Needled evergreens take a back seat to flowers, flowering shrubs, and pretty much every other aspect of the summer landscape. These landscape staples are often considered little more than “backdrop plants” or necessary additions to keep the yard from looking completely bare in winter. Color-lovers diss them for being plain green all […]
Every gardener has them… those obstinate plants that just won’t grow for you no matter what you do or where you plant them. It’s especially maddening when others seem to have no trouble growing a particular plant, but the same thing seems bent on dying when you plant it. Sometimes these plants […]
It’s not easy being any plant in the deer-infested, clay-endowed, erratic-weathered, lanternfly kingdom known as central Pennsylvania. But the going is doubly tough if you’re a young plant facing the middle of one of our summers. A Harrisburg July and August can throw all kinds of extra challenges at a botanical newbie […]
I’ve long battled animal pests and weather assaults in my annual quest to grow intact vegetables, but one common problem that’s never vexed me much is one that plagues a lot of other veggie gardeners this time of year – bugs. Garden bugs can be a big problem and do a lot of […]
The heat and humidity of a typical Harrisburg summer is enough to make it seem as if we’re living in the tropics. If that’s the case, we may as well grow with the flow. Plenty of tropical plants do nicely here as summertime in-ground, landscape plants. They think they’re at home. […]
Sometime in the next few weeks, millions of locust-like bugs called cicadas will emerge from 17 years of slumber underground. They’ll screech and fly around some 24 counties in central Pennsylvania for about six weeks, no doubt causing plenty of gardeners to fear that their plants are doomed. Although the cicada’s Biblical-proportion […]
The crown jewel of the Dutch bulb industry is the world-famous Keukenhof garden, a 79-acre, bulb-studded color show that wows 1.4 million flower-gawkers each spring. The place is only open for seven weeks from late March until mid-May, but if you’ve ever seen it, you know why it’s so popular. Keukenhof is certainly […]
Now that we’re into May and usually past the point of killing frost, the big question on gardeners’ minds is exactly when is it “safe” to plant the summer flowers and vegetables? Those are the plants that will croak on frosty nights… things like zinnias, marigolds, and begonias in the flower garden and […]
Trees are the most expensive plants in the landscape budget. They not only cost the most at purchase time, but pruning and other care can chew up some dollars over the years. And if you have to have one cut down? Well, let’s not think about that bill. Picking a tree is […]
Some plants are way over-used – even though they’re trouble-plagued – simply because they’re familiar. Others are way under-used – even though they’re virtually bullet-proof – simply because they’re not well known. The arrival of a new gardening season is a good time to do something about that imbalance… to opt for […]