Gardening

Favorite Dahlias: Bold, Brassy Garden Performers

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Dahlias are born performers, no shrinking violets they. If Ethel Merman was a flower, she'd have been a dahlia, belting, upstaging, and headlining in every corner...

A Great Way to Water Your Garden

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My friend Crystal once dubbed me the "Dahlia Whisperer" after spotting me in my front flower field. And while I basked in the glory of her...

White Flowers: Dressing-Up the Garden

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Like the song says, "June is busting out all over!" But before it concedes to July and the bold colors of summer, June is holding...

Foxglove in the Locust Tree

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Foxglove growing in an unlikely place. Each season brings new surprises, a changing of the guard so to speak, when petals fall, snowflakes melt or swallows...

I Fought the Lawn, and the Lawn Won

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At first it was difficult to wrap my suburban-lawn-care brain around the fact that I no longer lived in Seattle on a postage-stamp-sized lot. When...

How to Make an Orchard Mason Bee House

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While I adore my honeybees, I also revere the amazing and often-times overlooked native pollinator, the Mason Orchard Bee (Osmia lignaria). Where the honeybee is...

Garry Oak: Deep Roots in the Pacific Northwest

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True confession: I'm a collector of plants. I can (and do) have a greenhouse of flora, weeds, seeds, bulbs and starts, with nary an inch...

Broadfork: Shake, Shimmy and Till!

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Broadfork: my new best friend in the greenhouse There are gardening tools, and then, there are gardening tools. The Meadow Creature broadfork is definitely the...

An Easy Way to Repot Plants

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Out in the greenhouse, I found many of my garden starts and cuttings were already needing to be repotted into larger pots. Apparently a warmer-than-normal...
shredded paper garden mulch

Gardening Tip: Shredded Paper as Garden Mulch

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Junk mail and newspapers are two of my best crops, sprouting up everywhere inside the house, covering surfaces like kudzu. Solution: shredded paper as...