With winter behind us, we welcome a new season with one of our favorite spring-blooming perennials, Dianthus! These re-blooming flowers give us that color we've been waiting for. Not only are they beautiful, they are also very easy to grow. The most difficult part of growing dianthus is choosing which types you want to plant. Depending on the variety, blooms begin in early spring and continue all the way until frost. Dianthus blooms may be single or double (think little carnations), and tend to be white, pink, red, rose, or lavender - available in nearly all shades except true blue.
Tomato, tomahto. Potato, potahto. If you’re here to settle a produce aisle bet on matters of semantics where edible plant varieties are concerned - 'What is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?” - you will be perhaps chagrined to learn that for many of those food pyramid superstars, the answer isn’t very simple. There’s a lot of either/either, neither/neither involved with what makes a fruit a fruit and a vegetable a vegetable and a fair amount of crossover between the two categories. Read the full article by Chowhound here
Quite possibly one of the most eye-catching evergreen shrub, camellias feature stunning rose-like flowers in shades of pink, red, and white in fall, late winter, or spring, depending on the type. They shine throughout the rest of the year with their glossy, deep green leaves and superb symmetry. They can be grown as large shrubs for use as a hedge, screen or corner plant, espalier, or 'limbed up' to form an attractive small tree. And, planting more than one species will give your garden multi-season color.
Boxwoods have been the backbone of Southern gardens for centuries and are one of the most popular shrubs in landscape design. Extensively used in both formal and more casual gardens, boxwoods are easy to grow and maintain and can be easily shaped. They make an excellent filler for gaps in the landscape or can be used to divide one portion of a yard from another. Gardeners looking for a plant that provides simple greenery with a fine texture need look no farther than boxwood.
Although plants can’t talk, they do send messages all the time — from requests for resources to warnings of trouble. And, they do so silently, communicating with visual cues, such as changes in leaf colors and shapes. If you learn to read these signs, you’ll be able to catch minor issues before they become big ones.