Vibrant Fall Foliage Are you drawn to bright scarlet leaves in autumn? You have probably admired sumac shrubs growing along the roadsides even if you didn’t know their name. Sumac’s huge, compound leaves can grow to two feet long, made up of as many as 31 leaflets arranged along its colorful central stem. They are deep green and glossy through much of the year, until they turn golden, orange, scarlet, or even deep purple from September until the leaves finally...
A Window of Opportunity Your window to destroy any Japanese stilt grass on your property closes when its seeds emerge in late August through October. This tenacious, invasive grass has all the adaptations it needs to gobble up real estate in private yards, public spaces, and in woodlands across America. But your swift action now, before this year’s seeds ripen, can help stop its spread. Japanese stilt grass, Microstegium vimineum, is an annual that will die back with...
Maidenhair ferns look so delicate and fragile I avoided planting them for the first thirty-odd years of my gardening adventures. I had no confidence in keeping them alive through a Virginia summer because I expected them to be fussy, requiring far more skillful care than I could offer. Native Northern Maidenhair Ferns When I first toured the Williamsburg Botanical Garden as a newly minted Master Gardener intern in April of 2018, our guide, Dr. Donna Ware, pointed out a...
Fragrant Gardenia Flowers Fragrance often announces the shift in our seasons, alerting us to look more carefully for what has changed since the day before. In June, a languid sweetness in the air calls our attention to the first flowers opening on the Gardenia shrub, a fixture in many Southeastern gardens, including residential gardens in coastal Virginia. Pristine, white and elegant, Gardenia flowers tend to fade all too quickly. Their beauty is ephemeral as they fade first to beige...
Dangerously Beautiful Opuntia Opuntia is a dangerous plant. A beautiful plant, perhaps, useful and delicious; but always dangerous to anyone who comes near it. Approach any Opuntia (Oh-POON’-tee-ah) you see with great care. Wear gloves. Wear heavy shoes and long pants. Study it carefully before approaching and consider its mysteries with an open mind. It is rife with contradictions. Opuntia is a native cactus that looks entirely out of place in most Virginia landscapes, though it grows here easily in...
Flowers for Mothers’ Day We traditionally honor our mothers, grandmothers, and the other important women in our lives with a gift of beautiful flowers at Mothers’ Day each May. Some may favor an orchid or rose corsage, while others present a bouquet of freshly cut flowers. And while flowers always make a lovely gift, the life of cut flowers is all too brief. A Gift That Gives Joy Again and Again One year, when my daughter was still...
A New View of our Earth American soldiers and scientists working at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico took the first images of Earth from space in late October of 1946 when they attached a 35-millimeter movie camera to a confiscated German V-2 missile they were testing. The missile reached an altitude of 65 miles, just above the limit of ‘outer space,’ before crashing back to earth with the film protected in a steel container. Subsequent missile tests...
Let’s celebrate some of our more unusual and lesser-known native wildflowers in 2025. The Virginia Native Plant Society has chosen the Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum, as its 2025 Wildflower of the Year. The Perennial Plant Association has also chosen a native wildflower, indigenous to Virginia, as its pick for 2025. Perennial Plant of the Year for 2025 The 2025 Perennial Plant of the Year is clustered mountain mint, Pycnanthemum muticum, a native wildflower in the mint, or Lamiaceae family. It...
Have You Eaten? Animals engage in the business of eating; there is no common ground between our desire for a beautiful and productive garden and a deer or rabbit’s need for lunch. While we may garden in harmony with birds harvesting berries from our shrubs and bees harvesting nectar and pollen from our flowers, it is mainly because they can assist us with our gardening tasks and feed themselves without destroying our plants. Birds and spiders eat mostly insects, helping...
Fallen leaves carpet the ravine behind our home, broken only by thick green stems of bamboo, taller than most of our trees; a few young pawpaw and scarlet buckeye trees; and the thick trunks of century old beech trees. There are also a few fallen, decaying trunks of trees lost to storms, but none of the undergrowth you might expect to find in a wild ravine bordering a small lake. The soil is rich and deep. Dappled sunlight illuminates...