Taille (arboriculture)

Sometimes side yards are the least-visited places in a garden. This makes them perfect candidates for quiet getaways. Folks may not come looking for you when you’re ready to relax in a beautiful spot alone. This design is filled with a soft, soothing

At first glance, bark might seem like something you’d only want to eat in a survival situation. Take a closer look, though, and you’ll see that bark can be both nutritious and tasty. It can also be foraged any time of year, even in regions with harsh

Check stakes and ties are still strong. Plants may have lost a lot of lower leaves in a hard winter, but if there is a good cluster at the top they can still produce an excellent crop. Early varieties appear in shops this month. Buy while there is pl

Small-space gardening can be a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity to get creative. Backyards are getting smaller and for an increasing number of people, the only outdoor space they have to grow plants in is a courtyard, terrace or deck — sometim

Food forests are production systems that try to mimic nature. Rather than growing trees in grass, we aim for a variety of plants of different shapes and sizes among the trees. Like natural forests, food forests include layers from the ground up. By s

Creating the garden of your dreams takes a good deal of planning and organisation, but gardening is also a therapeutic activity for both body and soul, and rewards greatly from the effort put in. Start the new gardening year prepared. Ensure you have

The plant: Quick-growing and evergreen, senetti are naturally perennial and keep blooming, after pruning, to reboot throughout autumn, winter and into early spring. Their compact growth habit makes them perfect for pots on the patio and planted en ma

THIS week, I’ve been turning my attention to our winter-flowering clematis ‘Freckles’, which, once again, put on a superb show despite the weather’s bettering. This is a group one plant, which means it flowers early in the year on last year’s growth,

As every homeowner knows, spring waits for no one. Procrastinate your mulching or planting for one too many warm weekends, and the once-barren winter landscape changes to a thicket of fresh foliage. “Always work a season ahead,” advises horticulturis

EVERY season has its challenges, but winter is the one that really keeps us on our toes. Unpredictable, harsher weather, gloopy mud, dripping branches and an apparent dearth of life in the garden is a less-than-thrilling combination that almost justi

When is the best time to prune red tip shrubs? Robert Baker, SC Prune red tips (Photinia spp. and hybrids) in the winter when they are dormant. Pruning during the growing season will encourage new growth, which is highly susceptible to attack by a

Many fruit trees — including semidwarf varieties — can easily grow to 15 feet and taller. Anyone who’s tried to manage one of these large trees in their backyard will instantly appreciate the value of small fruit trees, which require less space, are

Blueberries are a fantastic addition to the home garden, be it contained on a balcony or sprawling across acres, due to their adaptability and longevity – a happy mature blueberry bush can produce fruit for many years. Blueberries are a perennial woo

WITH its pastel shades and delicious scent, wisteria is undoubtedly romantic. In late spring and early summer the sight of walls draped in the pendulous blooms of this vigorous, twining climber is pure poetry. But a closer look at the plant labels wi

Limbing up a tree or shrub means removing the bottom branches to expose one or more main trunks. This can be done with almost any shrub or tree and can change the look dramatically. Nima uses a pruner or hand saw to take out branches (no more than on

IF you pruned your shrub roses back by one half to a third in autumn, now is the time to give them a really good chop. If you didn’t get round to pruning them earlier, they will certainly benefit from a hard pruning now. It may seem counter-intuitive

One way or another, it’s certainly been an unusual year. While there have been many changes to our daily working practices on the nursery to make sure we keep everyone as safe as possible, the day-to-day jobs of grafting, budding, training and prunin

There is a time in life for big gardens, when we’re possessed with boundless energy to maintain billowing perennial gardens and a quarter-acre vegetable plot that produces enough food for the whole neighborhood. But if you are just starting out and y

FOLKS HAVE BEEN MESSING with plants long enough to have discovered that those very plants might serve human needs better if their physical growth were restricted in a more or less systematic way. In some cases the plants might grow taller, or shorter

BELOVED BY BEES AND BUTTERFLIES, a quality cover for birds and wildlife, and one of the most cherished blooms in America, the common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) embodies everything we love about sweet, old-fashioned flowers. After all, is there any othe

SUBJECT: Guess the Weight FROM: Andy C. Hi, Danny. I’ve read many growers’ forums, and some people weigh their weed wet right after trimming, while others say this is a waste of time and weigh theirs only after drying and curing. My question is: Whic