missed the workshop? container-garden 101

When it comes to overall enhancement of your garden on a more strategic level, your best solution will arguably be a landscaping one. Sure, throwing in some pretty plants in the back yard is certainly necessary, but you can hardly beat the blend of emotions, sizes and shapes that a fully executed landscaping project gives to the home-owners.

The idea of growing our own vegetables and herbs is gaining popularity in the UK (possibly thanks to Felicity Kendal and ‘The Good Life’ circa 1975). However, not all of us have access to a garden, especially in large cities. So, what can you do if you would like to grow some veggies at home, but don’t have a garden or much space to work with? Don’t worry, you can still put those green fingers to good use!

Andrew Drake

Gardening is one of the most popular pastimes; everyone knows we are supposed to enjoy our garden but do we enjoy gardening or at times does it just feel like hard work? Is it similar to the Joy of Sex or 50 Shades of grey-green?

Is your garden safe from petty crime? Unfortunately in recent years garden theft has been on the rise. Plants, furniture, metal objects and statues can all be  attractive to thieves. Our local police  circulated this timely reminder on how to ‘nip crime in the bud’.

Britain is known for introducing us the best of the best — think Princess Diana, Harry Potter and fish and chips. Now we can thank the UK for bringing us a fantastic sun safety idea: the 3-hour-gardening rule.

“A very common issue with urban gardens is the lack of space. We suggest that people approach this as an opportunity rather than an issue. Like The Shifting Garden that we presented at Chelsea Flower Show, containers can be the allies to create a lush and inviting outdoor space. We can play with different textures, sizes and colours to fit any space. The downsize of using containers is that they drain fairly quicky and the plants need more attention, but an irrigation system is the best solution. If the floorspace is small, consider the vertical elements of the space: walls, trellises, staggered pots.”

This heirloom grain, together with the skilled knowledge and forced labor of West Africans and their descendants, made South Carolina very, very rich. From 1720 to the outbreak of the Civil War, rice was the most economically valuable crop for this state. White landowners, who thought rice would do well in the low country, themselves lacked practical knowledge of rice cultivation. Instead, they paid a premium to slave traders to capture and transport laborers from the well-established rice region of West Africa to Carolina. During the 18th century, many enslaved people brought into Charleston came from this rice-growing area. These people and their descendants created the Gullah-Geechee culture in the low country.

GARDEN CLEANUP HAS ITS REWARDS. There you are poking around with a pruning shears or a rake, cutting some things back and uncovering others, and suddenly you find them: the first brave souls to bloom.  From snowdrops (above) to the bravest shrub of all, a quick rundown of the first heat out of the gate:Helleborus niger, the so-called Christmas rose, is always extra-early.

I know it can feel about now as if someone sucked the life out of things…but maybe a few of the thoughts we discussed in these two recent podcasts will help make you a believer, too?Part 1: The 365-Day Garden (beginning at the 9:10 minute mark, after a discussion of night-blooming cereus, which radio host Jill Goodman was wondering how to overwinter) Part 2: Don’t Forget the Conifers (podcast about some of

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

I WAS ALMOST RELIEVED TO HEAR FROM a longtime reader that his Geranium macrorrhizum looked like some kind of lace–“shot through with tiny holes,” and that “this has never happened before.” Me too, and me either. Hostas, yes, and so many other things–but the trouble-free, aromatic, tough-as-nails bigroot geranium? All I can say is: 2012 is host to some fierce breed of slugs–and thanks to another reader, I have also found cabbage looper caterpillars‘ excrement (ahem!) in the geraniums, alongside the slime trails.