Most gardeners pick flowers they love and hope for the best. Garden designers pick by the color wheel, and the difference is visible from the street. The good news? Color theory for gardens isn’t complicated. It boils down to one principle: colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel create the most electric …
Gardening
Pollinators are small creatures with a big impact. In fact, they are responsible for about one of every three bites of food we eat! Most of the flowering plants on earth–including the ones we depend upon for food–rely on bees, birds, butterflies, bats, and other animals in order to reproduce. Unfortunately, many of these important …
Starting a garden can feel overwhelming. There are things to buy, seeds to plant, things to keep watered and alive. Isn’t it easier to buy cucumbers at the grocery store? Not necessarily. When done right, access to fresh produce right in your backyard (or patio) is easier and cheaper than you think. There’s no need …
Lettuce is one of the easiest crops to grow in a backyard garden. Most gardeners spend weeks nurturing it from seed, only to harvest it once and pull the whole plant. That single mistake cuts a potentially long harvest short. The issue is that many home growers learned to harvest lettuce from a quick online …
You step outside one morning, coffee in hand, and spot a small rabbit tucked beside your garden bed. A few weeks later, there are two. While rabbits can be a beautiful sight, they can also be quite destructive. Then a tiny nest appears under the shrubs. Suddenly, your patch of green doubles as a rabbit …
It’s officially fire season, with the devastation affecting families across the country. Many fire experts and news outlets like The Dirt say that a smart “landscape approach”—careful planning of vegetation buffers and home hardening—can significantly slow wildfire spread and protect neighborhoods. Wildfires are, well, wild. If a flame catches the edge of your property, everything …
Growing lavender is supposed to be easy. That’s what everyone says. And yet it might be the single most commonly killed plant in the American backyard garden. The cruel irony? Most of the time, it isn’t neglect that does it in. It’s too much attention — too much water, too much fertilizer, too much fussing. …
If you’ve ever stood over a weedy, overgrown row garden in August and thought, there has to be a better way — there is, and it’s been around since the Carter administration. Most gardeners are still doing things the hard way, and a single number explains why: traditional row gardening requires approximately 98% more labor …
Most people think fruit trees are for serious gardeners; the type who have spray schedules pinned to their garage wall and know what “chill hours” means. They’re not. Several fruit trees are genuinely simple to grow, produce abundantly with minimal fuss, and taste so much better than anything at the grocery store that the first …
It’s no news that summers are hot, but the 2025 summer was predicted to turn the heat up a little, and it didn’t disappoint. With the sun coming out to play hard, everyone is talking about the heat, and if you have a garden, you’re likely wondering if it’s time to install a roof with …