Flowers & Ornamentals

There’s a subtle shift in the air when September rolls around. I can sense it, without even the slightest glance at a calendar. The light changes. The breeze changes. And …

As a gardener and a garden writer, I enjoy taking photos of plants, in all their stages of growth (and sometimes demise). Most photos I take for my own record-keeping, …

One of the things I’m becoming more aware of about gardening is how much it is a continuum. Like a talent show in which contestants follow one another – and …

You’d be hard pressed to find a showier flower in your garden than a dahlia. With their colorful heads full of neatly arrayed petals, their blooms that never stop, and …

I was reading a gardening magazine recently, which proclaimed that September is the most productive month in the garden. With veggies basically jumping into our harvest baskets, there’s little arguing …

For me, August is the month of lunching al fresco in the garden, a fresh meal sandwiched between getting a suntan in the morning and sipping cocktails on the terrace …

Japanese spirea is a beautiful addition to any landscape, with its fluffy pink clouds of flowers. That is, until those fluffy pink clouds turn into crusty brown clusters, which are …

In a classic tale of taking over someone else’s choices when you buy a place, when we moved into our current home and garden, I inherited a rose plant. I …

Where I live, columbine grows wild all over the mountains. I see it when I’m out hiking, and I feel as though I’ve stumbled into a fairytale. I fully expect …

Alliums are stunning in the late spring and early summer garden. Their tall, architectural blooms hover over the rest of the flowers like purple fireworks. They’re the kind of blooms …

July is great! I’m always ready to eat my body weight in sweetcorn and watermelon. The fireflies are floating up from the grass at night. And my flower beds are…well, …

Every spring, I’m amazed by my peonies. It still blows my mind that such a massive, frilly blossom comes from a bud roughly the size of a large marble. Aren’t …

Who doesn’t love hydrangeas? With their giant mopheads of icy blue, soft mauve or creamy white flowers, it’s no wonder they’re one of the most popular flowering shrubs out there. …

Growing lavender means happy buzzing bees and patches of fragrant blossoms in dusky purple. Not to mention glasses of lavender lemonade. But if your lavender is looking lush and leafy …

Irises are often the first flower to kick off the summer perennial season. So it can be incredibly frustrating when that tall crop of sword-shaped leaves ends up being just …

Peonies always make me think of weddings. They’re such a romantic flower, so frilly and beautiful in shades of creamy white, soft pink or magenta. What bride wouldn’t want a …

June is a bit like coming up to the top of the first drop of a roller coaster ride. It’s that slow and steady rise above the daffodils and crocus, …

There comes a moment every spring when my garden threatens to run away from me. One minute, everything is barely waking up, and then I blink, and I’ve got a …

One of my plant-buying pet peeves is when plants come with labels that do more harm than good. Most of the time, it’s just confusing or incomplete information. (Such as …

I love gardening. But I like sitting on the porch admiring my garden a whole heck of a lot more, especially when the mercury starts to climb. As summer cranks …

Creating new garden beds doesn’t require you to dig up the turf and turn over the soil. That is, most certainly, the hardest way to do it. Cutting out the …

Don’t get me wrong, part of the appeal of Russian sage is the gorgeous color of the stems and leaves. That silvery green looks as though it belongs to another …

In “You’ve Got Mail,” Meg Ryan’s character notes that daisies are the friendliest flower. Ahem, really, Meg? How could you have discounted the sunflower so easily? It’s okay; we’ll forgive …

I was thinking recently about gardening expectations. About how, if certain plants don’t do so well one year, I’m ok with that. But when other plants fail to meet my …