Grow a Cut Flower Garden from Seeds

Boxwood shrubs are simply the best for garden borders, hedges, and fences. Evergreen, adaptable, and lending solid design and symmetry—what could go wrong? With time and neglect, these plants can grow too huge for you to handle! So, what do you do with overgrown boxwood? Relax, we’ve got you!

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Perhaps your lush summer blossoms have begun wilting, and you dread a barren garden as winter approaches! However, with our list of the best flowers to plant in September, you’ll have a garden teeming with deep, warm blooms—some as early as fall and some through spring!

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Rock gardens are an attractive way of displaying a variety of small plants including alpines, dwarf shrubs and low-growing perennials. They can be adapted to suit any space – an alpine trough, old stone wall or sunny border can all be used to create a form of rock garden. One of the first rock gardens was built at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London in the late 1770s, and they became a popular feature in Victorian and Edwardian gardens, providing a way to display alpine plants from around the world.

Dead and forgotten? Far from it! These perennials have a life cycle that barely lasts a few years. Most of them bloom in the first few years of planting itself—and then they perish! So, what’s the point in growing such short-lived specimens? Won’t it mean more work? You have the questions, and we have the answers!

You've likely heard that burying banana peels in your garden is a good way to add important nutrients to the soil to grow healthy plants. Banana peels do contain nutrients, but not as many as you may think. Plus, it's not as simple as placing them in the soil and skipping fertilizer or compost.

A vase full of fresh, bright blooms is all you need to dazzle anyone visiting your home. These can liven up the dullest spaces in a heartbeat but cost a pretty penny at the florist. So it’s natural that you want them to stay glorious and live as long as possible! While you can’t make them last forever, here is how to keep cut flowers fresh longer.

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“Uncontrollable changes in a garden are inevitable and wonderful opportunities,” says Donald Pell, a landscape designer in Chester County, Pennsylvania. To prove this is true, Donald and his associates created an incredible series ofnaturalistic gardens around their studio. This landscape has become an invaluable laboratory where Donald and his team learn from failures and from the many years of watching this landscape design evolve. “Establishing a garden based on an initial plan (perhaps one even scribbled on paper) is a great place to start, but as plants, the setting, conditions, our knowledge, and our tastes change, so should our designs,” Donald says.

An apple a day keeps the gardener happy and busy, but does it grow in Texas? Yes—but not all varieties! Some apple trees are well-suited to thrive in the Lone Star State’s subtropical to temperate conditions. Let’s find out the best ones for your Texan homestead!

There is no way to sugarcoat the challenges many of us in the Mid-Atlantic region have faced this summer. The inconsistency of rainfall and the extreme high temperatures have greatly impacted our efforts to garden successfully. Even with valiant efforts to apply supplemental irrigation, I have witnessed a wide range of plant material showing signs of drought stress that I have rarely witnessed in my 15-plus years of gardening in this region. To say it is cause for concern would be an understatement. As a result, in the last few months I have been repeatedly asked how we can prepare our beloved gardens to reduce heat and moisture stress for future growing seasons. One answer to this conundrum is to add organic matter to the soil in the form of compost.