Plants are generally pretty docile and defenseless creations. If your dog wants to dig up a daylily or you feel like decapitating a cabbage for dinner, there’s really not much the plants can do about it. Then there’s Toxicodendron radicans, better known as poison ivy. This is a plant that not […]
Way back when I was a Cub Scout leader, we started the year by having the boys discuss what the pack’s rules should be. The 8-year-olds’ first suggestion was, “No killing.” I wouldn’t have thought of that, but it was definitely a good place to start. That also happens to be […]
Maybe I’m a little premature, but me thinks good, old-fashioned impatiens are back. Impatiens walleriana were our top-selling annual flower up until 2012, when a deadly downy mildew disease swooped in and killed just about everybody’s plants in a matter of weeks. Because the water mold that causes the collapse is as […]
I like waterfalls. They make dramatic or soothing landscape features, and ones like Niagara and Iguaçu are some of most impressive features on the planet. However, I don’t care for waterfalls that materialize out of summer downpours and carry away everything in their path. It turns out that’s the type we […]
Bugs. We like it when those pretty little skippers and monarchs flit around the flowers. And more people are coming around to the idea that bees are a good sign in the garden and that spiders do more good than not. But pretty much everyone is aghast when Japanese beetles swarm […]
One thing Cristina Papson said she wished she had done before moving from Cumberland County to Florida was take a little of her garden soil with her. It would’ve been a memento… a tangible keepsake to remind her of the many pleasant hours spent beautifying her Hampden Twp. yard. Before my wife, […]
I’m beginning to think that maybe the appreciation of flowers is inversely proportional to the lousiness of your winter weather. Boothbay, Maine, is pretty cold and icy over a long winter, but the little coast-line town has one of the nation’s best botanical gardens, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Buffalo, N.Y., […]
I can’t imagine the void we’d have in the gardening world if there were no such thing as Master Gardeners. These plant-loving, sharing-minded folks – mostly retirees – volunteer millions of hours nationwide each year answering gardening questions, teaching better ways to garden, and helping home gardeners solve their garden problems. It’s […]
So I was poking around the fabulous 2019 Chelsea Flower Show last month in London when I came across an educational display on invasive plants. The British are apparently having as alarming a time with that issue as we are. But what caught my eye most was what made the invasive list […]
Back in my Cumberland County garden, I’d improved the soil so well over 30 years that I scarcely needed even a trowel to plant. The ground was so loose I could open holes with my fingers. Not so in my new Pittsburgh “landscape.” The soil here is a dense, back-achingly heavy, […]