the top garden stories of 2015

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.

Succulents demonstrate the ability to adapt and survive in the harshest of environments. They are well known for growing in dry inhospitable locations such as desert areas.  As shown in the range of families in this plant group there is an astonishing variety of size, shape, form  and colour to be found.

Cop hold of these gardeners tips designed for the upcoming Cop26 summit on the climate

The Elizabethan Tower where Vita had her study. Credit: Shutterstock

Marion Brenner

 Part of Tom Massey's

As you drink your recommended 6 to 8, 8-ounce glasses of water per day, don’t forget that your vegetable garden should also never be short of water this summer.  Did you know that water makes up 80 to 90 % of vegetable and fruit weight? Water affects yield, fruit size, and quality.  It also prevents a variety of disorders such as toughness, off-flavor, cracking, blossom-end rot, and misshapen fruit.

When I started this series of K.I.S.S. gardening advice, I hoped to inspire those who didn’t know where to begin gardening and those who may have lost joy in their gardening pursuits. After all, there are plenty of things to worry about these days, and gardening should not be one of them. Gardening should provide a respite and an escape from our screen technology culture. So let’s take the advice of Willie Nelson’s boy, Lukas, and “Turn off the news and build a garden.”

LOST ANYTHING IN THE GARDEN LATELY (besides your mind)? That’s the question Forum member Boodely poses in the Urgent Garden Question Forum this week, and I’m confessing to eyeglasses, every manner of tool and more. (Usually my MIA items turn up when I turn the compost heap.) Lost anything in your garden? On the very practical side comes a twist on the groundcover question, which usually includes the words “for shade.” Not this time.

Ask yourself this: Where do you see your garden from most often, and at what time of year? Where does the magical light happen, and catch your eye? For me, it’s a few places:The best seat in the house is the dining-room table (above), where I often plunk my laptop and heaps of messiness when writing and just generally like to be. (So does Jack the Demon Cat, who adores the west view.)I can see a long way due west from that old Chinese wooden chair, and also pretty far south, with a short east snapshot as well…so those directions, starting at the point of my favorite chair and emanating outward, are the primary axes of my garden. Fr

SO WHAT CAUGHT YOUR ATTENTION most of all in 2012, among the 1,200-ish stories on A Way to Garden so far? Well, apparently these were the top 50 stories, the topics you clicked on most during the year, A Way to Garden’s fifth online.

Note on things I didn’t include: the monthly garden chores (always a big hit), or posts from previous years that are still top-performing thanks to Google search (like my refrigerator-pickle recipe, truly the little engine that could). All the big green headline links below are 2010 vintage, and apparently met with your approval. Thanks for your visits and encouragement this year.1. Vintage WPA PostersThese 1936-1943 beauties bear timely messages: of conservation, hard work, simplicity, rich with phrases like “preserve food” and “spare our trees.” A slideshow.2. What Weed Is It?Stop wondering and use one of the handy guides I rounded up to ID and manage your invaders.3. 2010 Res