Tom’s Favorite Cold-Hardy Roses

WHEN I CALLED Rose Marie Nichols McGee after much more than a decade, it was like we’d just hung up moments before. “Do you still grow Phlomis?” she asked without missing a beat, referring to a mint relative I’d loved early on in my garden’s life, a former Nichols Garden Nursery purchase I’d almost forgotten (since I’d eventually killed it, oops). That’s OK, she said; it got tricky here, too. The nursery, with more than 60 years selling herbs and much more—one of the first places I ever shopped as a gardener—is Rose Marie and her husband, Keane’s, family business (that’s them above), and they’ve seen lots of plants come, and go, and come around again. With a gift-certificate giveaway and an herb-growing Q&A, meet an old friend and some great new and old plants as well–and learn tricks for growing them.

WHAT WE CALL STONE FRUITS all grow on trees in the genus Prunus, and have a hard, stony pit inside them (their seed), with fleshy fruit around it—unlike so-called pome fruits (see below).Apricots, cherries, nectarines, plums (and therefore prunes), and some interspecies hybrids of the above, like plumcots and pluots, are all stone fruits. So are peaches (like the ones in the 1940 harvesting photo by Lee Russell, in the Library of Congress archive, top, or just above in the print from Boston Public Library’s).And then there’s the trick-question one, the stone fruit you think of as a nut. What’s that?Almond, of course: Prunus dulcis.What’s a Pome Fruit?I KNOW, IT’S STONE FRUIT WEEK, but hey,

Los Angeles-based Shulman is not a vegetarian, she says, but finds herself eating that way a lot–which may sound familiar to others, especially with the farm market and garden harvest season just getting into high gear.“I realized that people have problems with the concept of the vegetarian main dish. There’s really no lexicon for it. If you eat meat, you can ask, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and you can say, ‘Chicken,’ and that’s a good enough answer.“In my house, I do have one-word answers. When my son says, ‘What’s for dinner?’ I can say, ‘Frittata,’ or ‘Gratin,’ or ‘Pasta,’ and his only question will be, ‘With what?’ And

Adam, a graduate of the prestigious Longwood Gardens Professional Gardener Training Program, joined the staff at Swarthmore College’s arboretum in 2012. The rose garden he’s responsible for was first designed in 1956, then recently renovated to be more sustainable. In a recent chat, Adam shared tips for organic rose care today, both cultural techniques like proper spacing and using fish hydrolysate as a feed and disease-preventive, and also advice on selecting more resistant varieties. We even talked about the dreaded rose rosette disease that has been on the rise in recent years.If you’re near Swarthmore in late May and early June, treat yourself to a rose-garden tour, or just listen along as we get a virtual visit with the resident expert. Read along as you listen to the May 22, 2107 edition of my public-radio

Also on the agenda today, a tip on a bulb you may not have grown before, but could order to plant this fall, surprise lilies. Above: giant knapweed (Centaurea macrocephala) and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) in her dry garden.Jenny Rose Carey is former senior director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Meadowbrook Farm and taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at Temple University, where she also directed the Ambler Arboretum.Plus: Enter to win her new book, “The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide”

Today we’re headed to Kerala, India, to enjoy some beautiful blooms from Sreeja Sarathkumar’s rose garden.

Considering their Middle Eastern and western Asian roots, fig trees (Ficus carica) are generally considered warm-climate plants.But our friends in the North and

Hey Freinds! I’m so glad that you are here. I am so excited to share this project with you. Don’t you just love a cottage in the English countryside covered in roses? Me, too! Today, I am going to show you how I created a rose trellis for the gable above my front door. Let’s go!

These Rose Color Houseplants represent the famous hue of rose in the magnificent shade of red-pink. Grow them in your rooms for the awesome colors!

Perhaps not known for his greenfingers, it seems apt to quote the musician Paul Weller, who in 1978 gave us the great lyric ‘No matter where I roam, I will return to my English rose’. Because no matter how many other garden plants come and go, the popularity of the garden rose never seems to diminish. You might not see many in a Chelsea Flower Show garden but us gardeners know some good plants when we see them and roses regularly top polls for the nation’s favourite flower.

Whether they’re charming, compact millifloras in pastel shades, spreading varieties that cascade over a hill, or grandifloras with three-inch blooms in bold purple, all Petunia species belong to the nightshade family and are native to South America, in regions with hot and humid weather.While you’ll find more selections of the modern hyb

Roses love the sun. Find a location that receives as much sun as possible. A couple of hours of shade in an afternoon or a spot with light shade might not hurt the plant.