Plants for Special Needs and Problem Areas

Stop crying over lost tulips and open your eyes to spring treasures the deer won't bother with. (Hopefully)

Don't think bulbs are through once spring is over. Summer flowering bulbs are a wonderful way to add color and even a touch of the tropics to your garden.

A true butterfly garden is not just designed to attract adult butterflies, but also to afford a place for them to hibernate and lay eggs and for the larva, or caterpillars, to feed. Different species of butterflies have different preferences in plants.

Gardening in clay soil is a challenge that can be met. Their are many plants that will grow very well in clay soil and some that will even help improve it. Rugged natives and tough, tap rooted plants can make a garden even in the difficult conditions posed by clay. Here are some to get you started.

Get your garden off to a great start and end with a blaze of color, by planting annual flowers that love the cooler weather.

Repeat blooming annuals are favored for cutting gardens, but many perennial flowers do wonderfully well as cut flowers. What makes for a good cut flower is a stem that is long enough and sturdy enough to hold the flower in an arrangement and a flower that lasts and looks good for several days. That gives the gardener a wide choice for...

Truely 4 seasons of interest. Color, texture, form and they even attract birds!

Please do eat the flowers. You'd be surprised how many common flowers are edible.

The fall garden is one of the most colorful seasons in the garden. Many fall blooming perennial flowers display jewel tone blossoms that complement the fall foliage display of trees and shrubs.

Keep your garden in bloom with perennials that provide a long season of interest.

Moss looks wonderful in the garden, especially on rocks and rock walls. It gives any garden a sense of age and weight. Getting moss to grow on rocks or on the ground in your garden simply requires you give the moss the growing conditions it needs and have some patience while it gets established.

Of course you can grow ornamental grasses in containers. And what better way to keep them from taking over your garden?

One the the great features of ornamental grasses in the garden is the long season of interest. These ornamental grasses really come into their own in fall.

If you live in a cold climate, few plants are going to give you interest throughout the entire winter. But these sturdier grasses should hold up until you start to see the promise of spring.

All flowers are not created equal. These perennials provide lots of bloom and interest without lots of work.

You'll wait all season for these flowers to bloom, but they're worth the wait and they bloom when everything else in the garden is fading.

The nose knows. These fragrant beauties have some of the best scents in a flower known for it's fragrance.

Every rose grower wants the prize winning hybrid tea blossom. Start with a great plant and you're guaranteed great flowers.

No rose will grow in total shade, but there are some that can happily tolerate partical shade.

These garden volunteers will be popping up throughout your gardens for many seasons to come. There's no easier way to make your garden look natural.

Shade gardening offers the opportunity to work with a diverse variety of plants and to garden in a cool spot both the gardener and the plants will appreciate. There are shade plants suitable to the different degrees of shade. It is possible to create a shade garden with color and interest, if you choose appropriate shade garden plants. Here...

Texture, in garden design, generally refers to the surface quality of the plant. This is a feature, taking in conjunction with color and the overall form or shape of the plant, used to create interest and balance in garden design. Plant textures run the gamut from delicate and fine to coarse and bold, as with the examples listed here.

Need a clay buster? A rose for shade? What to try growing some of those heirloom vegetables you've heard about? Wish your annuals would self-seed? These lists will give you some top plant varieties, whatever your garden needs.

Xeriscaping is a method of gardening that involves choosing plants that are appropriate to their site and creating a landscape that can be maintained with little supplemental watering. Here are the seven steps of xeriscaping, common sense guides to gardening in harmony with your site that can be applied to any type of garden design.