The key to arranging is have fun and be imaginative, especially with your containers. I’ve got the water bucket filled with flowers. I could leave it that way if I wanted to. Keep the flowers simple. If I’ve taken some daisies, yarrow, and baby’s breath, I might put it in a bottle that I rescued out of the recycling bin. Add some raffia, and I’ll have a great display. If you want something a little more delicate, take some small flowers, add a couple of sprigs in a bottle, like the coral bells, add some periwinkle and a nice look on a nightstand. If you want a fun, exotic look, take a fishbowl, put water in, and float flowers on the top. If you want the flowers to last, add hydrogen peroxide. They’ll last one week longer.

Lilacs and plum are beautiful to force, but can be tricky. The best time to take your cuttings is between February and March during the warmest part of the day, when temperatures are above 32 degrees.

Once you get your cuttings indoors, get your pocketknife and remove 1″ from the base. The reason why we’re doing this — this is going to help the branch absorb more water. But just to ensure the uptake of water, get out the hammer. We’re going to smash the end.

Once you’ve prepared the stems, put them in luke-warm water, add a splash of hydrogen peroxide, and change the water every 2 days. This will help keep bacteria away. For the first few days, the stems need moisture, so wrap them in plastic wrap and keep them wrapped for 3 days. Keep in a cool location and when the buds swell, move them into indirect light… and you’ll have beautiful blooms in no time.

It’s very easy, and it’s sure to keep the flocks flying. The ingredients are simple. All you need is a variety of birdseed good for your area, your favorite cookie cutters, some bread, peanut butter, raffia, and of course, a lot of kids to have fun.

Put the cookie cutter on each piece of bread, and cut out the shapes. Then poke a hole in the top of the bread ornament. This way, it’ll hang from the tree easily. We want it to get dry and crusty, so either bake it in an oven at 250 degrees or let it sit overnight.

When it’s dry and crusty, we’re ready to spread on the peanut butter and add the birdseed. Lean cuisine. All right, everybody, let’s show what we’ve done! You want to put raffia around your ornament. Then it’s ready to go in the tree. You think the birds will like these? Yeah! Let’s go check it out.

We start here because we want to try to get as much of the rootball as we possibly can. Okay, so, this is what we end up with. You can see each of these petioles here. We can divide these, take one petiole, plant it, and we’d get another hosta plant. But what we’re going to do instead is probably divide it up into three, four different plants. Now, there are many different methods. You can take a sharp knife, serrated knife, and cut through the crowns, right through the center of the root system. That will divide it up. But with this type of hosta, we can jiggle it apart — it’s the wiggling method — and untangle the roots that way. The roots pull right off. We got ourselves a plant. Now, before you plant it, you may want to dust the roots with a rooting hormone that has a fungicide mixed in. This will help prevent crown rot.

Planting’s the easy part. I’ve dug a hole, and I’ve got a mound in the center. I’m going to drape the roots over the mound and cover it up with soil, Making sure that the soil line is one inch above the crown. That’s all there is to it. Learn to divide your hosta, and soon, you’ll have “lotsa hosta.” You know, wreaths have been around for a long time. And even today, they’re still growing in popularity in more ways than one.

But, eventually those beautiful blooms will fade and look something like this. Your first inclination is going to be to come out and saw the plants down. But don’t do that because now the plant is storing energy for next year’s bulb.

What you can remove are the spent blooms. In fact, you don’t want them to go to seed. So just remove the top. If you want to remove the stem as well, you can. What you can’t remove is the foliage, because that’s what’s sending energy down to next year’s bulb. So you want to let it die back naturally. After a while, it’s going to turn yellow and not look so good. If that bothers you, simply roll it up and secure it with a rubber band.

Another way to conceal your bulbs is to plant perennials. While the foliage from your bulbs is dying down, the perennials are growing up. Another way to maintain the health of next year’s bulb is to fertilize. You’ll know it is time when the foliage turns from green to yellow. Simply scratch in an all-purpose fertilizer around the bade of the flower. By following these easy tips, you’ll be able to enjoy big, beautiful blooms again next spring.

Decide on your color scheme first, by choosing two or three main colors and another for accent or contrast. Let’s say you settle on a pink, white and blue garden, with touches of yellow.

Write each color across the top of a sheet of paper, then divide each paper into four columns: spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Select plants for each season and each color. Use this site’s Plan My Garden section for help in making your decision based upon where you live. If you need to know more about the plants listed, check out the Plant Encyclopedia by clicking on Garden Library. If you see what you like and want to purchase online, don’t forget to visit the Garden Shop.

Soon your garden will be full of flowers without any gaps. Of course, in cold-winter regions, winter color is a subtle palette of tan, beige, gold, russet, and gray — but even that takes planning!

It’s very simple. At the end of the season, bring your tools in. With a brush or a Brillo pad, clean off all the caked-on soil. If you have some rust, just take some coarse sandpaper. Just go ahead and work that rust right out. Then we want to take something like a 3-in-one oil. Pick this up at the hardware store. Coat the blades of our tools, and rub that right into the blade. That will help prevent rust from forming.

If you have wooden tools, then you need some linseed oil. Once again, that’s something you can pick up at the hardware store. Just wipe on the oil. This will prevent drying and keep it from cracking. It’s also a good idea at the end of the season to bring your tools in the basement, where it’s cool and dry. That will keep them long-lasting, as well. This is for winter. But during the season, what do you do to keep them nice? I’ve got a great tip.

Take a bucket of sand. Pour in a quart of motor oil. See what it looks like there? Not a pretty picture. But watch this. Tools come in dirty. Put the tools down in the sand. The sand acts as sandpaper. The oil lubricates. When we come out, with a cloth, we’re going to clean these up. And look at that. They’re going to be great all season long. A great tool idea.

The first thing you do is take a cutting. You want a pretty lengthy stem here, about 6 to 8 inches. The next step is to remove all the leaves from the stem that’s going to go in the water. Otherwise, the leaves will rot. Once you’ve removed the leaves, the next part is easy. Simply dunk the stem into a container of water. You have to be a little patient because the roots will take about 1-6 weeks in developing.

If you want the roots to develop quicker, make sure you put in one plant per container. When the roots develop, it’s good to move the plant into soil quickly because they’ll actually adapt to growing underwater. Otherwise, once you plant it in soil, the roots will rot. So don’t waste any time. Get it planted. There you have it. Cloning plants.

Now, typically, the sweet pea vine will tire out once temperatures climb above 70 degrees. However, if you keep the roots cool, they’ll continue growing and continue blooming. Here, we’ve used annuals and perennials to keep the roots cool. You can also use a thick layer of mulch. The key to a successful cover-up is to give the vine something to grow on. In this case, simple chain link has been used. The vine is a tropical mandevilla. This loves full sunshine, and it’s not real picky about its soil. Once it starts to climb, it will provide you with exotic blooms all summer long. Now, if you really want your money’s worth from an annual vine, you have to check out hyacinth bean. This offers so many benefits. First of all, it’s a fast-growing vine and it’s very thick. The leaves are a beautiful green and have delicate purple veins. This makes the perfect backdrop for these nicely colored lavender flowers. The flowers eventually turn into wine-colored pods, and inside the pods are seeds for next year’s crop. To keep your vines looking good, you must keep them well watered, and don’t forget to feed them every two weeks with a water-soluble fertilizer.

To start with, you need stakes. You can use grape, bamboo, metal rods or branches. You’ll need some twine and some sharp shears.

The first thing we’re going to do is braid the twine around the branches. Tie the twine tightly around the top of the branches. Now you’re ready to lift it. All you’re going to do is spread the stakes out and push them in the ground about one to two inches. This way, it will secure the teepee.

There are many different beans that will grow up your tepee. You just want to make sure it says “pole bean.” These are the veining varieties. Also, you don’t want to plant your beans if there is a threat of frost. They don’t like cold weather. And more importantly you want to make sure your beans are dry. Because if you plant your beans in soggy soils, the seed will rot.

Now, I’m going to plant four seeds around the pole. I only want two of the strongest to grow, so when they start germinating and growing, I will pull out the two weakest ones. Now just keep your beans watered, fed, and mulched, and wait a couple of months. You will end up with wonderful tepees that look great in your yard. Plus, you get the added benefit of a wonderful place for your kids to play.