Fabulous New Plant Artist

If you are looking for the special occasion indoor plant arrangement whether for the table or for a gift please check out the new, as in (hasn't let success jack up her prices) plant artist:

sarahwallerflowers.blogspot.com

sorry, local to seattle area only right now


Plantgirl's Porch is my business that offers design for your pots, porches, and other particular areas in your little piece of the planet. Send me a message and I will email you.
plantgirlchd@comcast.net

good tips for veggie gardeners

Get the most from your veggie beds:

Soil Cleaners & Builders

These store the nitrogen from the air and then they release it into the soil. Examples of cleaners include things like potatoes and corn and peas and beans are great soil builders.

Therefore, if you follow a pattern of planting leafy vegetables the first season then follow successive seasons with fruits, then root plants the season after and then finally your soil builders and cleaners, you’re establishing a good crop rotation system which not only deters weed growth but keeps disease at bay as the different families of plants are more prone to different diseases.

Therefore, by rotation, you’re reducing a disease’s potential for incubation which could then take hold if you are planting crops from the same family year upon year. This is also true for pests and insects. If they know exactly where their preferred food is located, it will be a natural instinct to head for that area each year so by rotating the types of crops you plant each season, this only adds to their confusion so they are less likely to cause devastation to a particular crop.

By adopting a garden crop rotation policy, you’ll find that the yield from the crops you plant will be greater and of better quality and that your soil will healthier in which means each group can thrive.

http://www.safegardening.co.uk

Can't Wait Until Spring!

Here is a fun project to plan for the spring-- a white textural and fragrance garden as inspired by the British gardener Vita Sackville West and shown in her garden at Sissinghurst.

This garden is lovely through the seasons, but it was was designed to be at its best in early July and especially in the evenings or when illuminated by a full moon, since this garden was always used as an outdoor dining room. In one corner there is a dining table shaded by a rose arbor supported by broken columns (dubbed the "Erectheum"), where the family would eat whenever the weather allowed.

Vita wrote a description of her plantings in the White Garden in her a regular gardening column in the Observer for July 5, 1955: “There is a white underplanting of various artemisias, including the old aromatic Southernwood; the silvery Cineraria maritima, the grey santolina or Cotton Lavender; and the creeping Achillea ageratifolia. Dozens of the white Regale lily (grown from seed) come up through these. There are white delphiniums of the Pacific strain; white eremurus; white foxgloves in a shady place on the north side of a wall; the foam of gypsophila; the white shrubby Hydrangea grandiflora; white cistus; white tree peonies; buddlia nivea; white campanulas and the white form of Platycodon mariesii, the Chinese bellflower. There is a group of giant Arabian thistle, pure silver, 8 feet high. Two little sea buckthorns, the grey willow-leaved Pyrus salicifolia sheltered the grey leaden statue of a Vestal Virgin. Down the central path goes an avenue of white climbing roses, trailing up old almond trees. Later on there will be white Japanese anemones and some white dahlias....” These plantings have remained essentially unchanged, although the gardeners have introduced a few new plants.

There is little ornamentation in this garden, with only the statue under a weeping pear and a large gray Chinese jar, purchased by Harold in Egypt. The wrought iron arbor over the jar in the center of the intersection of the main paths replaced almond trees that eventually died and were removed in 1970. The most vigorous of the climbing roses (Rosa mulliganii) that had rambled through the trees was left to be trained over, but not completely obscure, the arches of the arbor.

To read more check www.SissinghurstCastleGarden.com