The Best Flowering Vines and Climbers to Grow in Garden & Containers can add vertical interest, frame doorways, or even create privacy screens. And the best part? They’re really easy to take care of.
03.05.2024 - 14:27 / finegardening.com
When you first arrive at the home of Curtis Steiner, you’re not exactly sure you’ve found the right address. His storybook home sits off the main street, and the entrance is only accessible from a small alleyway that is not large enough for cars. But once you open the tall front gate, you are immersed in a purely magical garden oasis filled with whimsy and plants of every imaginable shape and color. The fact that you’re in an urban setting is instantly forgotten thanks to the dense foliage that envelops you from every angle.
In his article How to Design a Serene and Immersive Garden Oasis, Curtis gave some background about how he was initially bitten by the gardening bug: “I was painfully shy as a child, often taking refuge in the forested greenbelt adjacent to our suburban backyard. It was the early 1970s, before children were kept on a short tether, and I was allowed to wander so long as I was home before dark. I would explore paths and climb trees, collecting nature and memories as I went. The forest of my youth was mostly conifers, where an occasional mother tree would establish her dominance, reaching out with a great protective canopy underneath which little could grow. I would adopt the ground beneath and ‘park it out.’
“This meant removing debris and creating a garden of collected flowers and plants (sometimes with roots still intact), along with laying small circles of stones. I would sit in the mossy solitude on the forest floor with my back against the trunk, feeling safe in the dappled light. It was an idyllic refuge of my own creation, all done on a five-year-old’s salary.”
Later in life Cutis became an artist who turned his creative sensibilities toward his immersive landscape. “I grew up to become a
The Best Flowering Vines and Climbers to Grow in Garden & Containers can add vertical interest, frame doorways, or even create privacy screens. And the best part? They’re really easy to take care of.
If you love something, make it flat—that’s how the saying goes, right? When it comes to flat croissants, at least, that’s definitely the case. We all know (and love) the classic flaky croissant, but bakeries and home chefs have taken the pastry to new heights (or lows?) by flattening it and frying it to make it even crispier.
You must be careful when you enter the backyard of garden designer Jeff Epping. No because you’re likely to trip on something but because you might be dive-bombed by a pair of nesting hummingbirds, or a bevy of butterflies, or any number of other pollinators that make this shady Midwestern garden their home. Jeff Epping is the principal designer at Epping Design & Consulting and the former director of horticulture at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. Given this background, it’s no surprise that his home landscape is something special. He writes about this beautiful space in his article, Design an Engaging, Naturalistic Garden in the Shade.
Like many northern gardeners, I had red-hot poker envy for many years but ruled out growing them because of their iffy -chances of surviving winter in my region. However, I am very excited about some of the newer Kniphofia introductions we are growing at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Being able to overwinter a South African plant in the Midwest is pretty cool, right?
Cucumbers are among the most popular crops for home gardeners. They’re easy to grow and just a handful of vines can provide enough cucumbers for fresh eating from mid-summer through late fall. But proper cucumber plant spacing can mean the difference between healthy, productive plants and disease ridden, low yielding ones. Let’s take a look at how far apart to plant cucumbers based on your growing technique and the method you use to plant them. Why properly spacing cucumber plants matters Before we dive into the details on proper plant spacing for cucumbers, let’s take a
TODAY’S TOPIC is orchids, but not the ones you might be growing as a flowering houseplant. Our subject is native terrestrial types that are more often than not under great pressure in the wild, their numbers dwindling.
How to Plant and Grow Parris Island Cos Lettuce Lactuca sativa ‘Parris Island Cos’
How to Plant and Grow Scarlet Runner Beans Phaseolus coccineus
Hebes are popular evergreen shrubs, mostly native to New Zealand although some are native to Australia and South America. They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and are suitable for growing in a range of sites and planting schemes. Hebes are excellent in shrub borders, used as ground cover or low-growing hedging, and are relatively low-maintenance.