How-to Archives

The Ultimate Guide to Water-Wise Gardening

Backyard Habitat, How-to, Planning and Design, Pollinator Gardening

The importance of making water-wise choices has become very apparent with the spread of climate change. It is becoming more difficult to grow certain crops, maintain landscapes, and enjoy various recreational activities as water availability wavers and heat threatens popular crop growing. Across the country, people continue to make garden choices that can help conserve...

Adaptive Gardening is Cool at Any Age

Gardening as Therapy, How-to

When I began writing my blog in 2017, the reader I had in mind was the senior gardener who was rethinking their gardening future in view of health challenges. That decision was based on an article I had read in a recent landscaping trade magazine suggesting that landscape professionals learn about the special needs facing their...

10 Best Plants & Flowers for your garden

10 Best Plants & Flowers to Use for Tea

How-to, Planting

There is nothing better than drinking a delicious cup of tea. Except, drinking a cup made from plants grown in your own garden. Ditch the classics and get ready for your new home-grown favorites! 10 favorite plants to grow and use in your tea garden 1. Lemon Grass Towering in the garden, lemongrass is truly...

Jazz Hands Loropetalum is a warm hardiness zone plant - National Garden Bureau

Get in the Zone: Two Truths (and a Lie) about Zone Maps

How-to, Planning and Design, Planting Tips

Have you ever returned from a trip, determined to recreate that tropical vacation vibe in your northern backyard? Or maybe you hope to grow lilacs, like those that filled the vase on your grandmother’s kitchen table—but aren’t sure they’ll flourish in your southern garden. While it’s easy to drool over the latest, greatest plants featured...

5 Essential gardening tips - national garden bureau

5 Essential Spring Gardening Tips

Garden Planning & Design, How-to, Planting Tips

Spring is full of new life, green grass, and sunshine! It’s also time to get back into the garden. Here are some tips to keep you and your garden on track this spring. 1. Remove Winter Protection In the fall or early winter, you may have added some winter protection, like mulch or leaves, to...

7 Benefits for Raised Bed Gardening - National Garden Bureau

7 Benefits of Raised Bed Gardening

How-to, Planning and Design

Why Grow Your Own? No matter how often we resolve to eat healthfully, it can be a challenge. From waking early to shop at the farmers’ market to managing the grocery budget as droughts and supply chain issues cause food prices to soar, finding fresh, affordable produce seems exhausting. Don’t give up. Instead, enjoy the...

Ready, Set, GROW: 8 Tips for Timing Seed Starting

How-to, Seeds and Seed Starting

What is it about starting seeds that gives us such pleasure? When you’re itching to get your hands in the soil, but the garden is buried under snow, starting seeds indoors takes the gloom out of chilly winter days. But timing is everything, and you’ll want to create the best schedule for seed-starting success. You’ll...

Fabulous Figs: How To Grow Your Own in Your Yard - National Garden Bureau

Fabulous Figs: Grow Your Own

Garden Planning & Design, How-to, Plant Care & Maintenance

In the Garden of Eden, it was apples; nowadays it’s the plump, moist, luscious fig that’s a nearly irresistible temptation for fruit-lovers. According to historical records, fig trees had shown up in the New World by 1579; in 1769, Spanish Franciscan priests were growing them in what is now San Diego, California. How do you...

Become an Adaptive Gardener with these tips and tricks - National Garden Bureau

Nobody Ever Has To Be A Retired Gardener

Garden Planning & Design, Gardening as Therapy, How-to

Become an adaptive gardener... Gardening is an activity that most of us do because we want to. We do it because it’s pleasurable, healthy, puts fresh produce on the table, beautifies our environment, and the list goes on. However, when the breathing gets more difficult or the knees or back give out, many gardeners call...

Gardening Simplified: Time-Saving, Practical Products

How-to

Everyone loves a beautiful garden. Fabulous fragrance perfumes paths, cheerful flowers, and gorgeous foliage decorate landscapes, and homegrown tomatoes delight taste buds. But wow…it’s a lot of work! Those pristine plantings mean that a gardener worked hard to make the landscape look effortless. Planting, weeding, watering, feeding…a beautiful garden takes time and effort. Fortunately, many...