…. Cline, former director of the Garden’s Kemper Center for Home Gardening, started the program in 1998. The botanical garden’s Pots to Planks program sells 6″ x 6″ timbers made from ground-up pots (No. 2 and No. 5 plastics). The rigid, heavy timbers are great for raised beds and strong enough to use for retaining walls. “They are fantastic,” Cline says. “It’s a lot of plastic in one product, but we&…
…elp and encourage other vegetable gardeners, sharing their story and as much gardening advice as they can. Broadcaster Mélanie Grégoire visited Josée and Michel during their “bed-in” protest which was held on July 22. Their protest was meant to be resminiscent of the “Bed-Ins for Peace” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969. Photo: Samuel Gaudreau This year, they’re expanding the garden, adding one more raised bed. The…
Since we launched the Kitchen Garden Planner in 2009, we’ve been hearing how people use it. Beginners find it helpful when starting a garden for the first time. Meanwhile, avid gardeners use it to create complex designs and keep records. Recently, we heard that the Peterson Garden Project, a community garden in Chicago, is using our online tool. LaManda Joy, founder of the Peterson Garden Project. Photo by Jennifer Stix. Since we la…
As staff horticulturist, part of my job is to plant and maintain a display garden. I grow many of the newest perennials on the market and evaluate them here in zone 5. Improved varieties of some North American native plants were among the most outstanding plants in the garden during the 2007 growing season. Lime Rickey Heuchera One of the most exciting groups of native perennials is heuchera (HUE-ker-ah), also known as coral bells. Low-…
What’s growing this year in our test gardens. Bam-Bam contemplates a leafy oxheart carrot that’s bigger than her head. Carrots that grew bigger than a bunny’s head were just one of the surprises in the Gardener’s Supply display and test garden this summer. An heirloom variety introduced in 1884, Oxheart carrot is short and thick, typically growing 3-4” wide, but only 5-6” long. Ready to harvest in 90 days, they easily reach…
Sometimes, our customers really “get” a product and take it in a new direction. Susan Pav, a gardener from Pennsylvania, took our Garden Quilt and used it to create mini-hoop houses so she could grow crops in the winter. She took photos of the set-up and tells how she did it: A set of four tunnels in my garden. Lifting the tunnel to check the plants. The tied-off end of the tunnel. My first test crop, on Dec. 29. Sometim…
We are taking photos to document the progress of gardens featured in our Kitchen Garden Planner. Watch the slideshow to see how they’re looking. If you’re growing a vegetable garden that you designed using our Kitchen Garden Planner, please add some photos of your garden to our online album. The Plant It and Forget It Garden on June 21. See it in our slideshow. Our Kitchen Garden Planner features eight pre-planned garden designs for 3…
…ther is one of those formidable Yankees you hear about, and she takes her gardening seriously. When I was young, she had a vegetable garden that took up a third of our backyard. It had started out manageably enough as two 8 x 20-foot beds. But every year, under her foreman’s eye, we kids would tear up more sod and till cart-loads of manure into the exposed earth. Eventually it grew into a 2,400-square-foot mini-farm, with compost bins made…
Take a slideshow tour through the garden of Vicki Nowicki, one of the 2009 Garden Crusaders. Her garden is in Downer’s Grove, IL Vicki (right) and I in her garden. This past August, I had the great pleasure of spending a whole day with one of this year’s Garden Crusader award winners: Vicki Nowicki. It was exciting to visit her home just outside Chicago — ground zero for the sustainable landscaping business she runs with h…
…awn with blue garden beds in the next year. So please, don’t stop selling them! When did you start? The garden was built in January. Thank God for our beautiful southern California weather. I live in Sunset garden zone 18, in the San Fernando Valley. Piper What about the white fencing? Decorative or functional? The fencing was for one reason, and her name is Piper, my 3-pound (at the time) black poodle mix puppy. As soon as I put the fenci…