Month: October 2020

By Mary H. Dyer | October 31, 2020 The plant world is home to many weird or downright spooky houseplants. Growing scary houseplants is fun year-round, but for one special night of the year, they become spooky Halloween houseplants. Take a look at these haunted houseplants. Most are relatively easy to grow and all are fun houseplants for Halloween.  Growing Spooky Houseplants Here are some of my all-time favorite scary houseplants for Halloween: Earth star bromeliad (Cryptanthus): A rather odd-looking houseplant with interesting foliage in shades of pink or bright red to dark green or variegated with silvery stripes. Earth star bromeliad grows naturally in shady forests. It likes a fair amount of moisture and will do well in a bathroom or kitchen.  Desert Dragon Mangave (Mangave ‘Desert Dragon’): A low-growing succulent with a spidery shape and grayish green, lance-shaped leaves mottled with dark purple spots. Desert … Read More

For a lot of people, the love of gardening is one that has been nurtured from a very young age. Many gardeners recall fond memories of tending the garden with their parents or grandparents, and how they would also like to continue that same tradition with their own children and grandchildren. My garden origin story is somewhat different. However, I would be quite willing to bet that it is one to which many of you can relate. How My Gardening Addiction Got Started For the sake of backstory, it’s important to know that I was born and raised in a very urban area. While my grandmother did have a few hydrangea bushes in her backyard, I had never set foot in a garden. I imagine that the same was also true for the hard-working people who lived around me, as I can’t recall ever seeing anything more than a lone... Read More

Fall, and especially Halloween, can be a season filled with décor and festivity. From trips to the pumpkin patch to the creation of costumes for kids, it is easy to see how finding time to decorate our homes and gardens can be overlooked. While spooky skeletons and witches are fairly commonplace, some of us opt for more traditional autumnal decorations consisting of pumpkins, hay, and other natural elements. Regardless of your own preference, garden planning can help create impressive flower beds that are sure to add appeal throughout the fall Halloween season. Planning a Halloween Garden Bed When ordering seeds at the beginning of the growing season, few gardeners are thinking about fall – but you should be. Over the years, fall has become my favorite season. It signals the arrival of cooler weather and even the first frost. This unique set of circumstances can make planning the garden somewhat... Read More

When I think of fall, corn comes to mind. Cornstalks are often used in the autumn as décor on the front porch stoop or for harvest parties. Their presence evokes fall even though the actual corn on the cob is long gone. Once they are harvested, the fields are turned into mazes for harvest time fun. While not actually a fall harvest item, leftover cornstalk arrangements provide autumn ambiance in many settings. The Autumn Harvest Corn is Abundant Where I live the corn is coming towards the end of summer. The stalks are rising up to the sun and, in some cases, have begun to tassel. This signals the beginning of corn on the cob, a summertime BBQ staple. The golden ears, filled with juicy, succulent sweetness, are a proud feature in corn recipes from salads to side dishes, and even desserts. Driving the back roads, the corn stalks are... Read More

Holidays can bring out the competitive spirit, even a holiday like Halloween that’s largely celebrated by kids. A few years ago, my neighbor and I entered into a bet – friendly at first but developing into a keen competition – as to which of us could raise the biggest pumpkin. She was betting on education; I put my money on experience. The day we set to determine who won was truly an unforgettable garden moment. The Competitors My neighbor is quite a formidable individual. She holds dual PhDs in horticulture and biochemistry and spent her storied career developing medicines from plants. Even now, two decades into retirement, she is considered an expert in her field. But she has never grown a garden. I am a natural plant lover. I have no formal training in plant life but oodles of experience growing things. I’ve had gardens in Alaska, where I … Read More

Trees are majestic and inspire me all year long. Annual flowers light up my hanging baskets and vegetable patch in summer. Shrubs, both useful and ornamental, are the foundation of my garden. Here’s what I plant and why. Planting Shrubs in a Backyard Living in San Francisco, only a few lucky souls have backyards large enough to hold more than a grove of large trees. I am not among them, although I boast a few fruit trees in my garden and lots of summer blossoms. However, shrubs are the right size to make my backyard look vibrant all year long. “Shrub” is a small word that includes a huge variety of plants. You can get deciduous shrubs that lose their leaves in winter or evergreen shrubs that provide color and texture all year round. Many of the best backyard shrubs grow rapidly to fill in empty spaces in your … Read More

Shrubs in the landscape should accentuate the space, not take from it. Here is my “out with the old, in with the new” approach. Taking Out Bushes – and Planting New Ones I’m not sure who landscaped this huge yard before we moved in four years ago, or what they were thinking, but it was a disaster. Apparently, the previous owner thought it would be a good idea to plant a lot of assorted shrubs spaced randomly without any apparent rhyme or reason. Most of the shrubs were dead or dying, so we dug them out. Arranging shrubs in a garden shouldn’t make your space look messy. Shrubs need growing room, so we eliminated several that had long outgrown their allotted space. I hate boxwood shrubs, and they had no place in a rustic high desert garden, so bye-bye boxwoods. I also dislike arborvitae, but deer love them … Read More