Clematis vines are, of course, some of my favorite flowering vines: they're very easy to care for, and they produce absolutely amazing and varied flowers. One of the most common questions I get, though, is from readers who are confused about when to prune their particular Clematis. They know that pruning will help with the [...]
While on a short day trip to nearby Athens, Georgia this weekend, I had a chance to briefly visit one of my favorite places in the world, the Tree that Owns Itself (or, more properly, the Son of the Tree that Owns Itself). It is a white oak tree that was propagated from an ancient [...]
In honor of Earth Day, I thought that I would write a post today about something that you can do to help the environment. In recent years it has become more and more common for regular folks to keep plants in an effort to produce oxygen and sequester CO2. It only makes sense, then, that [...]
The weather has been going a little crazy the last few years, and each year it seems that more and more of the country is affected by drought conditions. It’s no surprise, then, that drought landscaping (sometimes called xeriscaping) is becoming a hot topic. There are a lot of easy things you can do in [...]
This is one of my very favorite times of the year. Everything is really starting to come out here in South Carolina. We've got White Dogwoods blooming strongly right now, and, of course, one of my favorite blooms of the year is out in force right now: Wisteria. Around here we have Wisteria growing everywhere. [...]
I was just looking around over in our Wayside Gardens Garden Center, and I happened upon some fantastic Sweetshrub. I asked one of our helpful Master Gardeners about the plant, and she told me that it’s x Sinocalycalycanthus ‘Hartlage Wine,’ a crossbreed of Chinese Sweetshrub and our native Carolina Allspice. All of these shrubs are [...]
After years of badly wanting to go, I finally got a chance to attend the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. We left on a last-minute (and poorly-planned) whim Friday evening and returned Sunday night. We were extremely fortunate to have had a free weekend just when the blooms were at their peak, and [...]