WANTED: Elaeagnus – Dead, Not Alive

The green swards in front gardens throughout the UK are not as environmentally friendly as you may think.

Pamper your plants by all means but resist the urge to over feed.

A rose is not a rose when it is a Lenten or Christmas rose!

‘What else did the Romans do for us’ asks Monty Python. ‘All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? ‘ Well if you include Latin as a language they gave us modern gardening nomenclature.

The year 2020 is set to be memorable for far too many reasons. At the moment I will only stick to comments about plant and garden viruses but note we ‘caught a cold’ on the wet winter.

Yorkshire has suffered an exceptionally wet autumn culminating in disastrous floods at Fishlake and around the river Don. One plant that will thrive in these wet northerly conditions is our old friend Moss.  As this has been covered before I am just using this post to link you to other observations and tips about moss.

Fall brings that time of year when leaf color can be its most vibrant! However, as time marches on towards the winter season, leaves quickly begin to fall to the ground and create a blanket of opportunity. Opportunity, you say. Yes, indeed.

A few years ago a friend, who was a native Alaskan, gave us a seed packet of alpine forget-me-nots (Myosotis alpestris) that she purchased on a visit back to her home state. We really didn’t think that a plant that flourishes in such a northerly region of the US would tolerate the heat and drought of South Carolina. However, we were pleasantly surprised!

You can help keep your family and our waterways safe by properly disposing of unwanted or expired medications. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the proper disposal of medications can prevent:

In a year when many of our favorite sporting events have been postponed or even canceled, the garden marches on! As gardeners, we have our own backyard competitions each year, keeping mental notes on which varieties we will plant again or replace due to their performance on our ‘home court’. But choosing which varieties will be in our starting lineup each year can become a daunting task.

Interest in home gardening has flourished throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Clemson Extension’s Horticulture team is evaluating the best ways to meet the growing public demand for gardening knowledge.

The recent news that all Pyrus calleryana cultivars – the most common of which is the Bradford pear – and several Elaeagnus species have been added to the “do not sell” list in South Carolina has generated a lot of buzz and a lot of questions from homeowners. We’ll try to answer some of those questions in this blog post.