Garden Design

Today we are visiting Mary Spaulding’s garden. I submitted photos of my emerging spring gardens in May 2020 (click here). I’d like to share some photos of our July-August Zone 3 gardens. Even though it was a very dry year, my husband’s diligent watering paid off. On the west side of the house, hosta cultivars

Today’s vegetable gardens may be Lilliputian compared with those of yesteryear, but new techniques return more bang for the buck in terms of space used and energy expended. Traditional gardens consisted mainly of widely spaced rows of plants. Instead, I suggest packing more into a space-challenged garden and reaping more from it using four different

Are gardeners notoriously hard to buy gifts for? My husband would say, “Absolutely.” I would argue the opposite. Grab me a gift certificate to a local nursery and a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves, and call it a day. But that’s where things get complicated, according to my spouse. Which nursery is my favorite? And

Today is part 2 of our visit to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham, North Carolina, with Teresa Watkins. Birdhouses in the gardens Vegetable gardens with the fire of fall foliage behind them Huge, beautiful, yellow chrysanthemums with Japanese maple (Acer palmatum, Zones 5–9) foliage behind them beginning to color up Chrysanthemums are incredibly

Today we’re on the road with Teresa Watkins, visiting a beautiful public garden in North Carolina. A quick two-day trip to North Carolina provided the opportunity to capture the beauty and richness of autumn at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham. Located on 55 acres with five miles of pedestrian paths, I strolled through

We’re visiting with Barry Friesen today, who is sharing photos of his beautiful garden, which he has named Dawn Gardens. Here are some photos of Dawn Gardens in Grass Valley, California. These are from the fall season, but I have many photos of the spring season, with 50,000 daffodils blooming, and of the summer, with

My name is Diane Smith, and I am a member of the 20-person Beautification Committee in New London, Connecticut. This is a city-appointed board, and we are all volunteers with various levels of gardening expertise. The members take care of 24 sites located throughout the city. Each member has one or two sites that are

Today Priscilla King is sharing some of the beautiful fall colors in her garden. I live very close to mile marker #1 at the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway in Central Virginia. The fall colors this year have been better than any recent year I can remember! These are pictures from my own yard

To extend the season on your porch or patio, containers built for winter are invaluable. But planting pots for cooler weather takes a little extra insight and planning. Proper hard goods are the key to success The temptation when planting winter containers is to think about the plants first, and give little thought to the

Today Carolyn Hirning is taking us along on a trip to a beautiful garden she visited in June. I thought you might like to see photos from a visit to Akron, Ohio, in June 2021. This was my first trip since the start of the pandemic, so that in itself was pretty exciting. Our first

The thought of restricting most gardeners to only three of any plant might sound cruel. After all, what makes us happier than heading to the nursery to fill a shopping cart? But limiting your plant palette has many advantages. In many cases, less variety means less chaos. And when it comes to trees, limiting yourself

Today we’re visiting Patty Eckels’s garden in Charleston, South Carolina. We’ve visited with Patty before, and it is great to see how the space has developed in the past few years! The pineapple guava (Feijoa sellowiana, Zones 7–10) was gorgeous this year. A bit of pruning in the fall helped. And here’s the full pineapple

With its delicious blooms and abundant yields of late season fruit, pineapple guava (Feijoa sellowiana, Zones 8–11) definitely deserves a spot in the orchard or kitchen garden. But this tree is so much more than “just” an edible. Pineapple guava is also one of the most easy-care, attractive, and versatile ornamental landscape plants a Northern

Today we’re in Kensington, New Hampshire, visiting with Robin Hess. Here are some photos from my seacoast New Hampshire garden this September. I have been gardening for about four years and especially love hostas. My garden is mostly sun with hardly any shade, which has been a challenge. Coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea, Zones 3–8) A stunning

Today’s post is from Amy Birdsong, who is sharing with us a trip she took to an amazing private garden in Virginia. Bill and Linda Pinkham are artists, daylily breeders, horticulturists, and landscape design experts who retired from the nursery business over twenty years ago. Since “retirement,” they created and continue to grow and nurture

We’re visiting Lindsey Cline’s garden today. My husband and I bought a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia about eight years ago. The property was a field of Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum, a highly invasive annual weed), which we transformed into a cottage garden with many edible and pollinator plants. Along with

Friend of the GPOD Cherry Ong is sharing a cool decorating project for the fall season. I’ve been making succulent-topped pumpkins for several years now after reading about it for the first time in Debra Lee Baldwin’s book and watching Laura Eubanks (the creator) on YouTube. I also enjoy and refer repeatedly to the Fine

Welcome to Sid and Jackie Pogue’s garden in Edmond, Oklahoma. With age, Jackie and Sid Pogue downsized in 2020 and are now learning the joys of accessibility and careful plant selection. This new chapter of their garden history, which they call “Less Is Fine but Make It Count,” means building a treasury of Oklahoma-tough favorites

I’ve grown a fair share of hardy and tender plants from the genus Euphorbia, but truth be told, I’ve only scratched the surface. Comprising one of the largest plant families in the plant kingdom, Euphorbiaceae, commonly referred to as the spurge family, contains approximately 300 genera and about 7,500 species. The best part of spurges

Today we’re in Lake Bluff, Illinois (north of Chicago), visiting Nicki Snoblin’s garden. I am often attracted to pristine garden beds filled with colorful and unblemished flowers and foliage. This is real life, however, and my garden rarely looks that way. It’s been really helpful to me to follow GPOD and see what other people