Garden Hike

Adding A Landscape Bed To A Front Yard

Landscaping adds visual interest and curb appeal to your home. There are many benefits to adding a landscape bed to your front yard, and using plastic edging is one of the easiest to install and one of the most economical choices. One of the main benefits of a landscape bed

Exploring The Black Hills Spruce

Black Hills Spruce Picea glauca var. densata 
 If you're looking for a beautiful and hardy tree to add to your landscape, the Black Hills Spruce is an excellent choice. Top Five Reasons You’ll Love The Black Hills Spruce
: Cold hardiness: The Black Hills Spruce is known for

Opening Up Space and Light For A Conifer Garden: Spring Snow Crab Pruning

If you love plants you quickly discover that it is a common problem among your fellow gardeners that you’ve planted your plants too close together. We want one of everything! When my wife and I moved to our current home, we inherited this beautiful row of flowering crabapples. I

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The Seven Dwarfs: Compact Conifers For Tight Spaces

Dwarf conifers are a great addition to any garden. One of the main advantages of planting dwarf conifers is their compact size. Unlike their larger counterparts, these plants are perfect for smaller gardens or for filling in gaps in your landscape. Dwarf conifers also work great in container gardens. Their

Planting A Prairie Horizon Manchurian Alder

The Prairie Horizon Manchurian Alder is a North Dakota State University introduction, where I studied horticulture back in the 1980's. I also highlighted this tree in a video titled Four Medium Sized Trees You'll Love that you can watch here. Top five reasons to plant a

Girdling Damage From Voles

In the 40 years I've been gardening and exploring landscapes, I've never seen such extensive girdling damage from voles and field mice over such a vast area after winter (2022-2023). Take a look at some of these photos. I suspect the extensive damage had to do

Vibrant Viburnums: Cold Hardy and Unbelievably Eye-Catching!

The Most Notable Qualities of Viburnums Viburnum plants are known for their outstanding qualities, making them desired for gardens and landscaping. Often referred to as Cranberry Viburnums, they are not the true cranberries on our Thanksgiving table. Listed below are the top five attributes and three of my favorite hardy

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Enhancing Your Landscape: Exploring The Beauty Of Ornamental Grasses

Ornamental grasses are an excellent addition to any landscape, as they can add texture, movement, and interest to your garden.  Not only are they low maintenance, but they also provide a natural look to your outdoor space. Let's explore five of the most popular grass species that can

Regretting My Juniper Planting Location: Time To Transplant

I recently transplanted a Blue Arrow Juniper to a new location since I originally planted it too close to a Buckeye Tree. You can watch the entire process in the video below. But first, let's do a quick summary of the most critical steps you should take when

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Boost Your Iris Flower Power: Learn How To Divide and Conquer

Irises are beautiful, hardy plants that bloom in various colors and are easy to care for. According to Greek mythology, the iris is named after the goddess of the rainbow, and the genus consists of around 300 species. Bearded iris are the most commonly planted and have rhizomes, a horizontal

Uncommon Beauties: Unique Shrubs That Deserve More Attention

Five Shrubs You Are Going To Love! * Trost's Dwarf Cutleaf Birch * Purpleleaf Bailey Select American Hazelnut * Black Lace Elderberry * Royal Purple Smoke Bush/Tree * Goji Berry We also have prepared for you a guided tour captured on a beautiful summer day, 2023. Trost's Dwarf Cutleaf Birch

Sumac + Sumac + Sumac = Gonna Need Some Space

Sumac, generally shrubs or small trees, are a popular landscaping choice. When used in our landscapes, there is a lot to love about the sumac, but you will need some space as they can be aggressive spreaders due to their rhizome roots, a horizontal underground stem that puts out vertical

Creating A Small Landscape Bed

I love landscaping! But landscaping can mean a lot of different things. I often create small landscape beds and then pause. I’ll add plants as I find them (or they find me). According to dictionary.com, landscaping is: "to improve the appearance of (an area of land, a

Serbian Spruce | A Must Have For Your Gardens

The Serbian spruce, Picea omorika, is an excellent addition to any garden or landscape. The upswept branches give it an elegant look, and the needles are a glossy dark green with streaks of white underneath, giving the tree a "silvery" appearance. For this post, we'll be

Four Great Variegated Shrubs

A variegated plant has leaves with more than one color, green with white or soft yellow shades being the most common. The colors can be uniform or random and usually have a streaking effect, but they can also be spots or blotches.  Let's take a look at four

Growing Garlic: Five Key Steps For Success

Garlic is used for preparing food dishes worldwide and is loved for its depth of flavor and aroma. It also has many health benefits since it contains high levels of antioxidants. Garlic has existed for over 5000 years, making it one of the oldest known horticultural crops. Let's

Colorado Blue Spruce: Three Different Looks - Same Great Blue

The Colorado Spruce group has a lot of varieties with different shapes and colors including, blues & greens, pyramids & globes. As well other shapes like weeping, sprawling and irregular mounds. Lets take a look at three wonderful blue spruce with different looks: * Hoops Blue Spruce * Montgomery Blue Spruce * Dwarf

Hardy Junipers For Your Landscape: So Many Sizes, Shapes, And Colors

Junipers love full sun, are drought tolerant and there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of hardy varieties available for you to plant and grow. Here are the varieties we'll be looking at: * Mother Lode Juniper * Star Power Juniper * Savin Juniper * Wichita Blue Juniper * Icee Blue Juniper * Medora Juniper * Trautman

Flame Amur Maple

In this blog post, we’ll be looking at the characteristics of the Flame Amur Maple, Acer ginnala 'Flame' and the attached video will show how you can change the look of this large shrub by pruning it into a small tree.  The video below shows you start

Girdling Damage On Techny Arborvitae

Girdling of a woody plant removes or injures a tree or shrub bark layer and the transport tissue just behind the bark, xylem, and phloem, which is vital for the plant's survival. Complete girdling on a tree trunk can be fatal, whereas girdling on multistemmed shrubs will often

Refresh Your Landscape Beds with Rock, New Plants and Fresh Mulch

Refreshing a landscape bed requires three main ingredients: rock, mulch, and new plants. Well, let's make that four: labor. As you can see by these first few photos, this landscape lacked interest. It was just kind of "there". I love working on makeover projects like this!

Dwarf Burning Bush | Euonymus alatus 'Compactus'

The Burning Bush gets its name from its scarlet red fall leaf color. I have seen the dwarf variety we will discuss here also have early fall colors that are more burgundy-purplish. Here are the specs on this showy dwarf shrub: * Height: 6-8' * Width: 8-10' * Hardiness: Zone 4-9

Dwarf Korean Lilac Tree: Pruning To Reduce Size

Dwarf Korean Lilac, Syringa meyeri ‘Palibin’ Lilacs are known for their showy spring flowers with a beautiful scent. Dwarf Korean Lilac is one of the smaller lilac varieties available. It is incredibly hardy and grows in many different types of soil. For best flowers, full sun is necessary. The leaves

Pruning A Techny Arborvitae and Colorado Globe Spruce

Techny Arborvitae, Thuja occidentalis ‘Techny’ | Colorado Globe Spruce, Picea pungens ‘Globosa’ One has to be more cautious when pruning evergreen conifers than deciduous shrubs. You will be more limited on how much growth you can take off on the conifers. Deciduous shrubs have latent buds on the stems, and with

Four Medium Sized Trees You'll Love

Prairie Torch Hybrid Buckeye, Aesculus x ‘Bergeson’ I have several Buckeye trees planted in my landscape. When I first started studying and learning about trees, Ohio Buckeye was the common name associated with this tree. But now, the common name is usually just Buckeye and its associated variety name. Characteristics