This photo, used for our late January 2025 webpage header, was taken along the National Colonial Parkway at Glebe Gut. It features a bald cypress tree and other native vegetation. Glebe Gut is a narrow, tidal channel that flows under the Colonial Parkway, between College Creek and Mill Creek, near Jamestown Island. The waterway itself forms the western boundary of a 100-acre tract of land known as the Glebe Land, set aside after 1619 for the use and support...
The Shortest Day of the Year On Saturday, December 21, 2024, indigenous people and others who practice nature based spiritual paths celebrate the Winter Solstice. Winter Solstice has been observed as a holy day for millennia, since before humans kept records, because it marks the shortest day of the year and the return of the sun to warm the Earth for the growing season ahead. Historians have found that ancient stone circles, pyramids, and other prehistoric stone constructions are oriented...
Woody plants remain healthier, more productive, and more beautiful with strategic, well-timed pruning. Pruning young plants guides their growth into a strong and balanced structure. Pruning older plants opens them up to sunlight and airflow, limiting the opportunities for disease to infect them. Proper pruning can also rejuvenate them with new, more vigorous growth. Pruning wisely is both an art and a science. Some homeowners and gardeners may question how and when to prune the many shrubs and trees...
Pruning woody shrubs is both art and science. Selecting which branches to leave and which to remove allows a gardener to train a woody plant into a pleasing, balanced shape that fits the available space. Some gardeners use pruning techniques to create neatly trimmed topiary, elegant hedges, or espaliered fruit trees. Gardeners may also prune roots and branches and remove leaves and buds to train trees to live as bonsai in shallow containers. Woody plants are extremely adaptable and...
Conifers Pinus taeda, Loblolly Pine Pinus virginiana, Virginia Pine Pinus palustris, Longleaf Pine Picea abies, Common Spruce Abies fraseri, Frasier Fir Tsuga canadensis, Eastern Hemlock Taxodium distichum, Bald Cypress Juniperus virginiana, Eastern Red Cedar x Hesperotropsis leylandii, Leyland Cypress The Beauty and Promise of Trees in Winter Planting Trees and Other Hacks to Manage Wet Soils Identifying Local Trees in Winter Native Trees Back to Plant Literacy Main Page
A Mythic Forest The American beech, Fagus grandifolia, once covered most of North America from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts. Before colonists cleared our ancient forests for farmland, large beech groves grew as part of the climax forest community. A single beech tree can live for centuries, and as it ages it surrounds itself with sapling trees growing as suckers from its relatively shallow root system, forming an expanding grove of graceful beech trees....
We can consider winter as the ‘weekend’ of the gardening year, both the last month and the first months of the year when we can enjoy a much-needed rest from the regular routine. A period of rest and renewal restores energy to both the garden and the gardener. It allows us time for reflection on the successes and challenges of seasons past and an opportunity to plan and prepare for the seasons to come. If winter is the weekend,...
There is a special beauty in the form and structure of a bare tree after it has dropped its annual crop of leaves. Like the beauty of a classical statue, one can see the truth of its bones. Leaves, for all of their movement and color, veil the beauty of branches and buds. Looking at a bare tree is a study in pure potential. All of the tree’s life draws inwards to the wood and roots as...