Garden Design

Today’s photos are from Dede Lifgren. Welcome to my garden in Brewster, New York (Zone 6a). I am an artist and garden lover. Much of my artwork centers around my garden. Or is it the other way around? Either way, I love to take full advantage of both! My pineapple columns and some potted impatiens

Although summer is a great and botanically bountiful season, fall is always a much-welcome time of year—especially after the heat of summer. I love living in the Northwest. The extremes in the seasons make the gardening year so diverse and exciting. I particularly love the fall when cooler nights and days trigger a wonderful palette

Nancy Kressin designs containers in Boston and is sharing some of them with us today. I first learned the term “shopping in my garden” from the writer and podcast host Margaret Roach. As I planted my pots this year, in an effort to fill them without going bankrupt, I went shopping at my local garden

It shouldn’t be a surprise that many of our perennial borders in the Northeast become less exciting in late summer and fall; after all, most of us only buy perennials in spring, and often when they are in bud or in bloom. This can leave color gaps that can start showing up in August and

Just when the heat and dryness of a Southwestern summer are starting to get to you, fall brings some respite. The plus side of living in such a warm region is that we have a multitude of plants that look good at every time of the year. The following are some of my favorite shrubs

Southern California seems to be one of those areas that’s feeling the impact of drought more critically than many other parts of the country. Yet as autumn begins, there is still the need for traditional harvesting, planting, and garden cleanup. But more than that, the coming winter months will determine next year’s water supply, the

Earlier this year I highlighted some of my favorite ground-cover sedums. But I can’t ignore the taller, upright sedums, or stonecrops, which are extremely showy in fall. Upright sedums are low maintenance, have minimal disease and pest problems, bloom from late summer into fall, and are beloved by bees (many of which were buzzing all

Your garden designs are put to the test throughout the growing season. Even when you are in the thick of the midseason rush, it is worth taking time to assess what is working and what is not. If you find a lot to fix, rest assured that even the best gardens must be edited. You’ll

As fall swiftly approaches in the Pacific Northwest I start to look forward to harvesting pumpkins. In my area there are several places to purchase pumpkins for fall eating and decorating. The cost of designer pumpkins, like white ghost pumpkins and flattened Cinderella or fairytale pumpkins, has gone up over the years. So growing them

Soil composition plays a critical role in the success of any garden. Plants respond to a variety of factors, with soil structure being one of the most important. Few of us are blessed with the well-drained, moist, loamy soil that most plants prefer. Instead, we might have clay soil, which does not drain well and

This week we’re on the road with Cherry Ong again, looking back at some gardens she got to visit on a garden tour organized by the Toronto Botanical Garden. Today is another beautiful private home garden, full of great ideas worth stealing for your own garden. At the heart of the back garden is a

While cool nights and diminishing daylight in fall triggers putting our gardens to bed at the forefront of our minds, don’t forget that this is the time to consider enlivening the spring garden with fall-planted bulbs. Our local garden centers and nurseries carry a wide range of beautiful and hardy bulbs for fall installation (as

Late summer through autumn, millions of birds pass through the Southern Plains on their migration to southern wintering grounds. Birds follow four main paths as they migrate. The Southern Plains Region lies at the heart of the largest of these, the Central Flyway. Roughly half of North America’s migratory waterfowl use the Central Flyway, as

In an episode of Fine Gardening‘s podcast, Let’s Argue About Plants, the hosts discuss the importance of evergreen plants, and the particular perks of broadleaf evergreens: “The key to any successful four-season garden is evergreens. Conifers are great, but they can be pricey and slow to bulk up. Broadleaf evergreens, on the other hand, bulk up

I am fascinated with deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara, Zones 6b–8). It is perhaps one of the most graceful of all evergreens we can grow. Deodar cedar is hardy to 6b and is one of the four known true cedars. Deodar cedar’s native range This tree can be found growing in the cool, moist slopes of

Sedums are easy to care for. They tend to grow naturally in cool, rocky areas, so well-drained soil is ideal. They also grow in open and exposed situations, which means full sun in the garden. In fact, many sedums have become the plants of choice for green roofs. I rarely recommend irrigating or fertilizing sedums

If you fell in love with Stacie Crooks’ border in the article Designing a Beautiful Back Border from Issue #208 of Fine Gardening Magazine, you are not alone—so did we. The way that she has hidden the fence with a carefully curated plant palette is absolutely stunning. Want to know which plants she used? Here

In the article 3 Steps to Get a Garden that Fills In Fast (Fine Gardening issue #208), garden designer Adam Woodruff took readers through the steps he used to get a landscape that looked 10 years old in just three quick years. Adam used a matrix approach when selecting the plants that would fill his

Tradescantias (Tradescantia spp. and cvs., Zones 4–12) are easy-care houseplants with cascading, colorful foliage. Apart from the ubiquitous zebra tradescantia (T. zebrina, Zones 8–12), which is beloved for its purple-and-silver leaves, there are dozens of species and varieties of tradescantia that are perfect for growing as houseplants, many with spectacular variegation. And under ideal conditions,

Today’s photos are from Deagmund Robinson, a gardener and photographer in Atlanta who has combined a love of flowers and photography skills to capture plants in beautiful and unusual ways. This dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) ended up being one of the prettiest shots I’ve taken. I’m a believer that even a weed can be a beautiful

Looking to add a surprising sea of pale pink color to your spring garden? This lovely grape hyacinth, with its small, charming heads of the lightest pink, will help you do just that. While we usually think of this species as ranging in shades from a dark cobalt to sky blue to white, ‘Pink Sunrise’

Today’s photos are from Lee Ann McAlpine, who is looking at her Ohio garden this year and determining what worked and what didn’t. My husband and I moved to our 90-year-old house two years ago. I’m having lots of fun restoring the garden and learning what works best in my semi-wooded backyard. I thought I’d

Today we’re in northeastern Ohio visiting with Criss. We’ve visited Criss before (Criss’s Ohio Garden), and it is always a pleasure to return to this beautiful garden. A planting in the east yard of the garden includes roses in front of a dappled willow (Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’, Zones 5–7). In the back of the

We’re visiting with Virginia Sherry today. A lifelong gardener, I am the founder of the nonprofit Native Plant Society of Staten Island (in 2019). As summer draws to a close, I treasure what is still blooming in my landscape. Most but not all of the species are native to eastern North America. Many people dismiss

Today we’re in Youngstown, Ohio, visiting the Fellows Riverside Gardens, a beautiful spot that is gorgeous, extensive, and completely free to all visitors thanks to a dedicated group of donors, staff, and volunteers. There are impressive formal garden plantings, with geometric stonework, perfectly clipped hedges, and exuberantly colorful annuals, all guiding the eye on to

On a north-facing hillside in Norwich, Vermont, is an unexpectedly gorgeous and sophisticated landscape—the home garden of designer Bill Noble and his husband, Jim Tatum. This unique landscape was built and tended over the past three decades with the assistance of horticulturist Susan Howard. The garden itself is mostly hidden from the road behind a

For many people, the mention of hardy sedums initially brings to mind classic Autumn Joy sedum (Sedum ‘Herbstfreude’, syn. S. ‘Autumn Joy’, Zones 3–9) with its soothing green, fleshy foliage on upright stems topped with pinkish bronze flowers. But once you jump down the sedum rabbit hole, there appears to be no end to the

We’ve been in Carla Zambelli’s garden in Malvern, Pennsylvania, before (see High Spring in Carla’s Garden), and today she’s sharing how it looks in September. September is here. It has been a crazy summer, one full of excessive heat and drought. It has tested both me and my garden, and I believe it’s a portent

Today we’re in Sweaburg, Ontario, visiting with Alice Fleurkens. We’ve been to her beautiful garden a couple times before (see Alice’s Front Garden in Canada), and it is always a pleasure to visit. It has been a difficult year to keep the garden looking nice, even though I enjoy it as much as ever. It

My name is Paul Brothe, and I live and garden in Newburgh, New York. (See a previous visit to this garden.) In 2020, I cleared an overgrown part of my yard to establish a woodland garden. I removed invasive plants, chiefly Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), and branches and fallen trees that had accumulated over many