7 Plants to Grow to Give This Summer’s Top Cocktails a Fresh Upgrade

Bromeliads are one of the most colorful plants you can adorn your rooms with. If you want the most stunning ones for your home, then check out these Best Bromeliads Anyone Can Grow Easily Indoors!

Rows of tall Delphinium ‘Strawberry Fair’ in Polly Nicholson's Wiltshire garden

Commonly known as the Winter melon and Chinese watermelon, Ash gourd is native to Japan is found commonly throughout India. When touched, the fruit leaves an ash-like residue on hands. That’s the reason behind its interesting name! Here’s all you need to know about growing Ash gourd!

Pilea involucrata is popular for its colorful foliage and easy-growing habit. It can be a spectacular, excellent beginner’s houseplant with a few quirks. Let’s take a look at How to Grow Friendship Plant!

First, a word about Summer Fest, which I co-founded in 2008: It’s a giant round-robin of sharing themed to a single garden-fresh ingredient each week. Get all the details and latest links below, just before the comments, and stock up on delicious ideas from around the web—or add your own.I READ UP ON CREAMED CORN this week (as did many of my Summer Fest colleagues—see the links below), and found a lot of variations included cornstarch or flour as thickeners, sugar, and even Parmesan cheese or bacon or any manner of extras. Once I shucked the fresh-picked corn from down the road, I thought: I can’t do that to this beautiful stuff, and went the ultra-simple route. Even adding cream seemed like gilding the lily. But I did.Corn in Historical ImageryMY VINTAGE PITCHER GOT ME THINKING how much a part of our heritage corn has been,

MELISSA CLARK IS ONE OF US. The prolific cookbook author and “The New York Times” food columnist has a homegrown Dahlia (her young daughter); knows a rutabaga from a turnip (so many people don’t!), and is intrepid in harvesting year-round farm-and-garden gleanings—if not in her own backyard, then in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market, where she has been a year-round customer for years, come hell or ice age. With her latest, “Cook This Now,” the hard part will be figuring out which of 120 recipes to start with. Win one of two copies I’ve bought to share—and get her recipe for Carroty Mac and Cheese right now.

AN ARTICLE about soil solarization for weed control, the practice of covering beds or fields with plastic to keep down unwanted plants, caught my attention in the summer of 2018. It was published on the Cooperative Extension’s online home called eXtension.org and was written by University of Maine doctoral candidate, and she was my guest that winter on my radio show and podcast.

In late winter or early spring phrases like “slow to establish” are heard from frustrated gardeners seeing maybe 2 of the 200 they planted last fall actually doing anything.Years ago I recall reading upstate New Yorker Kathy Purdy’s frustration on her Cold Climate Gardening blog, and how she’d since learned about soil pH and its effect on winter aconites, as Eranthis are commonly called. In a vintage how-to column in “The Telegraph,”

Learn from him when and how to plant them for best results; which varieties stand up to wind and rain best without toppling; how to have a peony season that extends to about seven weeks of beauty, and even when to cut flowers and prepare them to be longest-lasting in a vase (that answer may surprise you). And yes, he’ll explain why those ants like peony buds so much. Read along as you listen to the June 10, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).The photo of Jeff below is by Rutgers University, which gave him a major award not long ago for his “unsung hero” role in horticulture. Here at A Way to Garden, we like to sing about Jeff, too. (We also like coral-colored peonies like ‘Co

I always think of the big panicle hydrangeas, Hydrangea paniculata, as serving this freshening role around August onward, when much of the garden is just too tired. But the trend of summer whites really starts now, with plants like these:Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Snowflake’MY FRIENDS at Broken Arrow Nursery recommended I try the oakleaf hydrangea called ‘Snowflake’ (Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Snowflake,’ Zones 5-9), with its distinctive double blooms (detail above). Broken Arrow calls this shrub a “wow” plant because of its foot-long flower tru

Here’s a list of Plants to Grow in Glass Bowls of Water easily indoors! They can be a great addition to tabletops, shelves, or any place where you want some greenery!

When you spot its ethereal plumes swaying in the wind, it’s clear why pampas grass has rocketed to the top of everyone’s wish list.I nearly passed out when I saw how much a couple of dried stal