Author's posts
Jan 20
Scaevola (Fan Flower) Care: How to Grow & Keep It Blooming
Scaevola is one of those summer flowers that deserves considerably more attention than it gets. While petunias, geraniums, and calibrachoa often dominate garden centers, fan flower quietly offers many of the same benefits with remarkably little maintenance. It tolerates heat, handles periods of drought once established, blooms for months, and produces cascading stems that are …
Jan 19
The Vital Role of False Indigo in Sustainable Gardening
False indigo is one of those perennials that gets better as the years pass. A young Baptisia may look modest during its first season or two, but once established it develops into a substantial, shrub-like clump with attractive blue-green foliage, tall spikes of pea-shaped flowers, and distinctive seedpods that provide interest long after blooming ends. …
Jan 19
Spotted Dead Nettle Care: How to Grow Lamium maculatum as Ground Cover
Spotted dead nettle is one of the most useful ground covers for parts of the garden where grass and sun-loving perennials struggle. Its low stems spread beneath trees, along shaded borders, around shrubs, and across woodland-style beds, creating a carpet of silver-marked foliage topped with small pink, purple, or white flowers. The ornamental species most …
Jan 19
Clematis Care: How to Grow, Prune & Keep Clematis Blooming
Clematis has earned its reputation as the “queen of the vines.” Few climbing plants offer such an extraordinary range of flowers, from enormous dinner-plate-sized blooms in purple, pink, red, blue, and white to clouds of smaller bells, stars, and nodding flowers that can cover fences, trellises, arbors, shrubs, and garden walls. The vines themselves can …
Jan 19
Catmint Care: How to Grow & Keep Nepeta Blooming
Catmint is one of the easiest flowering perennials to grow in a sunny garden. Its soft gray-green foliage forms spreading mounds covered with lavender-blue flowers, attracting bees and butterflies while asking for remarkably little attention in return. Once established, catmint tolerates drought, poor soil, summer heat, and occasional neglect. Deer and rabbits generally avoid it, …
Jan 19
Calibrachoa Care: How to Grow & Keep Million Bells Blooming
Calibrachoa can turn a single hanging basket into a cascade of color from spring until frost. Often sold under the common name Million Bells, these vigorous trailing plants produce hundreds of miniature petunia-like flowers in shades of purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, blue, white, bronze, and multicolored combinations. They are particularly well suited to hanging …
Jan 19
Caladium Care: How to Grow Colorful Caladiums Indoors & Outdoors
Caladiums can bring more color to a shady garden than many flowering plants. Instead of relying on blossoms, these tropical plants produce heart- or lance-shaped leaves splashed with combinations of white, pink, red, burgundy, chartreuse, and green. Some leaves are dramatically veined, others are speckled or mottled, and a few are so pale that they …
Jan 19
Butterfly Bush Care: How to Grow, Prune & Manage Buddleja
Butterfly bush is famous for producing long, fragrant flower clusters that can draw butterflies, hummingbirds, bees, and other nectar-seeking insects throughout summer. Few flowering shrubs create such a dramatic display so quickly, and established plants can produce new stems several feet long in a single growing season. That vigorous growth is both butterfly bush’s greatest …
Jan 19
Begonia Care: How to Grow Begonias Indoors & Outdoors
Begonias are sometimes described as though they were one type of plant with one simple set of care instructions. In reality, the genus Begonia contains more than 2,000 species along with an enormous number of hybrids and cultivars, ranging from compact bedding plants to dramatic foliage houseplants and flowering tuberous varieties with blooms that rival …
Jan 19
Angelonia Care: How to Grow & Keep Summer Snapdragon Blooming
Angelonia is one of the best flowering plants for the point in summer when many other annuals begin looking exhausted. Heat that causes cool-season snapdragons to decline only seems to encourage Angelonia, which continues producing upright spikes of purple, lavender, pink, blue, and white flowers through hot, humid weather. That toughness explains its common name: …
