cornell’s take on the native lawn, with todd bittner

The holiday season is just around the corner—and chances are, your calendar is already filling up. If you’re hosting any get-togethers, your to-do list is probably just as packed.

We don’t mean to cause alarm, but the holiday season is almost officially upon us. While it’s always important to live in the moment and enjoy the current season, with busy lives and busier schedules, now is the ideal time to start some prep for the holidays. 

During the holidays, it's important to ensure your home is in its best condition since you'll be having family and guests over the majority of the season (especially if you're hosting). Although it may be too late for a full home renovation project, you can still make small updates to spruce up your space, so it looks new and put-together for all season long.

This month, we’re collaborating with some brilliant businesses to bring you our very special “12 days of Christmas” prize draw, offering 12 generous prizes to 12 lucky winners throughout the month of December.

We’re back with more from Susan Esche’s visit to the beautiful University of British Columbia Botanical Garden in Vancouver in early September. It is open to the public and has many different sections and types of gardens to explore.

We’ve visited Susan Esche’s home garden before (A Garden Wedding, the Flowers, and the Deer), but today she’s taking us along to visit a public garden in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Horse manure makes an extremely good soil improver for the garden. Often combined with stable bedding and allowed to rot down for a couple of years, horse manure is perfect for digging into planting holes or spreading onto the surface of bare soil. Fresh manure mustn’t be used directly on the garden as it can actually remove nutrients from the soil and scorch plants, but it can be added to compost heaps.

Fall is a great time for garden chores. This is the time to clean up before winter, protect vulnerable plants, and wind down the growing season. This isn’t the right time for all tasks, though. Know what to do with your garden in the fall and what not to do — for instance, what plants should not be cut back in the fall — to best prepare it for next year.

Take a tour of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and discover a meeting ground of natural beauty, expert design, and horticultural excellence. Nestled in the picturesque landscape of coastal Maine, this garden offers a symphony of colors, fragrances, and serene vistas that will surely captivate any nature enthusiast. In this video, director of horticulture (and frequent Fine Gardening contributing writer) Andy Brand takes us on a journey through three of his favorite gardens and gives insights as to what makes them unique. This tour barely scratches the surface of what CMBG has to offer, however, with its more than 300 acres and 16 unique gardens connected by well-maintained paths and trails. You can spend days at the garden and still find something new.

Joyelle West

When my budding interests in horticulture started developing in junior high school, I came across Hortus Third, an encyclopedic tome of horticulture compiled in the 1970s. Learning about plants from my dad while working on landscape installations, and then looking them up in Hortus Third after hours, I developed a sense of wonder about plant diversity both in the natural world and in cultivation in our gardens and landscapes. How could a genus described in Hortus Third such as Michelia (later reclassified as Magnolia) have “about 50 species of evergreen trees and shrubs” but only eight listed? What about the other 42 species? Were they unworthy of cultivation, or had we simply not tried the other ones yet? With many genera, the latter often proves to be the case. It turns out that the world of horticulture often overlooks many worthy plants.

These magnificent specimens not only add a stunning visual appeal to your interior but also contribute to better air quality. In this article, we’ll introduce you to stunningIndoor Palms with Big Foliage and Fronds!