Featured Stories

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
No matter where you live in the country, there is a season when snapdragons will absolutely steal the show in your landscape. In zones 7 and warmer, many gardeners plant them in the fall as pansy partners. They are planted in late winter to early spring in colder areas where they give riotous colors almost all summer.

By LEE REICH
For The Associated Press
Not to be unpatriotic, but another “cranberry” outshines our traditional Thanksgiving cranberry.
This fruit, sometimes called mountain cranberry, partridgeberry or foxberry, is esteemed in other parts of the world. You may know it by its Scandinavian name, lingonberry, because that’s where it is most popular, with many thousands of tons harvested each year from the wild.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Ornamental sweet potatoes rule! I just returned from speaking to a group, called Pascagoula Pride, that takes city beautification seriously. As I drove through town, I could not help but admire their effective use of the lime green ornamental sweet potatoes.
Much of the country has already experienced killing frost, but along the Gulf Coast, winter is still held at bay. Regardless of where you live, everyone should consider using the ornamental sweet potato in next spring’s plantings.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
At a meeting last weekend I felt like a discovered the Garden of Eden in Mount Vernon, Ga. I was at Brewton-Parker College and was given a tour of the campus by its president, Dr. David Smith. I noticed that everywhere I looked there was a native dogwood. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “These dogwoods are for the birds.”

By The Associated Press
Attracting a steady population of birds, butterflies and other watchable wildlife to your yard is a matter of providing habitat - a combination of food, water and cover. The challenge comes in finding the right plant partners.
Birds are attracted to plants and shrubs that produce seeds, berries and fruit. Butterflies and moths, bees and hummingbirds look for plants that provide pollen and nectar. Insect pollinators favor plants with broad leaves for laying their eggs and then providing forage for their hungry larvae.
Here are some native plants preferred by:

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Pansies are great in spring and fall, but the question is always asked, “What do I plant with them?”
One of my favorites to partner with pansies is sweet alyssum. No matter where you live in the country, at some time during the year you can grow both pansies and alyssum together for a magnificent olfactory experience.
I have always wondered why this little tiger of a plant has not found more favor in the garden. New varieties like the Clear Crystal series have made this plant even more of a must-have in the cool-season garden.

By LEE REICH
For The Associated Press
With harvest season winding down, it’s time for dessert. How about some candy, real candy, from the garden?
Marshmallows, anyone?
Of course you can’t just pluck a squishy marshmallow from a marshmallow bush or tree. But marshmallows — real marshmallows — were originally made from the candied roots of a plant. And that plant is aptly called “marsh mallow.”
DIGGING FOR MARSHMALLOWS

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
The audience gasped as I gave the pot of mums a big bear hug, thinking I was going to squeeze the life out of it. That was the scene last week when I spoke at a Spirit of Women Conference.
Gardeners know that squeezing mums is normally a recipe for disaster as branches break like crumbling pretzels. But these were Belgian mums, so the hug didn’t hurt them.

By Dean Fosdick
For The Associated Press
Bulbs are perfect, self-contained packages for gardeners. They’re equipped with everything necessary to make flowers grow and bloom.
Problem is, that makes them a prize for predators, too.
“The perfect lunch box,” said Leonard Perry, an extension professor with the University of Vermont. “Put them in the ground this fall and I guarantee you the plant pests will come.”

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
The vegetable garden looks to be “Sweet ’n’ Neat” next year, thanks to some new varieties of tomatoes by that very name.
More and more urban dwellers are joining in the latest trend of growing their own produce, and tomatoes are the No. 1 choice of those growing edibles.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Hey, Tiger, there’s a new Blonde in town, and she’s a real looker. I’m neither joking nor talking about girls, but I am referring to two of the hottest ferns in the gardening world.
The Tiger fern has been climbing steadily in popularity, but the competition just got a lot tougher thanks to the Blonde. If you are a fern lover, then you will delight in having both.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Red is a color that many gardeners want in the landscape but find very difficult to use successfully. The secret, however, may lie in your accent features.
It seems strange to think that red may be hard to use. There are red roses, red zinnias, red petunias and scores of other red flowers, but if you place them near each other, a wave of nausea may sweep over you.
Red is one of the hardest colors to work. Unless you know a couple of secrets to building a monochromatic color scheme, it is practically impossible to build one with red.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
“Simply unbelievable” is how I would describe the new Fireworks gomphrena. Gomphrena, sometimes called globe amaranth or bachelor’s button, is already considered a tough plant and you would think it would be hard to improve on it, but Fireworks is like none other.

By LEE REICH
For The Associated Press
So you’re going away on vacation? Your plants are not, and there’s no reason for them to suffer in your absence.
With a little pre-planning, they can thrive even as you stroll the streets of some exotic city or canoe pristine waters.
Unless your vacation is slated to go on for weeks and weeks, your main concern for your plants should be water. Two hot, sunny, summer days without water won’t faze a tomato plant out in the garden but could kill a pot of marigolds. Your first job, then, is to identify which plants have similar thirsts.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
In the South, I hear people referring every now and then to snow in mid-summer. Of course we rarely get snow even in the winter, and it sure doesn’t fall in August, but we can have the illusion of snow with a new plant called Snow Princess.
I have a story that goes back to the California Pack Trials near the end of March. At the Proven Winners location in Bonsall, Calif., they were proudly showing off a new sweet alyssum known botanically as Lobularia and called Snow Princess.

By DEAN FOSDICK
For The Associated Press
Whoever authored the phrase “strength in numbers” must have been a flower bulb grower. Gardeners for decades have been planting bulbs in mass beds — at least 50 at a time — to intensify their colors in the otherwise drab surroundings of late winter and early spring.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Gardeners can rejoice because we will have two great new choices for yellow zinnias in the landscape.
The Profusion series of zinnias has colors like Fire, Cherry, Orange and Deep Apricot, but it still lacks yellow for another year. This year gardeners celebrated the appearance of the Zahara series with scarlet and the much-anticipated yellow. Of course there are white zinnias in both series, but we all longed for yellow.

By DEAN FOSDICK
For The Associated Press
Blooms may be losing some luster among cash-strapped gardeners weeding out nonessential spending. A practical option is investing in an assortment of low-risk, high-return shrubs.
Few plants can return so much for so little attention as shrubs, which are long-lasting, colorful, cold-hardy, fast-growing, drought-tolerant, pest-resistant and utilitarian, and also deliver multi-season interest.

By LEE REICH
For The Associated Press
Let’s plant a stone wall.
If only that were as simple as dropping a row of pebbles in the ground, stepping back, and waiting a few weeks or months for a wall to appear. But, of course, what I mean is to grow plants in a stone wall.
The nooks and crannies in any unmortared stone wall cry out for a bit of decoration. So much so that, without any helping hand, plants — too often weeds — frequently insinuate themselves into such walls here and there.

By Norman Winter
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Red Emperor ginger is one of those plants people treasure even if it never blooms. I did not know much about this plant but received a cluster of them from my daughter, who had been using them as a thriller plant in a mixed container for a special event.