Jul 23 2023
Marigolds are cheerful, hardworking flowers that can fill a garden with shades of yellow, gold, orange, cream, and deep red from summer until frost. They are inexpensive to grow from seed, tolerate heat and occasional dry conditions, and generally ask for very little attention once established. Their versatility is another reason marigolds remain such popular …
Jul 23 2023
A garden filled with flowers can appeal to more than the eyes. The right combination of plants can bring months of color while filling patios, pathways, borders, and seating areas with fragrance ranging from sweet and floral to spicy and herbal. Not every beautiful flower is strongly scented, and some of the most fragrant plants …
Jul 22 2023
Nasturtiums are the kind of flowers that make gardening feel easy. Scatter a few of their large seeds into a sunny patch of ground, and before long you can have rounded green leaves and jewel-toned flowers spilling across beds, tumbling from containers, or climbing a support. They are also unusual among ornamental garden favorites because …
Jul 22 2023
Purple is one of the easiest colors to build a garden around. It can be soft and romantic when paired with pale pink and white, dramatic beside burgundy foliage, or wonderfully energetic when contrasted with yellow and gold. Because purple flowers range from nearly blue lavender tones to deep violet and plum, a purple garden …
Jul 20 2023
Catmint is one of those garden plants that seems to offer far more than the amount of work it requires. Soft gray-green foliage forms relaxed mounds beneath clouds of lavender-blue flowers, often creating months of color with surprisingly little attention. It is especially useful along pathways, around roses, at the front of perennial borders, in …
Jul 18 2023
Dianthus brings together several qualities gardeners love: colorful flowers, compact growth, attractive blue-green foliage, and, in many varieties, a sweet fragrance reminiscent of cloves. Depending on the type, the flowers may be white, pink, rose, red, burgundy, lavender, or patterned with contrasting centers and edges. The genus includes familiar plants such as carnations, Sweet William, …
Jul 17 2023
Yarrow is one of those plants that often performs best when you stop fussing over it. Give it plenty of sunshine, soil that drains freely, and enough water to become established, and it can reward you with broad, flat-topped clusters of flowers for weeks at a time. Common yarrow, Achillea millefolium, is known for its …
Jul 16 2023
Few flowers make as dramatic an entrance as a sunflower. Some varieties stay compact enough for a patio pot, while others rise well above a gardener’s head before opening enormous golden blooms. There are branching sunflowers covered with smaller flowers, single-stem varieties grown for cutting, pollen-rich choices for bees, and seed-producing giants that eventually become …
Jul 12 2023
Garden phlox brings something especially valuable to the perennial border: big clusters of flowers at a time when many earlier summer plants are beginning to slow down. Rising on upright stems in shades of pink, purple, lavender, white, red, and bicolors, tall garden phlox can keep a flower bed lively from midsummer into early fall. …
Apr 17 2023
Indian paintbrush is one of the most recognizable wildflowers in North America, with brilliant red, orange, pink, yellow, or cream-colored bracts that can make a meadow look as though it has been brushed with paint. It is also one of the more challenging native wildflowers to establish in a garden. Plants in the genus Castilleja …
