Flowers and Plants

How to Grow Wildflowers
In the past few years I've read about, and have seen more interest in wildflowers, so I figure it's about time I jump in and add my two cents.
I have watched in despair as some of my friends have created a wildflower bed in their yard, and have ended with the biggest, ugliest patch of weeds I have ever seen. Why did they get weeds instead of wildflowers?
How to Grow Wildflowers

Letting Nature Grow Your Garden
Your garden. What fun -- and frustration -- await you there! The best mentor you can choose, as far as I'm concerned, is Nature herself. Nature likes life everywhere. Have an open field and plants magically appear! This is the way plants grow when left to themselves. We don't have to struggle so much.
It is wisest to let Nature have Her way. Nature has her own agenda, and your life as a gardener will be easier if you bow to Her desires. Better to dance with the fairies than struggle with eliminating "weeds".
What herbs already grow around you that you can use as teas and seasonings? Most areas are rich in such plants, both native and introduced. Many of them will be happy to grace your garden with very little effort on your part. Some will appear; others may want to be transplanted. Still others are simply there, waiting for you to notice.
Letting Nature Grow Your Garden

Bee Balm
A Beautiful and Useful Plant for your Garden
Bee Balm is a very pretty herb with a wonderful fruity, minty aroma. The gorgeous tubular flowers, held like a crown at the top of the 3-4 foot stems in mid and late summer come in a lot of colors including red, pink and purple.
On top of all these qualities, it is a hardy perennial herb that will grow in all zones. Bee Balm requires full sun or light shade and fertile, light and moist soil. It is best propagated by division or cuttings rather than seed because the seed isn't always true to the parent plant.
Bee Balm
A Beautiful and Useful Plant for your Garden

Celebrate Your Senses
An Evening Scented Garden
This is an ideal time to curl up with some full-color seed catalogues (virtual or real) and create your "ideal garden" plan for the year. And don't let small spaces constrict you - there are abundant options for container gardeners as well!
If you're someone who's most often home in the evenings, why wait until the weekend to enjoy a fragrant garden? Consider planting evening scented blossoms to enhance your personal space.
Celebrate Your Senses
An Evening Scented Garden

Hey, Nice Grass!!
Establishing a Great Lawn
When preparing to establish a new lawn, the options can be overwhelming. "Should I seed or sod? What is the difference between a spring and a plug, and why in the world would I use them? How did Mr. Lawn Guru up the street get such a thick lawn? I just want some grass!"
Don't let all these pressing questions drive you to distraction; get in control of your lawn dilemma and learn which lawn establishment method will work the best for you, your budget, and your sanity.
Hey, Nice Grass!!
Establishing a Great Lawn

A Japanese Garden is Not
Your Ordinary Garden
Japanese gardening is much different from the Western style garden. Most would say that a Japanese garden is far more soul soothing and inspires meditation. Japanese gardening is a cultural form of gardening that is meant to produce a scene that mimics nature as much as possible. Using trees, shrubs, rocks, sand, artificial hills, ponds, and flowing water the garden becomes an art form.
The Zen and Shinto traditions are both a large part of Japanese gardening and, because of this; the gardens have a contemplative and reflective state of mind.
The basic methods of scenery are a reduced scale, symbolization, and borrowed views. The reduced scale is the art of taking an actual scene from nature, mountains, rivers, trees, and reproducing it on a smaller scale. Symbolization involves generalization and abstraction.
A Japanese Garden is Not
Your Ordinary Garden

Flowers That Bloom in the Night
Some flowers prefer to grow by the light of the moon. It sounds as if I am going to break into song but there are those flowers that look their best after the sun has gone down. Many of these nocturnal bloomers are tropical plants best suited to warm climates. You can choose to select hardy perennials or just grow the tropical specimens as summer annuals and then bring them indoors for the winter.
Flowers that Bloom in the Night

Lessons About Life from the Apple
The apple tree is no longer evolving, but the viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects who love it, are. The domestication of the apple has gone too far, to the point where the species' fitness for life in nature (where it still has to live, after all!) has been dangerously compromised.
Now here's the EQ question -- Are you changing enough to keep up with the -- figuratively and literally speaking -- viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects that live in your world? Or have you "domesticated yourself" to the point where you are no long fit? Keep evolving. Become a master of change, i.e., resilient. It's an Emotional Intelligence competency.
Lessons About Life from the Apple

Catch the Bluebonnets in Texas This Spring
If you haven't seen the wildflowers in Texas in the spring, you haven't lived! The highway medians and hillsides are full of color -- bright red, yellow and blue, pink and cream -- but you better look out because cars are always pulling off the side of the highway to ogle and take photographs.
It's a tradition to get in your car in the spring and go look at the wildflowers. Nearly everyone in Texas has a photo of their kids in the bluebonnets.
Catch the Bluebonnets in Texas This Spring