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…]
container gardening
It needn't be an "annual" to belong in a pot. From "houseplants" doing outdoor summer duty to all manner of edibles and tropicals and even perennials, shrubs and young trees, the moveable garden.
may 20 container workshop: win a ticket!
April 29, 2012 By 74 Comments
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growing eucomis bicolor, or pineapple lily, in pots
August 15, 2011 By 20 Comments
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 By 28 Comments
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…]
q&a and a giveaway: you grow girl’s gayla trail
June 1, 2011 By 408 Comments
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 By 26 Comments
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…]
