Many gardeners are now becoming all too familiar with one of the diseases which affects Boxwood, called Boxwood blight. In addition to this, Boxwood, while proving very useful and deer resistant for us here, has many problems. Leaf miner, Psyllid, Winter burn, finicky reactions to pruning, are …
Maintaining continued interest in a mature garden can be a difficult task, and one that requires evoking new ideas of being creative. Last year I visited Chanticleer, one of the most creative and spellbinding gardens in the country. Inspired and talented staff are constantly implementing …
Helleborus Orientalis There are numerous shade and drought tolerant ground covers available which are also deer resistant. However, many of them are mundane and don’t change much with the seasons. Vinca minor (Myrtle) makes an attractive ground cover, fits the above criteria, but often acts …
One of the activities in our greenhouse during the Winter season is plant propagation. Plant propagation is the process of growing new plants from a variety of sources: seeds, cuttings, and other plant parts. Many plants can be propagated from divisions, made by removing a section of the old plant. There often is not enough above ground material to create more than one new plant.
Horticulturist, Alan Gorkin acknowledges a mass ripening of Sleepy Cat Farm’s Meyer Lemon crop: One of my first assignments as Horticulturist at Sleepy Cat Farm, nearly 10 years ago, was to acquire 8 Meyer Lemon trees for Italian terra cotta urns that would adorn the …
The first Azalea to bloom at Sleepy Cat Farm is the Rhododendron dauricum f. “album” – a pure white Azalea (Rhododendron ssp), that grows 5-8 feet tall and thrives in our shaded woodland. For most of the Winter, it appears as a leggy plant with …
While cutting back the old spent foliage of Hellebores, I came across an Aesculus fruit (Horse Chestnut) which had germinated. Most hardy woody plants have a safety mechanism which requires seeds to be moist and chilled for several months. After satisfying this dormancy requirement, they …
Pictured: Cornis Sericea: “Arctic Fire” adds interest in Winter with its colorful bark. Plants create interest in the garden in many ways: foliage, flowers, fruit, bark, form, and so on. Adding new plants to a mature garden sometimes means removing plants that have begun to decline. …
People often ask me, “what do you do in the winter”? Honestly, in our climate one can normally proceed with garden activities throughout the month of December: invasive plant removals, planting, mulching, cleanup, even lawn installations. My neighbor installed a sod lawn in January. I …
