Pruning - Fine Gardening
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How-To
3 Ways to Prune Lilacs to Maintain or Rejuvenate
The intoxicating fragrance of a lilac in full bloom stirs up intense memories for most gardeners. One whiff sends me back to Lilac Sunday preparations at the Arnold Arboretum in…
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Design
Growing Hellebores: Beautiful Varieties and Care
Few genera have gone through the incredible upgrade of flowers, foliage, and performance like hellebores have in the last 20 years. I began growing them in the early 1990s in my…
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Design
Top Native Shrubs to Replace Boxwood in Your Landscape
Throw a stone in any neighborhood, and more likely than not, you'll hit a boxwood tree. Boxwood (Buxus spp. and cvs., Zones 4–9) is the most popular evergreen shrub sold…
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How-To
Deer Ate My Evergreen. Now What?
So deer have carved their way into your arborvitae (Thuja spp. and cvs., Zones 2–8), rhododendron (Rhododendron spp. and cvs., Zones 3–11), or yew (Taxus spp. and cvs., Zones 5–8).…
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Design
Best Gardening Books with Fresh Perspectives to Inspire and Instruct
Whether you're drawn to native trees, inventive garden designs, or sustainable landscaping, the right book can transform your gardening practice. This collection of must-read titles offers fresh insights for gardeners…
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Design
How to Fix a Poorly Pruned Plant
There is nothing less noticeable than an excellent pruning job. But on the flip side, there is nothing more noticeable than a poorly pruned plant. Pruning is a science and…
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Design
Why to Stop Tilling and Grow Your Garden Like a Prairie
In graduate school my research involved comparing the health of soils in remnant native tallgrass prairies to adjacent farmlands. One of the lessons I learned is that we’d all be…
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Design
The Ultimate Guide to Growing Quince and Using Their Fruit
The topic of fruiting quince came up the other day when a friend shared just how productive his tree was shaping up to be this year. Everyone present enthusiastically chimed…
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Design
How to Coax Bountiful Blooms From Your Hydrangeas
While pruning a neighbor’s much neglected Hydrangea paniculata recently, I found myself musing on the history of this genus in American gardening, whose popularity has waxed and waned through the…
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Design
Guide to Growing Great Azaleas
One group of plants you can use to create a blooming bridge between spring and summer are azaleas (Rhododendron spp. and cvs., Zones 3–9). As one of the most popular…