More New Plants: More New Favorites!

Between testing plants for growers and having the opportunity to grow new introductions in my landscape or containers for photo shoots I consider myself incredibly fortunate. The sense of anticipation never gets old; I am always excited to see what might work well in my deer resistant, drought tolerant garden or what may be the…

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Hydrangea Companion Planting

On a recent trip to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens I was blinded by a dazzling display of a golden barberry paired with a kaleidoscopic Pistachio hydrangea – which got me thinking. What other plants make good companions for hydrangeas? So in the interest of helping your create artistic plant combinations and have another excuse to…

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Beyond Geraniums….

Are you struggling to do something different with your sunny container gardens this year? Do you always seem to start off with a geranium, add  some pretty million bells (Calibrachoa) and then tuck in some trailing vbacopa to finish it off? Cheerful but not very imaginative is it?Yet this early in the season these are…

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Taming the Front Garden

Eek! Where would you start? Pruning the overgrown rhododendrons and camellias? Removing towering, diseased conifers? Hauling away a pampas grass the size of a Volkswagen? Well maybe, but the biggest problem was actually the driveway, assuming you drove a vehicle larger than a Mini cooper. Besides some areas that were crumbling away, it was extremely difficult…

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Garden Emergencies

Help! As a designer there is one fundamental expectation when friends and clients visit; that my garden will be alive. This year that has been questionable as we've battled a plague of voles, unrelenting high temperatures, unprecedented drought and recovery from last winter which although mild arrived with a drop in temperature of twenty degrees or…

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