Outside,Oregon gray skies dump cold and windy rain-it’s that moment of no-color, before spring’s panoply of blossoms. But inside my sunroom, I’m greeted with colors-not only shades of green, but reds, yellows, blues and bright whites. This month I celebrate my top reliable winter bloomers for greenhouse or sunny windowsill. These are the toughest survivors […]
I’ve never met an indoor garden show I didn’t like. From Philadelphia to San Francisco, Boise to Atlanta—each show floor is like a huge greenhouse, creating garden magic in the middle of winter. I love the smell of bark mulch in the morning, the scents of early-blooming shrubs, the color and drama, both in the […]
In wintertime, the greenhouse is in its glory with colorful and glowing plants. It takes good care—water, heat and light—for these greenhouse beauties to survive. But just beyond the glass, the landscape stretches in patterns of gray and brown, every branch and drooping evergreen leaf outlined in a thin casing of ice. What mechanisms make […]
The hunt is on for the rare and unusual It’s the darkest time of the year, when your outdoor garden makes few demands—although you may be enjoying the plants in your greenhouse—so now is the perfect time to curl up and read catalogs. Start your armchair hunt for the next fabulous wow-factor plant to give […]
Ferns are the duct tape of garden design—they visually connect all other disparate plants. That’s why floral designers feature ferns in bouquets. And they perform the same function when you’re staging plants this winter in your greenhouse. To find out which ferns thrive best under glass I called on my friend Judith Jones, the owner […]
The decisions about which new plants will appear at a nursery near you next spring are happening right now. Here’s a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes process so you can jumpstart your own plant wish list. I was recently one of three judges for the 2009 New Varieties Showcase at the Farwest trade show in Portland, […]
Unusual fruiting shrubs and trees – where have you been all my gardening life? That was the question I asked myself while standing at One Green World’s tasting table in Molalla, Oregon. The nursery specializes in unique fruits from around the world. Affable owner, Jim Gilbert, presided over an enticing array of mouth-watering offerings. Landscaping […]
Five questions for strong healthy growth What do gardeners really want? Recently, I conducted an unscientific two-day sampling of homeowners’ gardening questions. The most common concerns were about how to help ailing plants. I spent an enjoyable weekend, volunteering in the “Ask An Expert” booth at the Sunset Celebration, a hoopla of all things great […]
Two new plant introductions in two If they made movies about the plants’ life stories – how they start out as unknowns in far away places and end up as star performers at a nursery near you – these two variegated must-have specimens would have award-winning biopics for best screenplay. Act One The first is […]
This is the year of the vegetable garden—from the White House to local front lawns—everyone is planting crops. However, even seasoned gardeners can have disappointments with veggies. So I asked my friend, Rose Marie Nichols McGee, owner/ president of Nichols Garden Nursery in Albany, Oregon, what to do about the most common edible errors. Rose […]
