Planting
A water garden's beauty can be highlighted with hardy or tropical water lilies. Hardy water lilies are rhizomatous perennials bearing flowers in shades of red, pink and yellow (some changing color). Their flowers open in early morning and close by mid to late afternoon.

Tropical water lilies are tuberous, cold-sensi...... 

Although the gardening season will soon be coming to a close, there is still one planting activity to be done: planting bulbs for spring flowers.

While it may seem odd to plant bulbs now, the reason is that spring-flowering bulbs need time to develop a solid root system before winter sets in. For best results, wait until soil temperatures are below 60 degrees F before planting bulbs. That means waiting to plant until mid-...... 

So, you have decided to plant rose bushes in your yard or on your patio, porch or balcony. Now all you have to do is go out and buy some bushes and plant them. Right? Wrong!!

There are several things that you have to decide before buying:

1. Where are you planning on planting?
2. Are you going to plant in the ground or in containers?
3. Do you want roses that are scented or unscented?
4. Do you want bushes, trees, climbers, vining or do you want them to grow into a hedge?
5. Do you want large, medium, small or miniature blooms?
6. Do you want...... 

Bare Root Roses, what to look for when buying

The first thing to look for is the plant's grade.

Nearly all bare root roses sold today are grown in the field and are approximetly two years old. They are sold in three main grades.

Grade 1 is the best and most expensive grade. In order to obtain this grade the plants are required to have at least three strong cains, two of which must be at least 18 inches in length for hybrid teas anf grandifloras. The canes should be a...... 

Plan before buying rose bushes.

So, you have decided to plant rose bushes in your yard or on your patio, porch or balcony. Now all you have to do is go out and buy some bushes and plant them. Right? Wrong!!

There are several things that you have to decide before buying:

1. Where are you planning on planting?
2. Are you going to plant in the ground or in containers?
3. Do you want roses that are scented or unscented?
4. Do you want bushes, trees, climbe...... 

Despite their short bloom time and unattractive foliage after the blooms are gone, they are still a wonderful ad...... 

Ornamental grasses have become extremely popular in the past ten years or so, and if you buy them at a garden center they are kind of pricey. Learning how to grow them yourself is actually quite easy. They can be grown from seed, but I won’t pretend to be an expert at that for several reasons. One, I don’t know anything about growing them from seed, and two, I have no desire to propagate them from seed because seedlings require too much care. 

The easiest and most effective way to propagate them is through simple division. Of course you will need at least one parent plant of ea...... 

As a home gardener, fall should be a very special time for you. Fall is the best season of the year for plant propagation, especially for home gardeners who do not have the luxury of intermittent mist. The technique that I am going to describe here can be equally effective for evergreens as well as many deciduous plants. 

The old rule of thumb was to start doing hardwood cuttings of evergreens after you have experienced at at least two hard freezes. After two hard freezes the plants are completely dormant. However, based on my experience it is beneficial to start doing your eve...... 

Flowering Dogwood trees can be easily grown from seed, however 99.9999% of the seedlings that sprout will be Cornus Florida, which is White Flowering Dogwood. It doesn’t matter if you collect the seeds from a White Dogwood or a Pink Dogwood, the seedlings are likely to be white. 

The only predictable way to grow a Pink Dogwood, Red Dogwood, or one of the beautiful Dogwoods with variegated leaves, is to bud or graft the desired variety onto a White Dogwood seedling. That’s why the botanical name for Pink Dogwood is Cornus Florida Rubra. Cornus means Dogwood, Florida indicates Wh...... 

There is nothing more beautiful than a flowering shrub in full bloom, except maybe a flowering shrub in full bloom that has been trained to grow as a single stem tree. Imagine having a fragrant Viburnum Tree next to your patio or outside your bedroom window, waking up to such a wonderful aroma. 

Don’t confuse what I am about to explain here with the common technique of grafting flowering shrubs on to the tall stem of some sort of rootstock. Grafting is very effective, but not so easy to do. This is much easier. Not only that, when you train the shrub to grow into a single stem ......