Are you one of the many people who have discovered how relaxing and soothing gardening can be? Horticultural hobbies are enjoyed not only in warmer months, but commonly throughout most of the year. However, while you are planning to create an amazing natural space for yourself and your family, you may be also unwittingly creating an ideal environment for termites. […]
Pool Landscape Design Tips: Transform Your Backyard into a Summer Oasis
Have you recently had a pool installed by a luxury pool builder in New York? If so, you may be trying to find ways to integrate plant life around your new pool to enhance the area. Landscaping a pool area is a unique challenge for everyone, just like the design of each home and garden. However, when it comes to […]
Watering trees and shrubs
Trees and shrubs need moist, but not thoroughly wet, soil in order to grow well, resist insects and winter injury, and, in some cases, to produce flowers and fruit. If fruiting plants fail to fruit, or produce few fruit, it may be due to drought during flowering or fruit production. From early spring until about September 1, apply water adequately […]
Helping lawns deal with drought
With a changing climate, droughts seem to be getting more frequent and sometimes of a longer duration. Proper mowing, watering, and fertilizing are some of the strategies you can use to help a lawn deal with droughts and to survive. During periods of intense heat or drought, lawns will go dormant. They’re still alive, just not growing, so won’t need […]
Garden Strawberry Planting and Care
The Strawberry is our most widely cultivated small fruit. In suitable varieties it is grown in every state, much of Canada, except the coldest regions, and even in the milder parts of Alaska. It is grown extensively commercially in widely separated parts of the United States and Canada and is the most popular and easily grown garden fruit. The common […]
Common Beneficial Insects
Although we focus on the insects that destroy our landscape plants and crops, these undesirable insects give a bad name to virtually all insect species, most of which are beneficial. These either do no harm, provide food for desirable species such as birds, or attack and kill the pests we don’t want. Here are ten common beneficial insects that we […]
Perennial Plant Feature: Milkweeds
Milkweeds have many benefits—they are hardy, low maintenance, good in rain gardens as well as in dry soils and during droughts, tolerate deer, the mid-summer flowers attract butterflies and the leaves feed monarch butterfly larvae. Milkweeds are not weeds at all (a plant out of place that you don’t want in your garden) unless, perhaps, you have a formal garden. […]
The pleasure of herbs should be in every garden
Herbs, in my opinion, should be grown in every garden. Not requiring a lot of space or care, the benefits are immense. Think about various dishes that are made and you will find at least one herb flavoring it; potatoes and chives or lovage, tomatoes and basil, spaghetti sauce and oregano, and many more. Herbs like other plants fall into […]
How to Use Your Garden to Have a Sustainable Life
Sustainability means using fewer non-renewable resources to ease the burden of extraction, production and consumption of these resources puts on the environment and on society. Starting a garden is one positive step you can take toward living a sustainable life, especially when you focus on low- or no-waste methods of growing food. You can easily start a sustainable garden […]
An Essential Guide to Your Backyard Garden
Starting a backyard garden might seem like an overwhelming project. That’s because you are probably picturing one of the gardens from Architecture and design magazines. Those gardens take months of planning and work. If you want a backyard garden like this, this essential guide will help you start with a good foundation. How to Start Your Backyard Garden The trick […]