Arctic Cabins: The heart and soul of your garden

A pothos at Patch Plants

Do you have an unsightly spot in your yard plagued by erosion? Or, how about an area that captures the majority of rain from your rooftop, driveway, or sidewalk? Rain gardens are the perfect management solution for these types of areas. Planted in depressed areas, rain gardens intercept stormwater runoff before it has the chance to enter our waterways, which often transports pollutants, such as sediment, fertilizer, and herbicide. Rain gardens slow down runoff, allowing it to infiltrate down into the ground and deeper into the groundwater. This helps to control erosion that may be problematic in the landscape, thus reducing the potential of flooding. As the water infiltrates, the soil filters nutrients and bacteria. The sediment is captured, and native plants remove the excess nutrients for their growth. This contributes to improved water quality downstream of the site.

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While romantics look to mid-February as a time to impress their favorite Valentine with chocolates and flowers, experienced gardeners know now is time to show their plants love through careful pruning! In a recent blog, Kerrie Roach discussed fruit tree pruning. Here, I will concentrate on ornamental landscape plants. While it is time to prune many plants, as usual, there is an exception to the rule. Do not prune plants that flower from late winter to mid-May, such as azalea, forsythia, and weigela, in winter. Gardenias also fall into this category but don’t bloom until June. Pruning now removes flower blooms resulting in a sparse spring floral display. Wait until after these plants complete flowering this spring to prune. For an extensive list of the optimal pruning times for individual plants, visit HGIC 1053 Pruning Shrubs.

Want to know how to get two distinct flavors from one plant? Well, the plant known as Coriandrum sativum can provide just that. C. sativum is commonly cultivated as a low growing, vegetative herb known as cilantro that adds a savory flavor to many foods and dishes. However, not everyone knows that the seed produced by C. sativum is commonly referred to as coriander. Coriander is used whole or often ground as a spice to provide delectable flavor to many traditional and newer fusion-type meals. The herb and the spice come from the same plant, just different parts. For this reason, C. sativum is referred to with two different common names.

I’ve made it clear in this blog that Winter is my least favorite season. Therefore, I always seek winter-blooming flowers to raise my spirits. However, before the yellow-flowered daffodils bloom to give me hope that Spring is coming, I rely on the soft-textured drooping gold threadlike leaves of golden threadleaf sawara cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea’).

Are you looking at plants in your garden and wondering why they aren’t flowering?

As gardeners, most of us are familiar with ramblers and climbers, that hugely diverse group of ornamental plants that we rely upon to clamber decoratively up walls and over trellises, pergolas, gazebos and other decorative garden structures as well as through established trees and shrubs. Much less celebrated but every bit as useful are what I like to call “minglers”, their much smaller equivalents.

T HERE IS LITTLE CHANCE THAT ANYBODY on this dirt road is stealing my garden-design ideas; they don’t want to go stark raving and have to take care of all this stuff. But our doodling friend Andre’s right: Cookie-cutter gardens all in a row would be no fun, and the garden’s a place for each of us to express our individuality, not try to recreate someone else’s picture or point of view.

When Katherine Tracey and her husband, Chris, aren’t manning Avant Gardens,  their longtime retail and mail-order nursery in Dartmouth, Massachusetts–which I am proud is a sponsor of A Way to Garden, and a friend—they are out helping others make, and refine, their landscapes. Chris is a master dry-stone artisan, so his work is often one signature of their landscapes.The “sense of place” of the nursery (which is also their home), as Katherine describes it:  “Intimate, but not fussy, with a wide variety of plants, but not one of this and one of that everywhere.”In a Q&A, Katherine and I talked about taking a sharper look at our home landscapes with an eye to enhancements.my garden-design q&a with katherine traceyQ. What are the most common reasons h

IHAVE READ (AND WRITTEN) ABOUT HOW YOU CAN “read your lawn weeds,” about how what’s invading your lawn (moss? plantain? dandelions?) reveals issues with the underlying soil, the light conditions, and so on. But now Andre the Doodler brings new meaning to the phrase “read your lawn weeds” with his latest graphic utterance.

“How rude of you,” the iridescent birds chattered, swooping madly overhead, then dive-bombing. “We are trying to mate here. Give a bird a little privacy.”“I have my mission, too,” I explained, one aimed at furthering the desired native plant species—little bluestem grass and asters and goldenrods, mostly. Around early May, I use the tractor’s mowing deck to behe