Landscape Design

A pawpaw tree outside a brick building

How sunlight can change tree shape

The Garden Scoop
Several years ago, we had an extra pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) after all the plants were distributed at the East Central Illinois Master Naturalist’s Annual Native Tree and Shrub sale. Since this poor tree had no home, we decided to plant it outside one of the staff entrances at the...
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An evening primrose bush.

Discovering the Common Evening Primrose

The Garden Scoop
In recent weeks, I have noticed an unfamiliar yellow flower around central Illinois.  It seems to be everywhere I go from ditches and roadsides to local natural areas or even around public gardens.  With its prevalence along my routine travel paths, such as the I-72 or I-74 corridors, I’d...
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A picture of pink flowers in a garden

How many natives should I plant?

The Garden Scoop
Gardeners considering the wildlife or ecological value of their plant selections have a lot to consider these days.   New information is emerging constantly about the perceived or proven value our landscape plants may provide for wildlife.  While the field of restoration ecology has...
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Pink surprise lily flowers

Surprise lilies shock with late bloom

The Garden Scoop
When I try to think of plants that live up to their common name, surprise lily (Lycoris squamigera) tops the list.  In fact, this plant has quite a few common names that are equally fitting, including ghost lily, magic lily, resurrection flower, naked lily, and mystery lily, among...
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Tropical Milkweed with bees and a fly on it.

Tropical milkweed could threaten monarchs

The Garden Scoop
As interest in planting milkweed has grown among gardeners focused on supporting Monarch butterfly populations, many of us have been watching garden centers for milkweed plants.  This interest has sparked demand for easy-to-propagate milkweed species that can offer maximum garden beauty with a...
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Yellow flowers on a eastern prickly pear cactus

Prickly Pears bloom for pollinators

The Garden Scoop
I am always amazed at the diversity of native species our state hosts from top to bottom.  All in all, Illinois spans three USDA cold hardiness zones which illustrates the difference in climate from our northern counties to the southern confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.  In...
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A picture of two blooms of wild columbine

Using wild columbine at home

The Garden Scoop
During the flowering lull of late spring in my home gardens, I often admire the unique, dangling blooms of our native wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis).  This plant occurs in nearly every county of Illinois and its native range spans the Eastern US, from Florida and Texas to...
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redbud flower

Spring flowering trees and shrubs

The Garden Scoop
Signs of spring are beginning to pop up if you look close enough.  In the last week or so, I’ve noticed harbinger of spring (Erigenia bulbosa) and spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) in natural areas. The beginnings of Virginia bluebells can also be found as their...
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Prairie Establishment at ClarkLindsey

On a sunny and cold day in early February, some Urbana residents helped to spread handfuls of native prairie seed on the ground.  Using tools as simple as a paper cup or their bare hands, the seeds were broadcast into the air, falling silently to the ground.  As these seeds are exposed to...
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holly

Holly: A native holiday decoration

Flowers, Fruits, and Frass
Hollies are common landscape plants and even more common holiday decorations that belong to the incredibly diverse genus Ilex which contains over 400 species, both evergreen and deciduous, that hail from all corners of the globe.  A locally adapted holly species or cultivar is relatively easy...
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Prairie dropseed is shorter native grass that nicely accentuates the edge of garden beds or walkways.

Native Perennials with Winter Interest

The Garden Scoop
As fall progresses and most plants lose their leaves or retreat to their winter dormancy, portions of the landscape can appear bare and boring for winter.  Evergreens and woody plants are commonly considered the best specimens for winter interested, providing structure throughout the seasons...
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What Happened to my Dwarf Spruce Tree?

There are many oddities of the plant world that are hard to pass up without some questions.  Based on the perspective of the beholder, some of these strange phenomena may lead to either wonder or concern.  One plant that has fueled both questions of marvel and worry is the popular...
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White pine has beautiful color that is expressed in the yellow innermost needles this time of year.

Fall Color from Conifers

The beauty of fall is upon us with splashes of exorbitant color all around the landscape.  In the past week, red maples (Acer rubrum) have nearly reached their peak color for the season, displaying fire-red leaves that scream for attention.  The brilliant yellows of shagbark (...
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Right now, mums are available at local garden centers in a wide variety of colors.

Planting and Maintaining Perennial Mums

The Garden Scoop
Throughout the fall season, garden centers are filled with a beautiful selection of mums (short for chrysanthemums).   In the garden, mums provide a both a spectacular fall display and a late season nectar source for pollinating insects.  It is a wonderful time to plant these...
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False Indigo - A Native Shrub for the Home Landscape

Native plants are ever gaining popularity as gardeners seek specimens with high ecological value in support of declining insect pollinator populations.  Among the almost 2,300 plant species known to be native in Illinois, our native shrubs are often overlooked and underappreciated in the...
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Sedges for the Landscape

Noteworthy plants in natural areas can be the superstars of landscaping when gardeners learn to harness their natural tendencies and display their most virtuous attributes.  One group of plants that I have often underestimated are sedges (Carex spp.).  These tough native...
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Vegetable Gardening with Raised Beds

Vegetable Gardening with Raised Beds

The spring-like weather this past week has been phenomenal.  Although we may see a return to cooler weather since March is known to “come in like a lion”, it was certainly a sign of things to come.  I’m really looking forward to March’s exit as it “goes out like a lamb” and the 2022...
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monarch

New Research Assesses the Value of Urban Pollinator Gardens

In recent years, gardeners have become increasingly interested in maximizing the benefits their garden spaces can provide for pollinating insects.  We know that these important insect friends are struggling with declining populations reported by research from around the globe, which had put...
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Deicing

Deicing Salts and Plant Damage

While this winter has brought little ice and snow cover, this past weekend’s winter weather put a coating of ice on most smooth surfaces.  Gardeners, businesses, parks and others with landscaping near walkways must apply deicing salts for safety, but these products can harm plant life. ...
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Urban trees provide a variety of benefits which are going to be increasingly important as climate change impacts Illinois in coming years.

Climate Change Adaptations for the Urban Forest

Last month, the US Forest Service released a technical report titled, “Climate Adaptation Actions for Urban Forests and Human Health.”   The report includes a summation of the current research related to urban trees and climate change, looking at how trees benefit human health, how...
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‘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...
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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...
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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...
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Native butterfly milkweed is a favorite among gardens for its beautiful flowering display and high wildlife value, but native plants are a surprising minority of plant material available for purchase each year in the US.

Natives and Landscape Plant Selection

Native plants are becoming a larger part of our built environment each year as more and more gardeners begin to recognize their value. Natives support local ecosystems and wildlife habitat in ways that are increasingly important as our human footprint on the landscape grows.  From...
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Hand pollination of last year’s hosta flowers produced the seeds used to grow this tray of hosta seedlings. However, it will take a few more years for these plants to mature and truly express the traits gained from hybridization. Photo credit: Barb and Rick Schroeder

Hostas

Plants in the genus Hosta, collectively referred to as hostas, are one of the premier plants for ornamental gardens that lack full sun.  These resilient perennials are a mainstay of Midwestern shade gardens and remain popular in temperate regions worldwide. However, that wasn’t...
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These young prairie dropseed plants will mature into a nice sidewalk border of thin, feathery vegetation.

Landscaping with native grasses

Nothing beats the light and airy look of tall, distinctive grasses in a landscape arrangement. The fluffy seedheads and slender, and attractive stems practically dance in the wind on breezy days, adding texture as well as a structural element to any landscape bed.    For many years...
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burning bush

Burning Bush

This past week, the vivid red leaves of our native maples have really stolen the show, reaching near peak fall color for the year.  I have always loved the brilliant red colors of autumn leaves, making burning bush (Euyonomous alata) an old favorite of mine. However, in recent...
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Fall Color in Oaks

Fall color is beginning to paint tree canopies around central Illinois, making the next few weeks prime time for taking in the beauty.   Among our native trees, sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), red maple (Acer rubrum) and sugar maple (Acer saccharum)...
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Ornamental Brassicas

Fall annuals can breathe life into waning gardens late in the growing season, filling in among fading flowers to add beauty and interest.  Mums seem to be the quintessential fall annual, although perennial in our area if established early enough in the season, packing the garden centers with...
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Benefits of Urban Trees

Urban trees provide beauty and definition to our cities and most of us have a love and appreciation of these denizens of the boulevard and backyard.  In recent years, a body of research has emerged showing even greater benefits than previously understood to both the environment and our...
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Fall Tree Planting

Most folks think of spring as the ideal planting time for trees and shrubs.  However, fall offers a nice planting window with some added benefits over the spring season, making it my favorite time of year to establish woody plants. Fall weather can create ideal planting conditions, with...
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Daylilies

This time of year, daylilies are far from the center of attention in most landscapes.  The beautiful, vibrant flowers that adorn the scapes of most traditional varieties earlier in summer have long faded, leaving a much less interesting plant that very much resembles a clump of grass. As their...
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Poisonous Plants

How many times have you been kept up at night worrying about a poisonous plant?  Hopefully, for most of us the answer to that question will be ‘not many’.  For better or worse, humankind has not always had a well-defined separation from the plant world as we often see today.  With...
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Buttonbush

I always love it when a particular plant that I know from the natural world doubles as a landscape plant.  Not everything that is beautiful in nature can handle what we throw at it in human landscapes, some native plants are just too sensitive.  However, one old favorite of mine from...
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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,...
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Garden Storm Damage

Imagine spending years establishing and cultivating a beautiful landscape on your property, only for it to be destroyed in a heartbeat from a severe storm.  Couple that with a limb through your roof and you have a real disaster on your hands!  Who do you call?  What do you do about...
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2019 Vermilion County Master Gardener Garden Walk

June weather in Illinois is some of the best of the year. After our overly wet spring, I am sure most area gardeners are looking forward to sunny skies ahead and anxious to wrap any spring gardening plans that were delayed.  Sunny June skies will be a welcome addition to the 2019 Vermilion...
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Native Plants and Biodiversity

A startling report on global biodiversity was release by the United Nations this week noting an alarming trend in worldwide species extinction.  We, humans were pegged as the primary cause of an increase in extinction rates to the highest levels in human history.  Specifically, around 25...
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Osage Orange

In many communities there are iconic trees that nearly everyone recognizes and admires in passing during daily life.  The spreading, stately tree at the corner of University and Prospect Avenue in Champaign is certainly a historic and interesting specimen.  I cannot count the times that...
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Strategic Garden Plantings

Now that March has went out like a lamb, these warmer days we are really motivating me to get out into the garden and set things in motion for the 2019 growing season.  Right now is a perfect time to direct seed many of our cool-season vegetable crops, but don’t go too wild with planting or...
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Prescribed Burning

This past week, many folks around Champaign-Urbana and surrounding areas may have noticed plumes of white smoke gently rising in the distance or caught the scent of what seems to be the well-known smell of a campfire.  It is special time of year when a tiny window of time emerges for the...
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Daffodils

Nothing signals the coming of spring quite like a daffodil (Narcissus psuedonarcissus) in full bloom.  After winter slumber as bulbs beneath the ground, these tiny plants emerge very early in the year to put on a spectacular flowering display each spring.  These delightful...
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2019 Gardening Goals

Winter is an excellent time for reflection on the past year’s growing season and any gardening successes or failures to account for next year.  In this season of multitudes of seed catalog mailings, I have found it to be an ideal time to set gardening goals for the coming year during the down...
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Tree Bark

Winter time is somewhat of a downtime for deciduous trees.  After a growing season’s worth of beautiful foliage, culminating in the wonderful fall display of color, woody plants enter the long, cold season of dormancy that is part of their annual life.  For many of us, this is not a time...
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Climate Change and USDA Plant Hardiness Zones Part Three

The Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last fall in two volumes, containing information about how climate change is affecting the physical earth system across the US and a detailed assessment of how those changes now, and in the future, will impact our country.  The report...
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Fall Color in Native Grasses and Their Ornamental Uses

Most of us think of tree leaves when we think about beautiful fall foliage, but many ornamental grasses provide wonderful fall color that often extends well into the winter season.  Right now is an excellent time to observe these grasses in the landscape and consider how we might integrate...
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Douglas Discovery Garden

The Douglas Discovery Garden is an outstanding gem of Vermilion County and the Danville area.  It offers a wide variety of gardening applications for area residents to observe and learn from so they can apply these practices in their own gardens.  The beautiful space also has an...
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Garlic Planting

Garlic is a long-season, over-winter crop that does best when planted in the fall.  It can then be harvested in the early summer, which allows space for another summer crop.  This is rather unusual timing in the gardening world and it has always interested me for that reason. ...
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National Pollinator Week

Eleven years ago, the US Senate unanimously approved the designation of a week in June as National Pollinator Week, marking a huge step in recognizing both the value of our pollinators and the plight they have faced nationwide.  Governors in all 50 states have also recognized the same...
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2018 Garden Walk

Master Gardeners across Champaign, Ford, Iroquois and Vermilion Counties are planning a great line up of Garden Walks in the coming few weeks.  These events offer a wonderful opportunity to observe the diversity and individuality of garden spaces designed by a wide range of area gardeners....
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Pruning Spring Flowering Shrubs

Koreanspice viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) is one of the centerpiece landscape plants in my backyard, given its prime location at the corner of our screened-in porch and patio.   Last fall it delivered a stunning display as foliage turned every shade of yellow, orange and red to...
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Dividing Perennials in Spring

In the busyness of spring and planting all our annuals, such as flowers and vegetables, the perennials in our garden often get overlooked.  To keep perennial plants performing at their peak, it is necessary to divide them from time to time in order to maintain vigor and flowering.  As a...
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Gardening with Reptiles

If you are like me and your lizard brain apparently controls more of your actions than it should, then you can relate to a primal need to provide habitat for our reptilian friends.  Urban and developed landscapes can often be difficult places for reptile and amphibian populations to flourish...
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Vegetable Gardening in the Midwest

With last week’s Easter snow, it is hard to believe that the frost-free dates for our area are fast approaching.  Hopefully April will follow a more March-like tradition of “in like lion and out like a lamb”.  The “frost-free” date for the Champaign area is around April 15th, which is...
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Planting Potatoes

Potatoes are a cool season vegetable that are among the world’s food staples, ranking number four in the list behind rice, wheat and corn.  This native to the South American Andes was domesticated around 7,000 years ago.  Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers observed indigenous use of the...
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Gardening with Natives

Native plants are typically defined as vegetation growing wild in an undisturbed area at the time that scientific records began.  Specific climate, soils and other environmental factors, define a plants native range.  Our area is fortunate enough to have a large diversity of both prairie...
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Renovation of Allerton’s Triangle Parterre Garden

If you have not visited the formal gardens at Allerton Park and Retreat Center, near Monticello, I strongly recommend making the trip.  These spectacular gardens combine exquisite landscape design with sculptures from around the globe to create a flowing transition from Robert Allerton’s...
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Keyhole Gardens

In recent years, a new gardening phenomenon has gained popularity in the US, but it gets its roots abroad.  Keyhole gardening is a technique that was developed in Africa, for use in dry, arid climates with low soil fertility.  It has proven to be such an effective, sustainable method of...
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