Garden Design

Much like the United States Postal Service, these plants will not let rain, nor sleet, nor driving snow stop them from pulling through the worst winter weather imaginable.  It can be hard to find plants that will look two months of drying winds in the eyes and laugh—or sit in a frozen puddle for 4

Twenty years ago, I began to create a long flower border against an old stone wall that runs along the west side of our 1760s Cape Cod–style house. Big skies, expansive views, and lots of sun made this the perfect location for a long bed filled with perennials. Over time I widened the border, adding

Coppicing is an age-old practice in which a tree or shrub is cut to the ground or almost to the ground. This severe cutback stimulates the root system to produce abundant new growth, which often has larger, more colorful foliage. Coppicing is a useful method for controlling a tree or shrub’s size and shape, but

My name is Ryan Harvey, and I have been gardening with my wife, Kristin, and our Yorkie, Emmitt, for eight years in Austin, Texas, Zone 8b. We focus mainly on edibles, perennials, native plants, and enjoying views of the garden and wildlife. It all began with one garden bed in the midst of dying grass,

Today’s photos are from Lesley Golenor. For the past 10 years, since I started gardening, growing flowers from seed has been my passion. I love experimenting with different varieties, colors, and texture combinations. Lately I’ve been growing a lot more for drying purposes. Who doesn’t want flowers in their home and to share all year

It has been a while since we visited the beautiful Puerto Rican garden of Antigonum Cajan (Filling a Small Garden With Diversity). Today we are looking at some more images of this small garden space that is packed with incredible biodiversity. One of the secrets to making the most of a small garden space is

Hi GPODers, This is your editor, Joseph. GPOD submissions are very slow this time of year, with most of us settling in to wait out the winter, so I’m taking a moment today to share some of my favorite white flowers. White flowers are versatile in the garden, going with every other color and looking

Keukenhof is an iconic park in Lisse, the Netherlands. It sits in the heart of the bulb-growing region and is an over-the-top showcase of the region’s most famous export. These are photos from a trip I, Joseph, took to this incredible park back in 2008. These are the sights you’ll pass on the way to

Meadow gardens have been a long-lasting gardening “trend” that many have rushed to embrace. But most spaces can look more wild than curated. This garden, owned by Jay Sifford, an award-wining designer from North Carolina, shows how a landscape can encompass all the good attributes of a meadow garden (pollinator friendly, native plant inclusion, low-impact

Intro and Section 1: February 22, 2023 Getting Started—Learn to See Like a Designer. Explore sources of inspiration, identify what you want to change and why, learn how to understand your site conditions, and address the site’s function and flow.   Section 2: March 1, 2023 Design Principles, Tips, and Tricks: Explore principles of design

Today’s photos are from Claudia Meyer. I am living in a new condo on the opposite side of a park in southeastern Wisconsin. We have a berm that the builder allowed to grow wild, and so we worked on ridding the hillside of invasive plants and put in a redbud (Cercis canadensis, Zones 5–9) and

Today we’re visiting with Matthew Kunnari, who gardens in chilly Zone 4 in northern Minneapolis. Grass flowers are wind pollinated, so they lack the showy large petals of those that need to attract insect or bird pollinators. They are still beautiful, however. These big bluestem flowers (Andropogon gerardii, Zones 4–9) clearly show the dangling anthers

We’re traveling with Cherry Ong today, going through time as well as in space to visit the bog garden at Hatley Castle. The castle is a historic site in Victoria, British Columbia, surrounded by beautiful gardens. The areas around natural lakes and ponds are often great sites for bog gardens. And if you are building

The winter blues have certainly set in around here. But thankfully we have a few plants outside that seemed to have saved their best for last. Today Carol and Danielle are talking about Winter Stunners—trees, shrubs, and even a subshrub that look so gorgeous in January and February, you’ll forget that technically it’s the “off-season.”

January is a good time to look back at other times in the garden, and today, with the winter cold and snow all around, I thought I’d take a look at my favorite hot flowers—reds, oranges, yellows, fun colors to liven up the garden. Coreopsis auriculata (Zones 4–9) is called the mouse-ear coreopsis for the small,

Today’s photos are from Wiley Bennett in Charlotte, North Carolina. Shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia, Zones 4–8) is a beautiful and not too commonly grown native wildflower. Tiarella cordifolia (Zones 4–9) is another native, found in moist woodland sites around the eastern part of North America. Phacelia bipinnatifida, a biennial wildflower that is native to woodlands around

Hi, I’m Tracy Sundby—mom, wife, homemaker, and avant gardener extraordinaire in Stanwood, Washington. These last two years have brought a profound awakening to my soul. I became a mother, battled melanoma, and lost my job of 16 years. My mental health was struggling, and working the land was the cure. I worked tirelessly in the

Today’s photos are from Bas Suharto and were taken on a trip to Indonesia. (For photos of Bas’s beautiful front garden, check out Parterre Garden in Ottawa) I stayed a few days at a pilla (villa) in the village called Radjagaluh, located in West Java, Indonesia. It was the rainy season in December, and the

Today we’re going back to June with Carla Zambelli Mudry, looking at some photos from hydrangea season in her garden in Malvern, Pennsylvania. I have a deep love for hydrangeas. I rediscovered them as an adult visiting the Hamptons in New York. They are an integral part of the summer landscape up there and are

My name is Andy Schenck, and I garden in Malvern, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia) in Zone 6B/7 (depending on the winter). My garden is called Look Again Garden (named by my friend David Culp). It is a collector’s garden full of “drifts of one.” Winter is an amazing time for the conifers and broadleaf

Today we’re in Portland, Oregon, visiting Jim Rondone’s beautiful garden: White western redbud, (Cercis occidentalis ‘Alba’, Zone 6 – 9). While the more widely planted eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis, Zone 5 – 9) is native to the eastern half of North America, the western redbud is a similar species native to Utah, Arizona, and Nevada.

Today we’re in northeastern Pennsylvania visiting with Scott: Growing up I had very little exposure to gardening, aside from my annual 2-3 week vacation to my fathers in southern Mississippi, where he had a small produce farm. For the past few years I’ve dabbled with putting a store bought tomato and/or pepper plant in my

Today’s photos are from Nancy Ondra. Hayefield, my homestead in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, began over 20 years ago, when I built a log cabin on a minimally managed hayfield on our family farm. I slowly created the gardens, which now fill about an acre, and let about two acres go back to meadow. The remaining

We’re visiting with Chad and Seyra Hammond in Woodbury, Connecticut, today. We stopped by their beautiful garden last week (Chad and Seyra’s Garden), and I’m happy to be back there today. They love growing and collecting unusual plants, and the result is a beautiful and fascinating garden. We started water gardening after the koi pond

Today Cherry Ong in British Columbia is sharing some of her amaryllis (Hippeastrum hybrids, Zones 8–10 or as houseplants) from last winter. This is perfect inspiration for buying some to enjoy yourself in the coming months. Here are some of the results of my procrastination gardening last winter. I always forget to dry them in

Container gardening is perfect for anyone confined to a balcony or deck and is also a wonderful way to add color, dimension, and versatility to any landscape, large or small. We all know that a well-planted, well-placed container can make an outstanding garden accent or dress up patios, decks, entryways, and windowsills to perfection. There’s

Today we’re visiting with Alice Fleurkens. We live one and half hours from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, so we decided to drive down there on a Sunday afternoon to check out the Christmas lights and the greenhouses. What a treat that was! I am just guessing that they have over a million Christmas

Greetings from a North Georgia Zone 7 garden. I’m Bonnie Plikaytis. After looking through my 2022 garden photos, I selected a few to share. Hope you enjoy them! Edgeworthia chrysantha (Zones 7–10), commonly known as paperbush, blooms from late February to early April before its new leaves emerge. The creamy white-and-yellow fragrant flowers are a welcome

Flowers and foliage get most of the fanfare, but a plant with eye-catching seed heads will add interest for weeks or even months after its bloom time is over. The textures and shapes of these seed-bearing structures are delightfully diverse, ranging from alliums’ showy starbursts to plump peony pods and the feathery tassels of clematis.

When I first moved to Colorado, I learned the hard way about the need to winterize my irrigation system. Never having had a system, I had no idea how it worked or of the maintenance it required. Several hundred dollars later, after the backflow preventer had frozen, I learned my lesson. How to shut off