Cherry Ong recently visited Seattle’s Pike Place Market, which is a famous farmers market; however, she was focused not on the fresh produce for sale, but on the beautiful plantings.
This garden bed with the Corten steel edging is located by the Market Pavilion and overlooks the water. The bed is everything you would want in a summer garden—bold, spicy, and full of color and energy.
Huge castor beans (Ricinuscommunis, Zones 9–11 or as an annual) dominate the planting here with bold, dark leaves and showy red developing seeds.
A morning glory (Ipomoeapurpurea, annual) has been trained to grow as a mound of foliage sprinkled with beautiful purple blooms that will fade in the afternoon.
Closer look at the morning glory blooms
Petunias (Petunia hybrids, Zones 9–11 or as an annual) are blooming amid sweet potato vines (Ipomoeabatatas, Zone 10–12 or as an annual. The dark sweet potato foliage makes the petunia flowers glow.
Spotted bee balm (Monardapunctata, Zones 4–9). Most bee balms are grown for their showy flowers, but on this species, the flowers are small and almost unnoticeable compared to the large, beautiful, white-and-pink bracts that surround them.
Though not technically petals, these brachts perform the same function—attracting pollinators.
A cluster of sunflowers (Helianthusannuus, annual) not yet in bloom still provide great beauty thanks to their bold foliage.
Brilliant gold sweet potato vine and blue sea holly (Eryngium sp.)
A big patch of marigolds (Tagetespatula, annual) brings intense color to this bed. Marigolds are among the easiest and heaviest-flowering annuals you can grow.
This incredible hanging basket includes sweet potato vines in two colors and some gorgeous petunias.
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Sparrowhawks are one of the most agile birds of prey in the UK. They evolved to nip, dive and swerve around trees to hunt in forests, and this means they’re also well-adapted to hunt amongst the buildings in our urban centres. I’ve seen them several times in my garden in urban Cambridge. Either perched on my fence, streaking across in a blur, or, on one memorable occasion, swiping a Starling from the bird feeder and plucking it on the ground.
Traditionally, greenhouses can be quite energy and water intensive, running on fossil fuels which are detrimental to the environment. This is why more and more UK homeowners and gardening enthusiasts are designing their greenhouses with sustainability in mind. In this article, we’ll talk you through the different areas where you can consider improving the sustainability of your greenhouse and how these could benefit you – so that you can garden with a green conscience as well as a green thumb.
Using wallpaper to update your space brings in patterns and textures that plain old paint just can’t match. Especially with numerous peel-and-stick wallpaper options, you have various designs you can choose from without having to fully commit for years.
When it comes to interior design, it can be tricky to know what decor trends to buy into and what to skip. While 2023 trends included leaning into bold color, maximalist style, dark countertops, and a nod to Art Deco, some others like all-white interiors, sparse spaces, and wiggly furnishings weren't as popular. They may not be entirely trends to skip, but at least ones to put on the back burner if you are currently designing or updating your space. Looking for some advice? We sat down with interior designers to get their take on design trends they wish they'd skipped.
Just over a year ago, when we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I talked about the lack of diversity in space and mentioned Mary Jackson. In 2016, the movie Hidden Figures shared the stories of Mary Jackson and two other Black female mathematicians – Katherine Johnson and, Dorothy Vaughan. They worked at NASA when a ‘computer’ still meant a person carrying out mathematical calculations. The film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am reading at the moment. The book offers a more detailed and accurate account of the prejudice these women (and others) had to overcome.
Can we grow food on the Moon or Mars? That was the question that started Dr Wieger Wamelink, ecologist and exobiologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, on a research quest in 2013.
Getting a plant payload into space is rarely straightforward. In this episode, Emma the Space Gardener chats with Dr Carl Carruthers, who started out sending his own research projects into space and then became Chief Scientist at Nanoracks. There he worked on projects to send palm tree seeds to the International Space Station for the UAE and to design a kit to turn school kids into space farmers.