Hate saying goodbye every year to your beautiful flowers? Dry those blossoms and you can keep them for years to come. I’ve always been intrigued with flower drying; in fact I used strawflowers (Xerochrysum bracteatum), statice (Limonium spp.) and baby’s breath (Gypsophila spp.) in my bridal bouquet so I could keep them along with my memories of that eventful day. I even had strawflowers placed on the wedding cake instead of flowers made of icing. I still have those flowers, though they are fading a bit. And they still make me chuckle when I think how my mom bartered manure for them from a neighbor.

If you have a garden, it’s more than likely that you also have a pest or three. It should be no surprise that pests and critters like our yards and gardens as much, or more, than we do. We are encouraged to invite wildlife into our yards and gardens because we love seeing them, and, in theory, they help balance our desire for our garden and nature to coexist. But what happens when they go rogue and start eating, digging and destroying all of our hard work?

Scaring them away, or we could say gently discouraging, wild and sometimes not-so-wild critters to “Step away from the garden,” is always a first and sometimes successful option.

Nurseries and garden centers overflow with color on opening day in the spring. They woke the plants up early and grew them on to full foliage and bloom placing temptation before all the gardeners with cabin fever.

My wife and I are as susceptible to gardening siren calls as any other gardener, but over the years we have learned that there are plants best transplanted in the fall. September, October, and early November are prime months for bringing perennials, bulbs, trees, and shrubs into the garden.

Ever wonder why some herbs are popular in summer while others gain prominence in fall and winter? There are some very good reasons why we use mint, parsley, lavender and lemongrass in summer, and why sage, rosemary, thyme, hyssop and others are considered winter herbs.

With surprising regularity, some poor schlep of a volunteer from a community garden – abuzz with visions of plump, perfect sweet cherries, heirloom apples, and sugar plums dancing in his or her head – will email me with a simple question that they expect will have a simple answer. The question is always some variation on this: “What apples, pears, and peaches would you recommend for a community orchard?” I wish I could see the looks on their faces when they get a big old heaping serving of attitude.

You may be wondering, why write an article about mulching? Everyone knows how to mulch, right? You buy mulch and place it around your plants. True, it’s not rocket science, but I have seen enough bad mulching jobs that it does merit more attention.

Container gardening is one of the fastest growing sectors of the gardening world – and why not? Containers can be grown where traditional gardens cannot, such as apartment balconies, courtyards, decks and patios. Since most containers are portable, there is a strong temptation to bring this instant landscape and color into the home once autumn transitions into the cold of winter. However, in addition to the preparation of the plants’ horticultural needs, extra precautions need to be taken to ensure that no unwanted visitors hitchhike into your home on these container plants and jeopardize the health of your current houseplants or cause a nuisance in the home.

You have probably heard the term “outdoor living.” This has been listed as a major landscaping and gardening trend in recent years. But what does it really mean?

Traditionally, the Midwestern vegetable garden was considered a three-season affair, bounded by the last spring frost and the first fall freeze. True, cool-season gardens were popular in the spring and the fall, but the idea of year-round vegetable production definitely raised eyebrows. Recently, however, proponents of season extension, such as Elliot Coleman, have increased awareness of the possibilities, and enthusiastic gardeners across the region are embracing four-season vegetable gardening.

Expand your planting space, grow a living screen, or add vertical interest to your garden beds by growing plants on a wall or training them onto an obelisk or trellis.

During the past few years, the Slow Flower movement has been generating a lot of buzz in the media. Following the success of the Slow Food movement, Debra Prinzing, author of The 50 Mile Bouquet, coined the term “Slow Flowers” in an attempt to talk about some of the reasons for supporting local flower growers as well as appreciating in-season blooms.

In the last few years there has been a new method developed called “string gardens.” The nice thing about these hanging plants is that anything goes. They come in a multitude of sizes – tiny little things wrapped in colorful fabric and tied with embroidery thread or very large specimens in burlap, hung with a chain. They can be pottery, glass containers, or as natural as a moss-wrapped root ball. These are plants that have been wrapped in a variety of materials and hung from windows, beams, or ceilings.