Your hydrangea has gotten too big. It is growing up over the windows or spilling out into the walkway. Your hydrangea is covering nearby shrubs, or blocking the driveway. “How do I prune this to make it small again?” you ask. The simple answer is that you don’t. Plants grow to be the size and…

Or… “Can I still plant vegetables in the garden in late June?”  The answer to the first questions is no, it’s not too late. The answer to the second question is yes! Frankly, you can plant most vegetables now and many can be sown or placed in the garden through the rest of the summer.…

On this early June morning I went out to the front porch with a cup of coffee and my phone. But instead of checking my email, or sending a text to one of my sons, I put the phone down on the arm of the Adirondack chair and watched the landscape. The sun was just…

One of the best ways of being creative in the landscape is to plant containers filled with flowering annuals, succulents, shrubs or trees.  You can create a garden in pots on the deck, soften hard spaces such as driveways and walls, or fill window boxes with cheerful color that lasts all summer.  Here are some…

There are hundreds of myths about plants and gardens, but at this time of year it’s appropriate to address a few misunderstandings about planting. 1. “Is it too late to plant?” aka “Don’t plants have to be installed by the end of May?”  No matter what you’re putting into your yard and garden, there is…

Although the “word on the street” is that winter moth larvae damage isn’t going to be as bad this year, I have seen them on every property I’ve visited in the past ten days. They are still very small, so the damage they are doing is only noticeable when you look at a plant closely.…

Remember the fall of 2017 when it was warm, warm, warm, even through November? Remember how some PJM Rhododendrons came into bloom and the buds on the Hydrangeas were starting to swell as if it was spring? And perhaps you recall that in early December the temperatures suddenly plunged down into the low 20’s. Well…

As the garden center fills with beautiful plants for the summer season, our customers are asking if they can plant what they see outdoors. “Can I put my tomatoes in?” one man asked today, and yesterday a woman called wanting to know if she could plant the basil outdoors. Today is May 1st and we…

The containers we use on our porches, decks and patios are one way that we give our yards and gardens “a sense of place.” Our pots, urns and boxes can celebrate the natural world near the sea, but do so in a subtle way that doesn’t distract from the plants or the house. Large collections…

Over the past two weeks I’ve had many customers come to me asking about the moss in their landscape. “Where did all the moss come from?” or “What can I do about the moss in my lawn?” If you’ve been concerned about the amount of moss in your lawn and garden, this blog post is…

Now that it’s finally warming up, many on the Cape are taking a close look at what is going on in their lawn and gardens, and they are seeing weeds. Areas that were fine last fall are suddenly filled with small plants, many of them with tiny leaves. “What are these weeds and how can…

When I heard that on April 14th and 15th the Bonide company was going to donate their profits from the sale of their products in our store to Habit for Humanity Cape Cod, they had my attention. I routinely use many of their products through the course of the summer, so here was a change…