ix months before their wedding, Taylor and Jeff Weikel did not have bouquets. They did not have centerpieces. They barely had flowers. What they had was a patch of ground beside their Tennessee home, packets of seeds and a plan that could easily fail. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for professional wedding flowers, the […]
For years, homeowners were encouraged to plant shrubs close to foundations, cover bare soil with wood mulch and fill every empty corner with greenery. In fire-prone parts of the United States, that advice is changing. Gardeners are now creating deliberate gaps between plants, replacing combustible mulch with gravel and moving dense shrubs away from walls, […]
The latest viral gardening trend begins with a jar. Gardeners pour different flower seeds into it, shake them together and scatter the mixture across an open patch of soil. There are no carefully measured rows. There is no color chart or complicated planting plan. The gardener waters the area and waits to see which plants […]
When Eric Swenson asked Kristin to marry him, he offered more than a ring. He promised to plant 1,000 peonies, her favorite flowers, if she agreed to build a life with him. Kristin wanted to believe him, but part of her remained cautious. Both had experienced difficult relationships before meeting, and a promise involving an […]
The method looks wrong at first. Instead of removing the grass, turning over the soil or using a tiller, gardeners place sheets of ordinary cardboard directly over the lawn. They wet the cardboard, cover it with compost and begin planting into the new layer. Videos showing the transformation have spread widely across social media, where […]
Some flowers are admired for their color or fragrance. Others make gardeners stop and look twice. Across the orchid family, several species produce blooms that appear to contain tiny monkeys, bees, butterflies or human figures. The resemblance can seem like a coincidence created for social media, but in some orchids, unusual shapes and markings play […]
When Tyler and Lauren Bouldin bought an abandoned 1830s house in Pennsylvania, the neglected swimming pool was one of the property’s most obvious problems. It had no cover or safety fence. The water had turned black, and snakes had made the damaged structure their home. For several years, the couple covered the area and focused […]
Sarah Whitty never planned to become a competitive giant-pumpkin grower. Her unusual gardening journey began in 2012, after she moved into a house in northern Maine and discovered that the previous owners had thrown an old Halloween pumpkin into the compost pile. The following spring, one of its seeds germinated. The vine spread across Sarah’s […]
Every day, four-year-old Samantha walked into the house and asked her mother for a cup of water. She always gave the same explanation. It was for her pumpkin. Her mother, Gabey Powell, assumed the little girl was playing an imaginary game somewhere in the yard. Perhaps she was watering an orange ball, a toy or […]