Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2025 i Horticulture

This past spring I spotted a bird in my front-yard garden that I thought was a Carolina wren, going by size and shape. Though these wrens are frequent visitors to my garden, I still get excited to see and hear one, because they’re just so plucky and musical (albeit very loud, especially at dawn). But when this particular bird flitted from the dogwood tree into a rhododendron close to the window, I got a closer look and realized I’d never seen it before. Searching online, I determined it to be a common yellowthroat. That’s not a rare or unusual bird but spotting it in my garden made my day. I was similarly elated to find chipping sparrows pecking aphids off my ninebark. It has always been a goal to make…

In a way, hummingbirds remind me of mosquitos. I’ll be walking around the garden and suddenly there’s a loud buzzing sound inches from my face! These little birds are amazing with their shifty movement—their wings flap up to 70 times per second—and constant energy. Their heart can beat more than 1,200 times per minute when in flight. When I started gardening, hummingbirds were not on my mind. In fact, I had never seen a hummingbird on our property, which featured mainly hostas and a few struggling potentillas. Over several seasons, I planted a mixture of perennials, including bleeding hearts and nepeta, with a goal of creating a deer-resistant garden in part shade. Within two years of adding new plants, a pair of hummingbirds were regular visitors to the garden. They…

abies AY-bees: From a Latin word for a kind of fir acer rubrum ay-SIR: Latin for maple ROO-brum: Latin for red actaea ack-TEE-uh: Latin name for bugbanes agave amica ah-GAH-vey: From Greek agauos, noble ah-MEE-kuh: Latin for friendly ajuga reptans ah-JOO-guh: From Latin abigere, to drive away REP-tens: Latin for creeping alnus ALL-nus: Latin word for alder alternanthera brasiliana all-ter-NAN-thur-uh: From Latin alternans, alternating, and anthera, anthers bruh-sill-ee-AH-nuh: From Brazil amelanchier arborea am-el-ANK-ee-er: From a French word for one of the species are-BORE-ee-uh: From Latin arbor, tree a. laevis LAY-viss: From Latin levis, smooth a. x grandiflora gran-dih-FLOOR-uh: From Latin grandis, large, and flora, flower ananas comosus ah-NAH-nus: Tupi word for this genus coe-MOE-sus: Latin for tufted aquilegia canadensis ah-quill-EE-gee-ah: From Latin for eagle can-ah-DEN-siss: Of Canada aralia spinosa ah-RAH-lee-ah:…

WITH ALL THE SUNSHINE, warm weather and winter’s atmospheric rivers soaking the West Coast, you’d think that California would be the home of a strong, ecologically complex native flora supporting an equally strong, complex fauna. So I thought before moving in 1985 from my USDA Zone 6 homeland on the East Coast to Sonoma County’s Zone 9 Mediterranean climate, just north of San Francisco. Over the past 40 years, I have come to 2 broad conclusions about this fabled region. The first conclusion is to agree with Luther Burbank—a local guy from Santa Rosa and a horticultural genius who introduced over 800 new or improved plants into commerce from 1870 until his death in 1926—when he said, “I firmly believe, from what I have seen, that Sonoma County is the…

Whether it’s offering a welcome at the front door, punctuating the edge of the patio or filling a sudden hole within the border, a well-placed pot can make an impact. But for all they accomplish visually, containers’ best function is perhaps the opportunity they present: the chance to experiment with plants and design. Flowering annuals have always been a staple for pots, planters and hanging baskets, but foliage perennials deserve consideration here. Plants grown for their leaves offer some advantages when it comes time to plan containers and in terms of ongoing care, too. Joined by companions in a large pot or allowed to fly solo, leafy perennials provide consistent interest throughout the growing season (and beyond, in the case of evergreen types in mild climates). Their leaves can contribute…

I was immune to poison ivy until I was almost 30 years old. This boded well for my chosen career as a garden maker, but unfortunately my immunity ended one fateful day when, while hiking with friends in a wilderness area, I took a misstep and tumbled down a rocky ravine. It was a significant fall, and I was lucky that I did not get seriously injured on the way down. But I was unlucky to land in a large patch of poison ivy, where the irritating oils of Toxicodendron radi-cans blended with my blood, freshly exposed by the cuts and scrapes suffered during my fall. My days of poison-ivy immunity were over just as my professional gardening career was about to begin! Since then, I have encountered the genus…

WHETHER YOU’RE AFTER fanciful flowers or luscious leaves, Begonia can fit the bill. Ranked among the largest genera, it comprises roughly 2,000 species, at home in the tropics and subtropics around the globe. Thanks to decades of exploration and breeding, countless hybrids and cultivars can be found at garden centers and enthusiasts’ shows. The American Begonia Society sorts begonias into three groups: fibrous-rooted, including wax and cane begonias; rhizomatous, growing from a horizontal underground stem; and tuberous, which sprout from tubers that can be stored dormant during the winter, like dahlias. No matter the type, all begonias flower in cymes, or clusters that branch from the end of an axil, or stem, with the central flower opening first. Begonias are monoecious, meaning that distinct male and female flowers occur on…

When my work relocated me from Maryland to South Florida in 2007, it was a total upheaval to gardening as I knew it. Instead of the temperate USDA Zone 6b/7a that was so comfortable and familiar to me, I was rather abruptly thrust into Zones 10b/11a, in a part of the country that vacillates between tropical savannah and tropical rainforest. The move required me to unlearn about 90 percent of the horticulture I knew. I could still have petunias, for example, but I had to plant them in December instead of May. (To this day I remember my first time seeing petunias next to boxed Christmas ornaments in a Miami-based Home Depot, a truly jarring combination.) But many of my cold-climate staples, like bearded irises, lilacs and rhubarb, were now…