You’re not you when you’re hungry, and neither is your shade garden. Impatiens grow fast and burn out just as quickly. Most people forget that speed requires fuel. Don’t be like most people! Grab a spoon. If you’re still filling out a shady spot, we also have a guide on flowers that grow better in…
A wild Black-Eyed Susan thrives in a gravel ditch on a diet of exhaust fumes and misery. You tuck it into a cozy garden bed, and three years later? The middle starts going bald while the edges strangle your other plants, and suddenly your “easy perennial” is acting like it owns the deed. It’s a…
Your mail carrier spends all day passing boring metal boxes stuck in patchy turf. Let’s trade the weeds for tough, jaw-dropping blooms and give that little curbside box something better to sit in than sad grass and sunbaked dirt. One quick rule: don’t plant a curbside jungle! The mailbox still needs to be easy to…
Deer eat anything when famished (like me), but they loathe fuzzy textures, bitter sap, prickly stems, and intense aromatic oils (exactly like me!). Want a summer bed that stacks the odds against my doe-eyed brethren and still keeps the color loud? These are the heavy hitters I’d start with. Stink Out the Free-Loaders Deer have…
I’ve spent more time arguing with stubborn soil and dramatic shrubs than I have talking to actual people lately, so yeah, I can give it to you straight. Azaleas are gorgeous when they’re happy, but they’re not the kind of shrub you can ignore and hope for the best. If you want stronger roots, brighter…
One of my friends, a professional engineer but amateur gardener, once said: clematis are high-output machines with terrible cooling systems. She started talking about root-zone thermoregulation and nutrient density; all I heard was blah blah blah… What I do know from growing them is this: keep their roots cool, water them deeply, feed them like…