Potting soil is the most important ingredient for starting a terrific garden. It is also an important item for most indoor plants (Cactus and orchids being the exception, both require specialized mediums for growing.) Potting Soil Components – this will shock you. Compost is a major ingredient. Good compost is made from rotted vegetation but […]

Perennials are often touted as “easy-care,” but not all perennials are equal. Like many gardeners, I want ones that don’t need frequent dividing or deadheading. I need plants that are not fussy as to soil or weather conditions—and come back year after year. That’s a lot to ask for, I know, so this month I’m […]

If you have not grown anything in Europe lately, you may not have noticed the battle going on between peat moss and coir. Well, it’s not actually a battle. More like a rout. Peat moss, which came into widespread use in the late 1940’s, has been vanquished back to its bogs. The reason: peat (or […]

I was at the Philadelphia Flower Show during one of the many snow storms that hit the northeast this year and I was struck by the number of flowers in bloom. There were thousands and thousands of perfect flowers decorating every aspect of the event. These flowers had been forced to grow out of season […]

Roger Marshall’s journey Gardening came to me naturally, while growing up in England in the 1950s. At that time, with war time shortages still distressing the UK economy, commercial fertilizers were hard to come by, so we made compost and used natural organic materials to fertilize our gardens, practices that I continue using today. English […]

On April’s Fool’s Day, it was a balmy 65 in Chicago—with a forecast for 27 two nights later.That kind of grim joke is why it’s handy to have a greenhouse or a cold frame to even out the crazy temperature swings of springtime. One task that makes a greenhouse useful is starting bare-root plants. Perennials, […]

Succulents’ time has come. This group of plants, which includes cactus, requires only one-third to one-fifth the water of other ornamentals. With long-term drought in the western U.S., interest has never been higher. Even in other parts of the country, succulents’ easy care and strong architectural presence make them eye catchers. There’s a succulent for […]

I had the pleasure of spending the last day of February at a regional meeting of the Perennial Plant Association at The Morton Arboretum near Chicago. “Ready, Set, Grow!” was the theme of the daylong symposium, and are we ever! I got home all fired up to start some perennials from seed. Growing perennials from […]

Recycle. Reuse. Repurpose. It’s a popular mantra, but would it work for that most ephemeral of endeavors—a bouquet of flowers? Northwest horticulturalist Riz Reyes thinks so. He adds succulents and other structural perennials like tillandsia (air plants) to his floral designs. When the flowers fade, the cuttings can be rooted in a well-draining medium. Air plants […]

For nearly one hundred years–between the 1880’s and the 1960’s a stretch of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York was known as the “Violet Capital of the World.” Herb Saltford recounted that it was his grandfather, William Saltford– head gardener at several estates in England before the family moved to Hyde Park, New York– […]

Snow covers the garden, and spring is nowhere in sight, so it’s time for that perennial pleasure—perusing the stack of seed catalogs that’s been piling up since November. Interesting trends in vegetable gardening emerge in this year’s catalogs. If you plan to grow tomatoes, 2015 promises intriguing choices; breeders have been busy creating new combinations […]