While most gardeners find themselves with numerous flowering shrubs to enjoy outside, flowers that last in a vase without exploding their petals all over the carpet or drooping dramatically hours after being cut are a somewhat rarer breed. Though tricks abound to extend the life of flowers in a vase, the most important element in […]
Genevieve Schmidt
Posted inHome & Garden
Pruning Grassy Plants in Winter
The wispy strands and bold spikes of ornamental grasses provide both softness and drama in the landscape, yet they’re also the target of a lot of bad hairdos and garden don’ts. Though misunderstandings about how to prune ornamental grasses abound, pruning grasses is pretty simple. Just figure out which category they fall under, whether evergreen […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Gardening Grab Bag
Every spring, the gardening world explodes with an almost overwhelming array of new plants, books, tools and techniques. While most of it isn’t cool enough to bother with (do we really need 14 new Heuchera introductions when ‘Plum Pudding’ is already perfect?), there are always a few gems that take gardening up a notch. Here’s […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Tackling Weeds Organically
If there are any certain things in life, they’re death, taxes and weeds (and perhaps that more of our favorite characters will be killed off in the next season of Game of Thrones — pretty sure we can count on that, too). Though spraying with Roundup might seem a simple solution, funding Monsanto and dumping […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Illusion of Water in the Low-Water Garden
One of the biggest complaints about water-responsible gardening is that sometimes the garden just looks and feels “dry.” This has been one of my stumbling blocks on the way to gardening more carefully with this resource, because I love a lush, verdant garden. So imagine my delight to find a whole chapter on creating the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
High-Value Veggies:
While growing your own vegetables is often touted as a way of saving money, that hasn’t been my experience. On the surface, it sounds like a $3 pack of seeds can be turned into a bounty of fresh vegetables with only the minimal cost of water, but in practice, the costs of compost and fertilizer, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Native Plants, the Designer Way
Our regional plants offer so many ways to deepen our relationship with the environment around us. Not only do they attract birds and native insects (which form the base of our food chain and help birds feed their young — and are charming in their own right), they highlight the unique beauty only found here […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
KonMari in the Garden
For anyone who has read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, the KonMari method will need no introduction. For those who haven’t, this soft-spoken Japanese woman and her clear, simple way of dealing with excess clutter has inspired people around the world to clear out anything in the home that doesn’t “spark […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Armchair Gardening
While our recent rains have been welcome from our drought-ridden perspective, they do make it more challenging to get out and actually, you know, garden. Walking on the wet ground can compact soil, and there’s nothing like weeding under a tree when a stiff wind blows, knocking huge droplets of water down the back of […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Blowin’ in the Wind
The winter garden brings to mind rhododendrons, dwarf conifers and plants with colorful stemwork like red twig dogwoods. And while these plants form a strong framework from which the rest of the garden can shine, our gray Humboldt winters seem to call out for just a little more than those simpler shrubs can provide — […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
A Walk on the Dark Side
Many of us have been pressed into sedate suits and neutral colors by day jobs or a misplaced sense of propriety as we age, but if you’ve been squashing down your inner goth, Halloween’s the perfect time to indulge that irresistible pull toward everything dark, black and a little bit creepy — especially in the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
All Hail the Heather
Whether planted in drifts or used singly in the foreground of a shrub planting, heathers are one of the easiest plants to succeed with on the North Coast. They tolerate harsh coastal winds, aren’t bothered by deer, and need only moderate amounts of water once established if they are well mulched and planted in drifts, […]