On Tuesday I walked into a funeral service in full on late-summer weather and emerged a couple hours later into weather more suitable for late October. A brisk breeze came off the lake, leaves were falling on our heads and the sun refused to provide the warmth I swear it had earlier in the morning. In case I wasn’t fully ...
After a lot of talking about planting window boxes, the weather finally (if briefly) improved enough to actually do it. This year I aimed for a slightly more restrained color palette (blue/purple, lime green and a touch of orange) and fewer plants. In the past I’ve jammed so many plants in the window box that I think they had a ...
Designing containers is one of my favorite parts of gardening. There are so many options and there’s so much less commitment than designing a garden: You get to redo it every year. Pretty much everyone knows about the thriller, spiller, filler method of designing containers and although this isn’t the only way, it’s a pretty fail-safe method. Except when it ...
Wow, how did it get to be December 31 already? It seems like the year just flew by. Come to think if it, since I was 25, they all seem to have flown by. It was a good year on the blog. I’ve been doing this since April 2009 and I wrote (a few) more posts this year than any ...
My favorite holiday decorations are the ones I do outside. It’s partly because they brighten up what is otherwise a pretty dreary landscape, but also because the decorations outside, particularly the containers, provide the most decorating bang for the buck.I love how with a few collected (and some purchased) materials you can create something that is really beautiful. These containers ...
Somewhere along the line it became August. I have no idea how that happened and I’m none too happy about it, but that means I better check in with the containers like I promised I would back in June. The deck planters are doing surprisingly well. I feel like the pink mandevilla is a bit more vigorous than the red ...
As you know, I love planting containers. Of the containers I plant I think I put the most emphasis on the window box. It is probably the first thing you see when you pull up to our house and it’s one of the few containers I can see (part of, anyway) from inside the house. So I spend a lot ...
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Thank you to Wave Petunias for partnering with me on this post. I’m often asked a question that is perplexing to me: “Do you grow annuals or perennials?” I don’t fault the people asking the question as I think there are some people who grow one or the other, and perhaps that was more typical […]
Nothing stops me in my tracks more than when I’m looking at a garden jam-packed with color and texture and come across a spot of bare soil. It puts a screeching halt to well-planned flow. Gaps in the garden happen because the plant that was supposed to be growing there didn’t, or perhaps because other […]
What more can we ask from a gardening book than to be inspirational and education? Two new books with more than a little in common manage to strike the right balance of both, complimenting each other, much as the personalities of these enthusiastic and generally delightful gardeners do. Claus Dalby, the Danish gardener known for […]
Thank you to Park Seed for partnering with me on this post. As always, all words, thoughts and seed choices are my own. The hardest part of growing plants from seed is keeping the amount I grow in check. I can’t be alone in this. It can be so tempting to plant just a few […]
If there is a support group for planter addicts, let me know, because I need it. I love a good container, but finding one is a different matter. I have two non-negotiable requirements for most planters: they need to be big and they need to look good. Weight, style and even cost are all things […]
Is there any task that has so many rules and yet so many people tackling it in different methods more than growing plants from seeds? It can make the whole process even more confusing. Each way to start seeds has its pros and cons, and although some are better than others for starting particular seeds, […]
There’s a well-established garden-making process around here: Every other year I make a new garden space. It is a lot of work, puts me behind in other areas of my arguably already too-large garden and takes a bit bite out of the plant budget. By the end of the project I swear I’m all done […]
What can I say about the 2021 garden? I have been putting off thinking about it too much because well, I have regrets, and when we are only given so many summers in this lifetime, it stinks to use one on a garden that you don’t love. Don’t get me wrong, I am way more […]
No matter how much I’d like to be one of those people who makes notes throughout the year of gift ideas for family and friends, I am but a mere mortal who, in the throes of a panicked gift-buying season, ends up scouring online gift guides that claim to know the innermost desires of the […]
At a time of year when there’s no shortage of faux decor—faux trees, faux berries, faux garlands, faux mistletoe, for starters—it’s nice to have a few real plants around. The plants we typically think of as “holiday” plants don’t usually bloom at this time of year. Rather, they are forced (although perhaps “t
Growing oddball plants—those plants that aren’t commonly grown in the area—is almost always rewarding. Since there is no real way to measure success, any sign of a plant doing what it’s supposed to do is chalked up in the win column. In other words, I keep my expectations low and hope to be pleasantly surprised. […]
Thank you to Inside Outside House & Garden for partnering with me on my post. As usual, all words and thoughts are mine. Check out the promo code at the end for a free trial. “No new gardens.” Perhaps you’ve heard me say this a few times before, but it turns out no matter how […]
I’ll admit it: My gardener brain switched into fall to-do list mode awhile ago. But somewhere along the line in between planning where bulbs will go and remembering which plants need to be moved, I looked up and found some great plants showing off in the garden. It was, once again, a good reminder to […]
This time of year is all about soaking in the garden and making mental (or more likely, photographic) notes about what worked and what didn’t. Some things are as simple as a plant that just didn’t perform or as complicated as being happy with how a design sketched on paper came to fruition. But somewhere […]
