Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

I like the look of rocks for bordering my garden beds.  Rocks define the border between the garden area and the walkways, help keep mulch in place, and give the garden bed a structural element.  I’ve gathered rocks from several places over the years and brought them to my garden.  It’s not easy work but I like the end result….

Yesterday I asked people what varieties of vegetables they would recommend from their own experiences.  My goal is to add a few new vegetables each year just to try something new.  Some vegetables are tried and true and will always be in my garden but there are so many types of vegetables out there that I know I will never…

Recently I put together a little project from some wood I had stored in the garage. It was an idea I had to help me with a presentation I’ll be giving at a local garden show. Essentially I needed a way to demonstrate how a few plants could be planted in combination with each other. I didn’t have access to…

Free Plants! The best possible price you can find right? Last week I was struck by a post at everyone’s favorite garden ranting website. The post discussed the “lies” of gardening and one of those supposed lies was that you don’t have to spend money to get plants. The author implied that to get good plants you have to spend…

Let’s be real, foliage is more important than flowers!  Foliage is there 3 out of the four seasons and unless you have some fantastic re-blooming plant that blooms incessantly from spouting to leaf drop you aren’t going to have something interesting all the time – unless you plant with foliage.  Color, leaf texture, leaf shape, and leaf size all make…

Several months ago now my youngest daughter and I journeyed up to Clay and Limestone to visit Gail. While there Gail gifted us with a bounty of planting presents like a group of junipers, her famously practically perfect pink phlox, several St. John’s Worts, golden ragworts, and a couple other plants that have now found a place in our garden….

Fall is a great time of the year for seed saving. Our plants have spent their time over the summer building up energy to produce seeds which will one day sprout, grow, and create new plants. Seedlings are essential to the diversity of a species. When open pollinated plants share their genetic makeup they can pass on variations in their…

Through the diamond shaped hanging frames of the Arbor I spied a daylily and a salvia in the front garden. The blooming of the daylilies has begun!  Arbor voting is still in progress!

The historic dryness finally gave way to some rain on Halloween. About 0.83 inches came down that day give us a good soaking. We still need more rain, and regular rain but it definitely helps. I’ve been concerned about the lack rain and the fall color potential but fortunately some trees have done really well despite the lack of rain….

Welcome to Worst Weed Wednesday! Today is the day that you can rant all you want about weeds, how much you despise them, how you would like to eradicate them (and do), and what kinds of things you say to them (please keep it PG or PG13!). I’ll update this post as more folks rant on the worst weeds in…

A few years ago I drew a rough drawing of a garden area for my in-laws.  They had just built their new house and were excited to fill the landscaping in with something they would enjoy. What I came up with was a sitting garden. Essentially an area where they could go outside and relax while watching the garden or…

Thanks for guessing at my post the other day called Digging a Hole. Creative title right? Nan of Gardening Gone Wild, Tina of In the Garden and Gloria of Pollinators-Welcome all guessed right, it’s a rain garden. Our driveway is a slope and at the bottom of it is an area that collects and pools water after each rain. Rain…

I bet when you read the first three words “Bradford Pears breaking” you immediately though of another kind of breaking. One of the reasons they are on my least favorite ornamental tree list is because the trees frequently break in storms. These trees grow so fast that the wood suffers and they just can’t muster the strength to hold out…

Creeping Phlox – April 2011 I wish I could have gotten to this post earlier but Monday’s storms kept the computer off for most of the day. It’s pretty difficult to type a post without electricity! As of this morning 18,000 people in Middle Tennessee are still without power. Over the weekend the weather was absolutely perfect for outdoor activities….

This week I was excited to find that something I had given up for lost actually worked, cuttings of a red twig dogwood. I took some cuttings in an attempt to propagate Red Twig Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) back in the fall. After I prepared the cuttings they sat for several weeks without anything happening. Just after I transplanted my butterfly…

I really didn’t expect to get flowers from the cuttings of Persian Shield I made in the fall. It’s been an added bonus but I was only trying to keep the cuttings alive long enough to plant them in the ground this spring. I’ve kept them in jars of water so far even though I should have long ago planted…

It’s that time of year where the tomatoes are coming in faster than I can pick them. That’s a good thing but I wonder sometimes if I’m in over my head trying to find ways to use all these tomatoes. I planted over 20 tomato plants this year which may have been too many but I couldn’t resist. There are…