Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Monarda is called bee balm for a reason! This bee balm was brought home as a division from a plant in my wife’s aunt’s garden in West TN. Monarda is a great plant for attracting pollinators! It doesn’t only attract bees, butterflies are more than happy to land upon this flowering perennial. I planted it just outside our vegetable garden…

While I haven’t written about it in quite some time we have a large hillside that so far we’ve left pretty natural. Over the last two years I’ve gradually cut into the slope in an attempt to cut down on the worst of all weeds, ragweed. Right now the slope has large pathways cut into the top that have natural…

Gardeners in Tennessee should be wary of planting anything this weekend. I know the temptation to put things in the ground is great (it’s eating away at me too) but just look below at the temperatures for Sunday and Monday night. According to The Weather Channel it dips very close to freezing. A much better day to plant would be…

Spring is coming. Really.Signs of the coming gardening season are beginning to appear all over from the daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths beginning to emerge to the swelling buds on the trees. Very soon warmer weather will begin again and we will be fully emersed in the garden once again. In anticipation of the coming gardening season I thought I’d give…

Plant propagation can continue at almost every time of the year, the winter is no exception. This is especially true if you have a little space in your house to put your cuttings or can manage to manipulate them into interesting centerpieces! In this post you will see how to propagate Leyland cypress from cuttings. A Brief Bit About Leyland…

I’ve said repeatedly that I’m a fan of salvias. It’s no wonder since they bloom prolifically, are easy to care for, and attract pollinators right and left. One salvia in my garden (among many) that I’ve accumulated is the ‘Blue Bedder’ Salvia farinacea which is also called Blue Bedder Sage. It’s not reliably hardy to my zone according to many…

Fall color is on its way! Or colour as the case may be! Those Canadians have to do things different don’t they? 😉 However you spell it the fall foliage is well on its way to peaking. Here in Tennessee I would estimate that peak color is about a week or so away but we don’t have to wait to…

Several weeks ago I planted Baptisia australis seeds. It’s also known as false indigo. It took some time but with bottom heat from my seedling heat mat and continued patience several of the seedlings have sprouted.  It’s always exciting to see new plants come alive from seed.  It took the Baptisia seeds about a month to germinate.  Please note one…

One long anticipated task for me and my garden shed was the painting. It’s come a long way over the course of the past year – from nothing to an actual building capable of storing my lawn equipment, but I’ve really been looking forward to completing the painting. Even if the inside isn’t completely arranged and finished at least the…

There are very few gardens in Middle Tennessee that go without Chrysanthemums (Mums for short) or Asters for fall colors. With such a variety of colors there is one that can fit in nearly any garden. Both asters and chrysanthemums belong to the same family, Asteraceae, along with many other popular plants. In our garden we a have a few…

Sweet gum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua) are beautiful trees and are great to have around for wildlife. The seeds of the sweet gum tree are eaten by small mammals like squirrels and chipmunks as well as a number of birds including finches, ducks, quail, chickadees, sparrows, towhees, and Carolina wrens. With all that wildlife enjoying the sweetgum trees I can easily…

Today I put the final touches on the birdbath garden for the 2008 gardening season. It’s come a long way since it’s inception last fall. In the beginning it was merely a birdbath with a couple plants next to it. A few irises, two coneflowers (‘Sunset’), and a butterfly bush made up the whole garden. Later I added some discount…

Like a picture, a walk in the garden is worth a thousand words.

Before the first frost of the fall I took a few cuttings of my Persian Shield (Strobinlanthus dyerianus) to hopefully overwinter it as a houseplant. This was the first year for Persian Shield in my garden and I’ve only seen it at one nursery around so I wanted to be sure I had some for next year in the garden….

http://www.growingthehomegarden.com/2010/08/garden-blogger-posts-of-week.htmlWelcome to the second week of Garden Blogger Posts of the Week. Last week I highlighted two posts that I thought were interesting, unique, or stood out in some way (cool pictures etc.). Today I’ll mention a few more. Please pay them a visit when you get the chance! I thought Nancy Bond’s pictures of the eagle were very cool….

I know that you know that I like Yoshino Cherry trees. I thought I would highlight the Yoshino cherry tree that is flowering in our front yard so that you can enjoy its blooms too! Here’s why the Yoshino makes a great garden tree: they grow relatively fast, they look great when in bloom and when covered in leaves, and…

Since changing my URL to www.growingthehomegarden.com from thehomegarden.blogspot.com over the summer I’ve realized that I have been under-utilizing my fancy new domain name. There’s this whole concept of subdomains that can fit right in with your main domain that can really enable blogs to branch out in different directions, which is what I’m in the process of working on right…

A spiral vegetable garden planted with lettuce and greens is a very interesting way to grow vegetables or herbs. It has obvious design appeal with its circular form yet is fundamentally a raised bed. I can see where a spiral garden might make an interesting centerpiece for a parterre garden layout. We saw this spiral at the Nashville Lawn and…