Tagged: pollinator plants

Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Holiday Plants / Memorial Day / Summer Color Plants / Tender Perennials / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Patriotic Container Gardens for Summer Celebrations

The Historic Red, White and Blue Red, White and Blue is the iconic color scheme of an American summer.  These colors each have deep meanings and various interpretations.  American revolutionaries adopted these colors for our colonial flags beginning in 1776.  Yet red, white and blue were also the colors of the British flag, and the British Red Ensign Flag, a field of red with a Union Jack in the upper left corner, which flew over Colonial and British ships from...

mountain laurel in bloom

Evergreen Shrubs / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Heirloom plants / Native Trees / Ornamental Shrubs / Poisonous Plants / Spring / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Mountain Laurel, A Native Shrub to Love

  I love finding mountain laurel growing in large, lovely masses in the wild.  Its creamy pink flowers glow softly in the forest.  Wild mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, sometimes grows along the undeveloped banks of creeks and rivers in Eastern Virginia.  It grows as an understory shrub in our oak, beach and pine forests. These evergreen shrubs, almost small trees, simply blend into the fabric of the woods through much of the year before bursting into bloom, suddenly elegant and...

Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Propagation / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Landscaping With Herbs Part III: Annual, Biennial and Tender Perennial Herbs

Benefits of Garden Herbs Herbs attract hummingbirds and butterflies like few other plants.  It is worth planting a few herbs whether you plan to harvest and cook with them or not because they are tough, easy to grow, and beautiful.  They come with side benefits; their essential oils not only offer fragrance and flavor, but they also deter grazers.  If you have watched deer chew your roses and impatiens like deer candy, know that your herbs will survive their curiosity. ...

Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Invasive Plants / Perennial Care / Permaculture / Sustainable Gardening / Tender Perennials / Vegetable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Landscaping With Herbs Part II:  Deciduous Perennial Herbs

What is an Herb? Why is mint an herb, but clover isn’t?  Have you ever given it much thought?  Botanically, any plant with a soft stem, that dies back in winter, is ‘herbaceous.’  Were you give a stack of a dozen cards, each with the name and picture of a plant, could you sort them into ‘herbs’ and ‘not herbs’? If asked, most of us could probably name at least five herbs.  Those used in cooking, like basil and thyme...

Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Evergreen Perennials / Evergreen Shrubs / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Sustainable Gardening / Therapeutic Gardening / Wildlife Gardening / Winter Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Landscaping with Herbs in Williamsburg

  Once upon a time, I found herb gardening a topic of mystique and mystery.  Maybe it was the herb gardening books I found, with their illustrations of medieval knot gardens, and the cute little pots of culinary herbs grown on the wide, sunny windowsill of someone’s gourmet kitchen.  Or maybe it was learning that many herbs prefer a Mediterranean climate with dry, rocky soil and lots of sunshine.  How could I replicate that in Virginia? It may have been...

Beneficial Insects / Birds / Carbon Garden / Evergreen Perennials / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Holiday Plants / Native Plants / Poisonous Plants / Wildlife Gardening / Winter

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Legends, Lore and the Truth About Mistletoe

  From November through May we can admire the living mathematics of the trunks and branches of hardwood trees.   Their leafy crowns have fallen, and their beautiful bark in all its silvery, marbled, textured variety is revealed once again. Looking up, we sometimes see lively green clusters of mistletoe shining in the treetops.  These shrubby, evergreen plants have been a part of myth and folklore since ancient times.  They live suspended between heaven and Earth, rooted into the branches of...

Animal repellant products / Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Herbs / Tender Perennials / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Designing With Lemon Scented Plants

  Picnics with citronella candles, lemon scented furniture polish and sweet tea with lemons all recall happy childhood memories.   Fragrance has a profound ability to create or shift a mood, to trigger memories and create new ones.  Just as cinnamon evokes the holidays; crisp, cool lemon is a summertime fragrance. Most lemon scented plants thrive in warm climates.  Lemon trees, Citrus limon, are hardy only to Zone 8.  Originally native to Asia, they spread throughout the ancient world wherever the...

Beneficial Insects / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Permaculture / Pollinators / Summer Color Plants / Sustainable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Summer Flowering Trees and Shrubs for Pollinators

  Have you ever watched a bumblebee explore a Hibiscus flower?  Each flower is large enough for the bee to crawl around the depths of its funnel shaped petals to collect as much pollen as possible.  Short, powdery stamens grow like bristles on a bottle brush from a long, tubular pistil. The bee emerges white with pollen and satisfied by the flower’s nectar. Hibiscus shrubs, commonly known as Rose of Sharon, bloom from June through November in our area.  Each...

Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Larval Host Plants / Native Plants / Perennial Care / Poisonous Plants / Summer Color Plants / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Designing Plantings to Host Butterflies and Moths

  A friend was excited to buy milkweed plants at a WBG plant sale several years ago. They aren’t easy to find commercially, and few people raise them from seed.  When I saw her again a few weeks later, I inquired about how her plants were doing. “Oh, I must have done something wrong. They’re not looking so good.  Most of the leaves have disappeared,” she replied.     I quickly reassured her that it was unlikely she had done...

Container Gardens / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Native Plants / Perennial Care / Poisonous Plants / Summer Color Plants / Sustainable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Top Plant Picks for Summer Color: Foliage (Part 2)

Colorful and enticing plants fill every table and rack at garden centers in May.  Even the most experienced gardener may feel a little overwhelmed with so many interesting choices. Annual or perennial?  How big will this get? Will deer and bunnies eat it?  How long will it last?  Sun or shade?  Will it grow in a pot?  Will it stand the heat?  How much care will it require?  And most importantly, will it go the distance and survive all season?...