Whether you have a tiny garden, balcony or patio or a larger garden plot if you like eating blueberries you’d be mad not to grow them yourself. So in essence yes you can grow blueberries in your garden, regardless of the soil that you have. These plants are just wonderful to grow, perfect for pots […]
Gardening in the intermountain west and high plains is not for faint hearted; even with a greenhouse to coddle plants along, the climate conditions here are tough so plants need to be strong. When temperatures can drop from 85 degrees during a summer day and plummet to 50 – or less – at night, that’s […]
There are certain plants that announce the beginning of a new era as effectively as a clock striking midnight at Prince Charming’s ball. The first rose of summer for instance, or the parchment of a silver birch trunk glistening in low winter sun. When autumn is on the horizon there are two that pop up […]
I need new trees. Last winter, a 100-year-old Douglas fir came crashing down on six of my specimen trees. So, now in late summer, I looked for replacements at the Farwest Show New Varieties Showcase in Portland, Oregon. If you also need new trees, early autumn can be an excellent time to plant. According to […]
What began as a cracking summer in the greenhouse fizzled out, as summers so often do, just as the kids broke up for the holidays. The days they had spent sitting in classrooms gazing out at blue skies and parched earth were swapped for sitting in their bedrooms looking out at the rain. The chillies […]
Provide landing pads for insect pollinators and predators and your garden will be first stop for their services. Storm Aileen has scooted through, the land is a sodden sponge, and I’m out photographing red admirals in a dry crack between September’s relentless downpours. A whole troupe of Vanessa atalanta seems to have blown in with Aileen: seven, […]
Over the last few years I’ve come to a greater appreciation of begonias, both in conservatories and outside in the garden. Because my main garden is on the north side of a four-story building, I’m always interested in ways to bring colors other than green to the shade. Like many gardeners, I used to rely […]
I can’t think of another glasshouse plant that suffered from such perverse name changes as this, one of the oldest of all our houseplants now known as the Jade plant. A tender succulent from Natal in South Africa this became popular way before the Victorian era. Probably because it’s remarkably tough and undemanding as a […]
Autumn is the season of lawn maintenance and this is what you do. Rake out the ‘thatch’ or dead grass and moss that has accumulated over the mowing season using a wire rake, powered lawn rake or scarifier that can be rented from the tool hire shop. To save money, you could hire one and […]
