Plant Profile: Virgina Sweetspire (Itea virginica)
Karen Virginia sweetspire is a deciduous to semievergreen shrub native to eastern North America from New Jersey and Missouri south to Florida and Louisiana where it grows on stream and pond…
Garden Plants for Flower Arrangements: Spotted Laurel (Acuba japonica)
Spotted laurel is a broad leaf evergreen shrub native to China, Japan and Korea where it grows in moist forest soils. Its variegated forms are very useful in both the…
Plant Profile: Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens)
This rapidly growing, climbing or trailing woody vine is evergreen and a member of the logan family, Loganiaceae, a group made up of about thirteen genera many of which are…
Book Review: Compost Critters
Is a compost pile just a mound of plant debris and kitchen scraps? No, and Bianca Lavies’ book, Compost Critters, reveals the amazing critters that inhabit the compost pile and…
Earth Kind Roses: Nearly Thornless
The thorns, or prickles, on roses can make them very unpleasant garden companions especially when you have to weed, spread mulch, fertilize, deadhead, or cut flowers. Roses that lack prickles…
Plant Profile: Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)
Quaking aspen is a deciduous tree native to the cool climates of North America from Newfoundland across the subarctic to Alaska and British Columbia, south to Pennsylvania and Iowa, and…
Beneficial Insects and How to Attract Them: Ground Beetles
Ground beetles are members of the Carabidae family of insect with about forty thousand species worldwide, two thousand of which live in North America. They are variable in size and…
Plant Profile: Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)
Oriental bittersweet is a deciduous woody vine native to northern China, Japan and Korea growing up to 60’ tall often girlding and killing nearby shrubs and trees. It is a…
Book Review: The Urban Homesteading Cookbook
Do you live in the city but want to homestead? Michelle Catherine Nelson’s book, The Urban Homesteading Cookbook, will give you all the information you need to start collecting, growing,…
Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wine: Clover Wine
Clover wine today is made with the flowers or red rather than white clover. Over a hundred years ago when my paternal grandmother, Helen S. Wright, wrote her book Old…