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An English Beauty
BY INGER LUND
Admit it. Like most Americans, you’re just a little bit intimidated by things English. The accent, the pageantry, even the warm beer — they all make us feel just a tiny bit cruder than our English cousins. Lately even their gardens have seemed out of our league, as the buzz spread about glorious, superior “English roses.”
Interactive Window Box
BY RUTH ROGERS CLAUSEN
This window box is filled with easy-to-grow annuals that will tolerate a sunny position and bloom with a riot of color throughout the summer and into fall. Plant after the weather is settled and there is no danger of frost; the nasturtiums may be sown two to three weeks earlier. Select healthy, stocky plants and pinch off youngest growth to encourage bushiness.
MOMENTS IN TIME
My idea of a decent garden guarantees lots of visual diversity with little surprises tucked ’round every corner. This kind of variety requires quite an assortment of plants. The fuel which fires my enthusiasm for gardening is that continuing search and anticipated discovery of a new plant that can promise at least three seasons of visual delight. With the spring planting season finally arriving, it is a good time to add to your collection at least one plant that brings some new dimension. Buying a few new plants always provides that additional motivating factor to go out and get digging again. No matter what plant gets added to my garden it prompts a new focus of attention and that always has a positive affect on my disposition. Each gardener surely has their ever changing list of favorites. If one wanders my garden you can quickly discover a few probably overused favorites that many might consider pesky. Each to their own.
A Totally Tubular Hummer Garden
There are 342 species of hummingbirds in the world, but only the Ruby-throated Hummingbird spends the summer in the east and winters from Mexico to Panama.
It’s hard to believe that such little birds have the ability and stamina to migrate from the tropics, either over land through Texas or across the Gulf of Mexico, just to spend the summer in Maryland and other points east. The following tips will help you welcome these small tropic travelers to your backyard, and coax them to set up shop and stay awhile.
Hummingbirds need food, shelter and water just like any other wildlife species. Providing a variety of habitat elements for them beyond a hummingbird feeder will increase the likelihood that hummers will frequent your backyard all summer.
LANDSCAPE DESIGN: Step 1
Do you design and decorate your home interior with comfortable seats, lighting, and color schemes? Have you then added ornaments for tables, walls, and floors? One could approach outdoor landscaping and design using many of these same steps.
Start by evaluating the whole exterior space. On paper, note where and what is outside. For homeowners a useful tool is the surveyor plat. This can be copied, and using tracing paper, draw in what you have now.
The Literal Actual Lightness of Being:
The lift I feel now that I wake to sunshine pouring through the windows and a sky the blue of a robin’s egg reminds me of the literal lightness of being on planet earth. Light has everything to do with how we feel and how our gardens grow. There are rules about how much light plants need, but you have to use your head.
I’m planning flower and vegetable gardens for our new home, a property with a lot of big old shade trees. It’s difficult to judge where there will be enough light for either when the sun moves to its overhead summer position. Most flowers and vegetables need eight and can take twelve hours of light.
Landscape DesignLandscape Design
There is no easy way to teach landscape design and most home gardeners cringe at the thought of it, however, I’d like to introduce you to one particular landscape design concept that you might find interesting and useful, that of landscape mass and landscape void.
Every landscape is made up of masses of plants and areas void of plants — areas planted and areas that are open. Often the balance between the planted and the open spaces, and the arrangement of the planted and open spaces can determine the overall effectiveness of a landscape design.
Where The Voids Are
Planting To Encourage Wildlife
Both urban and rural landscapes have potential for maintaining a favorable habitat for songbirds, rabbits, squirrels, quail and other wildlife. Attracting wildlife can have many benefits for the homeowner beyond esthetics because many birds help reduce the insect pests that attack flowers, lawns, gardens and people.
There are many human-made devices for attracting birds but there is a natural way to encourage them while beautifying landscapes. Planting
Growlabs: Learning by Doing
by Liz Ball
What better way to help children learn about gardening than to encourage them to grow plants themselves? That is the idea behind the GrowLab program for school children sponsored by the National Garden Bureau (NGB) in a joint venture with the National Gardening Association and the National Science Foundation. In a matching funds program, NGB and participating seed companies donate 6 GrowLabs per year to schools (K-8) across the country. Each GrowLab is accompanied by a complete starter kit containing pots, potting mix, labels, fertilizer, insecticidal soap, watering can, and seeds.
