Gardenig in state Indiana. Tips & Guides

It is your GPOD editor, Joseph, here today, sharing photos of more wildflower adventures, this time in southern Indiana. It is amazing to me what beautiful flowers I saw and how many of them I have never seen in gardens! There is so much more we can do to truly appreciate and grow our beautiful native plants.

THE AREA around Philadelphia is well known for its richness of public gardens, including many historic ones. But the region is also home to an impressive roster of distinctive private landscapes from formal 19th century European-style estates to mid-century modern residences and contemporary ones. Now, a new book takes us inside the gates of 21 of them, places filled with ideas for our own gardens maybe, too.

Irvin Etienne is the curator of herbaceous plants and seasonal garden design at Newfields, a 152-acre campus with art galleries, performance spaces, world-class public gardens, and a nature park in Indianapolis. Irvin has been a frequent contributor to Fine Gardening, sharing his horticultural expertise through informative articles like A Bright Idea for Spring Containers, Big and Bold Plants for the Back of the Border, and Bring It In!, a primer on overwintering all kinds of tropical plants. In this episode he delves into the path that brought him to horticulture, the lessons learned from decades of gardening in public, and some of the (many, many) plants that earn their keep in his home garden.

Can Tyler Cameron really do it all? The reality TV star won all of our hearts in Hannah Brown’s 2019 season of ABC’s «The Bachelorette» and is now making his way to our small screens with his new show on Amazon Prime called «Going Home with Tyler Cameron.

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Color choice is important, but timing is actually everything when it comes to painting your home’s exterior. If you’re tackling this project as a DIYer, now's the time to get to work.

Joseph in northern Indiana here. Last week I got a chance to visit Wellfield Botanic Gardens in Elkhart, Indiana. It is a beautiful little garden, with lots to see, and this time of year the daffodil display is incredible.

It is spring in my garden in northern Indiana, and the bulbs are showing off like crazy. Daffodils are everywhere, and tulips are poking up and getting ready to bloom. But sometimes I think the beautiful spring bulbs distract from all the other amazing plants that bloom in spring. So here are some of my other favorite spring-blooming perennials.

It’s Joseph from northern Indiana again here today.

It’s Joseph in Northern Indiana here today. As spring arrives, so many of our gardens are full of daffodils and tulips and other examples of spring-blooming species from around the world that I thought I’d take a moment to celebrate the spring bloomers that are native to my part of the world. The woodlands of the eastern half of North America are full of native spring-blooming wildflowers that just don’t get as much appreciation in gardens as some of the European species we’re all so familiar with.

Joseph in northern Indiana here… where a string of warm days has pushed my garden over into the earliest flowers of spring, despite the early date.

Hi GPODers—it’s your editor, Joseph, here.

The following is excerpted from Taras Grescoe’s The Lost Supper, and has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

If you’ve eaten today, you can thank a trucker. Much of the food we eat in this country, and most other things as well, are transported by trucks—as much as 70 percent of the value of all commercial goods shipped in the US. And while the average American might not think too much about long-haul truckers in their day-to-day life, maybe we should. Not only is this an industry that we depend on critically, it’s one that is going through something of a transformation.

This article has been checked for horticultural accuracy by Oliver Parsons.

Joseph here, in northern Indiana, where normally December and January is an indoor-only gardening season, with lots of snow, frigid temperatures, and ground frozen solid.

Hey folks, it is your GPOD editor Joseph here… My northern Indiana garden has frozen solid, so gardening activities are on hold here, but I’ve been spending some time thinking about the upcoming spring plant shopping season! I’ve been going through old photos and making a list of plants that I’ve seen in other gardens, or used to have in my own former gardens, and would like to get for my current growing space. So, today, I’m sharing a bit of my garden wish-list for the sunny parts of my garden!

Our 2-for-1 Gardens are filled with interest all year round, even in winter. Join us this month and use your 2-for-1 Gardens entry card to experience the stillness and beauty of deep winter.

This is your GPOD editor, Joseph, from my frozen garden in northern Indiana. Winter has well and truly arrived for me here, we’ve had a few snows, good hard freezes. Not much is going on in the garden outside, but luckily for me, I live a short walk from a wonderful public conservatory. I love public spaces like these, a little magical escape from the winter cold into a delightful haven of plants. Here’s a little taste of some things that caught my eye on my last visit:

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We’re off to Canada today to visit Anne’s garden.

Iris is the Flower Named After Greek Rainbow Goddess. This bloom, an amalgamation of color and elegance, mirrors the ethereal beauty of its namesake.

Inspired by Cherry Ong’s post yesterday, this is Joseph, your GPOD editor, sharing some moments from the past summer in my northern Indiana garden. I hope you’ll send in some shots from your gardens this summer too! It’s always fun to see what went well for everyone.

Today’s photos are from Joseph in Indiana.

Hi GPODers, this is Joseph, your GPOD editor. Fall is here in my Indiana garden, which means bulb-planting time! I’ve been going through old pictures looking at some of my favorite bulbs and scheming which ones I need to add to my new garden. Here are some things I’ve got on my list. What are your favorite bulbs? Send in pics! I’d love to share them on the GPOD.

THE WORDS joy and delight figure prominently in writer Ross Gay‘s work, and so do moments he spends in his garden and descriptions of his relationship to plants. Now is that a coincidence that the garden is a main character in his books, books with the titles “Inciting Joy” and “The Book of Delights” and the latest, “The Book of (More) Delights”?

I’m not a chemist, but I do find plant chemistry (and the links and patterns between different plants) to be a fascinating topic. Fortunately there are chemists out there who can bring these to our attention, and Compound Interest includes some great plant-related infographics amongst a wider spread of chemical topics.

A little while ago, I told you about a preliminary experiment that Dr Wieger Wamelink and his team at the University of Wageningen conducted. It demonstrated that it is possible to grow plants in simulated Mars and Moon soils. 

World Bee Day seems like a good day to have a bee-related edition of The Hive, my round-up of positive (solarpunk) eco news stories. The UN designated 20 May as World Bee Day in 2017, to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development.

Header image: Glenn, in the NASA mailroom, received letters from fans of all ages. John Glenn Archives, The Ohio State University, CC BY-ND

When NASA is selecting crops to grow in space, it looks for varieties that can produce a lot of food in a small space, on compact plants that are healthy and easy-to-grow. It turns out that they suitable tomato plants already exist on Earth, as there are plenty of windowsill and small-space gardeners who love tiny tomatoes!

We’re visiting with Joseph today in his northern Indiana garden.

As Digital Content Editor Christine Alexander explains, pollinators play a vital role in our ecosystem and we should all be doing our part to support their populations:

Ah, garden dreams. We all have them. You drive by someone’s front yard and gasp at how original, yet welcoming it is. Or you go to a friend’s garden party and get positively green with envy over their, well, greenery and the overall flow of the space. To achieve such greatness, you decide you need to hire a landscape designer. And then you realize you have no idea what to do next. 

We’re visiting with Lilli Hazard today in southern Indiana.