October, I’m sorry, but you’ve been receiving all the praise for a job that needs to be done in September. Most of the commonly available tips about bulb planting concern not botany but logistics and are entirely wrong from the biological point of view. The…
There’s something in the morning air that makes me know it’s time for September planting — dewier grass, golden and soft sunlight rather than white and blinding, soil that, when you finally break through to it, still carries the warmth of the summer sun while…
Ask gardeners what September means, and they probably wouldn’t answer with blooms. This is the month when the harvest begins, when the garden is cleaned up, when gardeners should plan for frost dates rather than blooming dates. Nevertheless, I have seen some really beautiful flower…
Not a thing in the garden looks as if it is dying yet. And that is how the illusion is created. The pelargoniums continue to flower. The coleus brags in colors. The salvia is as tall as it has never been, and looking from the…
There’s a reason so many gardeners fall for delphiniums the moment they see them in a catalog. Those towering spikes of blue look like something out of an English cottage garden — tall, elegant, impossible to ignore. You plant them, you wait a full year…
Most gardeners sow foxglove, hollyhock, and sweet william in spring, right alongside their annuals. That’s exactly why so many of them never bloom. These are biennials — sow them in spring, and all you get by autumn is a rosette of leaves and a long…
I’m so excited because my English lavender is starting to bloom right now! Soon my garden will fill with its intoxicating fragrance, generous flower spikes and loads of bee, butterflies and other pollinators! If you too have this magical shrub in your garden, then you…
The moment those towering delphinium petals drop, your hands probably itch to grab the pruners and slice that fading stalk right down to the dirt. I completely understand the craving for a spotless flower bed. But taking a sharp blade and shearing a hollow botanical…
Did you enjoy your ball-like decorative allium blooms this year? From white to burgundy via blue and all shades of purple, from small to 12-inch large, their inflorescences are hard to miss in a garden… But my real question is: do you want another spectacular…
Why do some lilacs completely steal the show every spring? Is it because of some secret fertilizer? The perfect soil? Or maybe they just like the neighbor’s garden better than yours? Whichever the reason, if your shrub gave you nothing but a quiet mountain of…