Every weekend you spend mowing, staking, deadheading, and watering plants that don’t deserve your time is a weekend that you’re not getting back. However, most experienced gardeners won’t tell you that most of that work isn’t required by nature. It’s required because of the choices you made in your garden. Every high-maintenance garden is a …

Most people have a garden story that ends the same way: the slugs won, or the heat hit early, or the soil just never seemed right. Hydroponics removes all of those excuses from the equation entirely. Growing plants in a nutrient-rich water solution instead of soil is not a futuristic science experiment. It is one …

There is a shrub sold at nearly every garden center in America, marketed for its cheerful red berries and reputation for attracting birds. What most gardeners don’t know is that an exact plant can kill most birds within the hour. If you have it in your yard right now, this article is the most important …

Some of the plants most commonly sold at garden centers in spring are also the thirstiest. Impatiens, a staple of shady borders, need consistently moist soil and wilt dramatically in heat. Marigolds are sold as tough, no-fuss flowers, but they perform poorly in drought and require regular irrigation to stay full and blooming. Sweet corn …

A single 4×8 raised bed holds 32 cubic feet of space. Most gardeners fill every inch of it with store-bought bagged soil. That one habit costs an average of $150 to $250 per bed, and it is a costly mistake you can stop making this spring. The affordable ways to fill your raised beds have …

Every April, millions of home gardeners make the same well-intentioned mistakes. They grab their shovels on the first warm Saturday, dump fertilizer on their beds, and race their tomatoes into the ground before their neighbors do. Then they wonder why, by June, their garden looks like it skipped spring entirely. The most expensive spring gardening …

Every spring, millions of gardeners make the same expensive mistake: they grab a few foil packets off a spinning rack at the hardware store, get home, and wonder six weeks later why almost nothing came up. The truth is, where you buy your seeds matters as much as how you grow them, and the best …

Most gardeners have spent more money filling perennial beds than they will ever admit. Year after year, the ritual is the same: walk into a nursery, fall in love with a dozen plants at $15 to $25 each, and walk out $200 lighter. The garden looks great for the season. Then the cycle repeats. The …

Most people walk into a garden center in April and walk out $60 lighter with a single flat of flowers that stops blooming by August. There is a smarter way to do it, and it starts with knowing which flowers deliver the most color for the least money, especially when you grow them the way …

Your joints ache, your knees protest, and somewhere along the way, someone told you that gardening was a young person’s game. That someone was wrong, and a University of Arkansas study of more than 3,300 women proves it. Researchers found that women over 50 who gardened at least once a week had higher bone density …