A hydrangea with dark leaves, a mock orange that reblooms, and an inkberry holly that solves the “bare-legs” problem are among the most interesting new trees and shrubs hitting the market for the 2024 growing season. Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts mentioned the following 12 choices for my annual January […]
A cross between coneflowers and gloriosa daisies, a new variety of a little-known native plant, and the smallest native Joe Pye flower yet top the list of interesting new perennials debuting in the 2024 growing season. Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked the following 14 choices for my annual January […]
A super-cold-hardy dusty miller, a double-award-winning purple-blooming agapanthus, and a whole new type of succulent are among a slew of interesting new annual flowers debuting in the 2024 growing season. Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked those and more for my four-part, best-new-plants series that I compile each January – […]
A lot of winter is still staring us in the face, but for gardeners, it’s a time to dream about the many plants already awakening in greenhouses. Some of these plants will be new to the market in 2024 – improvements or new twists that haven’t been grown in home gardens yet. […]
The National Gardening Association’s 2023 National Gardening Survey found that an estimated 80 percent of American households are taking part in some sort of lawn or gardening activity. That’s a five-year high and comes despite markedly higher prices in plants and gardening supplies. What form will that interest take in 2024? Here’s […]
Now that another gardening season is in the bag, it’s a good time to look back and see what lessons we can draw from it. The 2023 gardening year was another one that brought us lots of twists and turns, not the least of which was more erratic weather and feast-or-famine rainfall. […]
It occurred to me one day while inspecting the butt hairs of a lawn grub that gardeners are not normal people. We gardeners tend to pay attention to things that “regular” people don’t, we don’t notice odors that regular people do, and we often engage in activities that would curl the skin of […]
You’ve probably heard of the kids book “The Little Engine That Could” in which a never-give-up little locomotive pulls a long train over a tall mountain by believing, “I think I can, I think I can.” It was one of our kids’ favorite bedtime books. It seems I have a plant with […]
Like most gardeners who have moved, I’ve had to deal with starting all over in a new landscape after spending years parenting an old one. My case was probably a bit more extreme than most. My wife and I spent 32 years at our previous home – a third-of-an-acre yard in suburban Cumberland […]
I wish I could say that my experiment growing 955 spring bulbs of 16 kinds has been a rousing success, carpeting my yard with vibrant color at a time when most everything else is just waking up. But three years after planting, only four of my bulb groupings put on a good show […]