Image from Proven Winners Are you thinking about curb appeal, wanting to clean up the planting beds along your home’s foundation? Did you just add a deck, and the yard around it looks bare and forgotten? Does your back yard have a pretty garden space left over from the former owners, but now it looks […]

I miss all kinds of things about growing plants in the Southeast and in New England, but probably the biggest loss for me is the giant, blue bombs of color in summer you get from a mophead hydrangea.  Sure, you can grow mophead hydrangeas in Iowa, but their flowers will be pink.  I love that blue so […]

Oh, winter.  For five months, if we’re not intentional, our landscapes will be mostly brown and grey with a little bit of white now and then.  And we long for color!  Especially when it’s cold out.  Once the perennials die back and the deciduous plants drop their leaves, what’s left in your yard? While anything […]

Happy August! At this time of year, garden centers in Iowa and in other cold parts of the country are beginning to mark plants down.  Well, this girl loves a bargain!  How do you decide if it’s worth it to pull over when you see those 30% off (or more) signs? Don’t be swayed by […]

Looking for a showy native shrub? It seems that new hydrangea cultivars appear everywhere you look, but this old stand-by is tried and true. Consider Hills-of-Snow smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens ‘Grandiflora’) for your garden. It was discovered growing in the wild in Ohio around 1900 and is native to moist, wooded slopes and stream banks […]