You can’t miss them! Sunflowers, that is. From across the garden, or across the highway, sunflowers (Helianthus, below), annual or perennial, make a bold statement in the early Fall. Big and bright, even the compact growing varieties grab your eye with masses of golden yellow blooms. Subtle, they are not. In stark contrast, Toad lilies (Tricyrtis) are…

Bravo! The end of the blooming season is near, and quite a year it has been. Spring started slow, but once flowers appeared cool temperatures kept them going longer. Though the late Summer was dry in the mid-Atlantic, we rarely experienced extreme heat, and the late season blooming crapemyrtles, hydrangeas, and perennials performed well. A superb year…

The Garden Guru is an occasional series featuring seasonal questions selected through a rigorous, time honored journalistic tradition in which the Guru makes up the questions, then answers them. If you wish to ask your own questions, feel free to submit them and the Guru will pick the ones he knows and include them in…

The light morning rain yesterday was a welcome relief. Two weeks with relatively low humidity and no rainfall, following a three week hot, humid, dry stretch, has sapped ground moisture and stressed the Spring blooming perennials so they look ready to jump into dormancy. All will be fine next year, but they’re a bit haggard now. Tuesday’s rain…

Try as I might, I’ve had a hard time conjuring up bad vibes this late Summer. Several dry weeks in late July and early August fried the non-irrigated lawn, but I’d just as soon rip all the grass out anyway, so that’s not a bother. One after the other through July and August I’ve had trees, shrubs,…

In recent weeks this journal has devoted much space to bees and bugs, and given scant notice to all but a few plants in the garden. Despite August’s stifling heat and humidity, there is much in bloom and more to catch up on. As the calendar turns to September there are flowering trees (Franklinia, Seven…

… and other garden marvels. Some evenings in late August are too intolerable to get excited about rambling through the garden, too hot, too humid, and I’m happy enough to lounge about indoors. But the past several weeks have been different. I admit to a fascination with the masses of Swallowtail butterflies and bumblebees that…

Bumblebees are everywhere! The sad, troubled story of the honeybee has been well documented. Their absence was noted in mid-March when they failed to appear with the blooms of Pieris japonica, and through the year I have spotted a few only occasionally. But there’s no shortage of bumblebees, more than ever in my garden. A stroll down…