Cold Climate Gardening
Favourite Gardening Blogs & feeds (40)
Country & Rural Garden News (13)Newspapers (6)Other Gardening News (A-J) (29)Other Gardening News (K-Z) (30)Hardy plants for hardy souls 4 Feb 12 How to Have Fun with the New Hardiness Map Since I just got done telling you what the new USDA Hardiness Map is not good for, I thought I should at least show you how to have some fun with it. Okay, not rolling on the floor laughing fun. Probably more like, “what can I do instead of my taxes?” fun... 3 Feb 12 The New USDA Hardiness Map and Cold Climate Gardening The new hardiness map put out by the USDA is not going to help you at all if you’ve been gardening in the same spot for any length of time with your eyes open and your mind engaged. Let’s face it: common sense and experience will trump aggregated data every time... 25 Jan 12 Winterberries: Wildflower Wednesday Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is a native holly that drops its leaves in the fall. That’s what enables them to survive in colder climates. If your winter landscape seems dark and dreary, you will want to plant some of these shrubs where you can see their profusion of colorful berries from the heated side of your [... 15 Jan 12 Flowering Houseplants to Stave Off Cabin Fever: Garden Bloggers? Bloom Day January 2012 The weather outside is finally frightful (subzero Fahrenheit as I write this, and dropping), so I can’t show you the pansy that had been blooming in the unseasonably mild weather. I do have more blooms than usual in the house for January, thanks to a thoughtful friend, a container plant wintering indoors, and an impulse [... 7 Jan 12 Two Houses: Dioecious Plants, part 6 Imagine having a garden composed of only female plants. It could be considered a goddess garden. Think how subtle that would be. I wonder how long it would take for visitors to discover the organizing principle... 6 Jan 12 Two Houses: Dioecious Plants, part 5 I had a hard time thinking of a vegetable that belonged with this group and then it hit me: Asparagus. Named varieties are usually all male but the grower missed this one. Asparagus is my number one favorite vegetable and the plants from the garden are the sweetest I?ve tasted... 5 Jan 12 Two Houses: Dioecious Plants, part 4 I never considered it before I started looking for these plants but some of them exhibit sexual dimorphism, an obvious physical difference between male and female. The Silene is a good example. The male leaves are narrower, its sepals are pigmented and the flowers are smaller but more abundant... 4 Jan 12 Two Houses: Dioecious Plants, part 3 The swelling flower buds of Red Maples give some of the first colorings in spring, letting us know that most of winter is behind us. The open flowers reveal that they?re part of this group, too. Another dioecious American native is Kentucky Coffee Tree with the challenging name Gymnocladus dioica (jim-NOK-lad-us dy-oh-EYE-kuh, try it, it’s [... 3 Jan 12 Two Houses: Dioecious Plants, part 2 In the Oakland hills near the Berkeley border is Chapel of the Chimes, a columbarium. Renovated and expanded by Julia Morgan, the architect of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, it is a melding of Spanish and Gothic styles with arches, latticing and copious stained glass... 2 Jan 12 Two Houses: Dioecious Plants, part 1 The street I grew up on was lined with Sycamore trees. Their leafy masses were a delight in summer and always produced some good-natured grumbling during fall raking. These were small city lots and as time moved on problems developed...
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