Savvy Gardening

Landscape borders: Eye-catching edging ideas to separate your garden areas

Landscape borders are a great way to outline one or more areas of the yard. No matter what your garden’s style is, they may be used to visually tie in different areas of a space, separate grass from garden, or work with paths to move people around the garden. You can use a number of different materials to create a garden border, and arrange them in a multitude of ways.

A weed free garden: 9 strategies for reducing weeds

Written by Niki Jabbour

Does a weed free garden sound like a dream? It IS possible to reduce weeds in flower and vegetable beds with a few simple strategies. I’ve been putting these techniques to work in my large vegetable garden for many years and while I wouldn’t call my garden completely weed free, I’ve cut my weeding time dramatically. Read on to learn my nine strategies for reducing garden weeds.

The tachinid fly: Get to know this beneficial insect

Written by Jessica Walliser

If you spy a fly buzzing around your garden and sipping nectar from your plants, you should probably give him or her a tiny high five. You owe a surprisingly big thank you to that little guy. If it’s lapping nectar from a flower, there’s a very good chance that fly is a tachinid fly, which is the world’s largest and most important group of parasitoidal flies. Yes, that means that tiny fly is a big-time helper to you and your garden. Let me introduce the two of you – I’m sure you’ll be best buds before you know it.
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Build a pollinator palace for your garden

Written by Tara Nolan

You’ve likely heard of insect hotels, but what about a pollinator palace? At the 2017 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, England, in the Great Pavilion, I encountered this very unique structure for pollinators, artistically assembled, though a little wilder looking. Conceived by garden designer John Cullen of John Cullen Gardens, gabions filled with layers of live plant material and items found in nature were placed among a regular garden with trees, flowers, and groundcover.

The daylily: A perfect perennial for the summer garden

Written by Niki Jabbour

A daylily is perhaps the perfect perennial. It thrives in full sun to partial shade, grows happily in a range of soil conditions, is resistant to most pests and diseases, is drought-tolerant, and blooms for weeks each summer. Plus, there are thousands of varieties to choose from in a dazzling assortment of flower sizes, shapes, and colors.

Shasta Daisy: Growing tips, varieties, and pollinator power

Written by Jessica Walliser

Though I love my vegetable garden, as a horticulturist my first “plant love” was perennials. I spent ten years in my early career tending 35 different perennial gardens in and around the city of Pittsburgh. That’s where I developed a great appreciation for these wonderful plants. Seeing them return to those gardens year after year, bigger and better than the season before, was a great confidence booster, especially for a young gardener. Perennials are among the most reliable and low-maintenance plants, and if you mix and match the right selections, you’ll have a beautiful show of blooms all season long. Among my most favorite perennials is the Shasta daisy, a hardy, rabbit- and deer-resistant perennial with a long bloom time and very few pest troubles.
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