Little Hover Flies are a Big Beneficial Insect

I am often asked to recommend plants for problematic garden areas during my call-in radio program or after public-speaking engagements. As a result, over the years I have developed a list of my top picks for sunny and shady gardens depending on whether the soil is dense, heavy, and clay-based, or lean, sandy, and quick-draining. Fortunately, I have experience gardening with both soil types, and so I know that each presents its own challenges and opportunities. Here are a few options for perennials, trees, and shrubs that can survive and even thrive in the trickiest soil conditions.

Parasitic plants derive their required energy and nutrition from other plants, hindering their growth. Here is a list of some Unwanted Plants that are Parasites!

This summer has been damp and the plants have grown lush. In some way this has contributed to a dramatic cut in the number of greenfly on my roses and other plants (perhaps they found other feeding grounds or did not mate as prolifically).

Have a look at the Best Blue Fruits that you can grow along with different plants and flowers in your garden for a touch of royal tint!

You don’t have to be a Starbucks aficionado to know Americans are obsessed with coffee. They love it so much that it’s the most popular beverage in the country, with consumption being at a two-decade high, according to the National Coffee Data Trends report.

Poinsettias are a classic holiday plant used to decorate homes from November to December. When South Carolinian Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, introduced the poinsettia to the United States in 1825, it is doubtful he had any idea how popular this plant would become.

In July 2022, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) drew attention to North America’s migrating monarchs by adding them to their ICUN Red List of Threatened Species. In the United States, the more immediate plight of other threatened and endangered species has precluded the monarchs’ inclusion on the Endangered Species List. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged that their place on this list is “warranted.” They mandated that the monarchs be reviewed annually as a potential candidate for inclusion. These incredible insects migrate 4000 miles every spring and fall and face immense dangers on this epic journey. What simple steps can you take to help monarchs as they travel past your home?

Since the book “Planting in a Post-Wild World” came out in 2015, co-authored by Claudia West with Thomas Rainer, I’ve been gradually studying their ideas and starting to have some light bulbs go off, on how to be inspired to put plants together in the ways that nature does, in layered communities.Claudia joined me on the July 17, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to about some of the practical, tactical aspects of plant community-inspired designs that we can app

I used to grow Joe Pye weed, Eupatorium purpureum (above), in the back row of mixed borders with much smaller perennials. Eventually I relegated all these super-tall types to a bed of their own, where they could shine together instead of be the only bright light in beds with foreground companions who had seen better days, the sometimes-unavoidably tattered heroes of spring and early summer.One other resident of the big bed is Rudbeckia ‘Herbstsonne’ (I also see it listed various places as ‘Herbstonne,’ see comment from Yvonne after the post) or autumn sun coneflower (photo above). It gets to about 8 feet, with a wonderful linear quality and a graceful sway in every breeze.Both of

Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney’s 2010 book is full of photos of all the oddball things you see outside (if you stop long enough to notice!): egg cases and cocoons and all kinds of webs; folded and curled-up leaves as if something’s hidden inside (it is!); and all manner of bumps, lumps, notches, and holes in foliage, bark, you name it. Even tiny previously unexplained pattern in the sand…and soil…a.k.a. tracks and signs of insects.“I’ve always been interested in everything around me,” says Charley, whose Master’s degree is from the University of Vermont’s field naturalist program. “Then someone gave me a digital camera right after I graduated from college, so I started paying closer attention to the little things.  And then I started wishing I had a field guide to tell me what all these signs left by insects and other invertebrates were—but it just didn’t seem to exist.”Charley and Noah took it upon themselves to create that guide, in “Tracks and Sign of Insect

On my radio show and podcast, we talked about why having extra-early and extra-later bloomers—from spicebush to Clethra to goldenrods and more—mean important insects and even birds will choose not just to stop by your garden, but call it home and raise a family.Read along as you listen to the May 11, 2015 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).read/listen: choosing native plants,a q&a with broken arrow’s andy brandQ. I know that when the subject of native plants is raised, peopl

LATEST LINKS: Too-hot-to-handle weather has had me indoors for a broad swath of each recent day, and that means more than the usual dose of web browsing—and a couple of new links to share. One (a video) is an extraordinary take on dragonflies; the other a moving essay on what I think is the garden’s most important and insistent message: that nothing lasts. The latter is delivered not by a gardener at all, but by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. Some decidedly non-horticultural but ever-so-moving links I think you’ll like: