A friend asked me in an email recently to recommend some shade plants to her.  I’m very happy to expound on shade gardening, because I love the mysterious quality of shade, and the relief it provides on a hot day. The previous post I devoted to shade gardening can be found here, so if it seems like I’m leaving things out, it’s because I already mentioned it there. If your garden doesn’t provide much shade, think about creating some, with a tree or an arbor.  There are some pretty fast-growing trees to choose from;  for instance, I have a Japanese willow...

I’ve been filling in the front yard with divided plants from the Tranquil Garden (aka the backyard) and it struck me that I feel like a painter with a blank canvas in front of me and the plants are my paint palette.  Since I use exclusively perennials in my garden (I buy annuals only for the  planters), I find it useful to use a broad palette of foliage shades, shapes and textures.  Especially in a shade garden (my front yard gets less than four hours of sun per day), this is very important.  Often the flowers produced by shade plants are less...

I was walking down the street yesterday, checking out people’s front yards, and musing to myself: “What makes a flower desirable?”  So many perfectly lovely flowers are looked at as scourges by many, if not most, gardeners.  I’m talking about the ones we call weeds: dandelions, goutweed, creeping charlie, etc. On the other hand, some people leave dandelions in their lawns, since they look rather bright and lovely in the spring and the bees love them.  Some people plant goutweed in their gardens because it makes a very reliable ground cover (very reliable!).  Others probably don’t even notice creeping charlie, it’s so...

Well, I didn’t make it to Jasmin by the end of April, so I missed using my 40$ off coupon and on top of it I forgot the 20$ coupon at home when I went today. Oh, well.  I still had a great time picking and choosing flowers for my garden.  I bought quite a few shade plants for the front yard, which I’ve decided is not going to be just ground cover.  I suddenly thought, nope, it’s going to be hostas, heuchera, and bleeding hearts, amongst other things.  I will make it a garden of earthly delights and it...

I don’t think  I’ve rhapsodized about primroses lately.  Probably it’s way overdue.  I was just reading an article about them in my latest Garden Making magazine and I remembered how much I admired their wonderful colours and neat shapes.  There’s also nothing wrong with a flower that blooms in the spring, (tra-la!).  The article was about the “double” primroses that are mutations of the regular, “single” (already stunning) varieties.  Apparently, even when you buy “double” seeds from a grower, only about 25% will actually have the double blooms, so bringing them up from seed is a crapshoot. It’s still a...