“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Year-Round Gardening” really isn’t just for complete idiots or even pretenders. Delilah Smittle and Sheri Ann Richerson have nondummy gardening credentials. They’ve crafted a book that speaks our language. I’m suggesting it for anybody who needs solid gardening advice, although I wish they’d change the title.
While the lingering snow cover and soft, soggy soils may limit raking and spring cleaning our borders, this is an ideal time to begin pruning many dormant trees and shrubs. A late-winter survey of your property’s trees and shrubs should be performed annually. Mid-February to mid-April is a preferred time of year to prune dormant plants since it is considerably easier to view their architecture and observe damaged, diseased, or crossed branches.
It has been said that the anticipation of something can be as rewarding as the actual event itself. I think that's why early March is one of my favorite times of the year. Each year about now we're so eagerly awaiting the fulfillment of the promise of spring.
Most of us are familiar with the cypress in the swamps, with woody knees poking out of the shallow water. Pond cypress, contrary to what you might think, doesn’t produce as many. Neither produces the knees when planted in the typical landscape where water doesn’t stand. Unlike the larch, the needles of the bald and pond cypress aren’t soft — though not as tough as Scots pine, blue spruce or the Douglas fir.
Weekly home rail, with tips on spring cleaning digital devices, how to update your decor for spring, what to know before painting the exterior of your home, and more.
Once so lightly regarded it was relegated to the backyard, bathrooms have come a long way since the days of outhouses and rain barrel tubs. Today the bathroom — especially the master bath — is treated as a coveted living space, and perhaps the most indispensable room in the home.
Tori Michaels' work in life is often misunderstood, feared even. "There were people who actually grabbed their children and ran away. They said I was working with the devil," said Michaels, a feng shui consultant who moved to the Peoria, Ill., area from St. Louis a couple years ago.
Urban residents are discovering that despite their lack of a yard, they still can garden. Space once wasted blooms and grows food.
What sets the larch apart, besides breathtaking fall color, is the needles. When the tree starts leafing out in spring, the needles are a soft, lime-green color with a shimmer. As they mature, they take on a soft, dark green color, a little darker than the yew. More importantly, the needles are soft.
Torrential downpours pummeled South Shore landscapes during the past week, flooding lawns and gardens and scattering debris far and wide.
Weekly home and garden rail, with organization tips, the "new neutrals" in home decor, a guide to raised-bed gardening, and more.
This is the time you might be thinking about buying seeds to start your vegetables or flowers inside. Somehow the winter seems less harsh when you can cultivate seedlings.
Wild winter weather takes a heavy toll on everything from school calendars to exhausted fleets of snow removal equipment. And Mother Nature seems to have come out a little worse for the wear herself. Here are five things to know about storm-damaged trees.
Vegetable gardening increased 19 percent last season as 43 million folks chose it as a hobby that also saves money. Then the newcomers went to the store and were shocked to find all the expensive gardening paraphernalia. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The snow has been covering and insulating the ground, making it difficult for some of our early spring bulbs to make themselves known. Without the snowdrops and winter aconite showing, we’re limited in what we can bring indoors. Sure, we can purchase some tulips or paper white narcissus to go along with the amaryllis. But there may be another option.
A well-designed property should be both functional and aesthetically pleasing, an extension of your indoor living areas. In the landscape, the sky and the mature tree canopy form the roof; shrubs, walls or fences serve as the walls; and ground covers, grass or hardscape function as the floor.
Weekly home and garden rail, with tips on growing roses, how to use glaze in a painting project, the benefits of a heated towel rack, and more.
Down a gravel road that cuts through steep wooded river bluffs along the Spoon River is a passive solar home with international provenance. With input from Mother Earth News, books and friends, the home rose from a footprint positioned in a small clearing to capitalize on views and the transit of the sun across a winter sky. In the middle of summer, the sun does not enter the house at all.
My mom fought our winter cabin fever with a simple solution: garbage plants. We grew all manner of stuff from the snippings and seeds of our kitchen trash. It was fun watching them grow, and we learned a lot about gardening from this simple hobby.
Shrubs that exhibit colored twigs during the winter months are great additions to our borders and are particularly effective against a backdrop of evergreens or when landscapes are snow-covered.
