263 Results

  • The awesomeness of agastache

    I am as fickle as any gardener. I'll pick a new favorite color, fragrance, leaf, flower, and plant habit every other week (or day) and reserve the right to change my mind over the slightest disappointment. That said, the hyssops, which have been ...
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  • What’s at stake

    I used to really enjoy the challenge of staking top-heavy plants in such a way that their crutches were as invisible as possible but this year, maybe because the ground is dry enough to make shoving bamboo poles in nearly impossible, I'm kind of ...
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  • Pinkster apples

    The other day friend of mine and Blithewold's left a bag full of these delicious looking things on my desk with a note suggesting they might make a good blog post. Indeed. I've never seen them before and I never can resist finding out more about ...
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  • Early summer perennials

    It's been really hard for me and other people I've talked to not to lament that the summer is flying by. There just doesn't seem like there's going to be time to take it all in and enjoy it. But of course there's time. We have the whole summer ...
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  • Early summer annuals

    Today is the official start of summer (Happy Solstice!) but we have been celebrating the season for weeks now. Everybody around here calls it summer when sailboats fill the harbor and beaches start charging for parking, but we gardeners are also ...
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  • Rain delay

    This week we had every intention of planting another big batch of seed annuals in the Display Garden but the weather had other things in mind for us. It insisted that we take the time to really think about where we wanted to place everything: it ...
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  • Happy planting!

    It's game time here at Blithewold. Even though we've been planting steadily since ... March (!) the biggest push starts now that we're well past frost and are desperate to get everything moved out of the greenhouse. What we call "planting week" ...
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  • Feeling the pinch

    Despite knowing that pinching new growth makes plants branch into full and sturdy clumps that promise extra flowers, it can be one of the hardest things to do. Somehow it goes against the grain to nip healthy new growth and I just can't do it ...
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  • Euphor(b)ia

    For this mid-May Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, I'm going to postpone the usual list of all of the amazing things that are blooming suddenly all at once and go into euphoric raptures about a single fantastic genus ...
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  • Plants with promise

    When it's pouring rain outside, the greenhouse is definitely the best place to be. It's not exactly warm on a gray day and it's not completely dry either but it is full of summer's promise. Visitors can't help asking if the plants are for sale. It's ...
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