a plant i’d order this fall: virginia bluebells

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If you’re in talks to potentially sell your home, Zillow is here with another tip for future sellers: Go dark. By that, they mean opt for moodier colors in every room—especially dark gray.

Red, White and Blue the patriotic colours of the Hydrangea are augmented by pinks and purples like H. Ayeshia above as a variation on those themes. Flowering from mid-summer these shrubs give a magnificent display with very little effort. Did you see Hydrangea maritima on seaside holidays in large displays of sugary pink and sometimes blue.

In times of this pandemic, it is imperative that you take good care of your health, especially the respiratory system. Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds (which are 10 times higher indoors than outdoors), Particulate Matter, Polluting Gases like Nitrogen Oxide andRadon, and Contaminants like Asbestos are commonly found inside homes.

Poke bowls, fish salads, originated in Hawaii and then became popular in California. The popularity of this dish has spread across the United States in 2018 and into 2019. According to Eater.com, the number of Hawaiian restaurants has doubled in the past two years. Poke bowls can be a healthy meal, and they offer a lot of diversity in one dish. So, it is easy to see why they are so popular.

Virginia creeper is a native North American, deciduous vine, which can easily climb 30 feet or higher. Its tendrils end in oval shaped disks that adhere to surfaces and can damage stucco, the mortar between bricks, and painted surfaces. This highly adaptable plant grows in full sun to full shade. Grown as a groundcover, it can provide erosion control on slopes. Virginia creeper is very drought tolerant and a vigorous grower. To control the spread of this somewhat aggressive vine, prune, mow, or weed whack in the spring.

Virginia copperleaf is a tall, branched summer annual that can grow three feet tall. It takes its name from the copper colored leaves of its late summer color. This weed is a North American native that is found from Maine to Georgia and as far west as Texas and north to South Dakota. It is a member of the spurge family and is poisonous, but it does not have the milky sap that is typical of other family members. The simple leaves are oppositely arranged on the stems when the plant is a young seedling, but they change to an alternate arrangement as the weed matures.

HGIC is receiving numerous calls about “spider-looking” webs on the ends of tree branches. The culprits are fall webworms (Hyphantria cunea). The webs are filled with 1 inch long caterpillars with a black to reddish head and a light yellow to greenish body with 2 long black stripes. They are covered in long, white hairs. Fall webworms are native to the US and attack 90 different species of trees including pecan, hickory, persimmon, sourwood, walnut, beech, birch, cherry, and crabapple to name a few. These voracious caterpillars will eat the foliage, sometimes nearly defoliating the tree. When the caterpillars mature and leave the web, they will pupate and overwinter in tree bark or leaf litter at the base of the tree. Call HGIC 1-888-656-9988 for helpful control information.

Are you looking for an early-season, shade-loving perennial that has blue flowers and is also a native perennial wildflower? Then Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are an excellent choice to add to your landscape.

I must be selective in the kinds of shrubs and trees I add to my landscape. Very simply: I don’t have the room. Like the village matchmaker, Yente, in Fiddler on the Roof, I match the plant with my landscape, paying particular attention to sun exposure, drainage, and room to grow. I also consider its maintenance requirements, particularly water, fertilizer, pruning, and pests. As a tough-love gardener, I have no tolerance for needy, wimpy plants.

What is your favorite glimpse of the American landscape, the one you could stare and stare out into? Does it include water or sky, or a sea of something else? Maybe you’ll be spending part of the holiday weekend in sight of it.

This native North American woodlander, also called black cohosh or bugbane or snakeroot, is slow to establish, and closely related to baneberry (Actaea rubra), which grows nearby it at my place like kissing cousins. My three black cohosh plants of a decade ago didn’t do much for years…and then they did. Now I have a glade of them, their astilbe-like foliage crowned with these sweet-smelling towering ivory wands throughout July here.When in flower, black cohosh (not to be confused with blue cohosh, a spring native) is 4 to 6 feet tall. Depending on the amount of light that filters through the canopy the spires are all wild (like the ones up top) or formally vertical (in a bit more sun, left). And as for needing maintenance: none.It will ask your patience, however, as I say. B