Is Your Air Conditioner Not Cooling Your Home? 7 Potential Causes (and Fixes)

Today’s boozy vase shares some elements with last week’s although lacks its fullness, containing less than an armful but more than a small posy, although with more time at my disposal it could have become more fulsome than it is. Having achieved my personal challenge of creating a vase with such a large number of blooms, I feel more confident of repeating the exercise and the garden is certainly proving the material to do so.

Andy Lyons

As of last summer, the island nation of New Zealand was home to 6.3 million head of dairy cattle, up 82 percent over the last two decades. The country also holds 3.8 million beef cattle, 800,000 deer and a whopping 26.8 million head of sheep. That’s a lot of livestock for a country of about five million people. 

The garden as a whole has looked pretty hot in recent weeks, with June’s abundance filling it with glorious colour and lush foliage; the gardener, however, sees it very differently, and will quickly provide a list of its defects, things which a casual visitor might overlook. As simple as the overblown geranium above (probably G ‘Ann Folkard’), perhaps, draping itself over several smaller choice plants in front of it, or a more complex problem like the lack of support given to Rosa ‘Strawberry Hill’ (gearing up for a repeat flush) by its current support, below. Certainly, as I see it, everything is NOT coming up roses, or maybe it is but just not in the right place.

Reasons and Fixes for Fraying and Shedding Palm Fronds

We hope everyone has a safe and happy Independence Day later this week!

Claire Hoppe

Adam Albright

If you've already encountered a few or a group of spotted lanternflies in your yard, you may need to take extra steps to protect your yard since this invasive pest can damage the ecosystem around them.

Edimentals is a new term for growing flowers and vegetables together. Gardens today are often too small to have a separate ‘veg patch.’

For the first time in decades I heard a cuckoo just the other day, its pealing “Wuck-Koo” ringing out so loudly nearby that I felt a quick, sharp jolt of joy at being so closely in its presence. Once a common sound, the distinctive call of this fleeting seasonal migrant from tropical Africa is traditionally believed to signal the arrival of spring. But as is true of so many other once-common species of birds, its numbers, which are down by an estimated 27 per cent since the early 1970s, have been in slow but steady decline for decades.

Homesick