Fall in John’s Garden

Today we’re off to Berwyn, Pennsylvania (Zone 6b), to visit Carol Verhake’s gorgeous garden. We’ve visited Carol’s garden before (Carefully Chosen Colors Bring a Garden Together), and it is always a beautiful and inspiring visit. Carol has a way of combining colors to make magical garden scenes.

While late autumn often triggers a shift to move inside, it turns out it might not be time to pack it all away—at least not yet. In fact, these cooler months before things get truly frosty are a fabulous time to prep your garden for a stunning spring.

Q: Please can you tell me if a dehumidifier is bad for house plants? On the advice of a friend we recently got one as an eco-friendly, cost-effective alternative to a tumble drier. It’s great when it comes to drying the laundry and getting rid of condensation, but I’m worried that it might not be so great for my plants! M Pearse, Dublin

This is Julie Prince (Julie’s Georgia Garden), with a few pictures from the late summer and fall garden. The pool garden was started in the summer of 2020. The front-drive garden was started in 2021. Both are still “works in progress”! Things are changing constantly as I try to give the garden more height and winter interest.

These versatile, clear pouches are not just for storing snacks; they can revolutionize your gardening practices in ways you might never have imagined! Whether you’re a seasoned green thumb or a budding gardener, prepare to be amazed with these amazing Ziplock Bag Uses in Garden!

I am Kris Northup, and I live in beautiful central Pennsylvania, Zone 6b. We are having an unusually long growing season here this year, presenting us with some really amazing fall foliage.

When Should I Stop Watering My Garden in Fall? If you're unsure when to put away the hose and stop watering in the fall, find the answer here. Watering the garden in fall

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.

Q: I have a beautiful Clematis montana that I planted in my garden many years ago, but it’s now got too large and is threatening to pull down an old garden fence. Can I prune it back hard without damaging the plant? AL, Co Longford

Garden for long enough and you eventually come to the inevitable realisation that for several perfectly good reasons it’s not that easy to create a memorably good winter pot display. Why not? First and foremost is the fact that unlike its summer equivalent (a completely different creature) you can’t simply stuff a winter container full of lots of frothy annuals, heat-loving, dramatic foliage plants, gauzy grasses, and showy, frost-tender perennials and then hope for the best. Instead the planting must be chosen to be resilient in the face of cold winter winds, heavy rain and frost, as well as tolerant of short days and low light levels, while somehow still being decorative enough to justify its prime position for up to six months. It’s quite the ask.