By Steffie Littlefield (This article was first published in The Gateway Gardener March 2007 issue.) This March or April, while you are admiring the color and excitement from your spring blooming bulbs, plan for more flowers and color all summer from lily, dahlia, cannas and gladioli bulbs. Nothing beats the opulent tropical look of the easiest bulb to grow, elephant
» Read moreWinter bullied its way back into spring today, but not before I could get out in the garden yesterday and document what I found blooming on a beautiful 70-degree spring morning. The hellebores (Lenten rose) and daffodils were dominating the show, but were joined by some other spring bulbs, woodland ephemerals and the dangling catkins of ‘Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick’.
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By Jerry Pence (This article was first published in the November/December 2005 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) When planning the landscape design around your home, consider the outdoor spaces as extensions of the indoors. In the backyard, patios and cooking areas might be extensions of a family room or kitchen. In the front of your home, a nice porch or
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By Jerry Pence (This article was first published in the March 2006 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) In the first article in this series, we did a break down of the front yard space as it pertains to landscape design. This month we will do the same thing with the backyard, remembering that the outdoor space can be looked at
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By Jerry Pence (This article was first published in the April 2006 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) Side yards have always been the areas of the yard that are least tended to and usually considered just a way to get between the front and back yards. For these reasons, those areas are generally left alone or maybe planted with a
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By Jerry Pence (This article was first published in the May 2006 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) The front yard is the showpiece to many landscapes. It is the part that faces the public and dresses up the front of your home. Curb appeal is a term often heard when speaking of the front yard space. One key factor to
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By Jerry Pence (This article was first published in the June 2006 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) When designing a landscape, the first step of the process is the gathering of information on the site. The second step is the conceptual stage, which we’ve been covering the last few articles. Figuring out what goes where and what is needed to
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By Jerry Pence (This article was first published in the July 2006 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) In the previous article in this series, I wrote about placing plants in your design according to their function in the landscape. With that done, now it’s time to look more closely at specific plant selections. There are some basic ways to select
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By Ellen Barredo (This article was first published in the March 2006 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) My first experience with Oxalis occurred on the 25-minute walk to ele- mentary school. The sidewalk I traveled passed by many big, beautiful houses sur- rounded by gardens of all descriptions. Although these gardens were full of blooming flowers, the lawns were typically
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By Steven Cline, Ph.D. (This article was first published in the March 2007 issue of The Gateway Gardener.) Regardless of the theory explaining our mild winters, the trend is pretty clear – it’s warming up on average. The data are now shown in the new plant hardiness map issued by the Arbor Day Foundation challenging the old USDA map with
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