I don’t often talk about houseplants here, and on the rare occasion that I do, it’s done reluctantly. I’m just not all that comfortable with them, and I certainly don’t have the passion for them that I have for all the great things that grow outdoors. I have a few houseplants that get special treatment […]
I have to admit something. I cried watching a gardening television show. Not during the reveal of some kind of makeover for a deserving family. Nope. I cried watching Monty Don talk about American gardens. Let me back up a bit. For those who are unfamiliar, Monty Don is perhaps the most well-known gardener in […]
Well I’m predictable, that’s for sure. Every couple years, almost without fail, I take on a really big garden project. I cannot explain what compels me to follow this arbitrary yet somehow predictable schedule, but I do. And so, since I spent much of 2018 building the dream vegetable garden, and part of last year […]
Most winters, I make it until at least January before I start ordering plants for a gardening summer that might as well be a light year away, but this year I got a head start. It wasn’t my intention to start buying when I should have been Christmas shopping for other people, but the early […]
In what has become something akin to a tradition around here, we’re just days away from Christmas and the outside of my house is fully decorated (at least as fully decorated as anything gets around here), and the inside has a long way to go. I’ll be honest, I have a lot more fun doing […]
