Category: Tropical Style

Native to the American West, ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa, U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness zones 3-7) makes a pyramidal-shaped evergreen when young. Under landscaping requirements, it can finally develop to 60-100 feet tall and 25-30 feet wide. Ponderosa pine grows best in moist soil but can adapt to a variety of soil types. It’s drought-tolerant […]

Called long-handle or dipper gourds, Lagenaria siceraria is a species of hard-shelled gourd developed for its fruit’s value. Each gourd includes a slightly curved neck and a base, giving it an unusual bottle-like contour that brings it into the making of craft projects such as scoops, ladles and birdhouses. The plants need at least 120 […]

The dawn redwood tree is a native of China. These deciduous conifers have needle-like leaves very similar but that they fall off in late fall. The foliage turns making dawn redwoods an superb tree for your home landscape. Throughout germinating seeds grow your dawn redwood trees. Dawn redwoods are seldom found growing in character, and […]

One can hardly find a more vibrant tree than the’Desert Museum’ palo verde, with its distinctive green trunk and yellow flowers that appear in spring. Although there are several species of palo verde,’Desert Museum’ has the very best features, including that it is thornless, has a beautiful vase shape and flowers over an extended time […]

It is that time of year — garden barbecues, iced tea, casual poolside parties and long, hot days that buzz with the pulsing rhythms of cicadas and fade into twilight punctuated with all the flashing lights of fireflies. July’s zenith is indicated with luxurious, vigorous growth in the garden. I make notice of plants that […]

If you’re planning a trip to New York City, make sure to Visit the Native Plant Garden, which opened in 2013 at the New York Botanical Garden. There is something for everyone here. Shade anglers will discover plenty to look at in the dappled layers beneath a canopy of river birch, dogwood and sugar maple. […]

At the late afternoon and early evening, once the summertime is its most potent, the insects are at frenzied activity. All over the backyard, the tips of flowers launch into the atmosphere — when there were such thing as an insect air traffic controller, it could have lost its mind long ago. Bees, wasps, flies, […]

This cool-season perennial herb is easy to grow and amazingly long-lasting. It’s also quite versatile, at home both in the garden and in a container and, provided it gets enough sun and regular water, happy indoors or outside. Chives, sometimes referred to as garden chives to distinguish them from garlic chives will be the more […]

Bringing the countryside into the contemporary landscape is a popular motion, both in city planning and also in garden layout — the magnificent opening ceremony at last year’s London Olympics even included an idyllic pastoral scene with sheep, cattle and meadows set in the rolling English countryside. There has been great interest in returning to […]

This is a very dependable tree with one true gift — sort of a Susan Boyle of the arboreal world. That gift is brilliant autumn color: orange, red, sometimes yellow. For the majority of the year, Chinese pistache is so understated and well behaved (no messy fruit, broken branches, foliage drop) that no one notices […]