Category: Home & Garden

THE EARLIEST REFERENCES to humans cultivating trees date back to maybe 6000 BC, and there are records of tree-care tactics in the Bible, too, and from ancient Egypt. These person-to-tree interventions were the start of the science and art of arboriculture, and our best practices of pruning and other how-to have evolved in each successive era to the methods we know today.

I took a look backward in history, and also explored some current recommendations, with Melissa Finley, New York Botanical Garden’s Thain Curator of Woody Plants, and also curator of NYBG’s Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

Woody plants are Melissa’s passion; she is a certified arborist, and was a forester with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation before joining NYBG four years ago.

Read along as you listen to the Dec. 22, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

woody plant history and how-to, with melissa finley

Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:26:43

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Margaret Roach: How are you in this craziest of winters so far, huh? [Laughter.] Up and down, up and down.

Melissa Finley: It’s so unpredictable. I can’t believe how hard it was raining about 10 minutes ago, and 55 degrees.

Margaret: Yeah. Madness, madness. So speaking of tree care, just a little background: Roughly how many zillion trees and shrubs are there at that botanical garden that you and your crew have to look after [laughter]?

Melissa: What a complex question. I think we have about 5,000 mapped trees and shrubs, but many more that are unmapped and kind of unverified, hanging out in our woodlands and natural areas. So it’s hard to guess.

Margaret: You better stay on your toes, you guys. I think of having a small number of trees and shrubs as a big responsibility, but that’s epic.

Melissa: We stay busy, definitely.

Margaret: Yeah. So I thought we could start with just a few highlights of the history of mankind’s attempts to manage trees. I know we could do 10 whole episodes of the show on different theories and styles that we’ve evolved through the ages, but I wanted to hear some that really stand out to you because I mean, I think trees have been on the earth close to 400 million years or something. We homo sapiens are more like, I don’t know, what, a few hundred thousand years or something [laughter]. So they’ve been around a lot longer than we have. But what, we’ve been cultivating them for 6,000 years or something. So any highlights for you?

Melissa: Yeah. So I became interested in this kind of early history of our relationship to trees when I read some articles just about the history of American arboriculture and how we came to do our contemporary practices of tree pruning and found that the basic articles that were available really stopped short in the late 19th century. So I really wanted to do a deep dive on how people thought about trees and approached their relationship to trees much further back.

So as you mentioned, yeah, our earliest cultivation practices that we have records of are about 6000 BC in Asia Minor, but those records really do extend. This is early olive tree cultivation moving from Asia Minor into Italy by the 6th century BC, which is just remarkable, unfathomable really amount of time.

And the other things I was looking for were just early mentions of intentional pruning. There are several kind of references to pruning of fig trees in the Bible. They call it “dressing of sycamores,” which refers to Ficus sycomorus, which is the sycamore fig tree.

And then the other very early mentions that we find in the historical records, which I think were just fabulous, were actually from ancient Egypt. We have these wonderful paintings and records of actually the transplanting of large trees by the ancient Egyptians. There’s records from the 15th century [BC], which was during the reign of Hatshepsut, who was a very famous female pharaoh. And she had sent people on an expedition to what we think is probably modern-day Somalia to bring back frankincense and myrrh trees for use in rituals. They extract those resins for mummy embalming, and there’s all these records of them very successfully transplanting these trees, which to us seems so modern.

Margaret: Yes. Oh, absolutely [laughter]. Wow. So I didn’t even know there was a female pharaoh, let alone that she was into transplanting, to having some trees transplanted.

Melissa: She’s very interesting.

Margaret: Oh, fascinating. So a long history, and it’s gone through a lot of … It’s evolved; the practices have evolved. And I mean, I’d imagine the tools have evolved, obviously. There were no chainsaws and all kinds of things we have today [laughter], big buckets that went up into the treetops and so forth.

So you gave me, when we first spoke about this just on the phone a couple of weeks back or whatever, some really interesting research papers to read. And it seemed like one of the subjects that had the most kind of differences was the pruning of mature trees, as opposed to the training of young trees when they’re first getting started. It seemed like with the older trees, there was a lot more, well, disparity, almost differences of tactical approaches. Is that the case?

Melissa: Yes, definitely. I think as we’ve been able to codify our scientific approaches to pruning, that the way that we treat mature trees has a lot more … I’m trying to think of the best way to put it. A lot more [laughter] kind of disagreement, I’ll say, in the field about how to approach these things. I mean, trees are very hard to study, and particularly mature trees. It’s hard to do a PhD on the way that pruning affects a mature tree when you really do want to come back not one year later or two years later, but 20 years later [laughter]. How do we do that sort of scientific study in that long of term is very difficult. So a lot of it is short-term observation and applying that as best we can to long-term understanding, which makes it all very difficult, yes.

Margaret: And I mean, I know a lot of arborists from the work I’ve done over the years, and then also arborists where I live, who I’ve employed to help me with things that are too big for me to do with trees, with older trees. And there’s a lot of difference of opinion as a consumer, as a garden owner who needs help. And there’s words that get thrown out, phrases that get thrown out: What’s structural pruning? And then I recently have heard about retrenchment pruning, and lots of what seems like disagreement about that [laughter]. And it’s hard for the consumer to know what’s the right way.

Melissa: It is. And unfortunately, it’s difficult for the expert to know the right way as well [laughter]. What I’ll say is luckily for the home pruner, trees that you can reach tend to be younger trees, and those recommendations have not changed very much in the last few years. That’s what we would call structural or formative pruning. When we’re approaching a juvenile tree, we’re trying to establish a structure that will be long-lasting, that will allow for proper spacing between branches and reduce the instances of the formation of bark inclusions and other things that might become what we would consider hazardous in the future. So that’s kind of what we mean when we’re talking about structural pruning.

Margaret: So like in the old days, we used to say the three D’s: dead, damaged and diseased, or some people had other ones—things like crossed branches or inward-facing branches, or as you say, things that were a potential danger. Those are all structural things?

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. So a lot of that comes out of the research from Ed Gilman, who’s a fantastic researcher down at the University of Florida, and he did a lot of research on young tree structural pruning, and that’s where a lot of those phrases come from. I think he might have even coined the three D’s, and that’s all kind of bog-standard since I don’t know how long ago, but his research has really proved that it seems to be good practice.

So yeah, you want to start with your three D’s: Eliminate crossers, and then take a big step back, put your saw down, and look at what you have left after you’ve eliminated those, and really just thinking about spacing and the overall shape of the canopy. So all of that is pretty much still recommended. But when we get into the mature trees, that’s when it gets really much more complex.

Margaret: Yes. And so I’ve followed the work of some practitioners who really honor the tree through its whole life cycle, including through its decline into its death and its role in the ecosystem as this biomass that was birthed there and lived there and will die there. And unless there’s grave danger to people or structures they let it do its thing, so to speak. And then I’ve also, again, met people who want to do adjustments to the canopy even of older trees or … and I never know [laughter] what’s the right idea.

Melissa: Yeah. So what I’ll say is I think the more recent research we have more and more is pointing to this incredible resilience that we have in trees throughout their whole lives. So in the … I’m trying to remember when this research was. There was some research done about tree life stages, where they were describing each phase of a tree’s life, as you say, as they go from young to mature to over-mature and ancient and start to crumble, that describe these as inherent sort of developmental stages.

And what the kind of newer research is showing is that it’s really best to think about several of those phases as response phases, and not so much always going to happen at such and such age, at such and such period of a tree’s life. So as it’s starting to decline, or change its canopy shape, these are signs that the tree is responding to the world around it, to the conditions it’s experiencing, and is actually actively reiterating its canopy in new ways in response to that environment.

So the trees are really, really resilient. They’re very perceptive of the world around them, and they’re growing new wood, new structures in response to changing weather and to changing branch shapes and all kinds of things. And the field is trying to really understand how trees are shaping themselves. And so over-pruning is, I think … I get it; I feel that need to prune these large trees in order to feel safer. But I think I kind of tend toward the side of trusting them to reiterate themselves and adapt to their environment over time as best we can.

Margaret: And then down to the level of the individual cuts over the years, I’ve heard different …  Obviously, there’s some very famous diagrams. I think some of them come from Alex Shigo or someone along the way that taught a lot of this. And we hear about things like the … well, I was taught it was called the branch-bark collar, but maybe it’s just the bark collar. And flush cuts and how those cause greater wounds. What about when we get to that sort of, O.K., I am going to make a cut for a particular reason? And there are some tree species that have very distinctive difference in the look of their tissue where the branch meets the trunk and some that don’t. It’s a lot [laughter].

Melissa: Right. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it was very common practice to recommend flush-cutting for a very long time. The oldest mention of it that I could find was from a book published in 1861 by a man called de Courval. I’m not going to try to pronounce the French. I’ll totally butcher it.

Margaret: I’m terrible at French, so forget it. I don’t mind.

Melissa: But the English translation [by A. Des Cars], which was published later, was titled “A Treatise on Pruning Forest and Ornamental Trees.” And he was advocating for flush-cutting, which is cutting beyond that branch-bark ridge, directly into the trunk tissue, so that you get as flat a cut as possible. And his argument is that cutting that close and even with the trunk will allow for more sap access to that wound, since the sap is flowing upward in the xylem of the tree, the vascular tissues of the tree, that having it cut flush against that trunk will expose all of the wound edges to actively flowing sap and would therefore close faster.

Which makes sense. And they have actually done studies that flush cuts, those wound edges do start to seal over faster. But because they are a larger wound surface, over the course of about 10 years, they’ve done these A/B testing and shown that eventually the branch-bark ridge intact cuts do seal completely over much faster.

But I was very interested in finding out why they were recommending that. And it really does make sense. It’s accessing that sap, that active wood, might cause faster regrowth.

Margaret: But now do most arborists go toward the outside the collar, outside the ridge?

Melissa: Correct. Yeah. So that all comes from Alex Shigo’s research, which was just fundamental in restructuring our understanding of trees. We had to wait until we could look at trees with a little finer microscope, and it had to wait until we had chainsaws, basically [laughter]. It allowed him to really finally cut trees and look at different cross-sections with a lot finer view, much more refinement to those cuts with a chainsaw. It’s an unbelievable scientific tool, if you can believe it.

So he started advocating in his 1977 report, “Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees,” this practice called natural target pruning. So it’s replacing this flush cut right against that stem of the tree with instead cutting just outside what you refer to as the branch-bark ridge. So it leaves just a little bit of a nub on the outside there. And the argument is that it both reduces the size of the cut, that cross-section of wounded wood, and it retains this very specialized wood, which research has shown has this ability, the specialized ability, to help seal over to occlude that wound much better than the stem tissue does.

Margaret: Oh. That’s the compartmentalization, is that place is a special place and it …?

Melissa: Yeah. So that tissue is much better at directing the chemistry of the tree to deposit microbe-fighting chemicals, and to physically seal off parts of the wood by depositing gums and just physically shutting off that area from air. All of these invading fungus especially really needs air to live. So if you seal off with gums and all sorts of cool waxes, it’s able to really functionally make a new wall. And that particular area of wood is much more physically and chemically able to do those functions.

Margaret: So speaking of 20th-century developments, did we do things like cabling and so forth before then, or is that a modern-day thing? I mean, because there are now support methods, too, that I see more commonly applied.

Melissa: Right, right. Well, so the steel cabling, which is a very common practice, that was invented by John Davey, who was an English arborist who moved to the U.S. in the 1870s, and he wrote a book called “The Tree Doctor” in 1901, which introduced some of these steel cabling and steel brace rod techniques, but it’s actually a much older approach. We have some evidence of the Greeks and Romans doing techniques like grafting and cabling and just kind of tying together orchard and olive and vineyard plants, and monks also mentioning it throughout the medieval period. But it was much more standardized in the early 20th century by people like John Davey and Francis Bartlett, probably the two most famous arborists from America.

Margaret: Whose names then became the name synonymous with large tree companies, Davey Tree and Bartlett [laughter].

Melissa: That’s right.

Margaret: Oh, I didn’t know that it had an old history before that. That’s interesting.

I wanted to ask you: Back at the botanical garden, are there tree species that take the most resources in terms of your team, your arborist team, your tree-care team there? Are there certain high-need type genera of trees versus low-need? Do you know what I mean?

Melissa: Sure, sure. I mean, it’s an interesting question. Yeah. I mean, I think just looking at the trees themselves, I would say the number one thing that we are always responding to is white pines dropping their branches [laughter]. And it’s a wonderful adaptation. They are adapted to alpine conditions, frequent snow and ice loading and high winds. And rather than sustaining much greater damage, they just are adapted to allow their branches to break off, kind of brittle and very easily, to protect themselves. But yeah, they do make a big mess around here quite frequently.

And then the broader question really is more about placement. So I’ve manufactured a rather complex system of inspections for safety for our trees, and that’s primarily informed by the location of the tree and how many people are often around it, rather than the tree itself. So if it’s over a bench or an outdoor amphitheater or something like that, those are trees that I’m looking at much more, and pruning much more conservatively.

Margaret: Top priority. Because for me, I would have guessed—and again, I’m a gardener; it’s not as extensive a collection by any means—but certain types of trees, like I have some very, very old apple trees and I have a number of old magnolias. Where they have had wounds, so to speak, on their branches, they seem to tend to get a lot of water-sprouty, kind of “bad hair day”-looking growth [laughter].

Melissa: Yes, they do.

Margaret: And that to me is a lot of work, and especially once they’re big; you have to get up in them, and it’s a lot of work. So certain plants, certain trees, seem to have that reaction more than others. I don’t see those vertical shoots as much in other species. And again, I only know those two because I have them here. I’m sure there are others that you know that do that.

Melissa: Oh, and those would be the ones that I would have mentioned, too. Absolutely. Crabapples and cherries, the Rosaceous orchard plants, are very prone to water sprouts and root sprouts, as well as magnolias, depending on the hybrid parents, as well. I’ve found that a lot of the yellow-flowered magnolias are prone to it, and that’s from that parentage from the Magnolia acuminata, the cucumber tree.

Margaret: And are your crews out doing certain pruning tasks now, or do you wait until late winter? Is this a year-round thing or is it-

Melissa: Yeah, I mean, I think in the best of all worlds, we would be waiting until late winter to do pruning. But we have, as I’m sure you can guess, a lot of pruning to do [laughter]. So we do prune throughout most of the dormant season, and of course do emergency pruning throughout the year. But yes, now is a good time if you have a long list of things to prune, but if you can wait until the end of the season, early spring or late winter is a better time, since you’re not leaving a sort of gaping wound that the tree isn’t able to start responding to. I think it gives it a better chance. But yeah, we will start getting into our water-sprout pruning on our crabapples and cherries as we get into the season for sure.

Margaret: Oh, that can go on forever, definitely.

Melissa: [Laughter.] Even here. It’s a constant battle.

Margaret: I always think to myself, I wish I had a use for all those very straight young twigs. And I keep thinking, oh, I should make what we used to call pea brush, where you’d poke them in the ground and “brush up” your peas when you grew peas, as opposed to putting them on a trellis. That was very English, a very British, old-fashioned thing. I’ve never done that with them, but boy, oh boy, it’s a lot of twigs.

Melissa: There’s got to be a great craft for it [laughter].

Margaret: I know. Well, if it were willows, right, we could make some baskets, couldn’t we? There you go. Melissa. Well, I’m so interested to … I never really thought of the history part, and I was glad that you sort of turned me onto it and got me reading some references about it, and I’m glad to talk to you again. So happy year-end and New Year to come, and thanks for making time today.

Melissa: Of course. Happy New Year, and thanks so much for having me.

prefer the podcast version of the show?

MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 16th year in March 2025. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Dec. 22, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Set out beer traps to end your garden slug problem

Does it work? This one can be answered with a resounding “kinda.”

The yeast in beer will certainly help to attract slugs to a well-placed trap, but the validity of this garden myth has all of its weight resting on whether or not the slugs can get back out of the trap again.

If you set out a shallow bowl with some beer in it, the slugs can climb up and slurp.

But if it’s too shallow, they’ll just turn around and go back to whatever other goodies you have available in your garden when they’re done.

The effectiveness of this legendary method rests on how quickly and effectively you can nab the slugs from these traps and dispose of them in another way.

Occasionally they may drown, but more often they manage to climb up the side of the container and go on their merry way.

Plant marigolds to keep the bad bugs away

This is a garden myth with a lot of truth to it, but likewise a lot of misunderstanding.

Marigolds do indeed deter some of the bugs we don’t like in the garden, such as cabbage worms, and they can attract beneficial flies that feed on aphids and other nasties.

But we need enormous amounts of marigolds for this to have a real effect.

A single six-pack of marigold starts from the nursery won’t do much for your garden. But if you carpeted the beds with a hundred plants, you’d definitely notice a positive impact.

Keep in mind, however, that those extra marigolds will also compete for the same resources our vegetable crops and other edibles need.

So, marigolds can certainly benefit your garden space as companion plants, but only when they’re grown in sufficient numbers, and there are some considerable drawbacks to this strategy as well.

If you choose to plant some marigolds in your garden, I’d recommend you do it with only their lovely appearance and scent as your reward.

Learn more about using marigolds for pest control here.

Flora Folklore That’s Garden Fact!

Yes, here we go! Definite garden truth that offers a clear, concise, factual bit of wisdom.

Use eggshells and banana peels in your garden for healthier plants

Eggshells and banana peels contain significant amounts of calcium and potassium, respectively, and these common kitchen waste products can be a boon to your garden.

I’d sprinkle crushed eggshells on the surface of the soil or work it just underneath.

And I recommend burying banana peels in the earth instead of tossing them loose on the surface of your garden beds – that’s a recipe for attracting rodents and other pests.

These two helpful food scraps are basic elements of compost, and they may be put to the best use in a bin where they can contribute to creating nutrient-rich compost.

However, in a pinch, adding them straight to the garden in their raw form works too.

Soak your plant cuttings in a “tea” made from soaked willow cuttings to promote rooting

I have a friend who asked if he really could get willow whips to set root in a bucket of water. I told him he’d have a hard time getting them not to take root.

Willows are fast growers, and this is due in large part to the growth hormone indolebutyric acid, which they contain. This hormone will indeed help your cuttings to root.

Cut about twenty branches from a willow tree, nothing larger than a pencil in diameter. Don’t worry, your willow can handle losing these!

Strip the leaves from the branches you’ve cut, and then cut the branches into one- to two-inch lengths.

Boil half a gallon of water, remove it from the heat, and then place the pieces in the water to soak.

In the past I’ve steeped mine for 24 hours because I’m an impatient guy, but they can sit in the water for 48 hours.

Sieve the mixture and discard the twigs however you prefer to go about this (throw them on the compost, etc.).

Yesterday Rachel and I got to film another video – this time, doing one of my favorite jobs:

Maintaining a food forest doesn’t have to stress you out.

If you cut good pathways, you can divide your forest garden into pieces that are then easy to maintain as you have the time. Here’s how we make our food forest more accessible, more attractive, and easier to amend and harvest in less than an hour. This even works for planning a food forest.

Let the grass grow, then mow meandering pathways. Stick to organic shapes and avoid straight lines for the best effect.

Meet Our Favorite Seeds to Start

The wonder of sowing seeds and watching tiny new plants emerging from the soil never gets old. In this episode, Danielle, Carol, and their guest compare notes on some of their favorite plants that can be grown easily (or not so easily) from seed. Whether you are an experienced seed propagator or a nervous newbie, you’ll be sure to find something in this episode that catches your interest and makes you look forward to spring. 

While we’re on the topic of plant propagation, check out this video about growing plants from cuttings, mentioned in this episode: Growing Cuttings for Gifts 

The lavender variety that Carol successfully grew from seed a couple of years ago is ‘Ellagance Purple’. 

Episode Expert: Christine Alexander is the executive digital editor for Fine Gardening. 

More Let’s Argue About Plants Podcast Episodes
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Danielle’s Favorite Seeds to Start

• ‘Amish Gold’ paste tomato  
• ‘Mad Hatter’ pepper  
• Chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus, Zones 7–9) 
• ‘Hawaiian Currant’ tomato  

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Carol’s Favorite Seeds to Start

• ‘Pampas Plume’ celosia (Celosia argentea ‘Pampas Plume’, annual) 
• Blackberry lily (Iris domestica, Zones 5–10) 
• ‘Apricotta’ cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Apricotta’, annual) 
• ‘Dandy Collarette’ dahlia (Dahlia ‘Dandy Collarette’, Zones 8–11) 

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Expert Christine’s Favorite Seeds to Start

• ‘Black Beauty’ eggplant 
• ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss chard 
• ‘Pepperbox’ breadseed poppy (Papaver somniferum ‘Pepperbox’, annual) 
• ‘Provence’ lavender (Lavandula × intermedia ‘Provence’, Zones 5–9) 

All photos from the contributors unless noted otherwise. 

Fine Gardening Recommended Products

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Coco Bliss 650gm Bricks (5-Pack) – Organic Coco Coir

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Pre-Rinsed & Pre-Screened Coco Coir – Every block of our coconut fiber substrate has been screened multiple times through an extremely small filter to get rid of any traces of fiber, sand, and rocks. This is what sets our coco coir apart, giving you pure and clean coco coir for plants, unlike others who don’t filter their coco coir for impurities.

TCBWFY 3×24 Inch Auger Drill Bit for Planting

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Happy Friday GPODers!

Fine Gardening editors take a lot of photos. During the growing season our editors travel across North America to visit gardens that will be featured in our print magazine. During these visits hundreds of photos are taken and only a fraction of them ever make it into the glossy pages. Some of these bonus photos are occasionally shared on our social media channels or on our website, but others slip through the cracks and end up in computer folders never to be enjoyed by the public. The photos I’m sharing today could have found that same fate.

Our Editorial Director, Danielle Sherry, made a trip to the midwest this past summer, specifically Chicago and Milwaukee, to visit and photograph a handful of gardens. One garden she has long wanted to visit, but could never fit into her schedule, was the colorful garden of Dorothy Danforth in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Determined to finally get a glimpse of this local legend, Danielle went out of her way to make a visit to Dorothy’s garden happen during her summer trip, despite no magazine feature being planned. Danielle ended up spending hours exploring and photographing Dorothy’s space.

As 2025 comes to an end, and with an already packed print schedule for 2026, Danielle sent me some of her photos to ensure this gorgeous garden can get some appreciation sooner rather than later.

In this first photo we see some wonderful plants, but we also get a taste of the art that Dorothy has sprinkled across her garden. While color is never in short supply with an incredible mix of flowers and lots of vibrant foliage, there are always opportunities to add more personality and interest with ornaments and adornments.

More than four decades of plant collecting and designing has cultivated a space with tons of diversity and little room for new additions. A narrow grass path allows Dorothy and her visitors to still enjoy these dense plantings.

As you might have already noticed, Dorothy has an incredible collection of conifers. Perennials and flowering shrubs provide tons of vibrant color, but it’s the conifers that make her landscape interesting year-round. A weeping Norway spruce (Picea abies ‘Pendula’, Zone 4–9) in this vignette is a cascade of incredible texture.

Conifers provide the backbone to Dorothy’s garden, but she is clearly a collector of all types of plants. As much as Dorothy understands the important of woodies, she also adores a large assortment of perennials that have interesting flower and foliage forms.

Dorothy has a mix of light conditions in her garden, from deep shade to full sun. This also attributes to the diversity Dorothy has achieved in her plantings, allowing her to utilize plants that thrive in lush shady borders and bright flower beds. This bed is vibrant with both sun and a lovely assortment of hot-colored flowers.

One of the most iconic non-plant features Dorothy’s garden is her colorful garden gazebo. As with the rest of her art, it adds even more color and personality to her landscape while melding beautifully with the plants that surround.

Lastly, we can’t share Dorothy’s garden without touching on her impressive hosta collection. In this bed alone I spot six different varieties that are creating a sea of greens and blues for two playful cranes.

I hope you enjoyed this selection of photos from a popular private garden! The Fine Gardening editors visit many spectacular gardens every year and I love being able to lift the curtain a bit to give the GPOD community a look behind the scenes.

If you participated in or attended a private garden tour this year, we would love to see your photos. Follow the NEW directions below to submit your photos to Garden Photo of the Day!

 

We want to see YOUR garden!

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, fill out the Garden Photo of the Day Submission Form.

You can also send 5–10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

Do you receive the GPOD by email yet? Sign up here

Fine Gardening Recommended Products

ARS Telescoping Long Reach Pruner

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Telescopes from 4 to 7′. Cut and Hold (160) Blades. Drop forged blades for unsurpassed long lasting sharpness. Lightweight, 2.3 lbs., for continued use. Perfectly balanced for easy pruning.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds Connecta® Cultivation Kit

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Choose the right tool head for the job and switch out quickly with a simple push-button release. Includes the Connecta receiver, Connecta Collinear 4 head, Connecta Collinear 7 head, Connecta Contour Wire 4 head, Connecta Contour Wire 6 head, a sustainably harvested oiled ashwood handle, and a stainless-steel carrying clip.

Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes

Fine Gardening receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site, including Amazon Associates and other affiliate advertising programs.

Featuring gorgeous photography and advice for landscapers, Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West is dedicated to the idea of a new nature—a hybrid of both the wild and the cultivated—that can nourish in our cities and suburbs.

A common error for newbies is to start too big, and then become overwhelmed.

If you just want to putter with a couple of flower pots, tilling and sowing the back 40 when you already work a 14-hour day will just lead to more stress!

If you’re not sure about your requirements, this article has the guidelines you need for planning and planting your first garden.

The Big Mystery

Mystery, or fascination with processes such as the evolution of nature, can draw and engage our attention in both involuntary and voluntary ways – providing us with a valuable coping tool.

In environments that promote stress, it’s easy to become self-absorbed and fixate on problems, which can lead to depression and feelings of inadequacy or diminishment.

Even the simple act of viewing pictures of vegetation, or gazing from a window on a natural setting, helps to increase positive feelings and decrease stressful emotions!

When we engage with the garden, it holds our attention, which helps to assuage feelings of anger, fear, and sadness, and promote a healthier physiology.

It does this by interrupting and breaking the cycle of rumination, which can reveal a refreshing “bigger picture” perspective.

One study found that this fascination aspect improved depression severity during and immediately after a 12-week study period – with significant improvement still evident three months after the study concluded.

Stop and Smell the Roses

To get the most out of the de-stressing atmosphere of your time with nature, disconnect and slow down.

Numerous areas of medical study report that multitasking makes us less efficient.

And an increasing number of studies show that the heavy use of technology, like cell phones, can lead to sleep interruption and increased levels of depression and stress.

Just for a little while, become a Luddite – leave the phone indoors, take out the earbuds, and enjoy a break from emails, texts, phone calls, social media, AI nonsense, and the web.

It’s the perfect environment to practice mindfulness. Indulge in the richness of the moment, and immerse your senses in all that’s available.

Simply pause, and become present.

The sound of wind and birdsong, the color of leaves and blossoms, fragrances, the taste of herbs, and the texture of the earth will all mindfully absorb your attention.

Tuning in to what’s before us distracts us from our problems and puts us firmly on the pollen path of appreciation.

The “pollen path” is a Navajo story about the riches of opportunity that await us when we journey through life with presence and appreciation.

This is a metaphor Joseph Campbell used often in his writings on mythology, which you can read more about in his collected works, The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion.

This classic look at mythology in the space age is available on Amazon.

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space

The cares and worries of the world will still be there when you return to it, but the practice of mindfulness will let you see them in a gentler light, and with improved problem-solving skills.

There’s a wealth of information on the benefits of developing a state of mindfulness, and meta-analysis of the available data include the following:

1. Reduced rumination (excessive worry over a perceived problem)
2. Increased working memory capacity
3. Stress reduction
4. Improved ability to focus attention and suppress distracting information
5. Decrease in emotional reactivity
6. Increase in the ability to disengage from emotional upsets
7. Improvement in relationship satisfaction

And because many tasks in the garden are rhythmic in nature, they naturally lend themselves to developing present moment awareness.

Repetitive motions such as hoeing, raking, weeding, and digging are soothing to the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is responsible for the “fight or flight” response.

Too much stress, and this SNS is always “on” – which, of course, makes us feel even more stressed about feeling stressed!

Gardening books shape not only how we garden, but how we think about land, plants, and our role within living systems. The most enduring titles do more than offer instructions; they sharpen observation, challenge assumptions, and encourage gardeners to work with nature rather than against it. This curated reading list brings together influential, practical, and inspiring gardening books that span naturalistic design, ecological thinking, perennial planting, edible gardening, and horticultural reference. Together, they form a well-rounded working library for gardeners who value resilience, beauty, and ecological integrity.

Several of the books included here are widely regarded as foundational texts. The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman remains a touchstone for organic vegetable gardeners decades after its first publication, valued for its clarity, practicality, and deep respect for soil health and seasonal rhythms. Michael Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs is another essential work relied upon by designers and gardeners for its authoritative, experience-based insight into woody plants. These are books that reward repeated use and grow more valuable over time.

Other selections reflect the growing shift toward ecological and climate-conscious gardening. Dr. Douglas Tallamy’s Nature’s Best Hope reframes home landscapes as vital habitat, offering both solid science and genuine optimism about the power of individual action. Titles such as Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West and The Undaunted Garden by Lauren Springer Ogden push gardeners to think in terms of plant communities, adaptation, and long-term resilience. These ideas feel increasingly urgent as climate challenges intensify.

Design-focused readers will find inspiration in books that explore naturalistic and perennial planting in depth. Piet Oudolf at Work offers rare insight into the creative process behind some of the most influential contemporary gardens, while the classic The Wild Garden by William Robinson reminds us that many “modern” ideas about naturalistic planting have deep historical roots. For gardeners seeking beauty with longevity, works such as Roy Diblik’s The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden and Beth Chatto’s Green Tapestry Revisited demonstrate how thoughtful plant selection can reduce maintenance while strengthening ecological harmony.

Organized by the type of gardener each book may most appeal to, these recommendations are intended to support home gardeners, designers, and plant enthusiasts at every stage. Whether you are building soil, refining design sensibility, replacing lawn, saving seed, or simply seeking seasonal inspiration, the books gathered here share a common thread: They encourage attentive, informed gardening that is deeply connected to place.

Editor’s Top Garden Book Picks

The New Organic Grower, 3rd Edition: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, 30th Anniversary Edition

Carol’s Pick

Author: Eliot Coleman

Description: A foundational guide to organic vegetable production that emphasizes soil health, season extension, efficient tools, and thoughtful garden planning. Updated to reflect decades of experience, this edition remains deeply practical while grounded in ecological principles. A pioneer of the organic movement in the United States, Eliot Coleman’s books and innovative methods have helped innumerable organic farmers build successful farms in deep accordance with nature. The wisdom in this seminal book holds true even as the modern agricultural canon has grown—in large part due to Coleman’s influence as a wise elder with decades of experience.

Why it’s valued: Often considered the classic text for organic growing, Coleman’s work bridges small-scale home gardening and professional market farming with clarity and integrity.

Best suited for: Serious home vegetable gardeners, market gardeners, and anyone interested in organic, low-input food production.

Buy Now: Amazon

Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia

Danielle’s Pick

Author: Michael A. Dirr

Description: A comprehensive reference covering hundreds of woody plants, with detailed information on identification, habit, size, cultural needs, and ornamental qualities, accompanied by brilliant photographs. In this book, Dirr describes the best woody plants adapted to cooler climates, showing both habit and details of more than 500 species, and including some 700 additional cultivars and varieties.

Why it’s valued: Widely regarded as the definitive reference on trees and shrubs for landscape use in North America. Dirr’s authoritative voice and practical observations make it indispensable.

Best suited for: Landscape designers, horticulturists, serious gardeners, and anyone selecting or managing trees and shrubs.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition

Carol’s Pick

Author: Jeff Lowenfels

Description: Part of the “Teaming with . . . ” series, this book explains plant nutrition through the lens of soil biology, focusing on the soil food web, nutrient cycling, and microbial relationships rather than synthetic inputs. Teaming with Nutrients explains how nutrients move into plants and what both macronutrients and micronutrients do once inside. It shows organic gardeners how to provide these essentials.

Why it’s valued: Transforms complex soil science into accessible, actionable knowledge and shifts gardeners away from fertilizer dependency toward biological understanding.

Best suited for: Organic gardeners, soil enthusiasts, and growers who want to deepen their understanding of plant nutrition and soil ecology.

Buy Now: Amazon

Cass Turnbull’s Guide to Pruning, 3rd Edition: What, When, Where, and How to Prune for a More Beautiful Garden

Danielle’s Pick

Author: Cass Turnbull

Description: A clear, approachable guide to pruning trees, shrubs, and perennials that focuses on plant health, structure, and long-term beauty rather than rigid rules. Covering 160 plants with clear instructions and illustrations, Cass Turnbull will show you exactly how to prune any plant in your garden.

Why it’s valued: Demystifies pruning with an encouraging, plant-centered approach that builds confidence and reduces fear of “doing it wrong.”

Best suited for: Home gardeners, gardeners maintaining established landscapes, and anyone wanting to prune thoughtfully and responsibly.

Buy Now: Amazon

The American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers

Christine’s Pick

Authors: American Horticultural Society editors

Description: A comprehensive illustrated full-color gardening reference covering thousands of garden plants, this tome is a must-have for anyone who loves gardening; it is considered the definitive guide for gardeners. AHS Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers contains more than 8,000 plant profiles, over 4,250 photographs, and practical advice on everything from cultivation, pests, and diseases, to plant selection and identification.

Best suited for: Serious gardeners, designers, and horticulturists.

Buy Now: Amazon

Nature’s Best Hope

Christine’s Pick

Author: Dr. Douglas Tallamy

Description: Nature’s Best Hope is an accessible and encouraging guide that empowers individuals to make a meaningful impact on biodiversity and climate resilience. Douglas Tallamy clearly demonstrates how everyday landscapes such as yards, gardens, and shared spaces can function as vital conservation corridors when planted thoughtfully with native species. Grounded in solid science yet deeply practical, the book offers specific, manageable actions that gardeners can implement immediately. Above all, it serves as a hopeful call to action, reminding readers that collective, small-scale efforts can restore ecological balance, and offers a much-needed sense of agency for the world-weary gardener.

Best suited for: Gardeners interested in conservation and wildlife support.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

For Garden Designers and Naturalistic Planting Enthusiasts

Piet Oudolf at Work

Authors: Piet Oudolf and contributors

Description: Step into a Piet Oudolf garden and you are transported into a dreamlike meadowscape, filled with perennials, seasonal color, and texture. This book is an in-depth look at Oudolf’s design philosophy, process, and planting compositions. A major monograph on the Dutch garden designer, featuring his gardens and the largest collection of his drawings ever published; anyone who is a Piet Oudolf fan is sure to love seeing behind the scenes in this book.

Best suited for: Designers, plant-lovers, and naturalistic-garden enthusiasts

Buy Now: Amazon

 

Planting in a Post-Wild World

Authors: Thomas Rainer and Claudia West

Description: Encourages layered, resilient plant communities that balance ecology and design. Over time, with industrialization and urban sprawl, we have driven nature out of our neighborhoods and cities. But we can invite it back by designing landscapes that look and function more like they do in the wild: robust, diverse, and visually harmonious.

Best suited for: Designers and gardeners interested in ecological urban landscapes.

Buy Now: Amazon

The Wild Garden: Expanded Edition

Authors: William Robinson and Rick Darke

Description: This book is largely considered a foundational work promoting naturalistic planting and informal garden design. First published in 1870, The Wild Garden challenged the prevailing garden style of the day and advocated a naturalistic style, in which hardy plants, both native and exotic, are arranged in groupings that mimic wild landscapes. Thanks to Robinson’s passionate advocacy, the naturalistic style triumphed, and his urgent message continues to resonate today. For this newly designed edition, Rick Darke has written an introductory essay that not only underscores Robinson’s importance in the evolution of garden design and ecology but also explains his relevance for today’s gardeners, designers, and landscape professionals.

Best suited for: Garden historians and naturalistic-garden designers.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

Mien Ruys: The Mother of Modernist Gardens

Author: Julia Crawford

Description: The first full-length publication in English on influential modernist landscape designer Mien Ruys, this book offers rich insight into her character and the timeless lessons which can still be learned from her work.

Best suited for: Garden historians and designers interested in 20th-century modern garden movements.

Buy Now: Amazon

Exploring Garden Style: Creative Ideas from America’s Best Gardeners

Authors: Editors and contributors of Fine Gardening

Description: A collection of design ideas from over 50 gardeners and designers, Exploring Garden Style takes a commonsense approach to an often daunting subject: how to create a garden based on a particular theme, style, or need. From kitchen gardens to tropical gardens, sound ideas are combined with inspiring prose to motivate any gardener.

Best suited for: Gardeners and designers seeking inspiration and design ideas.

Buy Now: Amazon

Beth Chatto’s Green Tapestry Revisited

Authors: Beth Chatto and Julia Boulton

Description: First published in 1989, Green Tapestry described in words and photographs how Beth Chatto created her now world-famous gardens, and the thoughts behind them.

Green Tapestry Revisited brings the story up to date. Given the current issues about climate change, Beth’s ethos of choosing those plants that are most appropriate for the prevailing conditions could not be more timely.

Best suited for: Gardeners and designers interested in ecological thinking.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

 

For Perennial and Ornamental Gardeners

The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden

Author: Roy Diblik

Description: A modern classic on designing perennial gardens that are beautiful, resilient, and lower maintenance, The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden makes a design-magazine-worthy garden achievable at home. The simplified approach is made up of hardy, beautiful plants grown on a 10×14 foot grid. Each of the 62 garden plans combines complementary plants that thrive together and grow as a community.

Best suited for: Home gardeners and designers seeking attractive, low-maintenance perennial gardens.

Buy Now: Amazon

The Undaunted Garden: Planting for Weather-Resilient Beauty

Author: Lauren Springer Ogden

Description: Well-adapted plants, practical and environmental perspectives, and a uniquely aesthetic approach to gardening in a challenging climate compose the story that is The Undaunted Garden by pioneering plantswoman, garden designer, and author Lauren Springer Ogden. Highlights include: more than 370 new full-color photographs; 100 portraits of underused, exceptional plants; information on drought-tolerant and deer-resistant plants; and insights and lessons from Lauren’s three personal gardens.

Best suited for: Gardeners wanting to strengthen their garden against potential extreme climate conditions.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

Perennial Ground Covers

Author: David S. Mackenzie

Description: David Mackenzie explores the concept of ground covers to introduce the idea that they could include plants with strong, season-long foliage and varied interest. Through this lens, ground covers take on new meaning—defined not just as low-growing creeping plants, but as any plant that fits the requirements for covering ground. Learn how plants of any size, shape, or habit can be used as ground cover in this innovative book.

Best suited for: Designers and gardeners focused on year-round structure.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

For Site-Specific, Ecological, and Climate-Conscious Gardeners

The Dry Garden/The Damp Garden

Author: Beth Chatto

Description: The Dry Garden is based on Beth Chatto’s pioneering work gardening in dry conditions without irrigation. A partner to the first, The Damp Garden explores planting strategies for moisture-retentive or poorly drained soils. Both books showcase Chatto’s influence on the way we garden today as she describes her own successes and failures and gives detailed practical advice about plans, plants, and pitfalls when gardening with—rather than against—nature.

Best suited for: Gardeners with dry soils or drought-prone climates.

Buy Now: The Dry Garden/The Damp Garden

Shrouded in Light

Authors: Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi

Description: This book examines shrubland-inspired planting and ecological garden design. As meadows and prairies have long informed naturalistic planting, shrublands now offer fresh inspiration for a new era of garden design. The final section features gardens that illustrate contemporary approaches to using shrubs, calling for both aesthetic integration and a deeper adoption of shrubland ecological principles.

Best suited for: Gardeners interested in climate-resilient, naturalistic design.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

Requiem for a Lawnmower

Authors: Sally Wasowski and Andy Wasowski

Description: Advocates replacing traditional lawns with climate-appropriate, diverse plantings. In Requiem for a Lawnmower, Sally and Andy Wasowski offer a timely manifesto on this more naturalistic approach to gardening, “working with Mother Nature, not fighting her.” Consisting of practical advice as well as calls to action, this book is sure to make you think twice about the American lawn.

Best suited for: Homeowners seeking lawn alternatives.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

For Edible Gardeners and Seed Stewards

Taunton’s Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables and Herbs

Authors: Editors of Fine Gardening

Description: A comprehensive guide covering soil preparation, planting, care, and harvesting of vegetables and herbs. With detailed advice on growing 85 crops, plus sidebars on how to make a garden as attractive as it is productive, readers will delight in finding all the information they’ll ever need on vegetable gardening in one place.

Best suited for: Beginner to intermediate vegetable and herb gardeners.

Buy Now: Amazon

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

Author: Suzanne Ashworth

Description: Seed to Seed is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. It is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale.

Best suited for: Gardeners interested in seed saving and self-sufficiency.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

The Culinary Herbal: Growing & Preserving 97 Flavorful Herbs

Authors: Susan Belsinger and Arthur O. Tucker

Description: The Culinary Herbal highlights 97 delicious varieties like black cumin, fenugreek, lemon balm, and sassafras that every food lover will want to add to their kitchen garden. In this gorgeously photographed guide, you will learn which herbs offer the most flavor, how to grow them at home, and how to put them to use.

Best suited for: Chefs and kitchen gardeners who want to learn the best herbs to grow as well as the methods for drying them and using them.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

For Reference, Inspiration, and Garden Reading

A Year at Brandywine Cottage

Authors: Longwood Gardens and contributors

Description: Organized seasonally, A Year at Brandywine Cottage is filled with fresh ideas and trusted advice on flower gardening, growing vegetables and herbs, creating simple floral arrangements, and cooking seasonally with home-grown produce. You’ll find suggested tasks for each month, including advice on when to plant and harvest, how to weed and water, and what to plant for year-round beauty.

Best suited for: Gardeners who enjoy seasonal, reflective garden writing.

Buy Now: Amazon

 

 

Modern Japanese Gardens

Author: Stephen Mansfield

Description: A comprehensive survey of Japanese gardens, this volume offers a richly illustrated exploration of the relationship between nature and modernity through 50 public gardens across Japan. The Modern Japanese Garden serves as an indispensable design reference, celebrating the remarkable breadth of garden expression—from animist-rooted stone compositions set within sacred groves to groundbreaking innovations of the postwar era.

Best suited for: Garden historians and designers interested in 20th-century modern garden movements.

Buy Now: Amazon

The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer

Author: R. William Thomas

Description: Chanticleer is widely regarded as one of the most romantic, imaginative, and inspiring public gardens in America. At once a place of beauty and discovery, it invites visitors to linger while offering a wealth of ideas to bring back to their own landscapes. The Art of Gardening reveals the design philosophy and inventive planting techniques behind Chanticleer’s ever-evolving garden rooms, showcasing how bold experimentation, seasonal change, and thoughtful craftsmanship combine to create a garden that is both deeply personal and endlessly influential.

Best suited for: Whether you’re already under Chanticleer’s spell or have yet to visit, this book will serve to inspire.

Buy Now: Amazon

For more book recommendations, check out our sister site, HortMag.com

Since getting the shop, it’s been difficult to manage YouTube as well.

We’re working on a solution.

I’m currently at the shop for 10 hours per day, Monday to Friday, and for five hours on Saturday. On Sunday, we don’t work so we can dedicate that day to the Lord and to the family He has gifted to us.

Sometimes I take a couple hours off here and there to work in the greenhouse or on other projects, but most of the time I’m in for most or all of 55 hours per week. That has made YouTube difficult to maintain.

I do have someone that can manage the shop a couple of days per week while I’m out; however, if I am out, we make less. Right now, as we’re just getting the shop running, the more I can build up inventory, talk to people, etc., the better. It takes serious work to build a new business, even if it was already a working store.

When I get home in the evening, I leave my phone at the office. This means I’m really home when I’m home. We get to eat dinner together, then pray the Rosary and read the Bible as a family, then I often read to the kids afterwards.

Right now I’m reading Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome to the family. Not all of them enjoy it, but it builds character.

This means I don’t have time to do live streams either.

However, we are working on freeing up some time. I have some videos planned and Rachel and I could probably record two or three in a day if we can get a couple of hours, then post them weekly.

That’s the goal this week now that things are stabilizing at the store.

YouTube has been a good way to meet people and get gardeners growing their own food. We won’t stop, even posting frequency has declined precipitously we took over a brick and mortar business.

When spring comes, this business will really be busy. If we can post at least a YouTube video a week then, we’ll also gain new people that will help the store. It’s a balancing act, and I’m trying not to cut out any more family time (or church time).

We also have a baby due in June.

Life is good – it’s just a little busy right now.

This week I also hope to measure up the final harvest totals from our gardens. That will probably be a video. I just need a few more minutes!

Hi GPODers!

We’re back in the garden of Barbara Mrgich today to learn more about the many ways she supports pollinators with her plantings. Barbara already shared a highly informative submission on supporting monarch butterflies in her Pennsylvania garden (Check that out here, if you missed it: Supporting Monarchs in Barbara’s Pennsylvania Garden), but she’s got a lot more to share on more than just butterflies. Her garden is a haven for all kinds of wildlife and pollinators, and a multitude of gorgeous native plants provide as much beauty as they do environmental benefit.

Hello, this is Barb Mrgich, Adams County master gardener, back to talk about supporting pollinators in my suburban Pennsylvania garden, zone 6b (or maybe 7a).

Pollinators are vitally important to our food supply, and are disappearing at an alarming rate from our landscapes mostly because of loss of habitat, and misuse of pesticides in the home landscapes. Some pollinators are beautiful and a delight to see, while others can be rather scary looking. They all perform important tasks for us that most folks don’t even recognize.

Host plants are needed to attract important pollinators to your garden. Since most important pollinators are native insects, they need native plants for their larva to host on (feed on).

An important early season native plant is red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis, Zone 3–8) which attracts the ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) when they arrive from their annual migration. Red columbine is a vital early nectar source for the hummingbirds. Did you know they are the only native hummingbird this side of the Mississippi? (Occasionally, other species of hummingbird might be spotted here, but ruby throats are the only ones who raise their young here.)

Red columbine is a beautiful little flower that self-seeds itself around liberally forming a very nice ground cover in partially shaded areas. It serves as a host plant for the columbine duskywing butterfly (Erynnis lucilius), and the hawk moth (Sphingidae), an important nighttime pollinator.

Red columbine will naturally release its seed, and next year the clump will be larger. The deeply rooted little plants actually prefer lean soil over rich, and are quite drought tolerant. They create a lovely ground cover between larger plants.

Along with the columbine comes the native honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens, Zone 4–9), or coral honeysuckle. This plant blooms with no help from me from May until October. Hummingbirds can’t resist it! Here it is in May on a trellis.

The flowers of this native coral honeysuckle are well suited to the hummer’s long, slender bill and tongue.

Black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes) nectaring on orange zinnia. The black swallowtails are frequent visitors to my garden, probably because I keep a host area just for them. Carrots, dill, fennel, rue, and parsley will all act as a host plant for the black swallowtail. But, these are not native plants, so how can this be?

Golden alexander (Zizia aurea, Zone 3–8) is also a host plant for the black swallowtails, and is a North American native plant belonging to the Apiacaea family just as the other plants mentioned above. The fact that they are part of the same family means they have a similar chemical make-up. For some unknown reason to me, the butterfly has made the adjustment.

Golden alexander is a pretty plant the blooms for about a month very early in the season. It likes full or partial sun, and is drought tolerant. Like the native columbine, it will form an attractive ground cover if you encourage it.

Two black swallowtail caterpillars. Photo: Marsha Furtaw

Cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata, Zone 3–9) is a very tall, late summer native loved by bees. Bees are the most efficient pollinators and ecologically the most valuable. There are hundreds of different species of bees who all emerge at different times during the season, and rely on flower nectar to live. Late season blooms are vitally important.

A small bumble bee enjoys the bloom of a goldenrod (Solidago spp.).

Two different shades of New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, Zone 4–8) bloom in front of ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod (Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’, Zone 4–8).

Thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge on pollinators and the gorgeous plants that you grow to support them. The variety of beautiful blooms you cultivate makes your space a haven for all visitors.

How do you support pollinators and wildlife in your garden? Native plantings tend to get the unwarranted reputation that they are “messy,” but our readers continue to prove that no interest needs to be sacrificed when you lean into ecologically beneficial practices. Consider sharing your beautiful and beneficial garden with the blog. Follow the NEW directions below to submit your photos to Garden Photo of the Day!

 

We want to see YOUR garden!

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, fill out the Garden Photo of the Day Submission Form.

You can also send 5–10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

Do you receive the GPOD by email yet? Sign up here

Fine Gardening Recommended Products

Bee Watering Station with Vivid Flower Design

Fine Gardening receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site, including Amazon Associates and other affiliate advertising programs.

Thoughtful Combo: You will receive a bee feeder and 30 glass marbles. This thoughtful combo can provide clean water for the bees, you just need to put the marbles into the bee watering station, add water (note: the water level should not exceed the height of the marbles) and hang them in the right place. The round, colored marbles can provide a place for the bees to stand and prevent them from falling into the water, effectively keeping the bees safe. Fine Material: This exquisite bee bath is made of high quality iron material, smooth surface, rust and weather resistant, not easy to fade, sturdy and reliable. Bee cups for garden can well meet the drinking water needs of lovely bees, and it can also provide food for bees, such as sugar water, nectar, etc., attracting more bees to your outdoor area and making your garden full of vitality. Perfect Size: The butterfly watering station has an overall height of 13.4 inches, a bowl diameter of 9.4 inches, and a weight of 0.44 pounds. The bee cup serves the needs of the bees well without plunging them into dangerously deep water or taking up unnecessary space in your garden, and this compact and efficient design makes it a practical addition to any outdoor space. Elegant Design: Our bee watering cups are designed in unique flower shapes with vibrant and realistic colours to attract lovely bees to your garden and patio, bee feeders for outside are not only functional but can also be used as a landscaping element, their vibrant floral patterns enhance the beauty of your garden. Multicolored Decoration: Colorful bee water stations look like flowers in a garden, flower bed or pot and attract bees and butterflies. They can drink or bathe in bee feeders, which are highly decorative and practical.

Gilmour 5/8″ x 25′ Round Weeper Soaker Hose

Fine Gardening receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site, including Amazon Associates and other affiliate advertising programs.

Lightweight garden hose is made of 100% recycled vinyl for clog resistant, consistent soaking in the garden or around foundations. Can be installed above or below ground to efficiently deliver water directly to plant roots. Can be linked with other hoses to create your own DIY garden drip irrigation system, and is flexible for easy storage and space saving.

Buffalo-Style Gardens: Create a Quirky, One-of-a-Kind Private Garden with Eye-Catching Designs

Fine Gardening receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site, including Amazon Associates and other affiliate advertising programs.

Buffalo-Style Gardens is a one-of-a-kind, offbeat garden design book that showcases the wildly inventive gardens and gardeners of Buffalo – and offers readers “the best of the best” ideas to use in their own small-space gardens.

Soil challenges come in many forms, and the solutions aren’t always obvious. In this interactive Q&A webinar, hosts Carol Collins and Kirsten Kurtz will explore strategies for dealing with some of the toughest situations: compaction (including the added difficulty of clay soils), stress from heat and salts near sidewalks and streets, recently disturbed ground after construction, soils with low organic matter (including sandy soils), and how to best care for soil in the root zones of trees, shrubs, and perennials. Along the way, they’ll also touch on how to know when a plant problem isn’t soil-related and where to turn for specialized diagnostic help.

If you have questions about how to improve your soil, make sure to submit them ahead of time to [email protected]. We’ll be taking questions live, but are happy to have some ahead of time, too.

 

Hosts: Carol Collins and Kirsten Kurtz

Date & Time: January 16th, 2026, 9am EST

About Kirsten Kurtz Kirsten is the Assistant Director of the Cornell Soil Health Lab, where she helps growers and gardeners interpret soil tests and improve management strategies. With a master’s degree in Natural Resources and the Environment from Cornell, she specializes in assessing and remediating degraded soils. She’s also known for her innovative soil paintings, artworks made from natural soil pigments that celebrate both the beauty and importance of healthy soils.

 

 

Fine Gardening Recommended Products

Gardzen 3-Pack 72 Gallons Garden Bag

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High Quality Fabric – Gardzen Garden Waste Bags are made from 4.4oz/yd2 (150g/㎡) durable polypropylene fabric that can withstand heavy loads and rough handling. Please note that they should not be left out in the sun for long periods. Environmentally Friendly – These reusable yard waste bags are an environmentally friendly choice as they can be used over and over again, unlike disposable bags. The strong handles make it easy to carry the bags, even when they are full. These garden bags for debris allow you to complete your gardening tasks efficiently and effectively, while minimising waste and promoting sustainability. Large Capacity – With a height of 30 inches and a diameter of 26 inches, there is plenty of room for a large amount of garden waste. Whether it’s leaves, branches or grass clippings, these yard waste containers can handle it all. A Must-Have For Gardeners – these leaf bags are an essential tool for managing garden waste and can make your gardening tasks much more efficient. The large capacity and durable construction make them ideal for storing and transporting various items. The yard bags can also be folded and stored compactly when not needed, saving valuable space.
Package Included – A great value set of 3pcs heavy duty lawn and leaf bags. 3pcs white plastic hoops. There are 2pcs double stitched webbing handles in the top and 1pc strong webbing corner handles in the bottom.

Razor-Back Potato/Refuse Hook

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Gardena 3103 Combisystem 12-Inch To 20-Inch Adjustable Metal Fan Rake Head

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With adjustable tine spacing: suitable for raking coarse and fine material. Flexible, zinc-plated spring-steel prongs. Working width adjustable from 12-20 inches. Sold as head only, handle sold separately.

Messy gardening. It’s a familiar term for many of us, especially gardeners seeking to boost their garden’s ecological value. As we leave the leaves, add native plants and rain gardens, and keep those dead perennial stems standing through the winter and into spring, we’re encouraged to adopt a messier, less strict aesthetic that increases opportunities for other creatures to share the abundance our gardens can offer.

Imagine, however, ecologically friendly garden enhancements that increase the sense of order and rhythm in your yard. Even better if these creations are beautiful, dynamic, and provide shelter for birds, amphibians, and invertebrates. And the best part? The only supplies are your creative energy and materials you already have on hand.

Introducing . . . the dead hedge!

A dead hedge is a garden structure built from dead and dormant plant material ranging from fallen leaves and cutback perennial stems to twigs, branches, and stumps. The shape is only limited by your imagination; a tidy conical heap could be a good place to start, but a sinuous curving dead hedge can be a striking garden feature.

The benefits of building a dead hedge

Dead hedges offer a myriad of benefits for your garden ecology. After spring garden cutback, loosely layering the clipped perennial debris in a dead hedge gives insects that could be overwintering in leaves and stems an opportunity to emerge as the weather warms. Other beneficial insects shelter or overwinter on bark, branches, and leaves safely tucked away in a dead hedge.

Birds benefit too; dead hedges can offer a buffet of plant fibers for nesting, while ground-foraging woodland birds like thrushes are drawn to the hedge’s shelter and snack on ants and beetles hiding underneath. Gradual decomposition within the dead hedge also builds soil, as fungi and microbes slowly break down the plant materials and return organic matter to your garden beds.

3 Guidelines for Great Dead-Hedge Design

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For gardeners who may be getting antsy during our long Midwestern winters, creating the framework for a dead hedge is a fun winter project. The design, materials, and goals are open to experimentation, but a few guidelines will keep your new creation functional and beautiful for years to come.

1. Consider the site and placement

Dead hedges can be great problem-solvers in the landscape. A vertical dead hedge can screen undesirable views like utility boxes or tool storage, and a striking dead hedge offers a great focal point in parts of your yard that lack definition and winter interest. Two parallel dead hedges can define a new walking path, while placing one perpendicular to a slope can slow down stormwater and decrease erosion.

Save steps by positioning dead hedges close to the source of garden debris; a dead hedge bordering perennial gardens makes spring cutback a breeze, while a dead hedge constructed from woody material can be a great way to skip hauling heavy trunks after a tree is cut down.

2. Build in “cues to care”

Especially in naturalistic gardens that tend toward looking wild, it’s important to pay attention to details that add order and aesthetic value. Before construction starts, a base of mulch or wood chips for your dead hedge provides a tidy surface to work from. As you begin stacking, place heavier materials at the base to create a stable foundation and prevent your hedge from wobbling or falling over. For more precise designs, cutting ingredients into uniform pieces before stacking can help you stay true to your vision, so keep your hand pruners and pruning saw sharp and at hand.

A dead hedge with a smoothly curving shape or a zigzag reminiscent of split-rail fencing can look more artful than a straight line. Plus, perfectly straight lines can be hard to achieve with natural materials, so a curve is usually more forgiving.

Consider adding wooden stakes or rebar posts along the edges of the dead hedge to make it easier to keep the hedge tidy and vertical as materials are added and the height grows. A width of about 12 to 18 inches is the sweet spot for most dead hedges. You may be surprised at how much material it takes to start building upward!

3. Plant for maintenance

A little annual touch-up keeps the hedge looking sharp. As materials decompose, there may be some shifting, so adding and redistributing materials, especially after winter settling, helps keep a uniform height and appearance.

It may be obvious, but avoid moving materials from the base layer of your dead hedge. The base is where contact with the soil promotes development of fungal networks and boosts soil health as the hedge materials are decomposed and add organic matter into the soil.

Extend the “life” of your plants

These design and maintenance tips will make your dead hedge a creation that combines beauty and function for many years to come, with character that grows over time as it becomes one with the landscape. Keeping our organic materials on-site is just another step toward a sustainable garden. Our plants work so hard to add beauty and support other life in our gardens while they are growing, and a dead hedge is a living monument that helps honor and extend their contributions in death as in life.

Find more information on wildlife-friendly gardening:

 

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Erin Presley is a horticulturist at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin.

Photos: courtesy of Erin Presley

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