How-to

I am always looking to cram more color into spring.So when Longfield Gardens offered me the chance to try 25 Mystic Van Eijk tulips and 50 grape hyacinths, I was happy to take them up on it. But we have a lot of voles and chipmunks around here, which love to eat tulips. We also [...]

True confession: I have a secret desire to create a garden so spectacular that it will stop traffic. I know that's not realistic. For one thing, we don't have much traffic. If ten cars go by in an hour, we say, "Gosh, there sure is a lot of traffic on the road today." I'd settle [...]

If you've been following my back page, you probably already know that I've been invited to the 2014 version of P. Allen Smith's Garden2Blog. I'll be joining twenty-plus other bloggers for two jam-packed days of tours, demonstrations, and workshops, while squeezing in time to get to know my fellow bloggers and P. Allen Smith himself. [...]

The snow is melting, but not fast enough to suit me. I've already taken pictures of where the snow melts first, so I know where to plant my spring-flowering bulbs this fall. In the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, I realized this lingering snow was the perfect opportunity to outline a new garden [...]

In case you are just joining in: About two-and-a-half years ago our family moved from our long-time rural home to a different 19th-century farm house about twenty-five minutes from our previous one. I have been renovating the landscape around the house in a non-systematic frenzy and writing about it as time permits. (Previous posts are [...]

A guest post about Meiwa kumquat trees for a blog about gardening in cold climates? Oh, yes. If you have a sunny spot in your yard in summer and a south- or south-west-facing window in your house, you'll love this little tree. I live in suburban Maryland, and am the happy owner of the two [...]

When I first started gardening, the "proper" way to prepare a garden bed was double digging. I wouldn't recommend that for anything except really long-lived plants, like peonies and asparagus. These days many people recommend lasagna gardening or something similar. I tried that, and it didn't work too well for me. The biggest mistake I [...]

It happens to all of us. At least, it happens to me and a lot of other gardeners I know. Winter is right around the corner and you have all these plants in pots that you were sure you were going to have time to plant during the growing season. And now the growing season [...]

Last weekend the last stage of the front walk project was completed. Every stone had to be leveled and the gaps between stones filled in.That's how my sons did it, at least. A lot of people would use sand for the leveling and joint-filling, but they thought the crushed bluestone would stay put better. They [...]