Encouraging the Honeybees: Making a Bee Garden

Posted in Featured Articles, garden theme, insects, plant lists The honeybee populations of the USA have been drastically diminishing [Learn about Colony Collapse Disorder], and though no one knows exactly why, one factor is less foraging. We gardeners can do something about that! It is really important that you never use pesticides in your bee garden. They poison bees. Starvation is currently considered to be the leading cause of bee...
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Winter Outlines Garden Bones

Posted in Featured Articles, Seasonal Interest, garden design, trees Winter is a stark time for most of us in a temperate climate. Doubly so when a fresh snowfall creates lines and shapes, filled in with snowy white. We then see our garden in silhouette, and all its features are outlined for us to better judge the proportions and dimensions of our larger plantings and hardscaping. This is when we can decide how to improve the garden’s structure to give...
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The White Garden

Posted in garden theme, landscaping, white flowers Making an all white garden used to be quite a popular undertaking. Although the idea probably started (in modern gardening times anyway) with Gertrude Jekyll in her book, Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, it was Vita Sackville-West who created the most famous white garden at Sissinghurst Castle. This garden was “designed to be at its best in early July and especially in the evenings...
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The Blue Garden

Posted in Featured Articles, garden theme While color-themed gardens intrigue in the planning stages, they can be a bit difficult to pull off. One drawback is the self-limiting nature of it… there are so many plants that attract our attention and to reduce them to only one color is quite a task. Then, next, the color blue is not a common one in nature, perhaps as an offset to all that sky. Finally, there is the color itself....
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The Prairie Garden

Posted in Featured Articles, garden design, landscaping Few of us will ever see a true prairie like the pioneers of old had seen, but we still have the plants, and many of those are ideal for the challenging conditions of drought. Prairies are rare now, but some enthusiasts believe you can have a little piece of the prairie in even the smallest of yards, and I am inclined to agree. How did the original settlers see the native prairies? What do...
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Garden Ornaments: To Have or Have Not?

Posted in Featured Articles, garden design Garden ornaments are a tricky topic. You are going to risk offending someone or another if you say something is tacky… and it is just your opinion, anyway, right? Well, though my own taste tends towards the garden of little and classic ornament, I have seen all sorts of flourishes done well. From the Medicis influenced by Hadrian’s sculptures and garden to fifty’s style...
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