Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Fall is well known for its colorful foliage that paints the country each year but there’s still lots to appreciate among the flowering plants!  Here’s a few of our current blooming flowers from the garden. Some don’t have much longer to go until the frost declares an end to the show. The ‘Clara Curtis’ mums put on a spectacular show…

Arborvitae is a very nice plant for the home landscape. Also called Thuja occidentalis, arborvitae is an extremely versatile evergreen tree in the landscape. It can be used as a foundation planting, privacy screen, or even as a windbreak. These columnar evergreens tend to evoke a formal mood in the garden. There are cultivars that range from 2 feet in…

OK it’s not really a strawberry patch as much as it is a raised bed in the vegetable garden that is overflowing with strawberry plants. A couple years ago I planted the bed with these strawberry plants, I believe there were twelve plants total, and let them grow in the bed. I fertilized after their fruiting was complete with an…

I’ve been curious lately about the scientific names of plants and their origins. How are they put together? What do they mean?What’s in a Name?One name I see frequently is sinenis. Camellia sinensis and Miscanthus sinensis are two plants that use sinensis in their name but there are many others. Camellia sinensis is the plant that makes tea. Green tea…

When most people, including myself, think of hostas they imagine a beautiful dark green to light green foliage plant with variegation. It’s too bad that the flowers are often taken for granted since they really are quite showy! The show starts with this little pineapple-like bud. The tightly bound buds eventually open to reveal a flower with six petals that…

Coming up on April 25, 2008 is Arbor Day. It’s a day to celebrate a unique feature of our planet the trees. The trees are so important to us. They serve as the planet’s lungs filtering the air we breathe, they provide us fruit and nuts to eat, paper to read and write with, drugs like aspirin and shade to…

A few years ago I found a maple tree on sale at one of our local nurseries.  It was only five dollars so I bought it, planted it, and left it alone.  It was a ‘Brandywine’ maple tree which is a cross between an ‘October Glory’ and ‘Autumn Flame’.  With parents that good it had to be something special! Almost…

The shovel, the rake, and the hoe.  Three tools no gardener should be without.  Ever.  They dig, they grade, and the chop the earth.  They cut roots and aid the gardener in tilling when the tiller is kaput.  While they take a little muscle to use they are capable of great deeds, such as Bermuda grass removal! Raised Bed Vegetable…

This week is the Nashville Lawn and Garden Show!  For those of us here in TN this is a great opportunity to go out and take care of that gardening fix after a long cold winter.  There are always some interesting ideas to be found in the displays so make sure you bring a camera!  Here are some photos from…

It’s been a few weeks since I last mentioned a notable weed but I can tell you that doesn’t mean the weeds haven’t been growing!  Ragweed and Johnson Grass are coming up in force with the warm weather and so is the weed I’m about to talk about today – pokeweed!  Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is a very prolific weed in…

I hope when you read this post that the rains are coming down in a delightful shower to water your garden, because they certainly aren’t here! It’s dry, extremely dry. Working in the ground is like cutting through a brick. Fortunately we’ve planted plants over the years that can tolerate these dry drought conditions. Autumn sage is one of those…

While I didn’t intend to talk about weeds today I was out weeding the vegetable garden last night and had some thoughts on the weeds that I thought I would share. Worst Weed Wednesday was last week but with weeds there is always more to say so here are 5 things weeds do! Weeds: Crowd out plants Propagate like crazy…

Beware gardeners for danger may lurk beneath a rock. Though a rock may be a home to many creatures there are few that rival the venomous Black Widow spider. This spider is one of only two spiders gardeners in Tennessee have to watch out for, the other is the brown recluse. The black widow loves to lurk underneath rocks and…

Recently in the gardening blogosphere there’s been a little uproar over a particular post on a particular blog regarding the particulars of gardening. While I don’t wish to officially enter the fray of back and forth I thought I might offer my thoughts on gardening rules that should be strictly adhered to at all costs. Garden Rule Number One: Garden…

This post is about two of my favorite vegetable garden plants: tomatoes and sugar snap peas! Both are delicious right from the garden and I have both growing in my home and garden! The snap peas are about 6 inches tall at this point. The pea growth has been slowed some by the cool temperatures.  Even though sugar snap peas…

Since its addition to our garden in 2009 ‘Powis Castle’ artemisia has proved to be a powerful perennial plant for foliage! I’ve always enjoyed artemisias for the silver foliage and really liked the ‘Silver Mound’ artemisia that we put in the front sidewalk garden so once I found this cultivar at a local nursery I thought I would give it…

I’m always excited for a new challenge to accomplish in the garden and recently I was invited to participate in Better Homes and Gardens 48-hour Blog Challenge.  Together BHG.com and The Home Depot are proposing a very interesting event that is sure to be fun for me and hopefully for you as well.  Here’s the deal.  They have given me…

The plant of the week this past week was correctly guessed by several people. It is a honeysuckle vine. This particular one is sprawling up the lamp post outside my parent’s home. I suspect that it is a trumpet honeysuckle or coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). It was there before they purchased the house so I can’t be 100% sure of…