Zone 6b - Mid-Atlantic Gardening

Are your shrubs and trees having “bad hair days”? While a bad haircut isn’t life-threatening, incorrect pruning can affect the health of the plant – not just its appearance.

Shade used to limit the average weekend gardener to ferns, hostas, and impatiens. But nurseries and catalog supply companies have stepped up to the plate in the past few years with an impressive array of shade-tolerant annuals, perennials, and shrubs that can provide lovely textures and colors even in the shadiest of settings.

Whether you’re filling in a few gaps in your existing flower beds or planting a whole new area, you’ll want to decide now what to put where. Here’s the trade-off: most annuals will bloom all season – but (despite their name) you won’t see them again next year. Perennials’ bloom-time usually lasts for a […]

So there you are, standing in the hardware store or garden center in front of a vast array of fertilizers. What the heck do those three numbers on the bags mean?