… to reach a height of about 3 feet before the stems start to lay over due to their weight. In late spring, it produces large orange-red blooms. It is free of most insect and disease problems. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… through October it produces fragrant white, salmon and yellow blooms that attract birds. It is a specimen in a hedge or a border as well as a ground cover. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… moisture conditions. It has purple and lavender blooms from March through June. It belongs in a ground cover or an understory and is attractive to birds. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… seem to love the same thing — creating a place of their own, making something beautiful. It is a powerful pull for those of us who consider ourselves gardeners, whether by profession or … dew. Conveying to children that worms or spiders are bad is simply passing along prejudices. In fact, worms are very beneficial to the soil, and spiders are important predators to keep insect pests at bay. Lessons that sound too much like school are easily covered in the informal environs of the garden. In addition, foods that might turn up little noses become …
Type: Plant Info
… This is the quiet time of year, when we put our gardens to bed. All the hustle of summer planting, … titmice, blue jays, and others provide a colorful, entertaining addition to our gardens in winter. Unlike spring—when they’re busy singing, looking for a mate, and building nests—in winter, a bird’s main activity is to find and eat enough food to keep warm. They’re searching …
Type: Plant Info
… Chinese spice bush is a shrub that grows up to 9 feet with opposite, untoothed, aromatic glossy green leaves. It produces interesting many-petaled, nodding flowers in later May. The cupped flowers have broad outer sepals that are glistening white, sometimes tinged in violet, with a ring of inner petals of yellow with a purple blotch at the base. Originally …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… All Summer Beauty has large mophead flowers which are blue in acid soils and pink in alkaline soils. The mophead inflorescence consists mainly of showy but sterile florets with a … in mid summer on new wood, and later in the summer it will bloom on old growth until fall. It is winter hardy to USDA Zone 5, but for added protection the plants can be sited in a sheltered …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… Marmalade Mussaenda is a tropical clumping shrub with clusters of unusual yellow and orange flowers and medium green … and partial sun, especially afternoon shade. Although they are capable of reaching 10-12 feet in height and width in their native environments, in northern climates, when grown in pots they are more likely to …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… Vernonia lettermannii , known as Letterman's ironweed, is covered with purple flowers in September and October produced by a rounded 4' x 4' herbaceous … flock to this plant when it comes into flower. Requires well drained soils on the dry side in the Chicago region in order to thrive. Insect and disease resistant. In an evaluation of …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… growing season than Chicago—are best given a head start inside where it's warm, beginning in late February or March for some plants. Expert greenhouse growers carefully fine-tune … can start with a dozen plants on a windowsill. Seeds are so cheap that there's no great risk in at least trying the experiment. Start small, with just a few containers and a couple of kinds … any seed starting are time, light, a growing medium, cleanliness, water, and attention. Time is critical. Some species need weeks longer than others. Impatiens, for example, need to be …
Type: Plant Info
