It's always exciting to visit nurseries where great plants are grown so it was a special treat to be invited to the 50th Celebration of Van Belle Nursery, the home of Bloomin' Easy plants in Abbotsford, British Columbia recently. I first visited as a consultant in 2014 when I taught a container design workshop to…

Repetition of color in a garden is an easy way to bring a sense of cohesion to a design and is often called a 'color echo'. When designing 'foliage first' this color echo may be between a leaf and a flower or even between two or more different leaves, yet there are many more adventurous…

I now understand why many visitors say they prefer the Hampton Court Flower Festival over the Chelsea Flower Show: it seems more familiar, more attainable, more like a community event than a Grand Show. Yet it still offers an abundance of gardening ideas, shopping opportunities, and unlike Chelsea includes a number of educational workshops and…

Situated approximately 30 miles south-west of  London, Loseley Park is a 1400 acre estate of beautiful rolling countryside. The Manor itself dates back to the 16th century, and is a private home that has been in the same family for over 500 years. It is a popular destination for events, weddings and you may also…

I'm sure our giant green coach caused a few raised eyebrows as it pulled into the narrow residential street in Chelmsford, England. But homeowner Sheila Chapman took it all in her stride as she warmly welcomed our tour group to her pint-sized garden with a smile. Sheila is a well-known Royal Horticultural Society gold medal-winning…

So many gardens, so many ideas….I'm just back from leading my tour England in Full Bloom and have so much to share with you. I tried to post daily highlights on Facebook but thought I'd take this blog post to share some of the fun art installations we saw on our travels that varied in…

It's a balance. I want to create habitat for wildlife – but that doesn't mean I want to live in an overgrown 5-acre field. I therefore designed the gardens closest to our home to be more ornamental, featuring some of my favorite deer-resistant trees, shrubs and perennials, with a mid-point transition area consisting of a…

I'm just home after hosting a wonderful tour of English gardens for Earthbound Expeditions. So many memories and so many ideas – but I wanted to share just a few images that highlight the use of color restraint and how effective that is as a design tool rather than a wild 'jellybean' approach. Monochromatic Schemes…

There comes a point when you just need to start again – and that was essentially the verdict after visiting this Seattle garden. A combination of overgrown shrubs, inadequate pathways, and piecemeal 'fixes' just weren't cutting it anymore. The homeowner loves the outdoors and wanted the garden to be naturalistic in design, featuring layers of…

I have received a lot of questions this month about how and when to prune bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla), especially the newer 'repeat blooming' varieties. What are repeat blooming hydrangea? These are the varieties which bloom both on the growth they put on last year (called old wood) as well as the growth that occurs…