Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

In the very back of our property we have a shady area.  It’s about the only shady area that has occured naturally in our landscape.  A mixture of walnut, sassafras, hackberry, and maple trees create a shade area that until recently was completely unusable!  It was a problem area in our landscape which I thought would make a great subject…

I like this picture for both the tree and for the sky in the background. This is a tulip poplar tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) located in our newly discovered territory. It’s a large tree and suffered some branch die back because of the drought of last summer. The branches were knocked down recently in one of our storms. The tulip poplar…

I wanted to put together a quick post to thank all those garden bloggers who have taken the effort to post the Fall Color Project Banner somewhere on their blog. It definitely is not required to participate but I wanted to pass on my appreciation for the extra visibility. So … thank you! Here are those who added the banner…

Yesterday’s post had many of the colorful plants I planted around the garden shed today’s post may be less colorful but hopefully still interesting! First let’s start off with a small stepping stone pathway. I bought some cheap 12″x12″ stepping stones to lay down for this little pathway. To the left of the pathway is an area that still needs…

I was inspecting the Birdbath Garden the other day when a persistent buzzing sound became noticeable. I looked around a little closer and found this little bee happily buzzing among the stalks of the salvia. No wonder I like these plants! They are magnets for these happy little pollinators. This bee buzzed from stalk to stalk sampling all it had…

The other day I was contacted by the folks at Workman Publishing. They had a new book that they wanted someone to look at so I said I’d be happy to check it out. The book is The Garden Primer: Second Edition by Barbara Damrosch. Some of you may be familiar with the original version of this gardening manual that…

I wrote in my last post about the plant benches I was working on for the garden shed and this weekend I was able to finish installing the coated wire shelf tops. Now I can add plants in to overwinter, hardwood cuttings for rooting over the winter, or maybe even start seeds in the early spring.Each shelf is covered with…

A couple weeks ago I was sent a copy of William Woys Weaver’s Heirloom Vegetable Gardening from Mother Earth News. I’m always excited to get more information on a favorite subject of mine, vegetables! The book was first published in 1997 and is now available on CD. Unfortunately you don’t get the tactile sensation of reading a book on paper…

OK gardeners and garden bloggers I need your help. Years ago I bought our first video camera to help film the antics of our children.  I bought it just before our oldest was born and many things have changed over the years. Essentially technology has made my old mini tape video camera obsolete. I can’t even hook it up to…

A Couple weeks ago a friend from Texas sent me a 5 tiered Greenstalk Vertical Planter. It’s an interesting concept for a planter that allows you to grow vertical and save on garden space. The planter came shipped with the 5 tiers, the top watering reservoir, a stand with wheels, a short drain tube for excess water, and of course…

Do you want to know where you can find tons of awesome photos of amazing fall color? Right here in these posts listed below! Over the last couple months we’ve been treated to fall color all over the northern hemisphere courtesy of bloggers all over the world. In many places the weather of 2010 was very difficult for folks to…

I don’t make many New Year’s resolutions.  I make goals instead.  I put together ideas of things I would like to accomplish and set out to do them.  I usually don’t get through every goal I set but by setting a few goals that are attainable I accomplish more than I would have otherwise! I’ll post my garden goals for…

Rhododendron calendulaceumThis week’s Plant of the Week was the Flame Azalea. Most people answered it pretty close. This is actually a native plant to the Smokey Mountains. It grows from four to eight feet tall and spreads out somewhere between ten to fifteen feet. My wife and I found this particular plant in 2003 along the Abram’s Falls trail. We…

Over the next several days I’ll be doing some minor changes to the site (emphasis on minor!) to help get better organized. I’ll just be making some posts that will house links to related posts to make things easier to find information. When I starting this blog I didn’t give a whole lot of thought on how to do things,…

I wrote about caryopteris last year so I won’t go deep into the details again but I thought you might like to see how I’m using it in the garden. First a bit of explanation. I once saw a picture of a row of caryopteris at Longwood Gardens and I thought “why not try that here?” The picture had caryopteris…

The truth is I never even considered remodeling our front porch for the Better Homes & Gardens 48 Hour Challenge but if I had considered it I did have some incentive not to. The two front runners in the challenge (Making it Lovely and This Young House) had some nifty ideas that they used in their porch remodels and some…

This time of year more than any other when the cold weather is still stuck upon us we look for any signs of spring. We scour the garden for any hints of warmer weather that will hopefully be on its way soon. We have it lucky right now here in Tennessee. While the snows are burying parts of our country…

One of the coolest things about gardening is that every month brings a new scene. Different plants come to the forefront while others fade away leaving either seed heads or simply foliage in their place. Some may disappear completely among the foliage or die back to the ground revealing new fresh plantings that are coming into their own while some…