Great Garden Combo: 6 Beautiful Plants for a Shady, Wet Site

Planting for shade can be challenging enough; combine shade with soil that remains moist or even wet year-round, and its enough to make even an experienced gardener shudder.Yet there are some stunning perennials

7 Tropical Wonders of the Plant World

Winter hardiness is most likely the quality novice gardeners first learn about. If you live in Mexico, the most tender plant delicacy can be yours; if you live in Iceland, you learn to work with slimmer pickings

Let Lilac Love Flower This Spring

“In the Spring, the poet Tennyson tells us, a young mans fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. He fails to mention where a young womans fancy turns. I can speak only for myself, but every spring of my girlhoo

Take a Mini Springtime Tour of Monets Giverny Gardens

I made a pilgrimage of sorts recently, not to a holy shrine or statuesque cathedral, but to a piece of land that inspired the great impressionist painter Claude Monet: Giverny, in northern France. It was here th

The Poop Scoop: Enrich Your Soil With Good Old Manure

Given the choice, would you choose a natural, inexpensive fertilizer for your plants or an expensive chemical fertilizer? What if you could boost your plants ability to take up water and nutrients while improvin

Great Design Plant: New Zealand Tea Tree

Tea trees burst of dainty flowers and wild twisting branches elegantly straddle the line between garden showcase and feral shrub, on no type more so than New Zealand tea tree (Leptospermum scoparium). While the

11 Perfect Plants for a Moonlit Garden — in Pots

Most summer gardens must be seen in the daylight for us to truly appreciate their beauty. But if you love to spend your summer nights outdoors, a moon garden can help you create an outdoor space thats just as en

6 Driveway Looks Take Landscapes Along for the Ride

Driveways are often the most overlooked part of garden design, considered more utilitarian than something worthy of our attention; yet we usually travel along them at least twice a day, and they are often both

Want Compelling Garden Minimalism? Think One Plant, One Pot

It seems like choices for planter filling have become very polarized these days. Gardeners either opt for a stiff boxwood ball to impart minimalist European flair or an ever-more-complex assortment of carefully

Smell This Shocking Flower at Your Own Risk

As someone whos smelled more than one Titan Arum in her lifetime, Joan Leonard has the odors description nailed: Roadkill with a little sauerkraut and dead fish mixed in. Leonard, program manager at Ohio State U

Great Native Plant: Baptisia

You want a shrub in that dry corner, but no shrub will work. You want something that looks different. You want superlow maintenance. Ive got just the right perennial for you: Baptisia is a quick-growing, uniquel

Take Your Garden on a Rural Route With Plant-Dominant Designs

Bringing the countryside to the contemporary landscape is a popular movement, both in town planning and also in garden design — the spectacular opening ceremony at last years London Olympics even included an idy

Great Native Plant: Angelita Daisy

The sunny flowers of angelita daisy (Tetraneuris acaulis) will brighten any landscape, but if you look beyond the pretty flowers of this Southwestern native, you will find that it packs a few surprises. Angelita

Great Design Plant: Paddle Plant

Paddle plant offers high impact even for a succulent. There are more than 125 species in the Kalanchoe genus, but Kalanchoe luciae is distinct. Its flat, stacking leaves contribute to its popularity in the world

How to Pick a Mulch — and Why Your Soil Wants It

The word mulch has fallen into common and nearly exclusive use as the descriptive name for shredded wood or bark products; the truth is that mulch is an umbrella term for any product — organic or inorganic — tha

Great Design Plant: Partridge Feather

Partridge feather has a unique and lovely appearance thats best enjoyed where it can be seen easily and often: near walkways, decks and patios. An evergreen subshrub with a woody base, partridge feather is the

10 Tips to Start a Garden — Can-Do Ideas for Beginners

I became a gardener 17 years ago when we bought our first home, a north-facing ranch set on a corner of a block where the rest of the homes faced east or west. We had a small front yard and two side yards. To

5 Easy Plants for a Romantic Entry Garden

Exuberance is key for a romantic garden style; it calls for a happy mingling of flowers and foliage rather than regimented spacing. Yet for this design to be considered easy care, the plant selection must also b

Great Design Plant: Bush Anemone

Bush anemone (Carpenteria californica) grows wild in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Fresno County, California, while the equally lovely ‘Elizabeth’ cultivar (Carpenteria californica Elizabeth) brightens the shad

Spring Patio Fix-Ups: 12 Wonderful Ways With Planters

Whether you use them to cover up flaws, ramp up style or simply delight your senses, there is little that the right planters (filled with the right plants) cant do. And unlike intensive projects, like building a