How to Use Banana Peels to Grow the Most Colorful Crotons

As someone both blessed and cursed with a keen sense of smell, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to lose it. To never again inhale, for example, the sweetness of a rose. To be forced to go without the spicy, spring perfume of witch-hazel, or the fresh-earth scent of newly dug potatoes, or the sharp, vegetal tang of tomato plants softly baking in a hot glasshouse in high summer.

Flowering shrubs can grace your garden, adding color, interest and sometimes fragrance to the home landscape. For the biggest, showiest flowers, you’ll also need to take into account the sun exposure of the garden site. But never fear, there are flowering shrubs for landscaping that like sun and others that like shade.

Now part of this garden is down to crazy paving the Qualcast grass box is needed less and can be put to a different use.  It looks like a ‘unibarrow’  has got in on the act to make a feature planter for these pansies.

Tips for Best Foxgloves

Whether you're revamping a certain space within your home or are moving into a brand new house, you may be wondering how to best select a color palette for a given room.

We’re all used to recycling the cardboard and soda cans that come through our homes, but did you know you can recycle your home’s used water, too? (Don’t worry; we’re not talking about the really dirty stuff!)

Hydrangeas, with their extravagant blooms, are a quintessential part of any garden. However, coaxing the best performance from these plants requires more than just basic gardening skills. This guide will share some secret Master Gardener’s Tricks to Grow the Successful Hydrangeas!

One of my favorite native plants in South Carolina isn’t a typical spring emergent full of bright colors; it’s a species that starts to turn heads as we head into the cooler months. Chasmanthium latifolium, also known as river oats, turns a beautiful bronze in my favorite season, fall, and is found in an area I’m passionate about protecting streamside riparian areas.

Theresa describes herself as “a lifelong canner.” Both her mother and grandmother canned, she says, and Theresa eventually studied culinary arts at UCLA, then took the Master Food Preserver curriculum through her county cooperative extension.“I try to get people thinking outside the canning jars,” says Theresa, who grows much of her family’s food on a mere one-tenth acre in the Los Angeles area (including a coop for a small flock of chickens). “The new video series focuses on creative ways to can, and to use what you can.”  Each of the fun, approachable recipe videos is about 2 minutes long, offering the “aha” of the essential technique involved (with full recipe and details on the “Growing a Greener World” TV website).where to begin in canning?WHEN LEARNING to can, stick first with the high-acid foods, such as tomatoes that have

Which was our subject ina  recent conversation—not the husband but the houseplants, that is. We talked specifically about Jane’s new-ish podcast called “On The Ledge” with its sometime motto, “Saving your houseplants from certain death since February 2017.” I’m having fun listening in to each episode and I’m glad Jane made time to speak with me, just as we officially kick off houseplant season. That’s Jane in her cactus-patterned shirt, below, and one of my oldest houseplants, the wacky Bowiea volubilis, above. Read along as you listen to the Oct. 9, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).h

In his new book, “The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees” (affiliate link), he makes the case more strongly than ever, with twists and turns and the tales of all the creatures we depend on, who depend on the genus Quercus.Doug Tallamy is well-known to most every gardener as a longtime leading voice speaking in the name of native plants. His 2007 book, “Bringing Nature Home,” was for many of us, an introduction into the entire subject of the unbreakable link between native plants and native wildlife. He followed up wi

THE LIGHT-HEARTED news from Nowheresville as June begins: I am short on garden help these days and long on frogs. Too bad the latter just lie around having a hot stone massage for hours and hours (above) in between brief bouts of chasing each other frantically for you-know-what. (In frogspeak they call it amplexus.