Gardenig in Usa. Tips & Guides

A native of China, tea leaves  were delivered around the world in Clipper ships, created the furore at the Boston Tea Party during the American war of independence and still provides badly paid work for workers in India, Sri Lanka, Kenya and China.

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Flowers stand out more when they have a unique shape to them! These cone-like blooms will surely turn heads in your garden!

The growing and collecting of cacti has been a popular hobby in this country for many years. Their varied shapes and colors together with the colored spines make them fascinating and their spectacular flowers are an added interest for the grower. Some of the larger types may not flower in this country owing to the lack of intense sunshine, but many hundreds of other species should flower every year.

Mostly evergreen shrubs, chiefly from tropical America, belonging to the Pea family, Leguminosae. They grow from 6-50 ft. in height, have pinnate, dark green, glossy leaves, and bear golden-yellow flowers in terminal clusters in summer. Cassia is from the original Greek name Kasia.

Fire destroys, but it also purifies and enriches. For thousands of years, indigenous people used fire to manipulate the landscape. Burning was used to clear land for farming and settlement, maintain grasslands for forage and to aid in both hunting and gathering. We use it here at the South Carolina Botanical Garden to manage some of our habitats in the Natural Heritage Garden. In the Prairie Exhibit, fire is used to clear out woody plants that would ultimately shade out grasses. The ashes reinvigorate the soil with a nutrient dump. In the past, the resultant fresh new grasses would attract bison and other herbivores, which would then be hunted for meat and other materials. The Longleaf Pine Savannah Exhibit is also an example of a fire-maintained habitat. Burning consumes the leaf litter, enabling the longleaf pine seedlings to sprout; then, at most stages, they are fire-adapted and resistant. The suppression of fire throughout the United States rendered these habitats extremely rare.

Ryan Phillips; Design: Diedre Doherty

In many places in the United States columbines (Aquilegia ssp.) still grow wild. Highbrow hybrids dominate the marketplace, but even they seem to retain some of that wildness. While cleaning out an overgrown greenhouse once, I noticed columbines of indeterminate variety growing up through the cracks between the slate floor’s slabs. In my own garden they tend to self-seed, coming up everywhere but where I intend them to be. They are much like cats, domesticated to a point, but still inclined to go their own way.

Coming in different patterns and colors, Coreopsis flowers also signiy the deeper aspects of life. Let’s have a look at them in detail!

Information pertaining to broadleaf trees.  Listed below are common trees with care facts.

When you rely on foliage over flowers, a plant rarely experiences a “down period.” The following are all plants that play an important role in my garden’s composition.

How to Grow and Care for Camassia (Wild Hyacinth) Camassia spp.

This is also available in Spanish – Celebre el Mes Americano del Corazón.

As February is Black History Month, it's an excellent time to celebrate the incredible Black designers who contribute to the design world all year long.

How to Plant and Grow Butterkin Squash Cucurbita ‘Butterkin’

Jason Donnelly

KitchenAid

If there’s one kitchen essential that shouldn't be sitting on the sidelines when it comes to throwing a game day viewing party, it’s a slow cooker. 

We’re visiting with Bonnie Plikaytis in north Georgia today.

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.

Although it would be nearly impossible for any plant lover to choose just one favorite, here are a few of the standouts that look especially good in my Zone 6 Michigan garden at the peak of the growing season.

Flittering, twittering, and singing—birds bring so much life to a garden. Apart from their beauty and pleasant songs, they also add to the biodiversity of our landscapes by spreading seeds and eating insect pests. How can we encourage birds to not only visit our yards but to nest there? Here’s a hint: it goes beyond hanging up a bird feeder. You must provide sustenance and shelter for birds to truly thrive in your garden. Here are some tips to attract them and make them want to stay.

David Tsay

Selecting a perfect indoor plant gift is made easy with our Best Indoor Plants for Gifting! From the lucky Jade Plant to the low-maintenance Peace Lily, each plant, like Orchids or Poinsettias, offers unique qualities for meaningful gifts.

It is important to differentiate between pepper plants and their look like weeds to keep your garden clutter free and safe.

I am very prone to love at first sight. In fact, it happened just last week. I saw a tall southerner “across a crowded room”, as the song says. My heart stood still (as another song says). I was enraptured.

In his classic book Mormon Country, author Wallace Stegner noted that nineteenth century Mormons planted rows of Lombardy poplar trees wherever they established settlements in the territory that is now Utah. The trees served as windbreaks and boundary markers, but they were also the flags that marked the advance of Mormon civilization in a hostile territory. In my hometown and lots of other towns all over the United States elm trees served a similar function, marking the spread of middle class residential neighborhoods during the end of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth centuries. In the 1960’s almost all of those tall elegant trees fell prey to Dutch Elm Disease, making each municipality a little poorer.

I think that one of the best things about gardening is that when I am weeding or planting or pruning, I worry a great deal less about losing my mind.  The seeds of insanity, or at least confusion seem to lurk indoors-—in the stuffed-full file drawers, the paper-strewn desk, and the Everest-like laundry pile.  If I do not get out into the garden for at least a few minutes every day, those seeds tend to take root and the green shoots of chaos quickly establish themselves in my mind.

Planting a tree takes a lot of thought. We may have to consider if we want a tree that is:

Jonathan Steinbeck / Getty Images

Frank Lee / Getty Images

Today I went out my back door and noticed that one of my rosebushes was, unexpectedly, sporting a fresh new flower bud.  It was within a day or so of opening up–small, greenish and obviously defiant of the season.  The bud was an oddity on a rosebush that is itself an oddity.  When I bought the small white-flowered shrub last summer it had one blossom that was half white and half red, and looked as if it had been half-dipped in red paint.  Though my February bud was not a “half and half” flower, I took its appearance as a harbinger of spring, plucked it, and delivered it to a friend who shares my belief in such things.

Approximately 180 species of gladiolus are available to the gardener. Originating from South Africa on rocky slopes, marshy areas and grasslands, they are also found growing in the Mediterranean, Asia and Central Europe. The latin name “Gladiolus” means “small sword”, which is referring to the shape of the leaves and flower spike. They were at one time referred to, as “sword lilies” or “corm lilies”, as the plants are formed from round, flattened bulbs, called “corms”.

This is not to say that I have no other roses in my garden. Life would not be complete without a few good reds, a generous handful of peach-tinted varieties and a sprinkling of whites. This year we may acquire one or two striped roses, and I have a feeling that they may prove addictive. However, for the moment, the yellow roses hold sway in my heart.

A giant invasive plant known as “Millennium Madness” sprouted worldwide last year. It was particularly bad in the United States and positively egregious in the New York metropolitan area. And, as if Millennium Madness was not bad enough all by itself, there were rumors that it was infested on a grand scale with the dreaded Y2K Bug. While professionals in a host of countries spent months trying to think of ways to eradicate the Y2K Bug, ordinary people were rumored to be aiding the rapid growth and spread of Millennium Madness by watering local specimens with vast quantities of bottled water that they had stored in their basements.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN