Marie's Gardening Blog

Yews have taken a beating among so called “serious” gardeners. They’re mocked for being pruned into little meatballs or flat-topped tables. They’re belittled for being ubiquitous and they’re considered down right boring. I beg to disagree. I think yews make excellent landscape shrubs. I even prefer them pruned, rather than au natural. They give a tidy, orderly look to a foundation planting or garden bed and some cohesiveness to the neighborhood. Prune them once a year and they remain attractive all season. They’re a glorious, shiny green all year. And they have cherry, bright red berries that persist into winter, until the birds feast on them. Speaking of birds, my yews are always home to at least one nest a season.

Don’t let the garden snobs talk you out of planting yews. About’s Landscaping Guide can help you brush up on your Yew knowledge so you can go shopping for just the right yew for you.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

Mums have taken over the gardens. It is amazing the way they suddenly start popping up here and there, until finally every house you pass has its blanket of burgundy, yellow and orange at the front entrance. Mums must be very easy to force, because you don’t see other fall flowers lining the nursery shelves come fall, all set to bloom. It’s nice that the nurseries did all the pinching and growing for us, while we were busy with our summer blooming plants. We’re probably spoiled. Fall blooming flowers take a great deal of patience, not to mention a great deal of room for the many months they do nothing more than sit there waiting their turn. So it is nice to be able to freshen up your garden with very little effort on your own part. Half the time gardeners don’t even take the plants out of the pots. Mums have become disposable plants and that’s actually too bad because they’re pretty easy to grow and there’s greater variety if you grow your own. That’s right, there’s more to mums than those fall-toned pom-poms. So take a peek at how easy it is to grow truly hardy mums and then take the poll below and tell us if you buy disposable mums every year.

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Photo Courtesy of lauren stout / stock.xchng

No, I’m not pushing the seasons here. Tonyone wrote into the About Gardening Forum asking about a source for poinsettia seeds and I haven’t found one. Has anyone grown poinsettia from seeds? I know most of the flashy new plants out at Christmas time are hybridized and probably propagated from cuttings, but there must be seed out there somewhere for the basic red poinsettia. If you know of a source, please let us know. And if you have any tips for saving your own poinsettia seed and growing poinsettia from seed, we’d love to hear that too. Thanks.

And just in case you were hardy enough to save last year’s poinsettia and want to try and get it to bloom again this Christmas, it’s time to start sequestering your plant in total darkness. Here’s what you need to do to force your poinsettia back into bloom.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

Being a green gardener is even harder to define than being an organic gardener. Most of us love being out in nature, or we wouldn’t be gardening in the first place. But unless all you’re doing is hugging trees, gardening is a manipulation of nature, not a joint effort. Still there’s a lot of “green” in the green around your house. According to the non-profit Project EverGreen, creating and preserving green spaces in your neighborhood contributes to the health of both you and the environment. For example, “...the net cooling effect of one young, healthy interior tree is equivalent to ten room-sized air conditioners operating 20 hours a day...” How’s that for living green?

I just learned about Project EverGreen recently, but they’re doing some really interesting and fun things. Want to become a member of YEA! (Yard Enthusiasts of America) and share tips on having a great yard? Maybe you can help Beulah, the compostaholic, with her composting addition.

Or maybe you’d like to volunteer for GreenCare for Troops, a program that has helped over 7,000 military families to date care for their yards and landscapes while mom or dad is on active duty.

OK, you might not be ready to get rid of the air condition in favor of a ficus tree, but you can get to know a little more about gardening green by reading these 5 Myths vs. Fact: The Truth About Green.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

Fall can be such a sigh of relief. If you’re thrilled when the heat lets up, just think how your plants feel. There’s no central air conditioning for the garden. Plants seem to put on one final hurrah in the fall, both in jubilant colors and refreshed foliage. If you don’t have the time or the room to spiff up the garden beds with fall beauties, you can still enjoy the season with your containers. Kerry Michaels show us some stunning examples in her photo gallery of fall container ideas. Best of all, you don’t even need to go out and buy a lot of new plants. Forget the mums and put your humble lamb’s ears on display.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

Most gardeners can’t resist the idea of a colorful or fragrant garden right near their entryway. So it seems odd that so many of us completely overlook the span along our driveways. Driveway plantings present their own unique challenges like: car exhaust, not blocking the view when pulling out, leaving room to plow snow and leaving a path from one side of the lawn to the other. But as About.com’s Landscaping Guide, David Beaulieu, explains, “How your driveway entrance is landscaped... sets the tone for the viewer's perception of the whole yard.” Besides, it’s another excuse to buy plants! Here are David’s considerations for landscaping driveways.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

The first time I saw an unhusked black walnut I thought it was an old tennis ball. Now I notice them everywhere. I’ve been getting a lot of questions locally about how to husk these tough nuts. I’ve never tried it myself, but I’m told it’s not an easy thing to do. I know it’s messy, because my squirrels leave stains everywhere. Steve Nix, About.com’s Guide to Forestry, has five old black walnut trees that all together have the potential of producing about 3,000 nuts, so he’s cracked a few in his time. Steve has put together a photo how-to on collecting and husking black walnuts. So if you’ve been puzzling how to get the nut out of the husk, here’s your answer.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

Pansies are one of the joys of cool season gardening. We expect them to be one of the first flowers on the nursery shelves in the spring, but they're equally great in the fall. Gardeners in warmer climates get to enjoy their smiling faces all winter.

Although technically a perennial, the pansy blooms its heart out for a season and then goes downhill from there. So most gardeners just grow them as annuals or biennials. Nurseries know this and put a whole new crop of pansies out for sale in the fall. But recent pansy breeding has provided us with pansies that bloom through a light snow, as well as much later into the heat of summer. But we really need them when it’s too cold for most other plants to put on a show. Pansies planted in the spring can be clipped back and tucked between summer bloomers, to reemerge refreshed and blooming in the fall. They always out bloom my mums and asters. And their flowers are edible! So if you’ve pooh-poohed pansies in the past, it’s time to give them another look.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

It’s time to plant the bulbs. Spring flowering bulbs are such a welcome sight after a long winter. But for that to happen, you have to plant them in the fall or early winter. When’s the best time to plant? What can you grow if the ground never freezes? How do you keep the squirrels and deer away? Good questions. Here are some answers for planting, choosing and caring for spring flowering bulbs.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.

Diana emailed me with an interesting question: “I save my geraniums from year to year in the basement. They tend to get misshapen and straggly. How often can I cut them down, how far, and is it alright to shape the plant by snapping off the side shoots. Is it good to strip the leaves mostly off, or do they feed the plant? Anything else to keep them healthy?”

Gardeners have been over-wintering their geraniums for generations. It’s easy to do and requires very little effort on the part of the gardener. You basically have 4 choices for what to do with your geraniums when frost hits: let them die off as annuals, bring them indoors as houseplants, take cuttings and make more plants or store them dormant until next spring.

I’m a fan of bringing them in, pot and all, and throwing a paper bag over them until spring. OK, there’s a little more involved than that - but not much. I’ve lost one or two, out of dozens, but that happens. I’m not really sure why I over-winter them, except that it seems a shame to just let them die. However after a few years the stems can get very woody and the plants start to bloom less and less, so none of my plants have been with me for decades. Still, I know I’ll be dragging a few in this fall. If you like to give it a try yourself, here are four ways to store your geraniums for the winter months ahead.

Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.