Fall Clean Up for Lazy Gardeners

I refuse to be a slave to my garden, which is why I designed it to be low maintenance; employing a variety of strategies to select plants that were both reliably easy care and suited to the space I had planned for them. Yet, there's no denying that even for me, fall is a busy…

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September Successes: planned and serendipitous

I've admitted already that this year my garden adventures have been more misadventures; moments here and there with little time, budget or frankly incentive as other priorities took center stage. Thank goodness nature – and serendipity often make up for my lackluster attempts! I went out into the garden with my camera just now to…

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Short Term Groundcovers for Hot, Dry, Deer-Prone Areas

Deer-Resistant Garden Design

Generally I'm not a huge fan of groundcovers. While they do suppress weeds they also prevent me adding soil amendments such as compost and in some case they are downright thugs, covering every spare inch of ground and smothering everything in sight! Some of those thugs are also very difficult to remove as they grow…

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Life and Gardening After Slugopocalypse

Anyone else feel as though this year has got away from them? In theory, my garden should be magnificent this year since I haven't been traveling. Somehow that's not my reality. Between a biblical plague of slugs that is STILL ongoing, crazy wet weather in spring (summer didn't even start until about a week ago)…

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A Garden to Grow Into

It was the all too familiar scenario; a charming new home with a small, non-functional back garden. With a patio barely big enough to accommodate the BBQ and a lawn that was saturated for much of the year there was nowhere to sit and enjoy a family meal, let alone a spot for a child…

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