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My fellow plant-lover, If today finds you in a new home, looking out the window at a landscape planted by someone else, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed, and a little frustrated. Even if creating a garden at this new home is important to you, it will likely go on the back burner until you’ve taken downContinue reading “Starting Over: How to Keep Your Sanity While Planning a New Garden”

I fell hard for flowering shrubs during my first spring in the South. There is no doubt that the spring and summer borders of shocking-pink azaleas and voluptuous hydrangeas I saw around town led to my obsession with all things flowering. When I lived in the Midwest I was perhaps too preoccupied with the worriesContinue reading “Simple Pairings for Beautiful Blooms”

I’ve spent the last few years writing a book. In all honesty, this wasn’t something I set out to do. I never wanted to be a published writer, though I do have a degree in Journalism from a fine school, where I imagined I might have a career writing advertising copy. Like many who graduatedContinue reading “How an Idea Became a Book About Gardening and Happiness”

As Halloween came and went this year, I found myself considering the cast of creepy crawly things and four-legged nocturnal creatures that roam our gardens while we sleep. The sound of my metal compost bucket being turned over in the night no longer startles me. It is likely a possum, raccoon, or possibly a ratContinue reading “Snails, Slugs, and Things That Go Bump in the Night”

Most people would feel disappointment once they realize that part of their yard is a mud pit after a rainstorm. Not me. I like a challenge. After living in my new home for a year or so, I noticed that part of an unplanted border was consistently damp. Rain would puddle in this area andContinue reading “Designing with Plants that Like Wet Feet”

As we look toward what will certainly be an atypical winter, I have been thinking about what I might plant this fall if I had small children at home. By the time February arrives, I suspect we will all be looking for any excuse to get out of the house on a sunny day. ItContinue reading “Get Out in the Garden with Your Kids This Fall”

There was a brief moment this summer when I felt like my childhood self, fully present, watching butterflies float around me, listening to the birds, and feeling the dappled sunlight on my face. I was sitting in the middle of a path lined with abelias, a plant that I have fallen in love with. InContinue reading “Abelia, You’ve Stolen My Heart”

After a long, hot summer in the South, I breathe a sigh of relief when temperatures finally drop into the seventies. This means I can once again spend long hours in my garden, moving plants, planting the last of cool season vegetables, and getting those chores done that I have put off since August.  ItContinue reading “Celebrate the Fall Season with Easy Container Plantings”

In Southern gardens, August brings together the last of our summer-blooming perennials, along with annuals that have been holding it all together visually, as plants expand, bloom, and, in some cases, decline. The end of summer brings with it the hardest lesson for new gardeners — the realization that it is impossible to hold ontoContinue reading “This Week in the Garden: Looking Toward Fall”

I have a confession to make:  I don’t like gardening in late July and August. Allow me to clarify.  I love to see what is happening in my Georgia garden in late summer, but I don’t want to work in it, and by work I mean any task that leaves me soaked with sweat, andContinue reading “Lift Your Mood with Color for the Late Summer Garden”