Grow a Garden of Succulents for Easy Beauty

Succulents are every gardener’s dream. They offer something for everyone, from the person who has yet to keep a plant alive, to the homeowner looking to minimize a summer watering schedule, to the artist who pai

Great Design Plant: Color Outside the Lines With Bluebell Bellflower

There are seemingly endless choices of plants available in the Campanula genus, but few have the resiliency and native range to compete with bluebell bellflower (Campanula rotundifolia). Bluebell bellflower is f

Planting Ideas: Life in the Crevices

If you are a plant collector, like I am, you will at some point come to the sobering conclusion that only a finite number of plants can be squeezed into each square foot of your garden space. Human nature dictat

How to Find the Right Plants for Your Garden

Making plant choices for our landscapes is fun — even addicting. The excitement over a new flowering find or filling the blank slate you made by tearing out lawn provides a wonderful gardener’s high. But making

Great Design Plant: Feed Wildlife With Flowering Currant

Long admired in the British Isles for their chubby racemes of bright flowers appearing in late winter to early spring, flowering currants (Ribes sanguineum) are now gaining the appreciation they deserve in West

20 Ways to Work White Magic in Your Yard

Like a perfect white shirt or a string of pearls, white gardens exude a timeless charm. Theyre classically elegant and never seem to go out of style. If youre looking to spruce up your property or try something

Great Design Plant: Beavertail Prickly Pear Wows With Color

Take a walk through the desert in spring or early summer, and you’ll halt at the sight of vivid magenta flowers bursting forth from this medium-size prickly pear. Beavertail prickly pear’s lack of long spines a

Great Garden Combo: Tropical Beauties for a Sun-Drenched Border

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida, and was entranced by the lush, vibrant plants at every turn — most of which I could enjoy only as houseplants in Seattle. I w

Get a Cool Garden Look With Gray and Blue Plants

We can do a lot with foliage. We can emphasize movement, create mystery or highlight a garden feature. Through color, foliage can also generate a mood. Blue and gray plants can recede to make way for bolder, bri

Make a Fun Robot Plant Holder for Kids

Julie Kim My 17-month-old toddler has an obsession with playing outside. We have a backyard with a small lawn, and I have always toyed with the idea

Great Design Plant: Prairie Phlox Draws Winged Beauties

The splashes of bright pink, fragrant flowers of prairie phlox are a welcome addition to any landscape border or edge. This is an extremely adaptable native plant that thrives in most soil types, except pure san

The Simple Secret to Gardening Success

Avid gardeners and those in the landscape industry talk about soil a lot. Clay, sand, topsoil, mulch, amendments, compost — we throw around these terms regularly because the ground is so essential to what we do.

Great Design Plant: Northern Bush Honeysuckle, a Bronze Beauty

What first attracted me to this gently mounding shrub at the nursery was the distinctive bronze foliage that glowed in the sun. The fragrant tubular yellow blooms came as an unexpected bonus, as did the discover

Great Design Plant: Blue Vervain for Beauty and Bees

There are so many native plants to choose from of all stripes — many of which most of us don’t grow. But once you start growing them, it’s amazing how you’ll suddenly notice them in the wild (which is half the f

Great Design Plant: Texas Ranger Explodes With Color

Residents in the Southwest who are fortunate enough to have Texas ranger (Leucophyllum frutescens) growing in their gardens are familiar with the eager anticipation of the year’s first flush of purple that cover

Great Design Plant: Try California Wild Grape for Interest All Year

California wild grape is known best for its sensational fall colors, but it is much more than a one-season plant. In spring its silvery leaves and tiny buds emerge from bare vines. In summer the lush foliage wit

How to Design a Garden That Lasts

If you’re anything like me, you bring home your nursery purchases with zeal and hope, piling them nicely in the garden corner for temporary storage until you can place them where you envisioned on the drive home

Great Design Plant: Try Penstemon Digitalis for Showy White Blooms

If you are new to gardening with native plants and are looking for a good introductory plant to try, foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) is an excellent choice. This Penstemon species will rival any culti

5 Prairie Wildflowers That Can Heal Your Soil

In the middle of summer I walk the garden in search of serendipity: a small spider web delicately laced between fragile flowers, a never-before-seen bee hard at work gathering pollen and ants harvesting honeydew

How to Avoid Overcrowded, Overpruned Shrubs

Have you driven by a landscape with flowering shrubs, crowded so closely that they have had to be pruned into round, square or even cupcake shapes? It makes you wonder if it was how the landscape was intended to