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Winter Charmer

I love flowering shrubs and often recommend them to fellow gardeners who want lots of color and blossoms with less work. Right now, though, I am especially appreciative of a tried and true shrub whose flowers are insignificant--variegated euonymus. The variegated euonymus in my yard came with the house...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 02-09-2008
First Day of Spring

We are only one month into winter and it's snowing outside, but in my household this is the first day of spring. Why? Because I suddenly feel the urge to plant, organize, repot and get set for the growing season. Yesterday at the garden center I saw pansy seeds. I can't resist pansies, violas...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 01-22-2008
Orchids

Call me Orchid Killer. Several years ago, a friend gave me a beautiful white phalaenopsis, sometimes known as a "moth orchid". It thrived in my dining room and even rebloomed the second year. Then a combination of circumstances killed it off. It wasn't entirely my fault--a home construction...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 01-21-2008
Spring Stirrings

Today I went outside to check on my winter blooming jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum). This plant, which is nothing more than an annoying tangle of long, thin branches much of the year, is often the first or second plant to bloom in my garden. Like forsythia and some other early spring shrubs, it is also...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 01-19-2008
Camellias

There are some plants that I love--ornamental sweet peas are chief among them--that I simply can't grow. Usually the problem is climate, and as long as I live in New Jersey I'll have the same problem with the same plants. For the longest time camellias have been on my list of "lovely, but...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 01-08-2008
Hellebores

The late garden writer Cassandra Danz, aka "Mrs. Greenthumbs," once wrote that all daylilies look orange from six feet away. My college-age daughter says something similar about hellebores. In her opinion all hellebore flowers look green from two feet away. Both Ms. Danz and my daughter have...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 12-28-2007
Too Much To Do

I look around at my green menagerie and suddenly I feel like a gardener in springtime--very busy. There is so much to do and the holidays are coming on fast. I am surrounded by plants that need attention and the hours seem to be going by at twice their normal speed. The coleus cuttings that I clipped...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 12-07-2007
Topiary Everywhere

I see topiary everywhere I go. Last weekend I went to the highest of high end boutique nurseries and saw more topiaries than I could count (and none that I could afford). Earlier today I went to my middlebrow local garden center and saw more of them. I have seen little eight-inch tall minis and two-foot...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 12-05-2007
Seasonal Change

The equinox has not arrived yet, but today I felt seasonal change as I finished fall chores and started on winter ones. We had snow on the ground yesterday, so bulb-planting season is officially over. There were a few assorted spring-flowering bulbs lying forgotten in the garage, so I gathered them together...

Posted to Growing Wise (Weblog) by Elisabeth on 12-03-2007

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