Garden Design

Today we’re visiting with Valerie Miller. I am an artist and newish gardener. Three years ago I was a work-from-home artist and homeschool mom with three little boys (one, four, and seven years old) who spent more time crying than probably anything else. I felt trapped and guilty because I had beautiful healthy children I

My name is Hannah, and I garden in Zone 4, in southeastern Minnesota. I have a full-sun garden that I started in 2017 when we built our home on our 30-acre farm. I love starting all my annuals and most of my perennials from seed in our free house. It saves money and allows me

Today we’re featuring an urban garden in New York City. My husband, Ian, and I (Kathy) live in a small house on a 100-foot by 25-foot lot in Queens, New York. Although we’d composted for years, we never gardened until 2020 when I left my corporate job. Ian’s mother and grandmother grew up in our

Brilliant wildflower displays are legendary in much of the Southwest, but they don’t occur every year. In fact, a widespread display only happens about once every ten years or so. Growing to maturity from tiny seeds in the harsh conditions of the desert is a challenge for wildflowers, so the displays are typically more localized,

Raise your hand if seasonal affective disorder has set in for you. Yep, us too. Because the skies are grey and the landscape is mostly brown in many areas of the country, we decided that today’s episode would be geared towards offering a glimmer of hope. We’re talking about plants that put on a show

Hello, this is Cindy Strickland. I wanted to share a few scenes from an October 2017 trip I took to the area around Sydney, Australia. I enjoyed walking in and around the historic Vaucluse House and its garden. This is the fountain garden at the Vaucluse House. And here is the enclosed cool and shaded

Anna Tsai in Bayside, Wisconsin, is welcoming us into her garden today. The backyard was only some overgrown bushes and hostas when we moved in 24 years ago. I opened up flower beds, worked on the soil, and then started planting different plants that grow well in wet and shady areas. l also replaced the

Today we’re visiting Robin Hess’s garden. I set out to try and find some winter interest in my New Hampshire garden. There isn’t any vibrant color here in January, but we had snow a few days ago and I thought some close-ups might inspire gardeners to look for the winter beauty in their gardens. An

Today’s photos are from Nicki Snoblin in Lake Bluff, Illinois. Since there’s not much going on outside right now, I thought I’d share some indoor photos. To keep away the winter blahs, I like to have as much color and variety as possible in my indoor plants. Cats are #1 in our house (after the

Finding interesting plants for shade can be a struggle, but when you add in the desire for that plant to be a woody shrub, the list narrows even more. But these structural wonders are essential in giving our shady beds and borders depth and real presence. Whether you’re looking for colorful foliage, fabulous flowers, or

Today’s photos are from Lynette Rodriguez. My husband and I garden professionally in northern Illinois, Zone 5b. Together we have more than 60 years of gardening experience ranging from general maintenance to private estate management. The photos I am submitting today were all taken at one of the properties we maintain. Generally, the perennial gardens

Today we’re in Canton, Massachusetts, visiting with Jana Trusz. Looking back at my garden during 2022, I have many lessons to learn. The drought was incredibly difficult and made me reevaluate what was in my garden, what survived and what didn’t, and how I will move forward. First, I will be installing a drip-irrigation system

Today’s photos are from Hugh Locke. As cell-phone cameras have gotten better, I have been using mine to capture close-up images of the flowers in my garden in Westchester, New York (Zone 6b). My goal has been to focus on details like petals, stamens, and pistils rather than flower portraits. The folds, shading, and edges

Today we’re visiting with Mary Maud Huber. Fourteen years ago when we moved to Fairfield Bay in north-central Arkansas, I wanted a plot in the Community Garden. The town is lushly forested in the Ozarks, and shade is a challenge for any kind of gardening, especially sun-loving vegetables. I really wanted to use sustainable organic

My name is Pam Alvord. In 2019 I submitted photos of our North Carolina garden in Zone 7B (Learning From Gardening in Different Climates). I explained that I have gardened and lived in many states and climates around the country. Two years ago, my husband and I moved to south-central Montana (Zone 4b) to retire

Sallie Boge is sharing her garden with us today. We garden in Riverside, a nearby suburb of Chicago (Zone 5a–6b). In April 2020 we constructed two new 11×16 garden beds in order to reduce our Kentucky bluegrass lawn and to add more plants for beneficial pollinators.  My husband, Mark, used a straight-edge spade to cut

For many gardeners, sharing a love of plants with family and friends adds another layer of enjoyment to a very fulfilling pastime. In this episode, Danielle, Carol, and expert guest Catharine Cooke explore plants that have special meaning or associations with their loved ones. Whether it is a dogwood that provides seedlings to share with

Carla Z Mudry is sharing her garden with us today. I know it sounds crazy, but you actually can garden in January! I have this giant Japanese maple we inherited with the property in the front. I love Japanese maples, perhaps a little too much, and I go out of my way to take care

Learn what plants were used in the long border in the article How to Make Changes to a Mature Garden: “It was a difficult decision, but last spring I took down some of the largest trees with the hope of getting my full-sun border back and bringing plantings back into scale. Although each tree left

While folks on the West Coast probably hear quite a bit about sudden oak death, it is an important plant disease that everyone should have on their radar. Sudden oak death (SOD) is caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. As the name implies, oak species (Quercus spp. and Notholithocarpus spp.) seem to be the

We shared our garden before (Sustainable Gardening in LA), and now we would like to share photos of some white flowers in our yard. Grandma planted this sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima, annual) as a ground cover. Here’s how it looked in 2009.  Burgundy plum (Prunus salicina, Zones 5–8) flower Almond (Prunus dulcis, Zones 7–9) flowers

We’re visiting award-winning garden designer Jay Sifford’s home garden today. We’ve visited it before in other seasons, but today he’s sharing how it looks in winter. I designed my garden called Rhodwood, which is nestled in a North Carolina mountain valley, during the COVID epidemic. Frankly, it was invaluable in helping me through that period

Radiator plants (Peperomia spp. and cvs., Zones 10–12) are beautiful and sturdy plants with overwhelming variety. While their flowers— like those of many houseplants—aren’t much to write home about, their foliage provides seemingly endless options in color, texture, and habit. Radiator plants can be green, variegated, or colorful; glossy or matte; fuzzy or smooth; and

Today’s offering is from Bill Marvin, a landscape designer living in Skokie, Illinois. My background is graphic design, and I don’t consider myself a master gardener. I think I’ve just scratched the surface of what there is to know about plants. The landscaping for my yard was never designed. It just evolved over 25 years

Hi. I am Barb Mrgich, a Master Gardener from Adams County, Pennsylvania. I have gardened on the same land in Zone 6B for 34 years. For the past 10 years, I have been slowly adding more and more native plants to the point where I now prefer to think of my property more as a

Today’s photos are from Mary in Ontario. We built our home in 2008. Our gardens have evolved over the years. The perennial garden is fun to watch go from flat to full and lush. In the winter there is 3 to 6 feet of snow on it. We love the fall color from the maple

Today we’re visiting with Laura Pisko and her lake-house garden on the east shore of Lake Huron in Ontario. For 10 years I have been developing a pollinator garden in Zone 5. It’s an experiment, amd I have been introducing many native plants. It’s also a monarch butterfly waystation, as it is on the migratory

Today Gail Bromer is sharing a method to brighten up the winter months. I started to collect orchids 30 years ago and still have several plants from those early years. I am a survival-of-the-fittest collector and don’t know most of their names, but I love to have their color, particularly during winter. Various orchids bloom

The editors here at Fine Gardening are not “just” editors. To say that they wear many hats might be the understatement of the century. They are, in my humble opinion, better stage managers than you’d find on Broadway. You often don’t see their names tied to any particular article, and so you might assume that

Today Joe is sharing his former garden with us. This was the garden I made over a decade ago at the first house I ever owned, in central Michigan. This is how it started—not much there, and the house needed a lot of work too. It was fun starting with a blank slate, but so