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Flowers

Yellow, orange, white and pink flowers

Extend the vase life of your fresh flowers with a little care

The delicate act of arranging fresh flowers is a joyful art. Each bloom and sprig of foliage receives special consideration when creating an arrangement as beautiful and unique as the recipient. Local florists are already hastily preparing arrangements for the upcoming Valentine’s Day rush. Aside...
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Pot of flowers on a windowsill

Plant a rainbow of color on your porch or patio

With limitless colors and textures, no porch or patio should sit bare this season. Plant a container. The home with a front porch container display always feels a bit more welcoming; the back patio with a well-designed pot always feels a bit more relaxing. Designing these eye-catching planters...
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Chive flowers

Edible flowers can add unique color and spice to your dish

Growing up, a summer meal at grandma and grandpa’s house wasn’t complete without a giant, juicy tomato and fried squash blossoms. Squash blossoms are one example of edible flowers that are already growing in our gardens and just waiting for us to enjoy. Edible flowers can be added as the main...
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calamint and Echinacea

Perennial plant of the year: Calamint

Sun-loving, season-long blooming, low maintenance, dependable and pollinator-friendly. Sound like a perfect perennial to add to your garden?   Calamint (Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta), selected as the Perennial Plant Association’s 2021 plant of the year, is a garden-favorite of many...
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Million Bells, by Emma Gossett, via Unsplash

Gifts for gardening mothers

My mom deserves an extra special gift for Mother’s Day. She really helped her kids out during the pandemic, offering child care, shopping, laundry, moral support, therapy—and she’s an overall cool person to hang and watch sci-fi movies with. She has never been hard to shop for because we share the...
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Photo by Nick Windsor via Unsplash

Tender bulbs make for summer delights

For vibrant cut flowers this season, plant summer bulbs like dahlias, gladiolus, and lilies. These summer-blooming tropical bulbs are called ‘tender bulbs’ because they can be killed by our cold temperatures if left outdoors during the winter, or if they’re planted too early in the spring. They do...
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cool season blooms - photo by Terrance Raper on Unsplash

Plant cool-season annuals now!

As winter slowly fades, every gardener is getting anxious for spring—to dig their hands into the dirt, smell the fresh-cut grass, and fill their containers with annual combinations bursting with color. While it is still a little too early to plant most annual plants, there are a few you can plant...
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assorted cut flowers in a wide mouth jar. credit:

Why buy flowers if they're just going to die?

Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate love in the form of flowers. This holiday excites floral designers because they know every festive flower can generate a positive emotional response. Floral designer and State Master Gardener Coordinator,...
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Photo credit Pixabay. Cyclamens have unique heart-shaped leaved and showstopper flowers that can bloom for four to six weeks making them a great Valentine’s Day gift.

Blooming plant ideas to gift this Valentine’s Day

The tradition of giving flowers to family and friends to express affection on Valentine’s’ Day began centuries ago. Give your loved one a gift this year with blooms that can be enjoyed long after February 14. Blooming houseplants are great alternatives to traditional bouquets of cut flowers. With...
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growing crops in bags

Edibles or ornamentals? Container trends for 2021

Patio containers will grow food and boast hues of silver and white, and I think we may even see gardeners experimenting with growing sweet potato vine towers. Long gone are the acre gardens with rows and rows of vegetables. The current gardeners are growing their food in patio pots, garden bags,...
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paperwhite bloom (Narcissus papyraceus)

Force bulbs indoors for holiday decor

Bring the garden inside this winter with fun activities and experiments! ‘Forcing’ paperwhite bulbs is a family-friendly activity to add a touch of nature to your home this winter. The technique nurtures a winter bloom indoors by providing bulbs with favorable growing conditions similar to spring...
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bulbs, pixabay

Plant spring bulbs now

As many perennial plants are getting ready to go dormant for the winter, it is time to start thinking about next spring’s floral display and plant spring-flowering bulbs. The best time to plant spring bulbs is late September through October to allow sufficient time for a good root system to develop...
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joseph's coat

Overwintering your favorite garden plants

This is the time of the year to make tough decisions about what will take up residence in the house and what will succumb to the frost. Though frost will inevitably kill off most of the tender plants that I have cared for all summer, some of these plants can be saved for next year. ...
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Take your butterfly garden to the next level

Are you ready to take your butterfly gardening to the next level and allow some of your beautiful plants to be eaten by caterpillars? Choose the right plants, give them some care, and voila — caterpillars. The most grown caterpillar food in our gardens are milkweeds for monarchs and parsley for...
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silvery checkerspot by kathy dumler

Advanced butterfly gardening

Are you ready to take your butterfly gardening status to the next level and allow some of your beautiful plants to be eaten by caterpillars? Choosing the right plants, some care and voila caterpillars. I am not only altering the habitat of my backyard for the greater good, I will have some more...
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LEGO art in the garden. Photo by Kelly Allsup.

Even Gardeners Have Their First Days

Looking back, we may realize this was the year we had a surge in cultivating new gardeners and nature enthusiasts. While most of my readers already garden and are looking for new tips and interesting information, we likely have brand new gardeners who can do without technical jargon and nuanced...
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nodding onion

Designing Around Specific Colors and Plants

Planting perennials can bring you wonderful surprises and inspiration for future garden design. This year I am raving about my nodding onion (Allium cernuum). I planted them randomly throughout the pollinator garden in my front yard, not knowing a lot about them. During the spring and early summer...
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brandywine viburnum

Ornamental Fall Berries Provide Year-Round Awe

Have you ever heard a horticulturists encourage the use of plants having “multiple seasons of interest”? This might be said in response to someone’s complaints about forsythia, for example. Forsythia blooms in spring, an explosion of lemon-yellow blossoms covering the plant. But the rest of the...
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Fall planted bulbs welcome bees with early spring bloomers

Get your gardens buzzing next spring by planting bee-friendly bulbs and spring bloomers this fall. Bumblebee queens, honey bees, and solitary bees start emerging from their winter homes ready to feast on the landscape as early as March. Feed them from your garden by planting a mix of crocus, snow...
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