The Garden Scoop 2021

Two-spotted bumble bee on a spirea flower

Celebrate Pollinator Week by Growing Native Plants

This week, June 21-27, 2021, is National Pollinator’s Week, which is a time set aside by congress to honor and appreciate the amazing process of pollination. Governors in all 50 states have also acknowledged this special week by making their own proclamations to recognize pollinators in their...
Finish this story
wild parnsnip

The wild carrot family is full of harmful plants

The plant world is filled with amazing feats of both helpful and harmful attributes when you consider all the ways that humans interact with our floral friends. Everything from disease treatments or cures, to irritating rashes and seasonal allergies, or even highly toxic compounds all come...
Finish this story
‘Forest Pansy’ is a cultivar of our native redbud that offers unique purple foliage.

Adding purple shade trees to your landscape

The ornamental value of landscape trees can be weighed by a variety of attributes, from interesting bark in the wintertime or colorful blooms in spring to the character of leaves that persists during the growing season. However, the foliage that embellishes branches to create a summertime...
Finish this story

Preserve soil health with microorganisms

Soil microorganisms are an integral part of all ecosystems worldwide, but they often go unnoticed. These tiny pillars of the soil environment perform a variety of incredibly important ecosystem functions, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling. In addition, they also help to build...
Finish this story
Flowering herbs provide ornamental beauty to the edge of this pollinator garden

Grow herb gardens for more than the kitchen

The Garden Scoop
Herbs are a wonderful garden addition that provide easily accessible, fresh herbs for culinary use. However, I find that herbs are too often overlooked in most garden plans and can really provide a ton of ornamental and ecological benefits as well.  In general, herbs are pretty tough plants...
Finish this story
This year, periodical cicadas in Brood X will emerge across Indiana and a small, 4-county area of central Illinois.

17-Year Cicadas of Brood X

The Garden Scoop
Over the next few weeks, some of central Illinois will experience a rare phenomenon that only occurs every other decade.  As soil temperatures warm, millions of insects will emerge from the ground in forests, city parks, yards and gardens.  They will carefully navigate the terrain and...
Finish this story
Redbud is a fantastic spring-flowering tree offering the best floral display of any Illinois native tree.

The top four spring-flowering trees to plant

The Garden Scoop
Spring is a time of abundant blooms as well as one of the best times of year to establish new woody plants in your landscape. This year, consider adding one, or all, of my favorite Illinois native spring-flowering trees to your landscape, and you’ll enjoy spring floral displays for years to...
Finish this story
In order to sprout, stored seeds must maintain viability which is dependent on a variety of factors.

Seed Viability in Storage

Anyone who has gardened long enough likely has a pile of seed packets squirrelled away with intentions of using those seeds someday.  Many times, I keep seed packets in my collection because I just can’t stand to throw things away, especially seeds that may have some viability.  However,...
Finish this story

Spring Gardening Timeline

As spring continues to bring warming temperatures, home gardeners begin the tricky business of deciding when to plant what in their vegetable garden.  In the past week or so, I have started receiving questions from anxious gardeners ready to get the season started.  While there are some...
Finish this story
Forsythia is currently blooming across central Illinois with clusters of bright yellow flowers creating a dramatic display.

Forsythia in Spring

The Garden Scoop
Every spring, the awakening plant world has those hard-to-miss harbingers which alert us that winter is over and help to welcome spring.  In native plant communities, I think of spring ephemeral wildflowers as the primary signal and watch intently for their blooms each year.  However, in...
Finish this story
The ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea is a cultivar that was originally collected from a wild specimen in southern Illinois and remains one of the most popular in production today.

The 'Annabelle' Hydrangea

The ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea has been a mainstay of the ornamental shrub world since its release in the 1960’s.  This showy shrub is filled with beautiful snowball-like flowers that adorn its spindly branches each summer.  The blooms begin as pretty green puffs that turn white at maturity,...
Finish this story

Tread lightly as the hunt begins for morel mushrooms

Every spring, a group of enthusiastic woodland hunters frequent forests across Illinois in search of a mysterious and elusive fungi – the morel. Many are armed with years of practical knowledge and experience to inform the success of their hunt. Many, like me, simply get lucky by stumbling upon...
Finish this story

Hydrangea Care

Hydrangeas are one of the most popular landscape shrubs in the US.  They are known for their exquisite flowering display, with many offering a season of beautiful blooms that remain attractive into winter.  Beyond flowers, these amazing shrubs offer additional ornamental beauty from neat...
Finish this story
Standing dead stems are important overwintering habitat that should not be removed from the garden until insects emerge later in spring.

Spring Garden Cleanup

The Garden Scoop
This past week’s warmer weather has been an exhilarating blast of spring when contrasted with the icy, extreme cold just one week earlier.  The warmup has spurred many of us to get back out in the garden to start getting ready for spring.  While our landscape beds and gardens will be...
Finish this story
River birch is a native tree with excellent winter appeal from its beautiful, exfoliating bark.

River Birch

The snow-blanketed wintertime landscape often lacks the beauty we can recall from other times of the year when plants were in bloom or filled with wonderful green foliage.  It leaves both humans and wildlife searching for plant life that retains interest either in the form of ornamental beauty...
Finish this story
This young red maple could benefit from corrective pruning to establish a central leader that is free of competition from adjacent limbs.

Shade Tree Pruning

Wintertime offers few activities out in the garden, other than filling bird feeders and carefully watching dormant plants for any sign of awakening as spring nears.  However, winter dormancy is the ideal time to prune woody plants.  With trees and shrubs inactive in their winter slumber,...
Finish this story
Snake plant is a very common houseplant that is easy to care for making it an excellent plant gift for your Valentine this year.

Houseplants for Valentines

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, many of us are seeking floral gifts to express our affection for family, friends, and significant others.  While nothing beats the spectacular blooms and intricate arrangements that cut flowers offer, we all know their lifespan is limited. ...
Finish this story
Gymnosperms, like this Colorado blue spruce, are a group of nonflowering plants that emerged several hundred million years before flowering plants (angiosperms) entered the evolutionary history of the plant kingdom.

Angiosperms vs Gymnosperms

The plant kingdom has not always had the diversity we know today.  It has taken hundreds of millions of years of evolution to bring about the diverse, complex group of flowering plants known as angiosperms.  And for many millions of years prior to the emergence of angiosperms, the plant...
Finish this story

What's in a Name?

Plant names provide the botanical vocabulary we use to describe the plant world to each other.  They are important descriptors that facilitate both backyard gardening and scientific study by establishing a widely agreed upon naming convention of species.  In our current system of plant...
Finish this story