When to do what around the yard? It’s a question that baffles many a homeowner, mainly because it’s not something that’s taught in school… and because few people paid attention when their parents tried to teach them the fine art of yard care. So most people wing it, hoping they’re not cutting the bushes at […]
If you’ve ever gone away on a 2-week summer vacation, you know it doesn’t take long for a yard to go down the tubes. The grass gets overgrown, weeds seem to grow 2 feet tall overnight, and assorted plants cry out for trimming, de-flopping, deadheading and other “primping.” Regular maintenance, in other words, is absolutely […]
You’ll fare a lot better against weeds if you yank or kill them when they’re little… or prevent them from sprouting in the first place. Here’s my strategy for keeping a lid on weed problems.
I didn’t think I liked Italian-style gardens as much as, say, a perennial border exploding with season-changing color or a mixed garden of cutting-edge shrubs. Italian gardens always seemed too formal, too green and too contrived to me, not to mention a heckuva lot of trimming work. But after 8 days of picking my jaw […]
I was expecting the cherry laurels and nandinas to brown out from the cold winter wind. I was expecting the crape myrtles to die back to the ground and the hydrangea flower buds to take another beating. What I wasn’t expecting was for my 20-year-old ‘Prairifire’ crabapple to die in the front yard. Crabapples are […]
Native plants are a hot trend lately. But how local does a native plant need to be? Cumberland County Master Gardener Susan Skender came up with detailed lists of plants native just to the six counties around Harrisburg.
Stephanie Cohen is the feisty planter and prolific author of all species perennial. Seward Johnson is an 84-year-old artist who’s sort of the Norman Rockwell of sculpture. The common denominator is that both have interesting gardens that you’ll be able to see on my next Lowee’s Group Tours day trip scheduled for Fri., June 26. […]
Do you really want or need that perfect green carpet of a lawn? An alternative is “good-enough grass” that’s a lot less expensive and less difficult to attain but still decent enough to keep you from dragging down the neighborhood.
The loss of the pollinator population is something home gardeners can help by knocking off spraying, planting more variety and not “sanitizing” the landscape.
I was zipping along fairly well talking about Pennsylvania plants and my new book for the April 12 edition of the hour-long “PA Books” program on the PCN cable network. Then host Brian Lockman hit a question that blanked me. What do you do in that situation? Say, “I have no clue,” and look stupid? […]