Gardenig in Sweden. Tips & Guides

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Rudbeckias in Clare Foster's garden

How to Grow and Care for Lupines Lupinus spp.

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Why is it important to learn how garden flowers are grouped or classified?

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When it comes to resilience, vibrant colors, and adaptability, these Swedish flowers are a no match! They also require minimum care and maintenance, adapting well to different soil types and weather conditions.

How to Grow Rutabagas: A Cool-Weather Crop Perfect for Fall Brassica napus var. napobrassica

Do you know about Plants that Attract Money and Bring Fortune to Home? If not, you are in for a surprise! We have compiled a list of the most beautiful ones for you!

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Commemorating Olaf Rudbeck (1660–1740) was a Swedish professor of botany and counselor of Linnaeus (Compositae). Coneflower. A genus of about 40 herbaceous plants, mostly perennial and hardy, natives of North America, related to Echinacea. The flowers are showy, daisy-like, often with drooping petals and conspicuous conical centers. Most of them are excellent herbaceous border plants and are valuable for late summer effect in the garden.

To the novice it is a mystery why a simple little blossom should be burdened with an unpronounceable Latin name-and not only with one, but two and often even more. She forgets that her own name is not only Brown, that to distinguish her from all the other Browns she has been called Kathy and because of the many Kathy Browns she bears the additional name of Ann. It is just so with plants; each has a family or genus name, a given or specific name and often one or more descriptive names. Thus we have Myosotis palustris semperflorens, a plant belonging to the Myosotis or Dill family. This particular one is a marsh-lover and a more or less continual bloomer, as the last two parts of its name indicate. We prefer to call this flower Forget-me-not, its pet or familiar name, just as Kathy Ann Brown’s friends may wish to call him Kathleen or Kate.It is very interesting to investigate why the botanical names were chosen. We have all known a man named Small who was anything but small, or a girl named Grace who was not at all graceful. In the plant world, such entirely inappropriate names occur very seldom; each name is chosen to describe a particular plant and plants do not change sufficiently to belie the terms descriptive of their family. The original Small was, no doubt, small of stature, but through the ages his children have outgrown the name.

In the long history of plant science, no name is more famous than that of Linnaeus and no book is more highly regarded than his “Species Plantarum,” published in 1753.

It is not so much a lawn as a moonscape: pitted craters dug by bandicoots, exhausted tufts of withered yellow grass plucked by wallabies and pitiful plants shrivelled brown under the Australian sunshine.

Header image: An illustration of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft approaching the International Space Station for docking. Image credit: NASA

How to Grow and Care for Queen’s Tears Bromeliads Billbergia nutans

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Dramatic and elegant, amaryllis (Hippeastrum) are bulbous indoor plants that cheer us through the coldest months. The huge flowers bloom atop tall, sturdy stems, opening like colourful trumpets, as if about to blast away the winter blues with a clarion call.

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Should you be stopped in your tracks by the blazing colour of a tree this autumn, it is likely to be a maple (Acer). Their distinctive palmate leaves burn breathtaking, vivid shades of scarlet, ruby, or gold before they fall, outshining most trees in the vicinity. Some acers also offer colourful spring foliage; others have a sculptural spreading shape with multiple trunks; and a few provide attractive bark during the winter months.

From messages of friendship to expressions of mutual support, learn in detail about Alstroemeria Flower Meaning in various contexts.

Swede (Brassica napus) is a delicious and nutritious vegetable that can be grown at home. Grow them yourself for organic produce with better flavour than shop-bought. Sown in spring, they’ll be ready to harvest for warming and hearty meals in the depths of winter.

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“Swedish death cleaning” may sound morbid, but the concept is less doom and gloom and more existential and sweet. Think of the decluttering style this way: if the KonMari Method and hygge had a baby, it’d be Swedish death cleaning.  The idea is simple, yet astounding. Swedish death cleaning is a Scandinavian method of organizing that focuses on decluttering your home before you pass on in an effort to lessen the burden on your grieving loved ones. Author Margareta Magnusson coined the phrase in her 2017 book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, and the concept has been gaining traction ever since. 

Chlorophytum comosum ‘Vittatum’ — available from Hortology

Earth Day seems to be an auspicious day on which to being a new blog series. ‘The Hive’ is going to be a collection of positive news stories about the environment, with a solarpunk vibe – demonstrating that those of us who care about the environment are not alone, and that in fact there are legions of people around the world who are actively making a difference, and who share a positive vision of how the future could look, rather than the gloom and doom of a dystopia forced on us by a broken climate.

The news for the past few weeks has been a little worrying (when is it not?), in the sense that although Brexit is only 7 months away, no one seems to have the foggiest what will happen when we leave the EU. All kinds of industries are predicting chaos. People in the government have said that the government is making plans to stockpile food, and the public don’t need to worry. However, with ‘just in time’ food supply lines that leave us nine meals away from anarchy, perhaps a little concern is in order. We’ve recently lived through a hummus shortage (due to production issues), a crumpet/fizzy drinks shortage (ditto) and salad shortages (weather issues), and that’s just the ones I (a) noticed and (b) can remember.

Klas Flärdh, Lund University and Paul Becher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Last summer, Ryan and I popped on our face masks, slathered our hands in sanitiser and braved a trip to pandemic-era Ikea. There were a few things we needed, and I wanted to stock up on consumables for my Hydroponicum.

As native grasses such as little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium and cvs., Zones 3–9) and prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis and cvs., Zones 3–9) increasingly gain traction in gardens, exotics such as miscanthus (Miscanthus sinensis and cvs., Zones 4–9) are losing favor because of their invasive tendencies. But not all exotic grasses are troublesome and need to be avoided. Feather reed grass (Calamagrostis × acutiflora and cvs., Zones 5–9) is a natural hybrid of C. arundinacea and C. epigejos, which are both nonnatives and prolific self-sowers, but the hybrid rarely sets fertile seed—a major plus for an exotic grass, right? So why are other reed grasses—‘Karl Foerster’ aside—so underused? To answer that question is to understand the phenomenon of ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (C. × acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’).

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Andrew Drake

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