From the McDonald Garden Center Blog
By now, you may have heard the buzz on the bee problem threatening the vitality of our fruits and vegetables. With bees and other pollinators being eradicated at an alarmingly fast rate, the need for action has reached its critical point. Luckily, McDonald Garden Center offers a number of ways to not only encourage pollinators in your garden, but beautify your space in the process.
Lets Its Petals Do the Talking
Most of us that had mothers or grandmothers who gardened probably remember old-fashioned petunias. Their fragrant, ruffled blooms in every imaginable color have long been a staple in flowerbeds. Now days, you can find petunias in just about any color or form you want, bi-colored, single flowered, double flowered, ruffled, mounding, spreading or spilling.
Ah, roses. From bud to bloom to falling petals, no garden, from cottage to contemporary, is really complete without at least a few of these dreamy flowering shrubs. Their wide variety of growth habits, sizes, colors, and textures can fill any niche in the home landscape, and as breeders have made improvements in disease resistance, they’re less work, too. As long as the site is right, there is no reason you can’t have roses in all parts of your garden. Here are five of our favorite ways to use them.
GARDEN GERANIUMSGeraniums are a truly a garden classic. Did you know that two types of geraniums exist? Seed geraniums and zonal geraniums. Choosing the right type for the garden depends on several factors and there are reasons to grow both depending on personal preference and where you are going to be using them.
Easy-to-love new plants, accessible technology, a flirt with romance, the sharing economy, a cleaner, simpler color palette, and crisp geometric design all add up to a fresh take on gardening in 2016, according to the plant experts at Monrovia.
Since spring has officially arrived, let's get a jumpstart on our container gardens. Try these bloomers that tolerate the cooler early days of spring and get your containers if full spring. These flowers will work great in the early unpredictable days of spring and last all the way until the heat sets in, in May.
Annuals provide color from the time of planting into early fall. Inexpensive, easy-to-grow and gorgeous ~ annuals are great for changing the look of your garden from year-to-year and filling in around those bulbs and perennials. A few early-blooming annuals that are safe to plant now include petunias, marigolds, snapdragons, geraniums, million bells, dianthus and verbena. Some annuals do not handle frost very well and we recommend waiting until after the last average frost date to plant them outside.
by Kathy Van Mullekom, a lifelong gardener and gardening writer living in York County, VirginiaDad taught me “it’s not what you make but how you spend it.”That philosophy has guided me in everything I do, even in my garden.What does spending wisely have to do with gardening? Everything, if you want to get the most out of your plants, time and money.My gardening dollars are divided into categories: yard art, garden structures, maintenance and, of course, plants.
