Gardeners have many motivations for trying to grow more native plants: supporting insects, birds, and other creatures for their own sake; attracting beneficial insects to attack pests on our plants; choosing plants that are well-adapted to our region’s soils and climate; and simply enjoying the many and varied native plants that are becoming more available … Continue reading The Nativity Scene
Prior to selling her house, our club president offered divisions of nearly all the plants in her lovely garden to the Plant Sale. Member volunteers and the Plant Sale Committee arrived at her garden on a sunny day in early April to prepare hundreds of plants. While new leaves barely showed above the soil, we … Continue reading Digging and potting at Karen’s
Last month I mentioned detecting the mottled green leaves of Phacelia bipinnatifida, a biennial that is quietly waiting for spring (aren’t we all?) to begin producing its attractive purple flowers. This is one of those plants that can self-seed prolifically in the right conditions, which turns out to be leaf litter under deciduous trees. (Another … Continue reading Desperately Seeking Phacelia
Every season in the garden has its particular delights. Winter is no exception. Perhaps the pleasures of the cold months are even more prized because they are many fewer in number. As with every other part of the year, winter’s fleeting glories bring moments to be savored before they pass into memory. Some perennials and … Continue reading To everything a season
Several years ago I bought a book called “Use What You Have Decorating,” which provides useful suggestions about home decor based on the idea in the title: basically, look at your stuff and arrange it to achieve a pleasing result (while also fixing or avoiding common mistakes)—easier said than done, obviously. It occurred to me … Continue reading Winter Inspirations
If you want to support the natural environment in your garden, you have to decide where you fall along the order to chaos spectrum. Clearly, a gardener who is trying to provide ecological niches for insects and wildlife is not going to produce a Versailles-like symmetrical tapestry of plantings (not that many of us aspire … Continue reading Order and Chaos
On November 4, an awesome group of BCGC volunteers executed yet another project at the Connie Morella Library in downtown Bethesda. We spread more than a cubic yard of Bloom Woody Blend into the soil in the islands and peninsulas in the library parking lot. In addition, we spread nearly 150 pounds of cured Bloom … Continue reading Connie Morella Library Project
I have reported on my experience with several low-growing native ground covers that seemed to be relatively immune to deer. I thought I’d revisit this topic, since it’s both perennial and evergreen (sorry, couldn’t resist). In fact, many of our shade-loving native ground covers are semi-evergreen: the leaves mostly hang on over winter, growing more … Continue reading Ground covers revisited
Member Venil Ramiah brought this delicious drink to the final club board meeting of the club year. The final meeting was also the first face-to-face meeting of the board since the pandemic began. So in accordance with recent tradition, it combined a meeting with a pot luck lunch…
Birds normally eat our serviceberries before they fully ripen. Except this year…