If you thought this summer would be a great time to buy a bunch of trees or shrubs, gather together a hoard of your favorite annual and perennial flowers or completely revamp your landscaping, my heart goes out to you.
One gardener’s weed might very well be a naturalist’s wild flower or a herbalist’s medicinal plant. So much depends on both your world view and the level of exasperation you’ve reached while battling shot weed, dandelions or nettles.
I’m no ancient Chinese fount of wisdom, but I believe wholeheartedly you should get to know all those little rascally plants that keep popping up in your flower beds and call them by their proper names. Here are just a few of them.
If anyone tries to sell you on a landscape design that’s touted as no-maintenance, tell them you’ll swap some ocean- front property in Nebraska for their plans. Who knows, with climate change they may come out ahead.
More than once I’ve watched a gardener bend down to examine something growing in a pot or in one of their beds and say, “I don’t remember planting that,” or “I don’t know where that came from.” Sound familiar?
I don’t know about you, but if I’m putting a lot of effort into the care and maintenance of a shrub, let alone the financial investment at the time of purchase, I want a reasonable payoff. This is doubly true when it comes to deciduous shrubs.
In a column a couple of months back, I wrote about some great plants for shade gardens. One of the plants I mentioned was sweet box, or Sarcococca, a very fragrant evergreen perennial that sometimes has a tendency to spread via runners.
If you’re looking for a low maintenance, low growing perennial that likes both full sun and shady gardens, Bergenia might do the trick.
Yes, I know we have more winter to endure, but my daffodils haven’t gotten the memo.
Are yours blooming too? And are your baby slugs as happy about it as mine are? How about your hyacinths?
Some plants can pack a wallop. It might be the breathtaking size or color of the blooms, the shape and texture of the foliage, an unusual form, or maybe just the plant’s rarity in Northwestern gardens that draws you in and makes you say, “Gotta have that!”
At first glance, Pieris japonica and Camellia japonica don’t seem to have much in common other than the second part, or specific epithet, of their Latin binomial.
When I checked a map of the weather monitoring stations throughout the island via www.wunderground.com this New Year’s morning, I saw numbers ranging from below freezing to 46 degrees. We’ve been having results like this for quite a while. Remember the recent snow storm that missed Oak Harbor and Coupeville and dumped four inches on the south end?
Last week I got real excited. And it wasn’t because an ice-cream truck overturned in front of my house.
