My dairy farmer neighbors sold their herd last June and have turned their attention to landscaping their farmyard. A year ago they hired a landscaping company who at great expense installed a small pond, put some plantings around it, planted a mis-labeled tree, and then went out of business. I’ve been asked to [Continue]
Its name is rather off-putting for someone who wants to grow a nice plant, but dead nettle is a pretty solution for the oft-asked question, “What can I grow under my trees in the shade where grass won’t grow?” Nettle implies something prickly or spiny, and dead, well dead implies dead. Dead nettle [Continue]
Some gardeners love moss. Some gardeners hate moss. Some gardeners love moss in some places but hate moss in other places. Moss growing in your lawn is actually a symptom rather than the cause of a poor lawn. Moss grows in shade where soil is compacted and has a low pH. Poor drainage [Continue]
Every year about this time, when the garden is planted, the flowerpots are blooming merrily and I’m caught up with weeding, I get the urge to “do something with bricks.” The itch intensifies when the Sunday Menards ad proclaims a sale on bricks at 4/$1. There are many places in a typical yard [Continue]
My neighbor erected three ugly plastic storage buildings along our shared lot line, just in my line of vision from the lawn chair on my deck. Even though the buildings aren’t straight off the deck, my eye was constantly drawn to the eyesores. What to do? Discarding the illegal and impractical alternatives, I [Continue]
Gardening for wildlife is much more fun and relaxing than gardening purely for beauty or to keep up with your neighbors’ expectations for yards in the neighborhood. A landscape with perfectly trimmed trees and shrubs and annuals lined up in rows like soldiers may be pretty, but it is rather sterile. Add some [Continue]
Just an eight-hour drive from the Fox Valley, Lima, Ohio, sits in the northwest corner of the state. About the size of Oshkosh, Lima is similar to many other Midwest cities of its size. But there is a jewel tucked into what was formerly a vacant lot filled with trash and choked with weeds [Continue]
Until recently, a large evergreen shrub grew to the right of my garage door. It was there when we moved here fifteen years ago. Twice every year I dutifully trimmed it to a perfect mounded shape. In between, its shaggy growth hung over the driveway and covered part of the garage door. It grew so [Continue]
The front page of the Stein’s advertisement last week didn’t feature a picture of a pretty flowering shrub or a spectacularly blooming perennial. What it did have in large letters were the words “Grass Seed Sale.” Kind of boring as ads go, but a good reminder that it’s time to fill in the [Continue]
You planted that maple when your son was born. He climbed it when he was twelve and now you sit on a blanket beneath it with your grandchild. The willow was the first tree you and your spouse planted when you built your home. The stately oak was the reason you bought your property. [Continue]