Southeast Gardeners January Checklist

January is a good time to look back on your gardening year and plan for the year ahead. Walk around your garden and take photos. Seeing your garden through the lens is telling, and looking at these pictures can

Rocky Mountain Gardeners January Checklist

Are you itching to get out in the garden despite the cold and snow? Make your landscape safe and welcoming for visiting friends and wildlife alike. A little care and attention this month will help keep your pla

Mid-Atlantic Gardeners January Checklist

January is not a particularly pretty month in the Mid-Atlantic garden. Few plants are in bloom, theres barely any green in sight and there are months of snow-covered bareness to look forward to. Chilly tempera

Pacific Northwest Gardeners January Checklist

As much as I enjoy the holidays, there is something very satisfying about sweeping up the glitter, packing away the decorations and getting the home straight once again. Its also an opportunity for a fresh start

Great Design Plant: Ornamental Cabbage and Kale

Ornamental cabbage and kale are the kinds of plants I love to design with. I think of these plants as I do succulents; they arent flowers but offer a flower or rosette kind of shape. They can be tucked into gard

Great Design Plant: Virginia Mountain Mint

I like it when I can suggest a U.S. Central Plains native plant that’s as tough as nails and as important as oxygen. Virginia mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) can take almost anything and thrive while be

Extend Your Growing Season With a Cold Frame in the Garden

My grandmother had a cold frame. It was a long rectangular box angled to catch the sun with a sliding glass top, located along the south wall of the garage. At the time I didnt know what it was, but now Ive buil

Great Design Plant: Island Alumroot

Island alumroot (Heuchera maxima), a native of Californias Channel Islands and a shade-loving member of the Heuchera genus, is an attractive yet hardy underplanting companion for California’s native oaks and oth

5 Essential Considerations for a Landscape Design Project

Are you dreaming of lush, fragrant plantings that create an oasis of calm and a private escape? Is it time to expand your entertaining options to better serve your social lifestyle? Or is it just time for a fre

Great Design Plant: Charity Oregon Grape

This vase-shaped evergreen shrub is sure to become a favorite in your winter garden. Whorls of stiff, holly-like foliage are decorated with fragrant yellow flowers, each cluster resembling a golden shuttlecock.

Garden Color: How to Landscape With Purple

Purple can be used to help create a desirable mood in the garden — from peaceful to romantic to inspiring. In color theory purple traditionally indicates knowledge, self-respect, spirituality, dignity and wealth

Great Design Plant: Culvers Root

I first started using Culvers root for kicks — I wanted something different. Thanks to its candelabra blooms adored by butterflies, good yellow fall color and carefree growing, Ive come to adore this Midwest nat

Great Design Plant: Golden Currant

Found naturally across much of the United States and Canada, golden currant (Ribes aureum) occurs in many diverse habitats: prairies, stream banks edges, foothills, ponderosa pine forests and shrublands of sageb

Great Design Plants: A Bevy of Beauties from the Meadow

The Eupatorium genus has a plant for everyone. From purple to magenta to white blooms, from gold leaves to green leaves, from short to gargantuan forms, you just cant go wrong. In winter the taller species provi

10 Ideas for an Exuberantly Abundant Landscape

After spending 15 years writing about home and garden design, Ive absorbed countless lessons about using design to express personal style and a feeling of abundance. I love the word abundance itself. It evokes a

Australian Vertical Gardens Create an Artful Outdoor Retreat

We’ve seen vertical gardening before, but in this residential renovated garden near Perth, Australia, landscape designer Andrew Beck explores an alternative to the lush, living tapestries we’ve come to expect.A

Let Spontaneity Loose for Abundance in the Landscape

In abundant gardens, as in all gardens, plants, ornamentation and architecture are used as personal expressions of ones design philosophy. To create the feeling of spontaneity, your gestures can be as simple as

Great Design Plant: Coyote Bush

Youve seen coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis) spreading along California beach bluffs and up through coastal canyons. While more often than not its found rather than designed with, restorationists and advocates o

See a Pattern Here? Its Conceptual Gardens, for Arts Sake

Pattern has long been used as a decorative addition to the structure of a garden; just look at Renaissance knot gardens and intricate Victorian carpet bedding for examples. Today the whole garden can become one

Let Nature Inspire Your Landscape: Grasslands to Garden

When it comes to choosing a style for a garden project, many people turn to cultural references: Japanese restraint, rigorously laid-out French parterres, abundantly flowering English borders and so on. But what