A dense evergreen as wide as your living room and six stories tall. That’s what you are committing to when you plant Leyland Cypress. They are inexpensive. They are fast-growing. They are readily available at the big-box stores as well as specialty nurseries. So you buy a few to make a hedge and in a [...]
“No, I don’t want any more shrubs in my yard. They’re too much work,” says a man who has asked me to design his garden. Puzzled, I think about the structure shrubs provide. Their flowers, leaf color, leaf shape. Low maintenance. Water deeply for the first season, then let Mother Nature take over. Decades [...]
Thank you, great-grandfather, for planting my oak tree. Over 100 years ago, someone–I do not know who–planted a White oak, Quercus alba, in the front yard of the house I recently moved into. That person has already died, for a White oak’s lifespan is many times that of a human, but his legacy remains. Few [...]