Great Design Plant: Chelone Glabra

I’m a sucker for native plants I can’t easily find at brick-and-mortar nurseries — especially if they’re tall, have white blooms and don’t require much work once established. You’re probably quite familiar with

Great Design Plant: Chamaecyparis Pisifera ‘Curly Tops’

Most gardeners have, deeply buried somewhere in their minds, a list of attributes that their imaginary perfect plant would possess. For me it would be a plant that is versatile and easily grown to a manageable s

14 Gardens Straight Out of Fairy Tales

In fairy tales, gardens and forests are the playgrounds of princesses, fairies, witches and mythical creatures. Take a moment to step away from the everyday and wander these beautiful and dreamy garden landscape

10 Essential Wildflowers for the U.S. Central Plains

Gardening in the central Plains can be both tricky and quite easy. We’re faced with two realities: wind and annual temperatures ranging from around -40 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Plants have to be able to bend a

Great Design Plant: Cedrus Deodara ‘Feelin’ Blue’

In our hurried lives, we seldom take time to look down. But when we do, we discover subtle gems that go unnoticed by most. So it is in our gardens. Take cedars, for example. Their bold, majestic forms rule the f

7 Spectacular and Practical Spring-Flowering Trees

The flowering cherries of Washington, D.C., the redbuds around Lake Michigan, the saucer magnolias of the San Francisco Bay Area — wherever you live, theres probably a blooming tree that spectacularly announces

Great Design Plant: Gentiana Andrewsii

With blooms that never open, closed bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) is about as different as they come. And those blooms can come in a range of hues, from reddish purple to mauve to dark blue — sometimes in

Great Design Plant: Penstemon Parryi

The pink spikes of Parry’s penstemon (Penstemon parryi) may look as if they belong in a cottage garden, but in reality this perennial is a desert native that easily handles hot, intense sun with little water. T

Great Design Plant: Ceanothus Americanus

New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus) is a beautiful native flowering shrub rarely seen in the U.S. East, but it’s a valuable landscaping plant because it stays low without pruning and thrives in dry, lean or ro

Great Design Plant: Comptonia Peregrina

Sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) is an apt name for this little shrub that’s native to northeastern North America. The arching form and deeply lobed foliage give it the appearance of a fern, but it is a woody sh

Designing With Conifers: Exploring Color

Conifers are the workhorses and problem solvers of garden design. Much more colorful and varied than the Christmas trees that spring to mind, conifers offer year-round structure, texture and color, becoming the

Great Design Plant: Corylus Americana Awakens the Woodland Garden

American hazelnut (Corylus americana) is one of the first native shrubs to flower in spring. Before the leaves emerge, the separate male and female flowers begin to develop on the bare branches. The male flowers

Freshen Up the Bath With Lush and Healthy Plants

The organic forms and oxygen-boosting properties of plants make them a welcome addition to the bathroom. But keeping houseplants healthy in the often humid, low-light conditions of the bath is not always straigh

Great Design Plant: Valentine Bush for Heartfelt Winter Color

The deep red flowers of ‘Valentine’ start appearing in winter, when most plants have closed up shop, adding much-needed color to landscapes throughout the Southwest. Flowers begin to appear around Christmas, and

15 Native Flowers That Feed Native Bees

We’ve been hearing a lot about bee and pollinator decline in the news. Though the implication is that “bees” means honeybees, there are over 4,000 native bee species providing us with free pollinating services —

Tips for Decluttering Your Garden Workspace

Before you succumb to the flats of annuals at the garden center, take a tip from articles that stress cleaning, decluttering and reorganizing your home and do the same for your garden work area — whether it’s a

Great Design Plant: Juniperus Squamata ‘Blue Star’

Certain garden plants earn their designation as go-to plants, and usually for good reasons. Consider Blue Star juniper (Juniperus squamata ‘Blue Star’). It has a compact size and offers evergreen foliage with se

Great Design Plant: Rosa Banksiae a Low-Maintenance Beauty

When we think about growing roses, beautiful, fragrant flowers are usually the first characteristic that comes to mind, often followed by the less desirable characteristics like thorns, blackspot, powdery mildew

Great Design Plant: Asclepias Incarnata for a Butterfly Garden

Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is one of my favorite milkweeds. It’s a well-behaved, clumping stunner that brings in far more monarch eggs than other gardenworthy species I’ve tried. With wintering monarch

10 Top Native Plants for Southern California Gardens

From the stunning blue of California lilacs in spring to the joyful, daisy-like blooms of California sunflowers from spring to fall, and the spritely charms of pink chaparral currants in winter, the plants below