Web Articles | Alabama Gardener

Popular Articles

Categories

Cactus Collecting
This is the year to get hooked by cacti
by Timothy J. Malinich

Cacti (singular cactus) catch the eye of many hobbyists. They are easy and rewarding to grow, fun to display, and readily available. People are often hesitant to grow them because they fear the reputation of these desert denizens. Here are a few tips that will hopefully de-mystify the collecting of cacti. >> read article

A Canna Renaissance
by Garry McDonald

Working on a university campus, I can’t help but notice the changing whims of fashion. Lately, the trend among young men is khaki walking shorts, polo shirts, and white crew socks and white sneakers: exactly what we wore on campus in the early 1980s. Like clothes, plants come into and fall out of fashion. Re-discovering old garden plants is usually the result of breeding improved cultivars or someone taking a fresh look at how plants can be used in the landscape. One such plant is canna. >> read article

The Real Dill
by Paige Day

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme are a great combination, but let’s not forget one herb that’s easy to grow and an extremely versatile addition to the garden: dill. >> read article

Get to the Point
by Troy B. Marden

Have you ever visited California or the American Southwest and admired the beautiful agaves, or century plants, that dot the hillsides and grace the gardens throughout the region? Their subtle colors and stunning architectural forms are welcome additions to any garden, but being from the desert where dry soil and dry air prevails means taking a few extra steps in order to grow them successfully in the damp and humid South. Proper siting, soil preparation and in colder parts of the South, winter protection, are essential to growing agaves successfully, but the rewards are worth any amount of effort. >> read article

Keep Your Friends Close, but Your Anemones Closer
by PJ Gartin

Move over pansy, cyclamen and snapdragon. Anemone (A. coronaria) is the new darling of the cool-season bloomers. After showing up in garden centers around mid-December last year, this scintillating Mediterranean native was snapped up faster than a gardener can say “ranunculus.” >> read article

Grow Succulents!
by Brittany May

Succulents are a great way to begin gardening, teaching children to garden, or building the confidence of a person who doesn’t exactly have a “green thumb.” Succulents seem to thrive when you ignore them. They require very little care after planting. In fact, making sure the pot has good drainage, and that the soil has extra pumice and horticultural sand to promote drainage is as difficult as it gets. >> read article

Monstera
by Peter Loewer

Today, many once-popular horticultural trends are just as passé as swim-tops for men and iceberg lettuce in a salad. Remember when everybody had an air plant pinned to the curtains in most rooms of the house and gardeners were happy to have plain white petunias? If you don’t recall those days of yore, you certainly will not remember the popularity once surrounding the Monstera deliciosa, or Swiss-cheese plant.

The botanical name, Monstera, is Latin for strange or monstrous, and points to some of the oddities associated with this rambling vine. These include aerial roots and large, glossy leaves full of deeply lobed cutouts and neatly cut round or oval holes, hence the common name Swiss-cheese plant. >> read article

Clematis 101
by Ilene Sternberg

Virtually all clematis books are British. I think it’s some kind of law. According to those books, you may pronounce it “klem-a-tiss,” “kli-mah-tiss,” “klem-at-iss” or “klem-ay-tiss.” The plants are fabulous, and will respond no matter how you address them. Most Americans only spiral one up their mailbox post, but the Brits have been exploring the potential of almost 300 species and even more varieties and cultivars, using them far more imaginatively in their gardens for eons. >> read article