Your guide to top plants

Here’s a quick look at six of the best vines to plant in your garden this spring. These will get visitors to look up. Raising their head will give them a positive feeling and you'll also be giving them something beautiful to look up at. This list, of course, is just a start. There are many other vines worth...

  Will Barron Walter Pennel Serenata Ville de Lyon Sea Breeze Prince Philip Ernest Markham Pamiat Serdsta Candida Bees Jubilee Your guide to clematis Every garden should have a few clematis. I have at least five kinds in different parts of the garden. I used to have several more but over the years I have replaced them - pyracantha instead of clematis around an arch, for instance. People fall madly in love with...

One of the new plants I have added to my garden this year is Euonymus japonica ‘Paloma Blanca’ which sometime goes by the name White Candles. I have used it to create a short, formal hedge behind which I grow a variety of taller shrubs including purple nine bark, calycanthus and Korean lilac. The euonymus replaces a drift of Carex...

Styrax japonicus (Japanese snowbell tree) Looking for a superb, moderate-growing, small tree for your garden, you can do no better than to pick the graceful snowbell tree. This exceptionally handsome deciduous tree is an excellent pick for a small- or medium-sized garden. It is relatively slow-growing, reaching only 25 to 30 feet (7.5 to 9 m) with a loosely rounded...

Want to do a special planting for Canada Day this year? Here are a couple of plants that are being marketed this spring specifically to appeal to those gardeners who want to show their patriotism when it comes to celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday on July 1. Dahlia 'Canadian Celebration' is a striking white dahlia with red stripes that is expected to...

Alchemilla mollis Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s mantle) All the great cottage gardens of England have this old-fashioned favorite. It is loved for the way it displays raindrops like diamonds on its rough, hairy leaves. It is also valued for the lime green color and frothy texture of its effervescent sprays of flowers, which first appear in June and last for several weeks....

In the early 1990s, I suffered, as did most other young gardeners who were starting out on their first major gardening project, from a serious case of plant lust: I felt I just had to have all the great plants in the book. Of course, I ended up with a hodgepodge, a disjointed jumble of plants, some of which obviously...

Do hostas look better with or without their flowers? Many people don't like the flowers and cut them off the moment they appear on their long stalks. Other love the flowers and would never think of cutting them when they are their peak. It really comes down to a matter of taste. But the conflict of whether to cut or not to...

People don't care anymore when they buy a clematis if it dies at the end of summer. They just want to have good flower impact on their patio, balcony or deck for a few months. After, they don't care what happens to the vine. This according to Rob Wein, one of the owners of Clearview Horticultural, the biggest grower of clematis...

Germination is one of the great mysteries of life. Yes, we see it working. Yep, we have lots of science on the process. But the reality of a seed springing to life, forcing its way out of the ground, showing a steely determination to succeed, an energy and will to live and grow and become something more than it...

There’s a reason bride’s love to have peonies in their bouquets and at wedding celebrations. Next to roses, peonies are one of the most romantic flowers, unashamedly soft and delicate and extraordinarily pretty. Pink and white peonies with their dense explosion of petals are without doubt a sensational sight in a vase or bouquet. Now, the question is which kinds should you grow in...

What’s the quirkiest plant on the shelves this spring? It could well be the “electric daisy” (Acmella oleracea), possibly the hottest novelty plant of 2017 that also is known as the toothache plant. This also goes by the botanical name Spilanthes acmella. It has glossy green  leaves and golden, bud-like flowers with a dark red eye. In Brazil, where it is an...

I have been agonizing over what to do with a space in the garden that has become an eyesore since a large Clematis montana growing over a Viburnum Summer Snowflake collapsed and died over winter. The viburnum had grown into a small tree and the clematis had scrambled into it and smothered it, creating a beautiful canopy of flowers in...

Buddleia davidii ‘Black Knight’ (butterfly bush) Walk into any garden and most of the plants you see come from other parts of the world. Buddleia, the butterfly bush, originates from the Sichuan and Hubei areas of China. It gets its name because it has the uncanny knack of attracting butterflies. ‘Black Knight’ is one of the most beautiful and reliable...