Garden Designer’s BlogLink: How to Make Your Region’s Plants Pop

January 6, 2010
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This month, a number of talented landscape designers are giving their take on the subject of regional diversity in design. Read to the bottom to see what other designers have to say!
I hear it again and again: folks think that natives are boring, that they have a short bloom season, that their foliage is dull; [...]

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Your Gardening Body: How to Scoop Mulch and Use a Wheelbarrow Without Strain or Pain

December 31, 2009
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Anne Asher, a movement specialist from The MOVE! Blog, has been kind enough to answer some common questions about how professional and/or passionate gardeners can reduce the strain that comes from repetitive gardening tasks. Check out her new product – great for winter time – called Clear the Blear. Here’s this month’s installment:
Dear Anne,
In winter, [...]

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Do Landscapers Listen to Our Own Advice? Plants We’d Never Plant at Home (Part Two)

December 28, 2009
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In part one, I discussed some of the beautiful and useful plants that landscapers recommend or maintain for clients, that we wouldn’t plant in our own home gardens. Whether hard to maintain, prickly, or just overused – these are perfectly good plants in many ways – but often have one fatal flaw us pro-gardeners just [...]

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Do Landscapers Listen to Our Own Advice? Plants We’d Never Plant at Home (Part One)

December 19, 2009
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I was gardening recently with one of my employees, and she groaned in the middle of pruning a Mexican Feather Grass and said firmly, “I will NEVER plant these things at my house. Never!”
It’s not a bad plant – in fact, it’s fantastic – it has seasonal interest, adds a sense of motion and  life [...]

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Video Review of the Fiskars Pruning Stik, My Favorite Pole Pruner

December 12, 2009
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Lightweight’s the name of the game for this pole pruner. I’ve been using these Fiskars Pruning Stiks for many years in my landscaping business and have not yet broken or had to retire one.
Many pole pruners fail because they try to do too much – they have a saw, a lopper, they extend, and thus [...]

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Fall Leaves: Leave ‘Em and Weep

December 5, 2009
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Once upon a time some newbie garden writer thought it’d be a great idea to encourage people to leave their fall leaves on the ground. Hey, it’s got all the qualities of a great article for the masses; it tells folks what they want to hear (stay in your jammies on Saturday and don’t bother [...]

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How to Prune Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (Video Tutorial)

November 30, 2009
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Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ is a true garden classic, especially paired with ornamental grasses, lavenders and colorful sages.
It’s particularly great because during the summer when everything else is blooming, its greenish-white buds are getting bigger and bigger, creating a subtly beautiful show, then as everything else slows for the fall, ‘Autumn Joy’ bursts into bloom with [...]

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Welcome to my OpenSky Store!

November 28, 2009
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If you’ve hung out at North Coast Gardening for a while, you know I have some, ahem, opinions about gardening tools. Felcos? Forget it!
But sometimes my favorite tools are a bit harder to find – they aren’t all on Amazon, nor are many of them at your local garden shop. So I’m really excited to [...]

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Calculating How Much Mulch or Compost You Need

November 21, 2009
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So your garden’s mulch is getting thin, and you’ve decided that you want to add 2 inches of wood chips to top it up. Great! But how much mulch do you need to buy to make that happen?
You can do this using math (yuck!), or you can use these great calculators I’ve found online. I’ll [...]

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Your Gardening Body: How to Rake and Sweep Without Strain or Pain

November 15, 2009
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Anne Asher, a movement specialist from The MOVE! Blog,  has been kind enough to answer some common questions about how professional and/or passionate gardeners can reduce the strain that comes from repetitive gardening tasks. Here’s this month’s installment:
Dear Anne,
By November, fall leaves are piling up around perennials and shrubs. I like to rake up my [...]

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