Gardening And More

Tropical and Subtropical Herbs As a horticulturist, we have favorite endeavors such as growing plants especially herbs. Herbs are very versatile and can be placed within your landscaping as groundcovers, shrubs, and trees. Herbs make an excellent choice to decorate a sunny patio, deck, or balcony, and the flowers that are produced on herbs will provide twice the amount of fun to your growing area. The seeds and flowers will provide additional ingredients to recipes. Processing the seeds produced by herbs make additional ingredients to add to recipes. For example, when Cilantro goes to seed the seeds are called Coriander when crushed; and when Dill goes to seed the processed seeds are called Dill Weed. Most flowers produced by herbs are edible and are used in salads, garnishes, and cooking or can be used in dried floral arrangements. For example, add Mexican Marigold Mint flowers to salads and Lavender flowers can be dried and used in floral arrangements. Plants that are classified...

Shady Garden Shrubs One of the challenges to gardening is selecting plants that grow in part-shade to shade. The way I define part-shade to shade to my retail customers is like walking into a forest. At the outer edge of the forest you are in full sun light and as you enter the forest the light begins to be part-shade as you look around some plants are receiving sun whereas other plants are receiving shade. This is part-shade a little bit of sun and a little bit of shade from sun rise to sun set. As you enter into the middle of the forest the sunlight cannot be seen and this is what would be defined as shade or full shade. As you exit the forest the sunlight becomes brighter and the plants in the forest are receiving part-shade again; and as you walk out of the forest you are in full sunlight again. The palette of shady garden plants to choose from is numerous. There are shrubs, perennials, annuals, and trees. There are numerous plants in each category and we will discuss Shady G...