Gardening Ideas, Tips & Guides

Happy Monday GPODers!

Have you ever thought about installing a pond in your garden? A pond can offer numerous advantages and serves more purposes than just being a decorative feature. Whether you have a spacious garden or a modest area, a pond can be a valuable addition. Here are five reasons why your garden might benefit from having a pond:

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

Even if you aren't fortunate enough to live next to a meadow of wildflowers, you can still capture their untamed beauty in a container or garden this summer by planting cosmos. Cosmos come in various colors, from burgundy to pink to white. Mix them up for a more natural look, like a wildflower meadow. Bonus: this colorful flower, native to tropical America, attracts birds and butterflies with its cheery blooms. Because of their wildflower characteristics, cosmo flowers are considered invasive in some environments. Cosmos are prime not only for containers but for creating a mass of color in borders or backgrounds or as a filler among shrubs.

Eco-friendly garden design can save you money on landscaping.

While mums are particularly popular during the fall season for their lasting power and bright multi-colored blooms, they aren't the only stars of the show for this upcoming season.

Whether you call them woodchucks, whistle pigs, ground pigs, or groundhogs, these large ground squirrels can be a real nuisance in your yard and garden. “Groundhogs eat whatever is available and most nutritious,” says Sheldon Owen, PhD, wildlife extension specialist at West Virginia University. “They consume large quantities of herbaceous vegetation, especially fruits and vegetables. But they’ll also eat clover, bark, and landscape plants.”

Fall color doesn't have to mean a bunch of blowing and raking. With these tidy bushes, you can complement the foliage already in your yard with new bursts of seasonal hues—and without the raining down of spent leaves. Though we can't deny the magic of bright red foliage pouring from a maple in peak season. If you're looking to add even more fall color to your yard, stop looking up and start maximizing the greenspace at ground level.

Your soil may not need it, your plants may not want it, and it's possible to use it incorrectly. But when properly applied, wood ash can be good for plants. This guide explains how to add wood ash to your garden for optimal plant growth.

I clocked up 46 hours in the garden in August this year, up from 34 the year before, so I have clearly been busy one way or another. I don’t include things like preserve making in this total, but nevertheless found time this week to make my first batch of tomato chutney (recipe here). This time last year I had already made 3 batches and had enough tomatoes to make a fourth batch, which is perhaps as well as I may not have enough ripened tomatoes to make the minimum of three batches I need to keep me going till the next tomato season. Not only have they been very much later to establish and ripen than most years, but the beefsteak tomato ‘Burlesque’, that I grow to make things easier for the chutney-making process, is less than half its usual size, either not maturing as normal, or not the correct variety in the first place.

Walmart

Venus fly traps (also called Venus flytraps or just a flytrap) are among the coolest plants you can grow. In their native habitat, Venus fly traps live for years. Unfortunately, they are often short-lived plants in cultivation, but this is only because most people don’t care for them properly. In this article, you’ll learn all the essential basics of Venus fly trap care. Varieties of Venus fly traps There is only one species of Venus fly trap, Dionaea muscipula, and it is native to a small

Last Sunday we treated ourselves to a visit to David Austin Roses, the ‘royal’ We that is, as the Golfer was happy enough to tag along wherever I planned to go. Although only about 35 miles away, I prefer to be as economical as possible with such trips and combine them with something else,  or include them en route to a more distant location, which is what we did, staying one night on the Staffordshire/Shropshire border and visiting other places too. The gardens are attached to the nursery and are open all year round at no cost, with over 700 different roses planted within the two acre rose garden, divided into smaller themed areas divided by neat hedges. The roses are complemented by a range of perennials, with sculptures by the late Pat Austin dotted throughout the gardens.

Boxwood (Buxus) are slow-growing shrubs that lend year-round evergreen symmetry and structure to a space. Popular as hedges and topiaries, poor practices like over-shearing have made it unviable and vulnerable to disease. Here are the best alternatives to the quintessential boxwood, which is likely more manageable and natural to your setting!

Parachute

Andrew Bunting is vice president of horticulture at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), where he promotes gardening for the greater good. PHS supports healthier neighborhoods through horticulture by cleaning and greening vacant lots, planting and maintaining street trees, partnering with community gardeners to share resources and conserve productive open space, and demonstrating ecologically sound gardening practices in public gardens throughout the greater Philadelphia area. Andrew’s extensive public gardening career includes time spent at Chicago Botanic Garden, Chanticleer, and 27 years at the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College. His Fine Gardening articles have covered topics like autumn-flowering trees, shrubs for shade, and selecting trees for structure. In this episode, he discusses the evolution of his home garden, the lessons learned from the many gardens his hands have touched, and the potential for making our shared landscapes more sustainable and inclusive.

Perhaps your lush summer blossoms have begun wilting, and you dread a barren garden as winter approaches! However, with our list of the best flowers to plant in September, you’ll have a garden teeming with deep, warm blooms—some as early as fall and some through spring!

Happy Friday GPODers!

Looking for something unusual to grow in the garden? Look no further than chocolate cosmos, a tuberous perennial with velvety blooms and a decadent fragrance. With showy wine-red blossoms that perfume the garden with the distinctive aromas of chocolate and vanilla from mid-summer through fall, chocolate cosmos entices butterflies and curious gardeners alike. The blooms make fragrant cutting for the vase and plants perform beautifully in containers, where their scent can be enjoyed on patios and balconies. Bring the beauty and aroma of chocolate cosmos to your own garden by learning how to grow and care for these unique bloomers.

Asters, rudbeckias and heleniums can be glimpsed behind the giant oat grass, Stipa gigantea

Greater or broadleaf plantain (Plantago major) is a small perennial plant that grows prolifically in gardens, and is often classed as a weed. You’ll find it in borders, paths and lawns, where its leaves form a rosette from which 30cm tall flower spikes emerge in summer.

Rock gardens are an attractive way of displaying a variety of small plants including alpines, dwarf shrubs and low-growing perennials. They can be adapted to suit any space – an alpine trough, old stone wall or sunny border can all be used to create a form of rock garden. One of the first rock gardens was built at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London in the late 1770s, and they became a popular feature in Victorian and Edwardian gardens, providing a way to display alpine plants from around the world.

Veronicastrum (Veronicastrum virginicum) is a hardy, herbaceous perennial that has been in garden cultivation for hundreds of years but has only gained popularity in the last couple of decades, thanks to a revival of naturalistic planting styles. Its vertical branching stems are excellent for architectural impact in sunny borders, and its long tapering blooms, made up of many tiny flowers, are a magnet for insects.

Well, obviously, you’re not growing these houseplants because they are toxic! But with this deadly and discomforting quality, why grow them indoors at all? Because you simply can’t resist them! Let’s find out what these plants are and why we can’t stop ourselves from loving them.

Hi GPODers!

There are few sights more iconic than a garden full of colorful hydrangea blooms. These perennials make their reappearance in late spring and, depending on the variety, they could put on one stunning show or deliver lush flowers all summer long. But making sure you're set up for the most blooms possible means transplanting any new hydrangeas at the right time.

You probably have a bunch of unused plastic containers lying around in miscellaneous drawers around your home and trust us, we totally have been there. It's hard to find space for these containers, and even harder to figure out what the heck to do with them.

Dead and forgotten? Far from it! These perennials have a life cycle that barely lasts a few years. Most of them bloom in the first few years of planting itself—and then they perish! So, what’s the point in growing such short-lived specimens? Won’t it mean more work? You have the questions, and we have the answers!

If you plan on setting up an entertainment system in your garden, there are many ways you can go about it, and there are many things to consider to ensure you get the most out of your space. 

Hello GPODers!

Spinach is a cool weather favorite, with leaves that sprout up and grow rapidly in both spring and fall. It has a relatively short growing season, but its yield is impressive—if it has the right companion plants by its side to help it thrive.

You've likely heard that burying banana peels in your garden is a good way to add important nutrients to the soil to grow healthy plants. Banana peels do contain nutrients, but not as many as you may think. Plus, it's not as simple as placing them in the soil and skipping fertilizer or compost.

Prepare Your Garden for Winter and a Colourful Spring

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

Walmart

When the air gets cooler and you are finding you need an extra sweater more than not, it can be easy to want to prune all of your plants and flowers to get ready for the upcoming season.