Professional Gardening Tips
How to grow Helianthemum From the Greek helios, the sun, and anthemon. a flower (Cistaceae). Sun Rose. A genus of evergreen and semi-evergreen shrubs, sub-shrubs, perennial plants and annuals, very free flowering. Numerous named varieties and hybrids are grown and […]
Vinca minor is, as my father used to say, neat but not gaudy. Sometimes known as periwinkle or myrtle, this creeping perennial appears everywhere. Like a good soldier, vinca hits the ground running, and does its task efficiently, even under […]
Lately, it seems like every time you turn on the local weather forecast, the meteorologist is talking about drought conditions. If you are in a severely affected area, or under water restrictions, this doesn’t mean you have to give up […]
After Helen of Troy ; according to legend the flowers sprang from her tears (Compositae). Sneezeweed. Hardy herbaceous perennials from North America, good for cutting and popularly grown for their late summer flowers. The disc of the flower head is […]
The catalogs are a little slimmer this year, but they are still full of the hope and glory of spring and summer. Flowers, vegetables, fruits and herbs burst forth from the pages, each better than last year, allegedly foolproof and […]
I am very prone to love at first sight. In fact, it happened just last week. I saw a tall southerner “across a crowded room”, as the song says. My heart stood still (as another song says). I was enraptured. […]
When I moved into my house in mid-February a year and a half ago, one of the first things I did was to walk around the yard, and try to figure out what the previous owner had planted. The winter […]
Broad Beans These were certainly known to the Ancient Egyptians and are probably natives of northern and western Asia. They are extremely hardy. Cultivation A good rich loam suits these beans, though they are not difficult to grow on any […]
We plant trees for their beauty of leaf, whether green in Summer or red in the Autumn; for their bark which becomes particularly fascinating. We plant trees because we love them. Some trees linger in our memories as old friends, from whose branches we […]
In his classic book Mormon Country, author Wallace Stegner noted that nineteenth century Mormons planted rows of Lombardy poplar trees wherever they established settlements in the territory that is now Utah. The trees served as windbreaks and boundary markers, but […]