A few years ago I purchased my first Ligularia plant – Othello variety and put it into my hosta garden to give a bit of contrast to all the green. The location had dappled shade and the soil had a lot of compost. My plant loved it and thrived. It got huge and I particularly […]
Garden Notes
To Bee or Not to Bee
Years ago, when we lived in an upper flat in Milwaukee, I tried growing tomatoes on the upstairs deck located on the south side of the house. It seemed like the perfect place for tomatoes, sunny most of the day except for a little shade from the curbside tree. I had a wooden planter […]
Pollarding or Lollipop Trees
When we first moved into our new home, the neighborhood had a lot of stately old weeping willow trees. In fact our next-door neighbor’s willow sported a large tree house close to our lot line and we first thought it might on our property. I was a bit disappointed to find out that it belonged […]
Potato Going Rogue
I have been faithfully composting my kitchen scraps and a lot of the garden waste from our yard for a few years now. Usually, the contents in my compost bins just perk along and eventually look sort of like soil, at which time I remove the compost and distribute it around the yard. This harvesting […]
The Beauty of Cinnamon Ferns
In the home landscape, it is very common to find small fir trees. They are attractive, easy to care for and provide winter interest in the yard. However as these trees mature, the lower branches can lose a lot of their needles and become bare and unsightly. The obvious solution is to plant something underneath […]
Beating the Bullies — Lasagna Gardening
As a long time gardener, I have a love/hate relationship with plants that are too successful and in fact become weeds. I have a long list of those pests that start out so sweetly and in fact need a bit of help getting established. Then, when my back is turned they flip into pest mode […]