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Special Series
Garden Design
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A New Tree Bed Garden
Tree beds offer great opportunities for city dwellers to exercise their green thumbs. As long as gardeners remember that the tree's health always comes first, they can choose from a large palette of annuals, perennials, and bulbs to beautify tree beds.
By Robin Simmen -
A Blended Garden
A blended garden is one that weaves edible and ornamental plants in the same garden bed or container. There isn’t a strict line as to where the flower garden stops and the vegetable garden starts.
By Joan McDonald -
The Savage Garden
Hardly a revolutionary horticultural practice, the jardin sauvage is based in part on permitting unplanned growth, such as that of self-seeding flowers that find their own cultural niche.
By Nancy Seaton -
A Late-Season Garden
Many gardeners feel compelled to prune back perennials and grasses in the fall, and some plants do indeed need to be cleaned up. But those with beautiful and interesting ornamental elements can help your garden make the transition from autumn to winter.
By Joan McDonald -
Designing A Hummingbird Garden: 15 Ways to Keep Them Coming
Hummingbirds prefer openings in the forest and forest edge, and so are readily drawn to suburban and rural gardens that offer a mix of tall trees, shrubs, and patches of meadow and lawn.
By Stephen W. Kress -
Herbes de Provence: An Elegant, Potted-Garden Design
Longing to visit Provence, that beautiful and charming region in the south of France, to bask in its warm sunlight, taste its delicious cuisine, and see the sloping vineyards and colorful scenery that charmed Cezanne and Van Gogh? Well, you can capture some of the ambience of Provence by growing its famous culinary herbs in your garden.
By Joan McDonald and Janet Otranto -
Dazzling Borders for Sun and Shade
The art and practice of creating dynamic, colorful, four-season borders planted with a mixture of perennials, shrubs, ornamental grasses, annuals, and bulbs has come of age in America. Never before has there been such a wealth and diversity of ornamental plants to combine in mixed borders.
By Bob Hyland -
An Easy-Care Rock Garden—Designing With Durable and Delightful Perennials
Rock-garden plants have a way of capturing the imagination with their delicate features and subtle adaptations to harsh—usually alpine—environments. Beautiful flowers, interesting foliage, and unusual textures make them irresistible additions to the sunny, well-drained garden.
By Megan T. Ray -
Easy Monochromatic Gardens
Combining shades and tones of the same color or limiting yourself to using a related group of colors is a fun way to create an exciting yet harmonious garden design.
By Walter Chandoha -
An Herb Garden for Tea Time
In our frenetically paced modern lives, making time for growing herbs and savoring herbal infusions may seem like an anachronism, a quaint throwback to a more unhurried age. But we need such time-tested tonics, places to slow down and enjoy nature's bounty, seemingly more than ever.
By Tina Marie Wilcox and Susan Belsinger
