Growing Guide for Hepatica

Hepatica Plant Care Today I went out my back door and noticed that one of my rosebushes was, unexpectedly, sporting a fresh new flower bud.  It was within a day or so of opening up–small, greenish and obviously defiant of the season.  The bud was an oddity on a rosebush that is itself an oddity.  When I bought the small […]

The versatility of ferns is being seen again

Gardeners today with busy schedules want less work in their gardens, and thus a need is established for plants that do just that. Their focus is more on leaf texture and foliage colour, rather than blooms and pruning schedules, consequently plants that don’t require a lot of care and maintenance are sought after. Self-sufficient ponds, shade gardens, and woodland gardens […]

Winter Ornamentals – Bark

 Winter Ornamentals – Bark Book Excerpt by Dan Hinkley Like the last and messy hours of a party gone on too long, the soggy, cool days of late autumn cast about the garden a mood of the season’s demise. Yet as the last colored leaves, varnished with the first rains of winter, fall earthward, the deciduous trees bare their sinewy […]

How to grow Oxalis

If you need an attractive low growing plant to use as a Border to conceal the scrappily base of rosebushes or to mask the water faucet on the side of your house, try oxalis. Or if you’ve a narrow park-way too difficult to mow easily or an area underneath an air vent in a house wall, oxalis will meet this […]

Planting Trees Correctly

Yes, there are right and wrong ways to plant a tree.  By following correct planting practices, you can ensure trees will avoid a slow decline and possible death from several causes. This is especially important for trees, which can be a large, long-lasting, and worthwhile landscape investment. Choose the right tree for the right site, not just a tree you […]

Making Maple Syrup

Although the calendar may say spring, here in the north country, March only hints at the warmer weather to come. For gardeners this can be a frustrating month with late season snows, fluctuating temperatures, and mud limiting outdoor activities. One way to shorten the waiting period until the gardening season is to force branches of spring flowering shrubs like forsythia, […]

Spleenwort fern Growing and planting Asplenium

ASPLENIUM—Spleenwort (Asple’nium). Ferns which are great favorites for cultivation out of doors and under glass. The cultivated hardy kinds are natives of North America, the others grow wild in tropical Africa, India and other countries. They belong to the Polypody family, Polypodiaceae. Asplenium is derived from a, not, and splen, spleen, and refers to the medicinal properties these Ferns were […]