Gardenig in Japan. Tips & Guides

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How to Grow Marigold Flowers Marigold flowers are easy to grow and bloom nonstop through summer. Learn how to start these bright blooms from seed and keep them growing all season! Why grow marigold flowers in your garden?

Tips for Growing Cast-Iron Plants (Aspidistra) Outdoors

Today’s boozy vase shares some elements with last week’s although lacks its fullness, containing less than an armful but more than a small posy, although with more time at my disposal it could have become more fulsome than it is. Having achieved my personal challenge of creating a vase with such a large number of blooms, I feel more confident of repeating the exercise and the garden is certainly proving the material to do so.

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

Hi GPODers! Today we’ve got an incredible garden story from a frequent GPOD contributor that is a demonstration of how magically small our big world can be. Bas Suharto has previously shown off gardens he has designed and built (check out some of those submissions: Building a Garden With Bas and Building a Japanese-Inspired Garden) as well as his own incredible home gardens (Parterre Garden in Ottawa and A Japanese-Style Garden in Ottawa). But the garden in this most recent submission caught Bas’ eye long before he was asked to lend a helping hand the space.

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.

National Hand Roll Day, which is celebrated on July 6th of this year, is a culinary adventure that invites you to dive deep into the vibrant world of Japanese sushi hand rolls. With their striking colors, tantalizing tastes, and varied textures, hand rolls are a testament to the artistry and tradition of Japanese cuisine. Observing this day is an opportunity to immerse yourself in a cultural feast, exploring the rich tapestry of flavors one roll at a time.

When and How to Thin Plum Trees

Happy Friday GPODers! We’re on the road again, this time seeing a slice of an expansive botanic garden in Texas with Frances Watson.

Happy Monday GPODers!

Zen gardens provide places for contemplation and relaxation in the whirl of busy modern life. They emerged as spaces for meditation around the fourteenth century in Japan. In Zen Buddhist temples of the time, a new style of garden was developed based on ancient traditions and intended to represent the Japanese landscape. These representations weren’t meant to be realistic – instead they included abstract forms, such as rocks and waves raked in gravel, to symbolise natural features. The purpose of a Zen garden was to inspire profound thoughts and meditation.

In January I visited the world’s largest horticultural show in Essen, Germany, and came away with some great take-aways, but I was especially impressed with the significant trend of pruning, training and grafting certain plants into new and unusual forms.

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!

In April 2014, a cherry tree unexpectedly bloomed at the Ganjoji temple in central Japan. The tree grew from a seed that spent eight months on the International Space Station (ISS), and when the sapling flowered it was only four years old. Trees of this species don’t normally flower until they are ten. This tree grew from a seed harvested from the celebrated “Chujo-hime-seigan-zakura” tree, which is said to be 1,250 years old.  Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata took the seeds to the ISS in November 2008, and they orbited the Earth 4,100 times before coming home. 

If you want to put your BBC Gardeners’ World 2 for 1 Gardens entry card and guide to good use this year, The Savill Garden is a must-visit. Set like a jewel in the heart of Windsor Great Park, it’s a garden for all seasons, always filled with colour and sights to behold, but during the summer months especially you can delight in its magnificent roses.

Hey GPODers! Today we’re taking a different look at a garden, an up-close perspective of the flowers Sarah Oneil grows in her Minnesota garden.

Q: We have anemone in our front garden. It has spread uncontrollably, and we want to get rid of it. We have tried digging it up, pulling the new shoots and spraying Roundup, all to no avail. What do you suggest? RK, Co Dublin

Even a toddler can look at a strawberry and call it one! But as the saying goes–all that glitters is not gold, and all berries that look like strawberries are not so! With this article, you’ll learn to discern the real ones from these mimics.

Hi GPODers,

My early sweet peas, grown in the greenhouse, are now flowering prolifically and I have to work hard at picking them regularly – but will have to work even harder soon as there are now buds on my outdoor varieties. The indoor ones have been bred specially to flower at lower light levels and in the UK have to be grown in a greenhouse. For some reason the lavender blooms are more dominant this year, although I sowed the same number of seeds of each colourway.

Q: I recently repotted my acer into a bigger pot, however it now is looking dead. Can you offer any advice? WT, England

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.

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Hi GPODers! Today we’re in the garden of Jo Ann, and seeing how she’s fairing after a move from sunny SoCal to the lush Pacific Northwest:

Nothing like a dash of passionate red to instantly liven up your space with warmth and freshness! You can grow these plants to create a contrast and accentuate their beauty among other plants of usual green foliage. And the best part, almost all of them can be grown in pots as well.

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

Yesterday we explored the wild side of Vermont with Sheila, today she’s sharing what spring looks like in her garden.

Chances are, you’ve got mixed conditions in your garden. One area might be in full sun, while another spot a bit farther away is in full shade. Even beds that have the same exposure on paper may have larger plants that shade out the ground below. This presents a challenge for developing a cohesive look within a landscape. As gardeners, we’ve been taught that repetition is one of the tenets of good garden design. But how can one repeat groupings of a plant throughout a border that stretches from bright light to dappled shade? The answer is by utilizing plants that are highly adaptable and will thrive in both sun and shade. In today’s episode we’re singing the praises of these flexible species. They are invaluable assets to the landscape and, as a bonus, will hold their own when the light conditions of a garden inevitably change over time.    

The star performers at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and other flower shows are herbaceous perennials.

This plan represents a bed along a property fence between the west side of a house and a large canopy tree. The edge of the border is curved because I find that adds visual interest. This plan includes many plants that are adaptable to sun and shade as well as some supporting players that add interesting textures and forms to the design and that provide repetition and rhythm. The plants are placed according to their needs:

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

Siberian irises are known for filling the bloom gap between late spring and midsummer. They blossom after Japanese iris (I. ensata, Zones 4–9) but before bearded iris (I. germanica, Zones 3–9). This 2024 introduction sports a compact habit that allows it to hold the stems of heavy blooms aloft without fuss. Each flower has saffron-yellow signals (outer petals) highlighted by dusty purple-blue veins. The center is a solid amethyst hue. The interesting, tiger-like striping is certainly the cat’s meow.

Most gardens have some dry shade, at the foot of walls where foundations draw water from the soil, or under eaves where little rain falls. Trees also create dry shade, as their roots take up a lot of water.

Wisteria flowers can help you showcase pretty meanings, and they look absolutely gorgeous on your skin. Don’t believe us? See for yourself with these designs.

If you want the colors in your garden to stay intact even in the peak of heat, these flowers are a great choice as they keep on blooming no matter how warm the weather gets!