Our Disastrous Summer Garden

...omegranate). The drought and an extreme heat wave pushed everything in the garden to the edge–and a few over the edge: in the last month we abruptly lost some garden stalwarts, including a rosemary bush and a culinary sage. Despite all these disasters, I came back from the Heirloom Expo with some ideas: Spend a little less time on Facebook and a little more time in the garden. Come up with better raccoon fortifications. Take out stone fruit that i...

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Straw Bale Garden Update: Success!

...input of outside resources in the form of straw and fertilizer, straw bale gardening is a great solution for beginning gardeners or for those cursed with bad soil. And the skunks that have decimated my previous vegetable gardens are unable to get up on the bales. I’m considering trying another straw bale garden during our winter season. And I’m also pondering building boxes to put the bales in to make the garden look a bit neater. Compare the stra...

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Win Two Tickets to the 15th Annual Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour

...hbor Lora’s house!). If you’re thinking of including native plants in your garden or pondering a garden re-design, the Theodore Payne Garden Tour is a great way to get ideas. To enter our contest leave a comment on this post naming your favorite native plant. Please make sure to enter your email in the comment form (your email will not be published nor used for anything else other than contacting you to send the tickets). We’ll choose a lucky winn...

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Designing the World’s Most Pretentious Garden Shed

...Pinterest board to gather more notions, mostly from Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden, Little Sparta: The garden shed design I settled on is a kind of mashup of Ian Hamilton Finlay and the front of an “airplane” bungalow (a common type of house in our neighborhood). Next it was time to put the idea into Sketchup. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Sketchup rocks. All DIYers should know how to use it. With Sketchup I was able to come up with a...

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