How To Grow And Care For Green Hawthorn (Crataegus Viridis)

Coleus plants are easy to care for, low-maintenance, and grow quickly, which makes them ideal for beginners.

Choosing the Christmas tree is a highlight of the festive season, with the whole family often taking part.

Many backyard gardeners avoid planting cover crops because it seems so hard to till them into the soil the next spring without all of the appropriate equipment. That’s where it pays to read about no-till cover crops. These crops give you all the benefits of cover crops, improving your soil over winter, but you don’t have to worry about blending them in.

How to Care for Cyclamen During Dormancy

Silver birch (Betula pendula) is a deciduous tree with a slender shape and graceful appearance, which has given rise to its lovely name of the ‘lady of the woods’. Silver birch trees look attractive year-round with white bark, spring catkins and yellow autumn leaf colour. The catkins and seeds are popular with wildlife such as bees and birds, while several species of moth lay eggs on birch leaves.

A great tree for multi-season interest, Lagerstroemia fauriei adds a decorative flourish from summer to winter. The Japanese crepe myrtle, as it is also known, is a deciduous tree with gorgeous fall color. This crepe myrtle also develops beautiful summer blossoms and attractive peeling red and brown bark.

As inextricable from mass festive wares as tinsel and paper hats, the poinsettia blazes red in most shops and homes during December. Being such an omnipresent sight makes it unappealing for many of us, but, thankfully – if the standard scarlet species makes you wince – there are less common forms available that are well worth buying to brighten the house this Christmas.

Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum) is also known as everlasting flower, immortelle and paper daisy. Strawflower plants have an upright habit and branching flower stems topped with many-petalled blooms to 8cm across. Hardy annuals, strawflowers bloom abundantly from summer into autumn, in shades of red, pink, yellow, orange, purple and white. The naturally dry texture of the blooms makes them an excellent choice as cut flowers to use fresh, or in dried arrangements that will last for years. Strawflower grows quickly and easily from seed and lasts for one growing season only.

Castor bean plants are easy to care for, low maintenance, and they grow very quickly.

Between my gardening practices, the plants I dig into my garden, and structures like my pollinator palace, I’m always looking for ways to support bees and other beneficial insects on my property. While bee houses have become quite popular, they don’t always come with the information on how to use one.

If you love cedar trees and have a large space for growing one, an atlas cedar tree (Cedrus atlantica) is a fine ornamental choice. One of the true cedar trees, it takes its common name from its home region, the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa. It is an evergreen conifer with a pyramidal shape when young, but it develops spreading branches and becomes more flat-topped as it matures. 

How to Grow and Care for Ferns Indoors Polypodiopsida