remember how to wake up tender bulbs?

Caladiums are not as difficult to care for as many people think, and they make a beautiful addition to any home or garden.

Mustard pickles are a yummy treat. This recipe is quick and easy to make – and it’s oh, so, delicious.

Rachel Platt in the 'Chained to Tech' Tatton Garden. Image Source: Julie Skelton Photography. 

Propagating wandering jew plants is very easy and makes a cost-effective way to expand your collection.

Marigolds are super easy to grow and the perfect care-free bedding plant for containers, borders and mass plantings. If you need a lot of plants, you can save seed from spent flowers and grow them yourself next year to save money. Since marigolds reseed in the garden easily all by themselves, leave a few dried flowers to drop seed. Keep in mind t

Janet Campbell Brayson,  10th February 1951 to 6th May 2023

My original piece of Farfugium japonicum ‘Giganteum’ (then known as Ligularia tussilaginea ‘Gigantea’) came many years ago, from a friend at a New York City public garden. Summers, it was lusty and bold, growing mightily in a pot and showing off like crazy. But I could never make the plant completely happy in the offseason, or so I thought, and after torturing it in my house one winter and in my basement (trying to force dormancy) the next, I gave the exhausted creature to a friend with a greenhouse.I kept his likeness here with me, and I guess I pined for him: A mid-century tray I’d bought at at antiques store bore an image of Farfugium, though not to scale. The plant bears ultra-shiny leaves that get to about 15 inches across.When I saw its shining face not long ago in the Plant Delights catalog, which credited the same person I’d got

I SAID IT A FEW WEEKS AGO, when I saw a change of the guard at my feeders a couple of weeks ahead of “normal”–do the birds know something I don’t yet? Seemed to me then that winter’s first teases must be close at hand. And now the National Weather Service says it may drop to 33 one night this week, slightly higher the others (not as scary as parts of Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, where I see–egads!–winter weather advisories and freeze watches and warnings).

NOTHING LASTS. Need I say more to a bunch of gardeners? Not winter, nor spring, nor any other season; not Narcissus nor magnolias.

I’M SEEING SHADES OF BLUE ON THE WEATHER MAP (you know, the numbing color of lips exposed to too much cold) and thinking, No, not yet; please not yet. But there it is, in living (killing?) color, on the NOAA map: time to bring in the tender things, or else.

OUT OF THE BASEMENT THEY CAME YESTERDAY, the cannas I’d stored after frost last fall. It’s easy to keep these prolific rhizomes year to year and even have plenty to give away.

Recalcitrant, to the max, apparently. Just plain uncooperative, and following a beat of their own.Seven months after they arrived, on nearly the shortest day of the year with months of low light and cold ahead, they have risen.Oh, perfect. Of course I have any number of ideal conditions to offer these late-sleeper: Will it be a radiator, my sleepyhead darlings, or a drafty windowsill? (Kidding. Both are certain death.)The description on my friend Tony Avent’s Plant Delight Nursery web