7 Small Spring Cleaning Tasks That Take 30 Minutes (or Less)

Name: Hydrangea arborescens ‘Kolpinbel’

Name: Cornus kousa var. chinensis

Name: Mahonia repens syn. Berberis repens

Name: Pycnanthemum albescens

If you buy your garden border plants from the people who grow them, you’ll benefit from their expert advice and knowledge.

Small bathrooms don’t have to pose a design dilemma. Although they may be short on space, a small bathroom can encourage you to get extra creative, flexing style and function in interesting new ways.

Pale brick pavers, laid in a herringbone pattern, run from the open-plan ground floor out into the garden, creating a seamless transition between the two spaces.

It’s always a treat when award-winning landscape designer Jay Sifford sends in photos of his fabulous home garden in the mountains of North Carolina. Today, we have an extra-special treat:

If you're looking to fake a clean home in a short amount of time because you have guests coming over soon—look no further.

Irvin Etienne is the curator of herbaceous plants and seasonal garden design at Newfields, a 152-acre campus with art galleries, performance spaces, world-class public gardens, and a nature park in Indianapolis. Irvin has been a frequent contributor to Fine Gardening, sharing his horticultural expertise through informative articles like A Bright Idea for Spring Containers, Big and Bold Plants for the Back of the Border, and Bring It In!, a primer on overwintering all kinds of tropical plants. In this episode he delves into the path that brought him to horticulture, the lessons learned from decades of gardening in public, and some of the (many, many) plants that earn their keep in his home garden.

Aldi

Putting plants together is the most creative and joyful part of making a garden. With colour, shape and texture, you can conjure up a living work of art, something that not only gives you sensory pleasure but also benefits wildlife and the environment. But with so many options available to us, where do we start? I always think back to the plantswoman Beth Chatto and her mantra ‘right plant, right place’ when conceiving a plan, because there is no point in rushing to place your favourite sun-loving flowers in a shady spot at the back of a north-facing house. ‘Plants, like people, have their preferences and don’t like being thrust into the nearest available hole,’ she observed.