I’m beginning to think that maybe nature has banned me from the blueberry list. At my previous place in Cumberland County, I harvested quarts of tasty berries every summer from five blueberry bushes I planted along my western backyard border. The main thing I learned was to drape and secure a sturdy […]
I’ve long suspected that deer have some sort of sophisticated, yard-monitoring network that lets them take maximum advantage of the plants that gardeners set out. Now I’m sure. There’s just too much efficiency going on to assume that simple-minded deer happen to wander by and find certain target plants for dinner almost […]
Gardeners are prone to all sorts of medical and psychological afflictions not faced by the “normal” population. Maybe it’s the price we pay to conquer the many threats and curveballs involved in getting things to grow. I thought I’d go over nine of these maladies that aren’t even well known in the […]
I liked the new streamlined layout of the 2022 Philadelphia Flower Show, which ended Sunday after being held outside for only the second time in its 194-year history. I also thought the display gardens were a cut above the 2021 ones, and I liked the spread-out conditions of FDR park’s 15-acre venue over […]
A fair number of south-central Pennsylvania homes have little to no landscaping. A majority have passable to middling plantings – enough to “fit in” or at least avoid being neighborhood embarrassments. Then there are the glorious few where the ambitious owners were bit by the plant bug and ended up building truly […]
I’ve always had doubts about meadows. Proponents of this buckshot-planted, multi-species idea tout meadows as an exceptionally low-care way to cover a lot of ground colorfully while being friendly to pollinators and the ecosystem. The cynical side of me pushes the too-good-to-be-true button and wonders whether weeds will be the ultimate winner. […]
I’ve seen a big shift these last few years in what gardeners view as the “best,” or at least the “desired,” way to garden. The trend is strongly toward a natural look in which lots of different plants intermingle and grow in laissez-faire masses – similar to how plants grow in the wild. […]
Flower color is one of nature’s most joyous gifts to people. Even non-gardeners appreciate it, while many a gardener strives to load the yard with a nonstop parade of flower power from the season’s first hellebores to the last Montauk daisy petal of fall. That’s not easy. More color means more […]
If the Dutch Floriade 2022 is correct, plants in the future will do way more than make our yards pretty or supply us with fresh salads. Tomorrow’s plants could fuel our cars, insulate our roofs and walls, and serve as building blocks for everything from cheese to bridges. The theme of this […]
The lackluster color we see (or don’t see at all) in so many yards up to this point in the growing season is largely because we’re under-bulbed. Spring blooming bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths are the leading way to color our spring landscapes, but the majority of yards I see are totally […]