Past Posts Still Worth Checking Out
December 9th, 2025
Time is winding down if you want to read and/or save anything I’ve written here over the past 20 years of GeorgeWeigel.net.
George, right, interviewing Tim Clymer for a gardening article of the past.
I’m retiring this site at the end of the year, and when my web hosting contract runs out at the end of April 2026, the site and everything in it will disappear into Internet Heaven.
That means now’s the time to sniff around here and mine whatever gardening info-nuggets you might have missed – or ones that you read a few years ago and forgot.
I don’t mind if you want to grab and save any of the files for your own use. But if you’d like to use any articles or photos commercially – say, to reprint in your own writings, site, or publication – I’d be happy to sell you the rights and email you copies. Articles are $25, and photos are $10. Email me at george@georgeweigel.net before that address also goes away.
As for what to find where, a good starting point is to check out the archived topic lists at left.
The Plant Profiles listing guides you to rundowns on the 300+ high-performing plants that I’ve profiled over the years, including good places to use each plant, good partners for them, and how to care for them.
The Timely Tips listing is my 12-part calendar on what garden jobs to do each month.
Buried cable lines… one of the many potential pitfalls on a typical gardening day.
My favorite section is George’s Handy Lists, a set of links that takes you to more than 60 lists to help you garden better (and maybe give you a few chuckles along the way). The entries include topics such as “10 Frankenplants I’d Like to See,” “10 Landscape Plants You’ll Probably Kill,” “10 Murphy’s Laws that Apply to Gardening,” “12 Ways to Keep You from Hurting Yourself in the Garden,” “Ultra-Local Native Plants for Southcentral Pennsylvania,” “The Eight Things that Annoy Gardeners Most,” and “10 Things My Wife Makes Fun of Me For (Gardening Only).”
If you like looking at plant and garden photos, my Photo Galleries section gives you hundreds of shots I took during the many garden trips I led as well as collections of my “50 Favorite American Garden Settings of All Time,” “50 Favorite International Garden Settings of All Time,” photos from past Philadelphia Flower Shows, photos of some superb Harrisburg-area home gardens, and photos of the Cumberland County home garden I left behind.
Probably the most useful resource I’ve come up with in my 30 years of garden-writing is my 19-page booklet, “George’s Survivor Plants for Pennsylvania.” I developed it as part of my Garden House-Calls consulting business. The listing zeroes in on hundreds of my top plant recommendations (specific varieties, too), and it includes light needs, planning sizes, bloom times, and other important factoids you ought to know about each plant.
The only place you can get this “Survivor Plants” booklet is directly from me, i.e. through my Buy Helpful Info page.
You can download a copy for $4.95 or order a paper copy for $7.95, plus $3 shipping. Once this site goes away, so does the booklet. So if you want one, now’s the time to do it. It’s been updated for 2025.
The Buy Helpful Info page is also the place where you can download a copy of my “50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See” ebook. It’s a $7.95 download.
If you’re interested in certain topics, look for the Search box at the top right of the home page and type in the topic of choice. A list should pop up of articles on this site that match.
Another option is to go to the Storage Shed button at the top of the left-side tool bar. This avenue lets you search by categories such as Enviro-Gardening, Flowers, How-To, Mayhem in the Garden, Garden Design/Plant Selection, Fun Stuff, and Everything Else.
Or you could just keep scrolling down the articles on the home page and hitting the “Older Ramblings and Readlings” button at the bottom to keep going back in time.
Here are a few past “Readlings” that I liked and believe are still timely and useful:
* How those controversial new Purple Tomatoes with the snapdragon genes perform and taste.
* The spread of a recent type of worm – the so-called “jumping worm” – that’s a threat to our gardens, not a help.
* A rundown on what the new USDA Cold Hardiness Zone Map means for Pennsylvania gardeners.
* A collection of tips on how to navigate our increasing erratic weather in the garden.
* A look at why it’s important to seek out “survivor plants.”
* How to head off plant problems by listening to what your plants are trying to tell you.
My “mini-meadow” by the summer of year four.
* How my “mini-meadow” finally flourished in year three, only to completely fall apart in summer.
* Why you should “Just Say No to These Pass-Along Plants.”
* My real-world experience with planting 16 different kinds of spring-blooming bulbs.
* Why I don’t buy into the idea that some people just have black thumbs and can’t be good gardener.
* “The Case for Weeds” is a look at why not everybody thinks weeds are a bad thing.
* “Winners and Losers in a Garden of Change” tells how our growing conditions are changing and what plants are being to benefit (or not) from it.
* A rundown on how to assess a landscape and move/add plants to make it better, called “Editing the Landscape.”
* A year-round to-do calendar spelling out “The Best (and Worst) Times to Do Things Around the Yard.”
* For DIY lawn-care folks, dual plans with one aimed at those shooting for the “green-carpet” lawn and the other aimed at those willing to balance less work, cost, and input with OK results.
* A look at “How Native Do You Have to Go to Make the Birds and Bees Happy?”
* “Failure to Thrive,” an article that looks at reasons why some plants just don’t seem to grow.
* For those of you trying to figure out what plants will work best according to the situation and setting, I put together a three-part “Solution Gardening” series with lists tailored to such cases as planting on a sunny bank, planting in the dry shade under big trees, and planting in wet areas.
* And finally, if you want to see a pictorial account of how I tackled the landscape mess I inherited after my move to the Pittsburgh area, that cringe-worthy post (three years after the fact) is titled “Before and After: Dejungling My Almost Landscape.”