Serenity in the Garden

rose hips photo by Jan Johnsen  Allow your roses to form hips.   Did you know that, like  many plants that produce fruit, the formation of rose hips is a signal to the rose to go dormant for the season? from Monrovia - Japanese rose  Rose hips provide wonderful color in the garden and are a good source of vitamin C for birds in the fall and winter.  They are one of the highest plant sources of Vitamin C. 'Cherry Pie' Rose makes great rose hips: Oso Easy Cherry Pie Rose -from May Dreams Garden Blog  You can eat them too. Rose hips are used for jam, jelly, syrup, soup, beverages, pies, bread, and wine.  They can also be eaten raw if care is used to avoid the hairs inside the fruit.   The redder they are, the softer and sweeter.   source: live by the sun blog  for more info on roses go to Chris Van Cleave - click here . 

Last week I was interviewed by Christy Wilhelmi on her podcast for Gardenerd. She has a great website and says that  Gardenerd is designed for people who have a healthy sense of humor about their obsession with organic gardening, and who have a thirst for knowledge.  Christy Wilhelmi - host of Gardenerd Her audio interviews feature  a wide variety of garden experts and are quite wonderful. I am honored to be among her guests!  If you want to hear our conversation about gardening tips  please click here : My  Audio  Interview with Gardenerd

ZOOM TALK - June 9 at 6 pm EST  Sponsored by the Los Angeles Association of Professional Landscape Designers - Go here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gardentopia-with-jan-johnsen-tickets-106030600380 Join award-winning landscape designer and garden writer Jan Johnsen to discuss the concepts in her latest book, Gardentopia. About this Event “Gardentopia is that rare marriage of the art of landscaping and the technical knowledge of how to compose a landscape―boiled down to readily understood and easily executed actions. This book puts you in the driver’s seat and shows you how to chart the course to your own personal garden utopia.” - Margie Grace, Grace Design Associates Any backyard has the potential to refresh and inspire if you know what to do. Jan Johnsen’s new book,  Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces , will delight all garden lovers with over 130 lushly illustrated landscape design and planting suggestions. Ms. Johns...

Are you feeling a little down? depressed? Well here is a way to fix that -  go out and plant something... Studies have found that an hour of gardening a day reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke and increases bone density more efficiently than aerobics or swimming! In fact, even looking at nature can result in a drop in blood pressure within five minutes and lower our stress hormones. One 16-year study in Australia revealed that those who did daily gardening even cut their risk of getting dementia in later life.    (Gardening boosts endorphins, the body’s good-mood chemicals. Personally, my theory is that we need the sunlight on our pineal gland and this can delay dementia, but I have no proof, its just a 'knowing') Here is a lovely story from  Timesonline United Kingdom,  dated March 27, 2010 "...Jane Robertson was earning a small fortune in the pressured world of derivatives markets when she had a breakdown at the age ...

Its 92 degrees outside. Sweltering. The air hangs like heavy drapes upon the landscape. There is no breeze. The garden quietly endures. So what can you do to lighten the oppressive atmosphere? ADD A BUBBLING URN -  a  recirculating water feature Japanese style bubbling urn by Jan Johnsen Why do this? Because the sound of water and its dynamic presence ( ask the great Dr. Emoto) add life and energy to a stultifying summer garden...  Bubbling urns and fountains bring sparkle to your garden. You can build a recirculating water fountain cheaply by buying parts in a hardware store or more expensively by going to a pond supplies vendor....I am not good at hardware so I buy kits. aquascape Bubbling Urns are set atop an underground reservoir that keeps re-circulating the water. Once the urn fills with water, the water spills over into the underground basin, which pumps the water back up through the urn. aquascape flavio website...

Check out  'Ideas for a Fall Garden'  on gardendesign.com. I share some ideas I have used in my landscape projects.  Please click on the article name above for some great end-of-the-gardening-year ideas for your garden. from gardendesign.com The Garden Design website  is a virtual compendium of ideas for your landscape.

Do you want to be immortalized? Just have someone name a fabulous plant after you.  Honorine Jobert was a very lucky lady because this flowering Japanese hybrid anemone -  Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert' -  is a wonderful bloomer and extremely adaptable.  Lovely in a woodland setting or in rock gardens. An excellent cut flower. Naturalizes by spreading rhizomes in ideal conditions. Herbaceous perennial. Blooms from August through September, every year. Zones 4 - 8. Low maintenance and great in perennial borders, cottage gardens, and city gardens  .  Named a 'Tried and True' plant by the Missouri Botanical Garden. 

Amsonia Blue Ice  by Monrovia Nurseries The Blue Star perennial family -   Amsonia tabernaemontana - has a hybrid cousin,  Amsonia 'Blue Ice'  that is an amazingly vigorous, low growing plant with deep blue flowers.    photo by Jan Johnsen Amsonia 'Blue Ice'  has a white, milky sap that is toxic to deer and more. Yay!  Amsonia 'Blue Ice' is easy to grow and drought tolerant.  12-16" tall, 18-24" wide. Needs full sun. It blooms from late spring to early summer.  amsonia Blue Ice fall foliage is stunning - photo by Jan Johnsen It grows in a 15" tall by 2' wide mound of narrow, dark green, deer-resistant foliage. And in spring it is topped with large clusters of lavender-blue flowers which are more vivid than other blue stars.  It  blooms prolifically and turns a fabulous golden yellow in the fall.  Zones 4-9   Amsonia blue ice , Miscanthus 'Morning light' ,  Nepeta 'Dropmore Hy...

Worm tubes from National Gardening Association  Want to know a great way to  enhance biological activity in  your garden? Think of it as adding  probiotics to your soil.... Worm Tubes!  It is a fun way to use your vegetable food waste without the hassle of true composting. Worm tubes attract worms to your garden and this, in turn, creates rich, worm casting-filled composted soil for you to use.  Josh shows us how - click here And did you know that  worm compost suppresses plant diseases ? Research has shown that worm compost can successfully suppress  Pythium aphanidermatum  - a mold responsible for the dreaded 'damping off', where seedlings and young plants rot away at the base of the stem. The microbes  in the compost are key. They chemically prevent (disrupts the signalling)  the  Pythium  pathogen from accessing the plant.  This is why you should consider making worm compost with a 'worm tube' ...

Happy Harvest Moon! It is the full moon that is nearest the start of the autumn equinox and this year that is October 5th. It is a significant full moon because near the fall equinox the moon rises soon after sunset and thus shines bright early in the evening. This helps farmers to harvest crops in the light of the full moon. .  Additionally, it appears to rise the same time each night for several nights (about 25 minutes later) while most full moons rise about 50 minutes later each night in the US and southern Canada. In more Northern areas the Harvest Moon rises only 10 - 20 minutes later each night.  This is a great benefit at sunset for farmers.

'Sedona' Coleus  What plant likes sun or shade - is Fast Growing - Easy to Grow - Adds a visual POP to planters and beds? the answer  :  Coleus (Solenostemon scutellarioides ) Coleus is a versatile foliage plant that is always at your service, no special requirements other than water and maybe a little pinching as the season progresses... and it thrives in part shade! What's not to love? It is an exuberant houseplant,  a summertime dazzler  and a fabuloso filler plant suitable for any and all applications... It looks especially wonderful in pots. Place several together like this: Inky Fingers Coleus, Chartreuse Sweet Potato Vine and others or in a low, wide mouth planter with ferns: Or you can plant it in shady plant bed alongside the perennial Ladies Mantle ( alchemilla mollis): Alabama Sunset Coleus with Ladies Mantle Or you plant it beneath larger plants - as I did below with a weeping blue at...