growing hellebores, with judith knott tyler

Living and working in northwestern Oregon, garden designer Wesley Younie is no stranger to dealing with challenging environments. When presented with this garden’s elevation changes, drainage management, and extreme climate conditions, he devised a plan that addresses it all—along with a specific functional wish list from the homeowners. Want to know which plants he used? Here are the plant IDs for this beautiful, sustainable landscape.

If you’re anything like us, then you love your dog and want to include them in as many of your daily activities as possible. Every dog owner has experienced the joy, frustration, and laughter caused by our four-legged friends who decide to help us complete a task and, in most cases, create even more chaos as a result.

Hollyhock family are from the Alcea genus but I couldn’t find a UK supplier of the variety above..

Ulex europaeus better known as Gorse, furze, furse or whin is a very prickly shrub of the pea family. Western gorse Ulex gallii is frequent in the western side of Britain and is relatively low growing yet robust. Dwarf gorse or Ulex minor is a low growing, sprawling shrub.

Conifer trees and plants are available in a range of colours, shapes and sizes. Sequoia conifers are the largest living thing on the planet. Mature trees reach for the skies but rockery or horizontalis varieties are ground hugging by comparison.

Foxgloves are native to the British isles and can be grown relatively easy here in the UK. They provide an excellent addition to any cottage garden. There distinctive spikes of flowers can be up to 4-5 feet high and they offer a new dimension to any garden. They also attract bees for their extensive nectar.

Bamboo is an intriguing plant, which contains over 1,200 species ranging from specimens 6 inches tall, to varieties which can grow upto a foot a day and reach over 130 feet. With the 1,200 species there are varieties which deserve a reputation for being an invasive plant. In the above picture, you can see how the bamboo is spreading away from the wall and is popping up in the middle of the front garden. This particular variety is not too bad, and digging up the rogue runners once a year is sufficient to keep it in check.

The pomegranate is a native of Iran and Pakistan. The shrub or small tree bears bright red flowers and juicy, if seedy fruit. Even if placed in the sunniest, warmest part of the garden they will suffer in the UK but with global warming who knows.

Isn’t it funny how even people who don’t like gardening grow tomatoes? What is it about them? Maybe tomato growing is one of those practices passed down from grandparents that just sticks, evoking childhood memories. Growing tomatoes is also one of those rites of passage to becoming a keen gardener. Ask the keenest gardener that you know and there’s a good chance that one of the plants they started out with was the good old tomato.

YES, OF COURSE I know about the more backbreaking ways to make a new bed, but lately I confess I’ve been relying more and more upon the magic of recyclables: newspaper and cardboard to be specific.

IN OUR CHAT on my public-radio program, I learned why not to till when prepping a planting; how to help a desired species outpace an unwanted one by learning to manage and influence natural processes; and what the word “naturalistic” means today.what’s ‘naturalistic,’ anyway?Q. How did the native and natural become your specialty, Larry—did the education in landscape design come first, or the nature and science?A. My first experience in the landscape world was working in traditional horticulture—first a job, and then going to school for it. However my interest in it always came from the naturalistic end.As a kid, I grew up in the urban Philadelphia and I don’t think I even knew there was such as thing as a garden designer, until I got a job with a landscape firm, in the summer between high school and college.But the thing that always interested me was na

YES, YES, I KNOW: I have already told you I love hellebores. While waiting for mine to reach full bloom, I took an online tour this very cold morning of other hellebore plantings that are enviably farther along.