editing the start-of-summer garden, with ken druse

Most likely native to Southeast Asia, colocasia (Colocasia esculenta, Zones 7b–12) is used by many gardeners for its large, tropical-looking foliage. This plant also has a long history of being used in cooking. Visitors to Hawaii are often treated to poi, a starchy Polynesian edible food paste made from its rootlike corm. Common names of colocasias include taro, eddo, dasheen, and elephant’s ear. Elephant’s ear is the most commonly used common name, but that can be confusing because plants called elephant’s ear come from several different genera, including Colocasia, Alocasia, and Xanthosoma, all of which are members of the arum family (Araceae). While there are several different species of colocasia, cultivars and hybrids of Colocasia esculenta are the main ones you will find being sold in garden centers to home gardeners.

You can enjoy the beauty of nature in a tiny space taking ideas from these Smart Miniaturized Indoor Garden Projects that you would surely love!

Planting and maintaining a thriving garden isn’t all knowledge and natural instincts—there can be an element of luck, too. Sometimes, what affects your plants’ success is totally out of your control, such as rainfall, wind, and other weather events. That’s just a byproduct of working with nature.

The small size of Tillandsia plants and their easy-to-grow nature makes them perfect for newbie gardeners. If you want to decorate your home with them, check out these Mini Vertical Garden Ideas with Air Plants!

Harry's Chelsea garden, The School Food Matters Garden

Show me the gardener who isn’t seduced by the sight and smell of a climbing rose in full and heady June bloom. And why not? It’s a particularly seductive mixture of perfume and colour that’s always guaranteed to pull at the heartstrings, reminding us of the beauty of the summer garden as well as its fleeting nature.

It’s hardly a meal in the South without green beans on the table! Fortunately, the common garden bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is one of the easiest vegetables to grow, even if it’s your first garden. Sometimes called snap beans, garden beans are inexpensive seeds and fast growers, with some types ready in as little as 50 days. They’ll produce bumper crops so you’ll have plenty of green beans to cook fresh, freeze or pickle. With top picks fromAll-American Selections (AAS), which trials seed performance for home gardeners,  Johnny’s Selected Seeds, extension services at Clemson University, North Carolina State University, Louisiana State University, University of Georgia, and University of Kentucky, here are the best types of beans to grow in the South:

Warmer weather means spending more time outside. This means time for planning and preparing your garden space. But before you can begin sowing seeds or planting starters, such as strawberries, tomatoes, or sunflowers, you’ll need to make sure the soil is ready. One way to prepare the soil is by tilling. Tilling is when you turn over the soil and add amendments to get it ready for planting. But not every gardener agrees that tilling is the best method. 

Is there any better feeling than a successful summer garden party? All your friends in one place, laughing and socialising in the summer sun. What's not to love?

This is one of the most beautiful and amazing garden lights that I have seen, and it is made out of nothing more than an old, dried out log and an inexpensive outdoor light. If you have chainsaw skills, then this project is for you so grab your chainsaw and put your skills to the test with this cool lamp build. Once you create one you won’t be able to stop, and you’ll be making them for everyone you know.

As I was ranting, my text buzzed to alert me there was a message, and there was a photo from Ken of a flat of his just-emerged primula seedlings—hundreds of them, that he’d successfully winter-sown outdoors. All for the price of a couple of seed packets. I asked him how he did it, and about other things you can sow that way.Ken, who gardens in New Jersey (those are some of his Primula japonica in his canal garden, above), is the author of 20 garden books and also my co-host of the Virtual Garden Club that we put on a few times each year. He’s a master propagator who loves to crack the code of how to make more plants of any kind. He shared the how-to’s of his success with primula seed

DR. JAMES NARDI says you can tell a lot about a tree by the company it keeps. From life in the soil around their roots to the action up in their canopies, trees are swarming with engagement—unseen microbes and fungi, countless insects and other arthropods, and vertebrates like birds, squirrels, and even porcupines.