Nature Hills Gardening Community

The term evergreen is a catch-all word for a plant, tree, shrub, groundcover, vine or perennial that retains its foliage year around. Most often evergreen is used to label a tree or a shrub. The term semi-evergreen is also used to describe a plant that looses their leaves in the winter in cold areas and keeps their leaves all year in warmer climates...

It's almost fall, and fall is prime time for Japanese maples (Acer palmatum). Somehow the combination of brilliant fall color, swathes of deeply dissected leaves and the lovely, soft shapes of the trees add up to a wondrous whole that can be magical in the garden. One of the best things about Japanese maples is that you don't have to have a...

If you are like me and have trouble waiting for the snow to melt and the flower bulbs to begin poking their heads up then this is the one for you. The Apricot Beauty, Tulipa single early 'Apricot Beauty', is a fall bulb that will start your garden out in early spring with fragrant light peach colored flowers. If you are not familiar with Single...

All over the country, people are cultivating butterfly gardens. This is a great thing because butterflies are threatened from all sides. Habitat destruction, pollution and pesticides have all played a role in the reduction in the butterfly population. But once you have your butterfly garden, what do you do (aside from weeding)? It is great fun and a...

Lately as I've been weeding the garden, I've noticed many self-sown seedlings, especially foxgloves, larkspur, perilla and even rose of Sharon. When I was a novice gardener, I never grubbed out unwanted seedlings, because I was afraid that if I did so I would somehow jinx all my gardening efforts. After all, what are self-sown plants if not...

We just had a surprise in our landscape this August. We moved into a home that is over 100 years old. The original owners had done lots of landscaping although after they passed away and new owners took over, it was and still is quite an overgrown area. We have had lots of surprises of plants that have come up that we often wonder, how they got there...