reading the land (with the help of trees), with noah charney

This June, some of our J. Parker’s team helped to put the finishing touches to the patient garden at St David’s Hospice in Llandudno, North Wales. We donated a new gazebo, planters, compost and hundreds of bedding plants to help finish off the garden which the St David’s team have lovingly built so that the patients at the hospice can enjoy an outside space full of colourful flowers.

This June, some of our J. Parker’s team helped to put the finishing touches to the patient garden at St David’s Hospice in Llandudno, North Wales. We donated a new gazebo, planters, compost and hundreds of bedding plants to help finish off the garden which the St David’s team have lovingly built so that the patients at the hospice can enjoy an outside space full of colourful flowers.

If you have a table that is bare or needs a makeover, try this painted faux wood-grain effect. It's a simple project, but the outcome is breathtaking. Here are the simple steps on how to complete this project.

When coming home from my day job I pass a house that has all kinds of metal garden decor for sale on the front lawn. There are metal birds, trees, obelisks, and beautiful large metal flowers. I've also seen this metal garden art at craft shows, and it can be quite expensive. I thought that I could make my own scaled down (and inexpensive) versions of the flowers by collecting some thrifted items and putting them together. I love that every flower will be one of a kind, and the possibilities are really endless.

As gardeners, it is easy to lose sight of exactly how much we have achieved over the years—and also so easy to focus on the things that go wrong rather than looking at the many things that go right. 

The ground is undisturbed. Maybe it’s in a forest, in a city park, or in your front yard. The moment is quiet. But the air is charged. It’s fueled by the energy of an impending change and the promise of a new legacy. Then, the silence is cracked open by the slice of a shovel breaking through the seal of the earth. The soil gives way, making room for the gentle roots of a young tree. 

«Healing gardens» are now featured in the design of most new hospitals. Aside from the pleasure of getting out in the fresh air and sunlight, just glimpsing the green space from a hospital window does wonders. As Deborah Franklin writes for Scientific American about one particular study on the topic, «Patients with bedside windows looking out on leafy trees healed, on average, a day faster, needed significantly less pain medication and had fewer postsurgical complications than patients who instead saw a brick wall.»

If you want to add different colors to your garden then take ideas from this beautiful Landscaping with Croton Pictures!

The online Purdue Plant Doctor does just that, plus offers possible solutions.Two Purdue Professors, entomologist Cliff Sadof and plant pathologist Janna Beckerman, collaborated on the recent enhancements to the online tool at PurduePlantDoctor.com. They also have some advice on how to sharpen our diagnostic skills and to learn how to do the homework it takes to plot a c

DR. JAMES NARDI says you can tell a lot about a tree by the company it keeps. From life in the soil around their roots to the action up in their canopies, trees are swarming with engagement—unseen microbes and fungi, countless insects and other arthropods, and vertebrates like birds, squirrels, and even porcupines.

You may know Nancy Lawson as “The Humane Gardener” (also the title of her previous book). She has a new book out called “Wildscape” (affiliate links) that asks us to adjust our senses to take into account everyone out there whose world it is—everyone else whose world it is, and was, before we intervened.Nancy Lawson is a naturalist and a habitat consultant based in Maryland who promotes animal-friendly plant strategies and challenges us to sharpen our awareness that we’re not alone out there. (Above, a spring mome

Marianne Willburn, a longtime garden writer who gardens in Virginia, is a contributing editor to the collaborative blog called Garden Rant. And she’s also author of the 2021 book “Tropical Plants and How to Love Them” (affiliate link). She offered guidance on which of these tempting tropicals at the garden center to indulge in for the combination of visual and culinary enjoyment, like ‘Snowdrift’ turmeric in her garden, above.Plus: Enter to win a copy of the book by commenting in the box at the bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the March 27, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here)