Gardenig in China. Tips & Guides

Thrifting and antiquing are great ways to decorate on a budget while expressing your own, unique style sustainably.

Gardens are abuzz and harvest baskets are full. Here’s how to soak up the last of the season while prepping for the next.

Blazing saddles had nothing on this years blazing Lilies in pots and beds. My current go- too is the oriental ‘Black Beauty’

Rain Lily is the unexpected visitor you didn’t know you needed! Packed with symbolism and cultural significance, let’s uncover the rain lily’s meaning and explore why you should grow it at home!

A crack in a bridge in Tennessee over the Mississippi River could disrupt huge shipments of corn and soybeans from growing regions up north to transportation down south. 

While pruning a neighbor’s much neglected Hydrangea paniculata recently, I found myself musing on the history of this genus in American gardening, whose popularity has waxed and waned through the years. Grown throughout the country in its many forms and employed in countless ways, Hydrangea has found prominence in every style of garden. Often, hydran­geas have been taken for granted and left unattended, like this one I was pruning. Yet even among such disregard, this versatile ornamental lives on, winning over new generations of fans.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it will approve new formulations of the herbicide dicamba. 

Hi GPODers!

This year Chelsea Flower Show was full of interesting trees and shrubs with lots of dreamy woodland-edge planting in dappled light underneath leafy canopies. Native trees such as hawthorns, hazels and silver birch were the favoured choices in many of the show gardens, with a mixture of native and non-native ornamental plants selected for resilience and sustainability. In Ula Maria’s Forest Bathing Garden, white foxgloves, cow parsley and other umbellifers like Baltic parsley (Cenolophium denudatum) and valerian (Valeriana officinalis) were mixed with the simple shade-loving grass Melica altissima ‘Alba’ while Tom Stuart-Smith showcased intricate tapestries of interesting foliage in different shapes and textures. In other gardens, orange was a popular colour in many shades, from deep rusty orange irises to pale orange geums, especially in Ann Marie-Powell’s exuberant Octavia Hill Garden. As always, the Grand Pavilion is the ideal place to discover new and interesting plants showcased by some of the country’s leading nurseries.

The beauty of the brightly-hued daisy-like cosmos flower is undisputed, but is there something more to it? What sets this blossom apart in the far-reaching world of blooms? Read on to find out the meaning of the Cosmos flower and why everyone should grow it!

About 70 miles south of Jackson Hole, 2150 Robinson Lane is a sprawling property with a castle, fully outfitted with tunnels and towers—and it can be yours for the cool price of $14 million. It hit the market in April, and since then, all eyes have been on this extraordinary real estate opportunity. 

There’s nothing nicer than being outside on a beautiful late spring day, especially if it means you get a whole day away from your desk. Danielle, Carol, and digital editor Christine Alexander recently played hooky from their editorial duties and went on a horticultural adventure at one of New England’s great public gardens. Located in Boylston, Massachusetts, Tower Hill is filled with fun places to explore, including formal gardens, woodland trails lined with native plantings, and two conservatories. After exploring the grounds and chatting about some of the great plants they came across, Danielle and Carol sat down for a chat with Tower Hill’s director of horticulture, Mark Richardson. We hope this episode inspires you to get out and enjoy a field trip to a public garden near you!  

Welcome to an exploration of flowers that start with the letter “B”. From the stunning Begonia to the vibrant Bluebell, this list covers a wide range of flowers, each with its own unique charm.

Behr

It may take up to four years for these plants to start bearing fruits, but our selection of fruit trees are also excellent ornamentals with decorative foliage for your home! Read and bookmark this list of a dozen fruit trees that grow well indoors and in small spaces.

From crocus to clematis, each flower on this list manifests as a masterpiece by Mama Nature! Appearing in surreal pastels and extraordinary form, our pick of Flowers that Look Like Sketches is all the inspiration you need to awaken the Picasso in you!

The bamboo palm (Rhapsis excelsa) is an elegant evergreen fan palm. It has bamboo-like stems and fronds of long dark green leaves with blunt ends, making it an unusual, yet attractive, house plant. Several other house plants are also referred to as the bamboo palm, including Dypsis lutescens (also known as the Areca palm, golden cane palm or butterfly palm) and Chamaedorea seifrizii.

Typically, any usual flower comprises an average of three to six petals. Some plants produce clusters of small blooms fused into enormous flowerheads, while some are mutated, called double flowers, producing an abnormally large number of petals.

How to Grow and Care for Saucer Magnolia Trees Magnolia x soulangeana

Header: ‘Rocket fish’ composite image by Emma Doughty. Includes a zebrafish image by Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff, CC 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

As one of the most unmistakable and recognizable flowers in the world, the peony has been revered for its enduring beauty and fragrance for centuries. It is believed that these highly valued blooms have been cultivated in China since 1000 BC. Since then, hybridizers have been creating a myriad of spectacular cultivars in a wide range of colors and flower forms.

When choosing flowers for graves, it’s important to consider their symbolism so that you can convey the right wishes to the lost soul.

Name: Hydrangea arborescens ‘Kolpinbel’

Name: Cornus kousa var. chinensis

Bridgerton is coming to Chelsea this month, as Netflix makes its debut at the flower show, with a garden themed around its popular TV show. First time Chelsea designer Holly Johnston has created a garden based on the personal journey of the show’s main character, Penelope Featherington. The Bridgerton Garden is part of the Sanctuary Gardens area at the show.

Fresh Del Monte

Many of you may be familiar with our native fringetree, Chionanthus virginicus, often called Grancy graybeard, granddaddy graybeard or old man’s beard. It is a wonderful small tree that grows throughout the state but is certainly not a common site. It begins blooming in late March with airy, off-white flowers.

Phoebe Cheong

Due to their size and expense, gardeners tend to put a lot more thought into the trees they ultimately buy for their landscape. While a perennial might only live for 6 or 7 years, a tree might grace your garden for 50 years or more—outliving the person who so carefully selected it, in fact. Here at Fine Gardening, we feel strongly that trees should look good in more than one season (for all of the reasons above AND because they take up a lot of real estate). Therefore, on today’s episode, we may be highlighting our favorite flowering trees for every season, but these choices have more going for them than just some fleeting blooms. Listen to hear about which trees we’re willing to sacrifice a chunk of our paycheck on and why.    

The umbrella plant is popular for its large leaves that are held on a long stem, with five long leaves spanning out like the canopy of an umbrella. There are two species of umbrella plant, Schefflera, that make good house plants – Schefflera arboricola and Schefflera actinophylla. These are both easy to grow and low maintenance, being able to cope with a bit of neglect when it comes to watering. These house plants are fast growing, reaching up to 3m, with evergreen foliage that will make an impact in the corner of a room. The most common one found online is Schefflera arboricola, which is native to China and its cultivar ‘Nora’, which is more compact than the species, reaching only 1.5m tall. There is also ‘Gold Capella’, which has yellow margins on its leaves.

With so many Colocasia varieties to choose from, picking one for your room can be a challenge. Don’t worry! We have handpicked some of the most beautiful ones that will make it easy for you to select the one you like!

If you want a quick and eco-friendly solution to get a privacy screen around your Texas home, these fast growing shrubs are your best bet!

Creating a garden with a backbone of colorful, interesting foliage ensures interest even when nothing is in bloom or if inquisitive deer decide to taste-test the flower buds. Varying the texture and height of plants also disguises any indiscriminate munching that would be very obvious in a monoculture. This garden exhibits those principles while also utilizing a selection of deer-resistant plants to keep the space looking good year-round despite pest pressure. Here are some of the key plants that tie this design together. 1. Wine & Roses® weigela

We’re visiting another garden with Cherry Ong today, one that she saw on a tour organized by the Vancouver Hardy Plant Society last summer. This is a collector’s shade garden, full of lots of beautiful and unusual plants, including a stunning collection of Podophyllum (mayapples; hardiness varies, but mostly Zones 6–9).

Ranging from $500 to $5,000 per kilogram, saffron, or the Red Gold as it is commonly referred to, takes a total of about 150,000 flowers to produce just one kilogram! Now you know why it would be a great idea to have its plant at home!

Goji berries (Lycium barbarum) are a popular ‘superfood’ to eat fresh or dried. Native to China, they’re packed with vitamins and antioxidants and have been used in Chinese medicine for over a thousand years. They’re easy to grow at home in the UK and bear fruit after just one or two years. The best thing about growing your own goji berries is that you can eat them straight from the bush – most commercially available goji berries are dried.