Our tips & advice to keep your garden beautiful!
Move over Mums! Now you can have garden beauty in late fall and early spring from spectacular ICICLE Pansies and Icicle Violas. Icicle pansies and violas are selected for their ability to overwinter when planted in the fall. Bred for cold climates, this tough new breed is guaranteed to survive the harshest winters, wherever they are [...]
Larkspur - A Late Spring Bloomer If you didn't sow Larkspur seed in October for flowering in late spring 2013, no worries. You can buy the plants at your local gardening center. Larkspur (Delphinium consolida,) which symbolizes an open heart, tends to be a bit fussy, and I've not had much luck in the DC-area. But if you have [...]
Don't let the January thaw fool you. Winter is far from over even here in the Mid-Atlantic, but winter shouldn't keep you from thinking about your garden. These warmer days that will soon become cold unpredictable days are great for planning; mulling over plant catalogs and books looking for new and unusual plants to add to your [...]
Don't Be Intimidated By "Organic" It's time to demystify the word "organic" because it's 2013, and growing organic produce and transforming a garden space into an "organic" garden is easily achieved. When gardeners and other folks refer to organic produce or organically grown veggies and fruit, they're describing items grown in a garden space that has replaced pesticides with natural substitutes, and building soil life [...]
GardenWise on Snow Damaged Gardens As the snow falls, I think about the long term effect it will have on so many gardens. I see people burying beds in their front yards with piles of snow laced with salt, and homeowners salting their gardens on the local news. I cringe each time I see it. Put down the salt! and check out some tips [...]
You've planned your landscape, spent months choosing your plantings, and something doesn't take. What to do? A bare area in a garden space can be fixed by dropping in a pot of blooms, fruits or vegetables. Pots allow for a more fluid and adaptable gardenspace, making it easy to change to seasonal needs and aesthetic choices. You can place potted plants in places [...]
Phlox 'Miss Lingard' is a GardenWise July favorite! With a spectacular clump-forming habit, 'Miss Lingard' has spikes of sweetly-scented, refined pure white flowers that are disease resistant, so you won't have to deal with that powdery mildew mess you sometimes get with other types of Phlox. Phlox comes from the Greek for "plant with showy flowers" and "flame," and 'Miss Lingard' delivers with a gorgeous eye-catching [...]
A favorite part of my job that I enjoy very much is landscaping -- figuring out which plants will work best in a particular garden, based on amount of light, soil type, water availability, and many other factors. I work a lot in Northern Virginia, an area which is notorious for clay heavy soil. I've been working with this [...]
Turf magazine has a feature story on a grass that holds very fond childhood memories for me -- Zoysia Grass.
Ease of movement and flow are essential when connecting your indoor and outdoor spaces. This can easily be achieved, especially in an older home, with a few inexpensive additions. Changing a door style from solid to french, and adding a few wooden stairs, will create the connection between the two spaces. Create areas in your outdoor space for entertaining, as well quiet conversation. Here are before and [...]
