The British have a bit of an obsession with the Mediterranean. It's tantalisingly close, yet sufficiently different that the moment the EasyJet tyres hit the tarmac, we feel transformed and instantly a bit more glamorous.
09.08.2023 - 13:41 / finegardening.com
A quick way to clean the algae out of a garden water feature after a long, dark, and wet winter is to use a power washer. It only takes a few minutes to dislodge the long mats of algae, and the low volume of water that blows out of the nozzle doesn’t disturb even the smallest of rocks. Start at the top of where the water flows and work your way down to the bottom of the feature. This is a lot easier and more effective than grabbing the strands by hand and then using a brush to clean the rest away. You can see the difference in these “before” and “after” photos. I enjoy this a lot more than power washing the patio.
—Jeffrey Steiner, Albany, Oregon
There are a number of plants rabbits attack in the winter that they never even touch during the growing season. While there are some very good repellents, who wants to go out in a snowstorm to reapply?
The bunnies have (not so kindly) taste-tested my specimen plants—fothergilla, dwarf hornbeam, and variegated cotoneaster— so I’m proactive now. Using multi-tier, heavy-duty plant hoops as frames, I form and then cut chicken wire to fit snugly around the outside. I attach the wire to the hoops with plastic zip ties. Then I place these cages over the top of the susceptible plants before the ground freezes and the rabbits come looking for a meal. I pull off the cages in spring and then stack and store them intact, ready to protect my plants again in fall.
—Tony Fulmer, Arlington Heights, Illinois
To mark the placement of bulbs and seeds I’ve planted in the garden, I purchased a large bag of multicolored golf tees (the tallest available). I use the different colors to code what is planted. The tees slide easily into the ground near the seeds or bulbs, which makes it easy to watch
The British have a bit of an obsession with the Mediterranean. It's tantalisingly close, yet sufficiently different that the moment the EasyJet tyres hit the tarmac, we feel transformed and instantly a bit more glamorous.
Illinois State Flower is known for its unpretentious yet captivating nature, making it a symbol of Illinois’ natural splendor and historical legacy. Through this article, we delve into the intricate facets of this charming flower, uncovering its botanical attributes, historical significance, and propagation methods.
Today we’re back in the Forest Park, Illinois, garden of Enrique Zuniga and Christian Altman, a space they transformed from a blank piece of turfgrass into a beautiful garden that attracts pollinators and is enjoyed by them, their three dogs, and their friends alike. We saw some of the garden yesterday and are back to enjoy more of it today.
As Digital Content Editor Christine Alexander explains, pollinators play a vital role in our ecosystem and we should all be doing our part to support their populations:
D espite our best efforts, we humans can’t do it all. Life in the 21st century often moves at a busy pace and is jam-packed with responsibilities and wonderfully abundant ways for us to spend our “free time.” While many of us love to spend a large chunk of that time enjoying our gardens, we don’t necessarily love (or have the necessary resources) to care for them. As a landscape designer, I’ve found that one of the best ways to create sustainable gardens for my clients is to develop designs that work with the sites, not against them, while also hitting on the clients’ wish lists.
Living and working in northwestern Oregon, garden designer Wesley Younie is no stranger to dealing with challenging environments. When presented with this garden’s elevation changes, drainage management, and extreme climate conditions, he devised a plan that addresses it all—along with a specific functional wish list from the homeowners. Want to know which plants he used? Here are the plant IDs for this beautiful, sustainable landscape.
My name is Enrique Zuniga. My husband, Christian Altman, our three dogs, and I live in Forest Park, Illinois (Zone 5b), which is located just west of downtown Chicago. Both Christian and I have had a love of gardening since we were children, but we fully tapped into our inner gardener when we were presented with the opportunity to work with a yard full of turf grass when we moved to our current house in 2017. The vast majority of the yard gets full sun, so we decided to remove large patches of turf grass and plant sun-loving perennials that are mostly native to Illinois.
Blue is not the colour you associate with foliage but if you can bend your eyes just a little around the silver – grey through to green spectrum there may be some surprises.
References to pumpkins date back many centuries. Native Americans dried strips of pumpkin and wove them into mats. They also roasted long strips of pumpkin on the open fire and ate them. The origin of pumpkin pie occurred when the colonists sliced off the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and filled the insides with milk, spices and honey. The pumpkin was then baked in hot ashes. University of Illinois Extension
Start with a cold-hardy cultivar if you plant to try to overwinter rosemary in the ground in other than a truly frost-free hardiness zone. ‘Arp’ is the best known, along with ‘Hill Hardy’ (also known as ‘Madalene Hill’ after the late herb gardener from Texas; ‘Arp’ was her discovery, by the way, the result of her search for plants that could take not extremes of cold but the Texas heat). Oregon-based Nichols Garden Nursery’s owner touts ‘Nichols Select’ as being a toughie, too.It’s “as hardy as any I’ve grown, probably Zone 6B, and the flavor is terrific,” Rose Marie Nichols McGee in an interview one spring. “It was planted 25 years ago at our home and survived minus-7 degrees F once. I think this is your best for a long-lived rosemary.”The U.S. National Arboretum website trialed many cultivars, and how they fare on all scores. Even in USDA Zone 7A,
I came upon Kollibri (below, curing tobacco leaves), and his farming partner, Nikki, thanks to their listing in the online collective called Local Harvest [dot] org. Why, I wondered, was my endless Nicotiana search, already many pages deep into Google results, taking me there?I knew Local Harvest as a great place to find a nearby CSA farm to buy a share of, or to order farm-made cheeses or meats or even wildcrafted salves and soaps and such—but Nicotiana? Turns out that Kollibri and Nikki are former CSA farmers from the Portland, Oregon, area, and so the connection. And I couldn’t resist their online claim, under their internet store called Daggawalla Seeds and Herbs, founded in 2012 [UPDATE: Daggawalla is h
Now before you go thinking dirty thoughts about my wood frog friends up in the top photo, who by the way quack like ducks to my ear, know this:They are simply engaged in amplexus (doesn’t that sound tame and scientific?), in which the male (in this species the smaller frog) clasps the larger female around the back. This goes on for some time, and they don’t seem to be one bit shy. The embrace began right out at poolside, where 15 other frogs were sunning themselves, including the few in the background of the photo below. Eventually the