FANCY LEAF GERANIUMS

I grew up with geraniums. So did everybody else. The plants of my childhood were, by and large, red, big-headed, and belonged to the genus Pelargonium. My father and thousands of like-minded people bought their geraniums every spring at the […]

Garlands And Gum Trees

A previous owner of my house loved the color brown. The outside is painted two shades of mocha. The kitchen has brown print wallpaper and brindle-toned tiles on the counters. The upstairs study features walls strewn with brown paisleys. The […]

Preachers In The Woods

A few weeks ago I finished Bill Bryson’s excellent book A Walk In the Woods. The author, an American who returned to this country several years ago after living twenty years in England, decided to walk the Appalachian Trail as […]

Platycodons – Balloon Flower

July is a difficult month for most flowers but the lovely Platycodons seem not to mind its heat at all. We could not be without them at that trying time to produce blossoms both to brighten the borders and for […]

Growing bulbs to flower indoors

If you plan it, you can cut winter short. You can order spring to come to your house 8 to 12 weeks early. Do this simply by adopting the florists’ methods of forcing tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths into bloom weeks […]

Heat, Drought and Roses

Just what we will get from our Roses during the trying month of July will depend on how the beds were prepared before planting, and whether the plants have been kept free from disease and kept well fed and watered […]

Lily-of-the-Valley Tree

When misty trade-winds dump their cool gray fogs over the Golden Gate during midsummer, that is the time when the Lily-of-the-Valley Tree adorns itself with myriads of small ivory white bells that toss their perfume on the air as the […]

Trees with yellow or golden leaves

Trees with yellow or golden leaves Included here are some trees which do not retain their exceptional color throughout the entire season, but are attractive during the early part of the summer. All are cultivars that must be propagated vegetatively […]

Trees with outstanding inflorescences

AESCULUS CARNEA The red hybrid horse chestnut is very variable, the cultivar briotii should always be chosen. A. hippocastanum, the common horsechestnut, growing into a very large tree, is well known. The double-flowered baumannii is smaller and does not produce […]