Gardenig in state Maryland. Tips & Guides

If you've ever marveled at the cozy ambiance of a room, chances are a great lighting scheme was at work.

Last month, the job listings page for the American Climate Corps went live. The ACC is a new program developed by the Biden administration that plans to mobilize young people into careers fighting climate change and environmental injustice. These roles span the country and both private and public sectors. Like other corps-type jobs, these roles will be term limited.

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Today we’re in Phoenix, Maryland, visiting Sally Barker’s beautiful garden:

There’s no denying that gardening is an occupation that throws up a lot of questions, but garden design apps can help. Whether you’re new to it or a seasoned, green fingered pro, big projects like landscaping or planning a garden from scratch need a lot of information along the way (which a garden designer can help with if you have one, but these apps will help if you don’t) but it’s the smaller issues like plant identification or concerns about flowers that are equally tricky and it can be a nuisance to dig out a book to help you.

AS SHE OFTEN DOES, naturalist and nature writer Nancy Lawson—perhaps known better to some of you as the Humane Gardener after the title of her first book—caught my attention the other day.

While gardeners often extol the virtues of outstanding bark and winter interest, let’s not kid ourselves—flower power reigns supreme. A tree that is a stately focal point most of the year will be transformed into an awe-inspiring centerpiece by spectacular blooms. Spring-flowering trees often occupy prime garden real estate, but for some easy, unexpected floral elegance, it is truly worthwhile to plant trees that bloom in summer, fall, or even late winter. Many of my favorites even have dazzling displays when they aren’t in bloom. Here are some excellent choices for you to consider.

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We’re in Westminster, Maryland, today to see how fall is treating Mary Spencer’s garden. Last time we visited Mary it was in the spring (Spring in Mary’s Garden), so it is fun to see how different the garden looks at the other end of the growing season.

Interior design trends have an intriguing way of reflecting the world we live in outside of our homes and even inside our phones. 

Have you ever been captivated by the mysterious hoot echoing through the Maryland woods at dusk, and wondered what winged enigma is behind that evocative sound? You’re not alone! Maryland offers birdwatchers and wildlife enthusiasts an exciting array of species to discover. Curious to know which owls you can spot in your backyard or during your next forest hike? Keep scrolling to know about the common Owls in Maryland.

The elm zigzag sawfly (Aproceros leucopoda, SLF) is one of the latest non-native species to take hold in the U.S. It was first found in Virginia in 2021, and active infestations are now established in Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. EZS has not been detected in South Carolina, but it is an insect for which we need to be on the lookout.

THE TERM “food forest” from the permaculture world sounds big—like if I suggested you start one, you’d probably say, “I don’t have room for a forest of any kind.”

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

My name is John Rohde. My garden is located 15 miles north of Baltimore in Towson, Maryland, in Zone 7b. This is the second full year for this pandemic garden. I enjoy mixing annuals and perennials with trees and tropicals in containers. There is a water feature, tubs of lotus, a patio, and a vegetable garden at the rear of my house.

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) (SLF) is the latest non-native species to take hold in the U.S. This planthopper is large (about a half-inch long) and originally from several countries in the Far East. It was first found in Pennsylvania in 2014, and active infestations are now established in Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and as of just last week, North Carolina. SLF has not been detected in South Carolina, but it is an insect for which we need to be on the lookout.

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

IF YOU ARE STILL USING any synthetic chemicals on your lawn, I hope you will stop. So does Paul Tukey. When he founded SafeLawns in 2006, Paul says, “It didn’t occur to people that their lawns could be dangerous.”“The sad reality is that we know that a lot of the chemicals used to grow the lawn (the fertilizers), or the chemicals used to control weeds or insects or fungal diseases—all  of these chemicals are designed to kill things, and they can make us very sick, and they make the water very sick, and the soil very sick, and the air very unhealthy.”Giving up chemicals doesn’t mean you have to pave over your front yard.“We will have lawns long after all these chemicals are banned in the United States, as they have been banned in Canada,” says Paul—explaining that more than 80 percent of Canadians cannot use weed and feed products, or glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide) because they are

I invited my favorite fruit expert, Lee Reich, author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening” and “The Pruning Book,” to come talk figs on my public-radio show and podcast. (I’m giving away a copy of “Grow Fruit Naturally;” enter by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.)I often refer to Lee as “the unusual fruit guy,” because one of his first books I read was “Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention.” Lee lives with blueberries and paw paws and medlars and kiwis and of course figs and more not far from me, across the Hudson in New Paltz, New York, on what he calls his farm-den (as in half-farm, half-garden) loaded with unusual fruits.Learn wh

Its native range, says the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, is New York and southern Ontario to Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa to Maryland, also appearing in the mountains from Georgia to Tennessee.  Depending whom you ask, twinleaf is hardy in Zone 4 or 5 to 7 or 8.The New England Wildflower Society’s Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, Massachusetts, was the first place I saw it in profusion, though it is apparently not technically a

FEBRUARYMonday, February 13, 11:30 AM: lecture for Farmington Garden Club Founders’ Fund Celebration meeting, at Hill-Stead Museum Makeshift Theater, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, CT; free admission.Saturday, February 25, 1 PM: lecture for Germantown Public Library, Germantown, NY, at 31 Palatine Park Road.MARCHThursday, March 1, 9:30 AM: lecture for Pleasantville Garden Club, in the social hall at Presbyterian Church, 400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY.We

I LEFT HOME LAST WEEK (without telling Jack first!) for a lecture in Baltimore, the farthest I’ve been from here in more years than I can recall. Besides a great crowd at the event held by the Maryland Horticultural Society, there was an extra treat: I got to meet Susan Harris, one of the four bloggers who collaborate on the wildly popular site called Garden Rant.

Q. The subheadline of your edible landscaping book is “With a Permaculture Twist.” What’s that about?A. Permaculture is a holistic landscape design technique that was born in the late 70s. A Tasmanian woodsman-cum-professor and one of his students, Bill Mollison and David Holgrem, generated the design of what permaculture is.It’s ecological design in that it observes natural ecological patterns, and then imitates those in ways to create human-centered habitats.It combines form, function and production—and also includes all the elements of alternative energy, sustainable forestry, of course your market gardening, and all the social dynamics. So it doesn’t isolate any one design element; it puts them all

Coauthor Joan Maloof is founder of the Old Growth Forest Network, aimed to preserve, protect and promote the country’s few remaining stands of old growth forest, and she’s a professor emeritus at Salisbury University in Maryland. She joined me to talk about complex the organism that is the forest, and I learned how almost half of all our rain is dependent on the forest’s “exhale” of water, how the trees with all their light-detecting cells can “see” different colors and intensities of light and respond accordingly, and much more.Read along as you listen to the Nov. 27, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here). Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new book by commenting at the very bottom of the page. (Below, co-authors Llewel

I’ve rounded up some of the best to tackle in the monthly Q&A segment with help from my friend Ken Druse. Ken, an award-winning garden photographer and author of more books than I can count, including “The New Shade Garden” and “Making More Plants,” produced his own “Real Dirt” podcast for 10 years, all available on KenDruse dot com (and still available on iTunes, too).Read along as you listen to the March 6, 2107 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).Part 2 of the transcript of this month’s doubleheader is at this link (incl

It would be easy visiting or even looking at photos of a place where very large, old trees grow, to see nothing else, but Maloof’s book shines a light on all the life in the complex and interconnected community that is such a forest, from lichens to salamanders, snails to beetles, birds and more.Joan Maloof, a professor emeritus at Salisbury University in Maryland, founded the Old-Growth Forest Network to preserve, protect and promote the country’s few remaining stands of old-growth forest. She intr

In collaboration with Rutgers University medical toxicologist Lewis S. Nelson, MD,Dr. Michael J. Balick, who is Vice President for Botanical Science and Director of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, has written the new third edition of the“Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants.”I asked him about plant chemistry—why some plants have the toxins they do–and what we’ve learned from, and about, those plants. And how did people figure out which are poisonous in the first place, anyhow?Read along as you listen to the July 27, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Our trillium conversations got me thinking about how headlines like the trillium one, highlighting reports of the accelerating threats of extinctions of plant or animal species, are so common in the news these days.But how are those predictions calculated, I wondered, and also: do we know what species are already gone–from the small tree that gardeners

If you are looking for Maryland Native Plant List to plan your garden, we have compiled the best ones below!

The ground is undisturbed. Maybe it’s in a forest, in a city park, or in your front yard. The moment is quiet. But the air is charged. It’s fueled by the energy of an impending change and the promise of a new legacy. Then, the silence is cracked open by the slice of a shovel breaking through the seal of the earth. The soil gives way, making room for the gentle roots of a young tree. 

Whether you're mowing the lawn or hosting a cookout, the last thing you want to worry about is stinging insects such as wasps. But the truth is that wasps have a somewhat undeserved bad reputation. These insects actually do plenty of good in our lawns and gardens, and not all types of wasps are aggressive.

Wasps do plenty of good in our gardens,pollinating plants and preying on hungry garden pests, such as caterpillars. But then there are yellow jackets (Vespula spp), which become aggressive as their populations soar in mid- to late-summer and fall. They can become a big problem if their nests are situated near your living areas.

I wanted to learn more about how to give the desired plants the edge, including some of the native perennials that have proven to be Nancy’s allies in out-competing the undesirables.Nancy Lawson is author of “The Humane Gardener” and more recently of “Wildscape.” In that book, she stresses that we’re not alone out there, and promotes animal-friendly planting and maintenance strategies. She helps us tune into everyone whose home it is through a mix of findings from scientific research and her own intima

You may know Nancy Lawson as “The Humane Gardener” (also the title of her previous book). She has a new book out called “Wildscape” (affiliate links) that asks us to adjust our senses to take into account everyone out there whose world it is—everyone else whose world it is, and was, before we intervened.Nancy Lawson is a naturalist and a habitat consultant based in Maryland who promotes animal-friendly plant strategies and challenges us to sharpen our awareness that we’re not alone out there. (Above, a spring mome

Living in a small house is a growing rage among people from all walks of life, quite a few countries are having a big love affair with cabins.

If you do not know about  Maryland’s State Flower,  we are happy to help you! Keep reading to find out  How to grow It!