Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

Greenhouse Glory—How to Make Your Poinsettias Bloom Every Year

I confess—I’m a poinsettia composter. I tried growing them on after the holidays with my other houseplants, and the results were leggy and dismal. Now I’m talking with Kym Pokorny, a gardener, a 20-year veteran garden writer, and communications specialist at Oregon State University Extension Service. She’s always been interested in this iconic holiday plant. […]

Conservatories and Conservation the Rancho Gordo Way

These days, more than ever, words matter. And in the realm of this column I got to wondering about the meaning of conservatory, which is more complex, it turns out, than the one for greenhouse. The latter is pretty much self-explanatory, a house where green things grow. But on turning to my copy of the […]

Grow Your Own Asian Herbs and Spices for Dinner

I recently cooked a Thai dinner with ingredients from my greenhouse, including kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lemongrass, Thai basil, and Thai hot peppers. Here are tips on growing each. Kaffir lime is a small tree with serrated leaves that are chopped or sliced into tiny slivers. To harvest these leaves for Asian meals, buy a […]

Best Easy-Care Plants for Years to Come

It’s the time of year for giving thanks. And as a professional garden writer, I am thankful for the exciting new plants from growers and marketers that I get to trial and review. However, sometimes many seasons pass before plants demonstrate just how good they really are. So, I’d like to share a couple of […]

Glasshouse Glazing: an arts and crafts approach

Stained glass windows have been around a good deal longer than Glasshouses, yet it would seem that the two have something to offer each other. Wafting around the National Botanic Garden of Ireland  in September I was fulfilling a bucket list item; I’d long known about but never visited the graceful Curvilinear Range and its […]

Instant Privacy Hedges—Now You Can Buy Time

Recently, while walking through the aisles of the Independent Garden Center trade show in Chicago, I discovered a product I’d never seen before—containerized hedges. A row of neatly sheared plants outlined the booth. Clearly, they were field-grown and root pruned, their branches naturally intermingling. It was a living privacy wall you could buy. It would […]