TWO CLASS SESSIONS FULL OF YOU visited yesterday to talk about container gardening, but for those who didn’t take the workshop in person, a recap seemed in order since it’s that time: everything into the pots! [read more…]
types of gardening
From container gardening to shade gardening to organic gardening and even lawncare basics, a range of gardening styles and practices are covered in this archive.
missed the workshop? container-garden 101
May 21, 2012 at 11:17 am
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may 20 container workshop: win a ticket!
April 29, 2012 at 7:47 am
WE CALL IT ‘CONTAINED EXUBERANCE,’ the container-garden workshop that garden designer Bob Hyland and I do in May each year at my garden in the Hudson Valley of New York. You can buy a ticket for one of the two sessions on Sunday May 20 – or enter to win one ($45 value) by commenting on this story about the event, which always sells out….so hurry. [read more…]
2 becomes 200: how to divide trillium
April 22, 2012 at 9:41 am
I DON’T RECALL HOW I FOUND THEM—maybe it was while fixing something, or painting the house all those years ago. But for some reason I was down at ground level, peering under the floor of the front porch, and there they were, in near-darkness: two tiny trillium plants. I rescued them, and you know how it goes when a plant thanks you for your help: Now I have hundreds, thanks to those first two, and to a tip handed down from a great gardener about dividing them when they’re in flower. Yes, like right now. [read more…]
growing eucomis bicolor, or pineapple lily, in pots
August 15, 2011 at 10:22 am
IWAS GIVEN A POT OF EUCOMIS BICOLOR, the so-called pineapple lily (guess how it got that name), by a friend who was moving and couldn’t take it along. Why had I forgotten how easy this wacky-looking South African character, whose genus name means well-haired because of the tuft of brachts topping the flowerhead, is for overwintering in the basement here? From its moptop to the purple-mottled stems and freckled leaves to its long-lasting, trouble-free performance, there’s nothing about Eucomis bicolor that I don’t like—except that I don’t have more. [read more…]
using coleus ‘spitfire’ as container-design glue
July 11, 2011 at 11:08 am
IFALL IN AND OUT OF LOVE WITH COLEUS (which not so many years back changed its botanical name to Solenostemon scutellarioides, not surprisingly prompting one of our estrangements). This season, I’m back in love, largely thanks to a recent introduction called ‘Spitfire’ that’s just what a gardener who loves hot-colored annuals needs to tie the picture together. [read more…]
new! slideshow of my 54 top shade plants
June 28, 2011 at 12:01 am
SHADE IS A TRICKSTER, CAPTURING AND RELINQUISHING territory as years pass and woody plants grow—or are damaged or lost. Twenty-five years into gardening on one site, some former “shade gardens” here now bake, and even more spots that were sunny—well, you get the changeable, unpredictable picture. Thankfully, for the latter areas, I have old clumps of lower-light plants to divide, including those in this new slideshow of my top 54 shade subjects. I included some woodland-garden shrubs and trees for those seeking to manufacture some shade of their own—or wanting to add more understory structure to what nature has provided. [read more…]
q&a and a giveaway: you grow girl’s gayla trail
June 1, 2011 at 12:00 pm
TRUE CONFESSION: I USED TO STALK GAYLA TRAIL ONLINE. Long before I started A Way to Garden, You Grow Girl, founded in 2000, defined “garden blog” for me, and I was a regular lurker there. But Gayla gardens in Canada (not the U.S.), in an urban setting (not a rural one). She is a bold world traveler (I am a big baby). We are nearly two decades apart in age (and I, regretfully, have no tattoos). If we’re so different, then why are we posting simultaneous profiles this week on our sites, and giving away four sets of both our books? Because we’re pretty sure you’ll like meeting the other one—we know we hit it off when we did. [read more…]
‘papaya’ petunia plus: updated annual slideshow
May 25, 2011 at 8:36 am
ME? I STICK TO MY STORY: CONSISTENCY! So here it is, time once again for planting up pots, but I’m stuck on my same color theme–hot, hot, hot. I’m working with an expanded palette of sunny-colored annuals gathered at the garden centers, including a very sexy new-ish petunia called ‘Potunia Papaya,’ from German breeder Dummen-Red Fox, above. Forgive its rain-splattered blossoms, and other still-in-their-flats snapshots that I added to the show in these “before” shots. Bring on the heat and some sunshine, and they will grow. [read more…]
rise and shine, tender bulbs!
May 7, 2011 at 9:13 am
OUR SPRING HERE HAS BEEN SO SLOW TO GET COOKING that I let the tender bulbs I’d stashed in the basement, like cannas and dahlias, all sleep a little longer this year. But now I’m sounding reveille, and saying “be up, be doing” like my Grandma used to say to me. I won’t put them in the ground till month’s end, but meanwhile, here’s how to get them off to a good start.
