Some plants rise above the rest with their extraordinarily brilliant blooms and foliage that are so distinctive that you can instantly identify them from a distance. We call them 55mph varieties – plants that turn heads even when you’re speeding past them down the highway. They make great flowers for front yards. If flashy flower
If you garden where the summer’s heat seems unrelenting, choosing suitable plants for your landscape that can handle consistently high temperatures is especially critical. Maybe you’ve found that some shrubs in your garden just can’t seem to take the heat like they used to. Instead of spending your time and energy pampering them along, consider
We’re back with this year’s edition of Heidi and Rod’s Top 10 New Plants for 2024! They know a good plant when they see one and since they have the advantage of growing many of the new varieties before they are introduced, you’ll get to benefit from their experience. Let’s see who made the list
Meet the national plants of the year 2024! Each year, Proven Winners awards top prizes for their most exemplary annuals, perennials, shrubs and container recipes under the National Plants and Recipes of the Year program. This makes it easy for home gardeners like you to identify the very best plants in each plant category. If
What a year it has been! 2023 was a gorgeous year in our expanded display gardens here at Garden Crossings in Zeeland, Michigan. With fairly moderate temperatures and decent rainfall, our plants flourished, creating a vibrant swathe of color across the front of our retail garden center. Let’s take a look back at ten of
Why didn’t my hydrangea bloom? What can I plant that the deer won’t eat? How do I overwinter this shrub in a container? You’ll find answers to these and many more of the most commonly asked questions in this season’s edition of Ask the Expert. Let’s dig in! Questions About Hydrangeas and Other Shrubs Why
When you stop to think about it, birds are a lot like people in that they need many of the same things to survive and thrive. Food, water, shelter and community are all critical components of the ecosystem in which they live. If your landscape is lacking any of the four, you are less likely
Are you tired of replanting all of your patio and porch pots every year? What if some of them contained plants that returned for several years? Though non-hardy annuals are traditionally used in patio and porch containers, the palette of available plant material increases exponentially when you add hardy perennials and shrubs into the mix.
As pretty as they are all on their own, you can enhance the beauty of your hydrangeas by pairing them with complementary plants that accentuate their best traits. Companion plants can also bring color and texture to the space when your hydrangeas aren’t in bloom. Let’s take a look at all six types of hydrangea
Few garden flowers have stood the test of time like roses. For centuries, they have been revered for their bouquet-worthy summertime blooms. There are so many different types of roses, from climbing forms to hybrid tea, floribunda and more, but for our purposes here, we are focusing on how to grow landscape roses. All of
Roses are undeniably beautiful but for a long time, fragrant cultivars fell out of favor. That’s because many of the most amazingly scented roses were also some of the worst offenders when it came to black spot and powdery mildew. They were too much work and required too many chemical treatments to keep them healthy,
If you enjoyed some blueberries in your cereal this morning or a thick slice of tomato on your BLT sandwich, you have a bee to thank. Native bees, of which there are approximately 4,000 species in North America, are the primary pollinator of many of our agricultural crops. They are generally far more efficient at