a plant i’d order: darmera peltata, a shady western native

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

The study of native plants, the ecosystems of South Carolina, and sustainable landscaping practices form the focus of the South Carolina Native Plant Certificate Program. A partnership between the South Carolina Native Plant Society and the South Carolina Botanical Garden, this program gives participants insight into South Carolina’s rich and complex botanical heritage, and offers ways to bolster the states’ biodiversity. This program began in July 2015, and to-date over 300 participants from all over the state, from all walks of life, and of all different ages, have enrolled in the program.

Native grasses are an excellent choice for low-maintenance, attractive, and wildlife-friendly plants to add to your landscape. Their beauty is often more subtle than the color splashes of perennials and annuals but can add amazing depth and interest to the gardener’s palette. There are so many species of native grasses to choose from, and each one brings differing structure, texture, and color to the garden. Grasses give multi-season interest to the landscape. Perennial grasses mostly emerge in the spring and are at their peak in summer and tend to be happiest in full sun. Persistent seed heads provide structure and movement to the garden in the fall and well into the winter.

At the beginning of the week, I noticed our native magnolias flowering profusely. First, the evergreen southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora), which line the entrance to the South Carolina Botanical Garden (SCBG), put on a show. Then, a few days later, one of our deciduous magnolias, the bigleaf, was covered in plate-sized flowers. In fact, the bigleaf (Magnolia macrophylla) has the largest simple leaf and flower of any native plant on the continent. Magnolias are an ancient plant, one of the earliest flowering trees (angiosperm) in the world. I love to think about these trees growing among the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years.

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.

I’M NOT SET UP QUITE YET at home to ship signed copies of “The Backyard Parables,” but thankfully Oblong Books of Millerton, New York, my neighborhood store, is–at least between now and Sunday, January 20, when I will appear there for an event, and while I’m there can personalize any books you order in time.

By the time I met the Chuck, Matt and Joe Heidgen 17-plus years ago, when we were  working on the former Martha Stewart garden line at K-Mart, I at least already knew that when I said Geranium that I actually meant Pelargonium, because that’s the genus our annual geraniums actually are in. But I didn’t know that one could look, and smell, nothing like Grandma’s old standards, and perform roles in the garden she’d never imagined.Today Joe Heidgen, with his brother Matt, runs the business called Shady Hill Gardens—both garden center (below) and mail-order specialists–that their father founded in Batavia 40 years ago. It’s now in Elburn, Illinois (an hour or so west of Chicago). For more than 30 years, Shady Hill has gained a national reputation as Pelargonium specialists, breeding and propagating every color, shape, size and scent imaginable (and then some). And good news: they sell them mail-order, too.Li

Rainer, who teaches planting design at George Washington University, writes the award-winning blog called Grounded Design. He has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial; and The New York Botanical Garden, as well as more than 100 private gardens–always advocating for an ecologically expressive aesthetic that interprets rather than imitates nature.But he is also a keen—and daring–home gardener.“It’s really the garden scale that to me is the most fascinating,” he says, despite his years of experience on the far grander scale.We talked about garden design, and about the sometimes controversial and confusing debate around natives. Read along as you listen to the April 14, 2014 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the pl

A COUPLE OF YOU COMMENTED when I posted a spring “walk in the garden” story years back, asking for help with the subject of underplanting trees and shrubs (including my oldest magnolia, below). True confession: I have come very slowly and painfully to this lesson, dragged by some much more talented friends, Glenn Withey and Charles Price of Seattle.

Longtime nursery owners and hellebore breeders Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne co-created “A Tapestry Garden: The Art of Weaving Plants in Place.” Their property, Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene, Oregon, includes their extensive and inspiring tapestry-filled gardens. (Up top: pulmonaria, trillium, epimedium, white-flowered Anemone nemorosa and more.)Read along as you listen to the July 16, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).underplanting: making tapestries, with marietta o’byrneQ. Congratulations on the new book.

LAST FALL, a month apart, the earth lost two of it great plantswomen. They were from opposite coasts, and one—Californian Ruth Bancroft, at 109 years old—was twice the age of the other, New Englander Elizabeth Farnsworth, 54. Both were individuals of great focus and optimism and energy whom I enormously admired, and will not forget.

WE ALL KNOW that living organisms adapt over generations to their environments, but this recent example made me smile: A bird species in the U.K. (the great tit, above) have developed longer beaks in recent decades, Oxford University reports, perhaps as a result of their attraction to bird feeders provided by humans. (Photo from Wikipedia by Shirley Clarke of Fordingbridge Camera Club.)ebird and ‘all about birds’ sites have new lookSPEAKING OF BIRDS: My go-to resource for information on them, All About Birds from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has had a redesign (look at the new species profile page for cedar waxwings, for instance). So has it