A Landscape Plan For a Challenging Area and Conditions

The British have a bit of an obsession with the Mediterranean. It's tantalisingly close, yet sufficiently different that the moment the EasyJet tyres hit the tarmac, we feel transformed and instantly a bit more glamorous.

With copper-colored wings and an emerald head, the Japanese beetle is pretty, but devastating.

As Digital Content Editor Christine Alexander explains, pollinators play a vital role in our ecosystem and we should all be doing our part to support their populations:

A quick way to clean the algae out of a garden water feature after a long, dark, and wet winter is to use a power washer. It only takes a few minutes to dislodge the long mats of algae, and the low volume of water that blows out of the nozzle doesn’t disturb even the smallest of rocks. Start at the top of where the water flows and work your way down to the bottom of the feature. This is a lot easier and more effective than grabbing the strands by hand and then using a brush to clean the rest away. You can see the difference in these “before” and “after” photos. I enjoy this a lot more than power washing the patio.

Living and working in northwestern Oregon, garden designer Wesley Younie is no stranger to dealing with challenging environments. When presented with this garden’s elevation changes, drainage management, and extreme climate conditions, he devised a plan that addresses it all—along with a specific functional wish list from the homeowners. Want to know which plants he used? Here are the plant IDs for this beautiful, sustainable landscape.

Blue is not the colour you associate with foliage but if you can bend your eyes just a little around the silver – grey through to green spectrum there may be some surprises.

Winter can start in December and continue through March (we even worry about snow in May up north) but do not let that put you off flowering plants.

St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is a popular celebration in the United States, due to the number of Americans, 10.5%, with Irish heritage. One million Irish emigrated to North America, Australia, or other parts of Great Britain in the mid-1800s because of the potato disease now known as late blight. Late blight, caused by the water mold, Phytophthora infestans, destroyed the Irish potato crops in 1845 through 1849 and caused the Irish Potato Famine. Another one million people died from hunger or disease.

THE PLANT CATALOGS look delicious, but what plans have you made for where those wishlist items might go, and how many of each do you need to make them really say something in the garden? I love creating mixed plantings of shade treasures–bulbs and perennials, and especially extra-early bloomers–under deciduous trees and shrubs. I call the process “Making Mosaics,” and it’s one of the how-to sidebars in my 2013 book, “The Backyard Parables.” It’s also a video, with photos I’ve taken here at my place.

Start with a cold-hardy cultivar if you plant to try to overwinter rosemary in the ground in other than a truly frost-free hardiness zone. ‘Arp’ is the best known, along with ‘Hill Hardy’ (also known as ‘Madalene Hill’ after the late herb gardener from Texas; ‘Arp’ was her discovery, by the way, the result of her search for plants that could take not extremes of cold but the Texas heat). Oregon-based Nichols Garden Nursery’s owner touts ‘Nichols Select’ as being a toughie, too.It’s “as hardy as any I’ve grown, probably Zone 6B, and the flavor is terrific,” Rose Marie Nichols McGee in an interview one spring. “It was planted 25 years ago at our home and survived minus-7 degrees F once. I think this is your best for a long-lived rosemary.”The U.S. National Arboretum website trialed many cultivars, and how they fare on all scores. Even in USDA Zone 7A,

IT’S EITHER TIME TO HIT THE SLOPES, or hit the bar, Andre Jordan–or at least that’s how it looks from conditions as depicted in your latest doodle.

The pre-Columbian Indians of the Andes domesticated more starchy root crops than any other culture, but only the potato caught on as a staple worldwide.“The others have seldom been tried outside South America, yet they are still found in the Andes and represent some of the most interesting of all root crops.…” said a 1989 report called “Lost Crops of the Incas: Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation” from the National Research Council.“They come in myriad colors, shapes, and sizes,” the report added. “T