Unplanned garden ‘accidents’ have lovely results
By Donna Williamson | 11.20.09
Developing a pleasing landscape or garden is the most wonderful work. We plan and design and deliberate. Plants are considered for one location or another, one function – like developing a hedge for privacy – or another, such as softening a stone building.
It’s more fun than I can usually contain!
Sometimes, though, good accidents occur. Typically at the end of the growing season, I have several leftover plants that I bought for one client or another and then reconsidered.
I jam them into an open spot in my garden to winter over, thinking I will remember in the spring to move them or pot them up again.
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Ways to overwinter tender succulent plants
By Betty Earl | 11.19.09
I love growing succulents — you know, those alluring fleshy, spiny, hairy, thorny, and otherwise bizarre-looking plants – in old bird baths, troughs, dishes, and other small containers outdoors during the summer months.
These tender, no-fuss plants offer interesting textures, shapes and colors, creating individually fascinating gardens that, for the most part, thrive on benign neglect.
Less time spent lugging around hoses or watering cans is a very compelling reason for growing several containers filled with these captivating gems.
Gardeners in warmer climates can grow them on walls, in rock gardens, in beds and borders, and containers year-round. However, here in the Midwest, growing them outdoors in containers during the summer is easy; but trying to overwinter them indoors is not.
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How to place rocks around water gardens
By Mary-Kate Mackey | 11.18.09
We’ve all seen them, those water features — particularly small ponds — dotted on the edges with natural rocks that look totally artificial. You may even own one.
After years of writing about backyard water features all over the country, I’ve come to think of this artificiality as distinguished by “same-size syndrome.” All the rocks around the pool are either, as the contractors say, “one-” or “two-person” rocks. That’s the number of people it takes to position them.
Sometimes this effect results because you don’t have the money to pay for the equipment that could place really big boulders. But I have also seen same-size syndrome on massive features that took up most of a water gardener’s budget.
If you’re happy with that look, read no more. But if you’d like to improve upon what you have, or if you’re planning a new water feature — and winter’s the best time for making those plans — read on.
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House plants for black thumbs and cave dwellers
By Doreen Howard | 11.17.09
I’ve killed more than my share of houseplants.
One of the great paradoxes of life is that accomplished gardeners who grow prize-winning roses and gigantic tomatoes frequently turn into grim reapers when it comes to ficus and philodendron indoors.
Gardeners are used to supplying plenty of water and nutrients to their outdoor plants and never have to worry about enough light. Indoors, daily watering and large doses of fertilizer spell disaster. And lack of strong light dooms the healthiest of orchids or staghorn ferns.
Learning the delicate balance of providing just enough water and nutrients and finding the right light in your home for different plants comes with practice. Yes, you’ll kill a few, but you’ll learn. I did.
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Take advantage of bargain bulbs with this trick
By Mary-Kate Mackey | 11.16.09
Here’s a trick that allows you to take advantage of the money-saving late offers from Internet bulb companies like Brent and Becky’s or Old House Gardens. Or you can snag bags of orphan bulbs locally for rock-bottom prices and have them bloom in your garden next spring.
Water features – especially the naturalistic kind with waterfalls, streams or pools – often have planting pockets among the rocks where the soil is already improved and drainage is terrific. These spaces are ideal for bulbs of all kinds.
Also, you could consider other areas around your garden where you’d love to see spring bulbs popping up.
But wait, you say—it’s beyond bulb planting time in your garden. You’ve already hung up your gardening gloves for the season.
