Poinsettias are the quintessential festive houseplant! And with Christmas now just 10 days away, this is December's Houseplant of the Month. Grab a poinsettia from your favorite garden center and enjoy! The traditional scarlet red variety may be the first to come to mind, but did you know that they...

Valentine's Day may just well be one of my favorite times of year. Probably because I'm a floral designer and horticulturist and anytime flowers or plants are the focus of a holiday, I'm ecstatic! It's the busiest time of year for florists across the country. They are busy designing thousands and...

While on a walk around my neighborhood this past week, I noticed some lovely large Catalpa trees in bloom. Likely the trees growing in my neighborhood were the Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa), but the other Catalpa species in Illinois is the Southern...

Here in the northwestern corner of Illinois, we got about 15 inches of snow this past weekend. This amount of snow definitely causes some road and travel problems, but what does that much snow mean for trees and shrubs? It means there is a lot of weight on the branches! Especially this particular...

Did you miss out on one of our in person Winter Container Garden Workshops? Don't fret! We've got a video for that! I demonstrate how to make an eye-catching winter evergreen container in this Youtube video....

This week's plant is the Purple-leaf Sand Cherry (Prunus x cistena). This lovely shrub is blooming now in my front yard. This upright deciduous shrub typically grows 6-10’ tall and 5-8’ wide, but can also be trained as a small tree. Its most noted feature is...

If you are lucky enough to have a neighbor with a large maple tree, you are probably in the same boat as myself right now. Maple seeds that are germinating everywhere!  My particular neighbor has a large silver maple tree that rains helicopters (samaras) all over my yard. Don't worry, I pay...

Last weekend I had the privelege of visiting a friend in Washington D.C and it just so happens to have been the same time that the cherry trees were blooming! It was a beautiful site. This week's plant of the week has to be Cherry Trees (Prunus sp.) of course then!...

It seems to be the season for odd oak galls. I've had several questions come into the office and while prepping for a fall tree walk this past week, I discovered many oak galls. Galls can be defined as irregular plant growths which are stimulated by the reaction between plant hormones and powerful...

This week's Plant of the Week is Love in a Mist (Nigella damascena), a great blue flowered addition to the landscape. As gardeners know, blue is not a common color in flowers, so this flowering annual is a great choice. Love in a mist can be easily grown in...

This summer I devoted an entire raised bed to growing dahlias and it's been lovely! Dahlias (Dahlia sp.) are an excellent cut flower which is why I love to grow them. Flower colors are various and foliage colors can be shades of green, but some varieties have darker foliages which...

This week's plant of the week is one of my favorite flowers, the Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteata). As a florist, I've come to appreciate flowers that hold up really well as a cut flower, as well as a dried flower, and strawflower is great in both categories. It...

It looks like we'll be getting a frost here in Northern Illinois on Friday, so it's time that those last houseplants make their way indoors. But this question comes up every fall: How can I bring my houseplants in from outside without bringing in spiders or other insects with it?   Well...

This past weekend I was overcome with zone envy while visiting Los Angeles on vacation. Neighborhoods were abloom with trees full of stunning bluish purple flowers. After some google research, I identified the trees as Jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia). While beautiful on the west coast,...

This week's Plant of the Week caught my attention in an herb garden while visiting the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix a few weeks ago. The way the flowers were circling the stem was very intriguing. Upon inspection I realized that the perennial was Jerusalem Sage (...

I discovered this week's Plant of the Week while checking out the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin last week during a conference. I had seen this plant several places around town and finally found one with a sign that I could identify...

I've noticed several cases of White Mold (Sclerotinia sp.) over the past few days. While at a field day last week, I noted several different annual flowering plants dying as a result of this fungus. And another email today concerning green beans looked like a similar problem. This...

This week's Plant of the Week is Beardstongue (Penstemon digitalis). I've noticed many beautiful Beardstongues blooming in landscapes this past week. Several species of Beardstongues can be found in the garden, but Penstemon digitalis is a pretty solid...

Reading through my weekly Perennial Pulse newsletter written by Paul Pilon, I came across a great little article about incorporating some edible perennials into the landscape this year. We think of perennials as...

This week's plant of the week is Bergenia (Bergenia cordifolia). I love Bergenia for multiple reasons, but mostly because another of it's common name is Pigsqueak. How cute is that! The name comes from the fact that the leaves are very glossy and...