Gardening Tips

Redbud trees or Cercis canadensis are small ornamental native trees growing 20-30 feet tall and wide. “Ruby Falls” is a cultivar of the Eastern Redbud tree, a cross between Cercis canadensis “Covey” which is a weeping form and “Forest Pansy,” which has purple foliage....

March is the beginning of spring when the sun crosses the equator and the earth begins to tilt toward the sun. The days get warmer and the earliest bulbs begin to bloom. Some plants just can’t wait that long, such as our native Oregon Grape Holly, Mahonia aquifolium....

Winter is often thought to be dull and dreary, but there are some beautiful evergreen plants that brighten up the landscape. One lovely evergreen is the Arizona Cypress Carolina Sapphire, Cupressus arizonica var. glabra “Carolina Sapphire.” This beautiful silvery blue...

The easiest houseplants to grow indoors are the old-fashioned, pass-along plants that your parents or grandparents might have grown. These plants can grow for many years with just a little basic care. They need the right amount of light and they need the right amount...

There are some wonderful plants that add color and texture to the landscapes, especially the winter landscapes. The American Holly is a wonderful native plant for the winter garden with its shiny or dull dark green leaves that stay on the trees all winter long. There...

The Evergreen Magnolia is a wonderful tree for all seasons! It blooms in the spring with fragrant, creamy 8-12 inch white flowers and often continues to bloom through the summer. It has decorative cone-like pods that release rosy-red coated seeds that are suspended on...

The seven-son flower, or Heptacodium miconioides, is a lovely fragrant shrub that is one of the latest plants to bloom in the autumn and only grows 10-20 feet tall and 8-10 feet wide. If you have a pollinator garden or wish to invite more pollinators to your garden,...

Blue mistflower is a native herbaceous perennial (Conoclinium coelestinum) that looks like the annual Ageratum, and sometimes even called a hardy ageratum. When you see photos of the flowers you see drifts of tiny sky-blue fuzzy flowers held above the green foliage,...

August is usually a hot and dry month and sometimes it seems that very few plants are blooming in the gardens. It may be hot and dry but there are some very lovely plants that bloom with huge and often brilliantly colored flowers even in August. Hibiscus is a cultivar...

Butterfly flower or Asclepia tuberosa used to be called the Butterfly weed, which never seemed right for this brightly colored flower that offers so much for the Monarch butterfly. It’s very nice that this herbaceous perennial is now called the “butterfly flower!”...