How to Grow and Care for Lupines

How to Make a Marigold Garland Make any celebration special with a string of colorful marigold blooms. Follow these simple steps to make a beautiful marigold garland! How to make a marigold garland

The arrival of autumn is the perfect time to get plants in the ground. Early-season rainstorms and cooling temperatures can help plants establish roots, meaning your outdoor fall to-do list isn't limited to just raking leaves.

A Goldfinch perching on teasel

How to Grow and Care for Weigela Shrubs Weigela spp.

Bedding plants, such as petunias, pelargoniums, pansies and nicotiana, are easy to grow and care for. They look good grown in hanging baskets and pots, and also work in borders, either used to fill gaps or grown together for a colourful display.

Header image: Cilantro seedlings grown in 100% recycled glass material. Image credit: Andrea Quezada

One of the secrets to producing big, bushy basil plants is trimming. Many gardeners are shy about harvesting from their herbs and don’t want to cut them back in case it damages the plants or reduces yield. I’m the opposite, constantly trimming herbs like basil to use fresh, or preserve by drying or freezing. Not only does it promote bushier growth it also increases stem and leaf production. Are you ready to learn how to trim your basil plants for maximum yield? When it comes to pruning basil, it doesn’t matter if you’re growing basil in containers or garden beds. It doesn’t matter if you’

A conversation with Sarah Price about how she designs her planting schemes is fascinating. She works in an unfettered way, with no specific planting plans but an intuitive sense of the plants that will work well together to form the nature-inspired compositions she is known for. Her gardens are like exquisite paintings, comprising layers of detail with a gentle succession of plants that provide interest for most of the year. This summer combination comes from Sarah’s own garden on the edge of Abergavenny. Here, she has created different areas and habitats, including a dry garden in the old walled kitchen garden.

Flanking our waterways in great mops of silver green, the willow is the most poetic and mysterious of trees. In many cultures – including ancient Egypt and ancient Greece – it was associated with immortality, death, and the underworld; old English folklore states that if you sit beside a willow and shed tears, the tree will cry with you. In China, where the weeping willow hails from, it represents strength and resilience, reflecting the instruction in the Tao Te Ching to have a flexible attitude: 'A tree that won't bend, breaks easily in storms.' Being pliant and strong, willow is used for weaving, and its light weight and hardness make it the best wood for cricket bats.

Blooming along the Nile, this sacred flower was a potent symbol among ancient Egyptian royalty and deities. Even found in the famed tomb of King Tutankhamun, it is treasured for its psychoactive blue blooms. Let’s uncover the meaning of the intriguing blue lotus flower!

Heucheras are shade-loving plants, native to the woodlands of North America. Grown for their foliage, their leaves come in a huge range of colours from red, purple, vivid green and even silver, and they bear attractive flowers in summer, too. Heucheras make excellent ground cover plants, and work well in winter pot displays. Members of thesaxifrage family, heucheras are also known as coral bells and alumroot.

When tapped to design a series of planters for our2024 Idea House in the Kiawah River community on Johns Island, South Carolina, plant pro Steph Green of Contained Creations in Richmond, Virginia, knew exactly what the waterfront property needed. “We wanted to create the most beautiful and biggest statement container gardens, but they needed to be durable and last a long time with minimal upkeep,” says Green. “That’s why picking evergreens or really tough perennials from the Southern Living Plant Collection was kind of the launching point for each individual design.”