Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Snowmagedon: Deja vu all over again




I took this a few hours ago... Now it's 8 inches deeper, dark and the power is out! ahhhh...winter!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday, January 21, 2011

garden show

get out of the frigid air and go indoors to the 68th annual cleveland home & garden show today through january 30th. 

Thursday, January 20, 2011

modern landscape design


i love the seamless carpet-style design of this landscape installation in beer sheba, israel...read more about the landscape architects' concept here.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

a garden bench

a few weeks ago i went down to the national mall for a little museum hopping. i dont know if these benches are recent acquisitions by the castle or not, but i never noticed them before: they are quite beautiful and unexpected!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

best plants for winter

as the bleakness of winter gets, well, bleaker, these are the plants i wish i had planted to give me a little mid winter color...they are on my list for this year!
red twig dogwood: i like the variety with the variegated leaves so it looks good all year round.
rosa rugosa: lovely large hips!
beauty berry: purple berries: need i say more?
harry lauder's walking stick:
i love this gnarly plant!  i have killed several starter ones, but look forward to giving another one a try soon...
 camellias!
my neighbor has a large-obviously very old-camellia shrub adjacent to her house that has huge and wonderful rose-like blooms all winter- just when you're longing for some color. i have been admiring it for many winters now, but every year its beauty continues to surprise me.
variegated holly bush...
i am not a fan of the sharp holly leaves in the summer time, with the bare feet and all. but, come winter its full silhoette is a welcome site! my favorite holly is this variegated variety: it is very festive around the holidays with the lovely red berries. many different types of birds live off of these berries in winter: robins, starlings, a bunch of different tree-clinging, wood-pecker-type birds, wax-wings (love them!) and cardinals to name a few.
hellebores...it took a few years to get my single one established, but now it blooms faithfully every late january and is even beginning to spread a bit, but i need more than one...
heathers and heaths are so pretty, especially on a wnter's day like today! this variety, Calluna vulgaris 'firefly' looks like a cluster of mini red hot pockers!

witch hazel blooms before forsythia, which i like because they signal the start of warmer days.
snow drops are
the first to show up in earliest spring: that's why they're great! 

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

porno for gardeners

you can tell the new year has arrived by the sudden influx of gardening catalogs...porno for gardeners.