Laura Schwarz

A few years ago, I discovered Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun,’ a gorgeous light-orange tulip that actually gets better with time. I was shocked, really. The plant closely resembled all of the tulips that had let me down so often in the past. However, the rabbits didn’t mow it down to the ground and it had just as many blooms this spring as it had the previous spring. I decided it was time to investigate my options for planting tulips that were truly perennial.

Northerly Flora grows 75 to 80 varieties of annual cut flowers, along with perennials and shrubs that also contribute to the bouquets. In Molly’s words, “I don’t want my CSA members to get bored.” Boredom seems unlikely: each week’s bouquet brings a brand new color scheme, textural blend, and overall vibrancy to the table. Quill-petaled rudbeckia, bright bold zinnias, and show-stopping dahlias each take their turn in the spotlight, supported by a diverse chorus of back-up stars: deep purple hibiscus leaves, puffed nigella seed pods, and airy pink Queen Anne’s lace.

The squash vine borer (Melittia cucurbitae) is a clear-winged moth that, unlike most moths, is active during daylight. The adult moths emerge from the ground between late June and early July. They are around half an inch in length, with orange abdomens and black spots and banding. These moths have two pairs of wings, one a dark metallic green and the other transparent with a dark outline.

Ever since we bought a house, landscape renovation has been a constant item on my list of yearly personal goals. I’ve had to pace myself, lowering my expectations to keep from feeling like I’ll never get everything done. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by landscaping projects, especially when you lack time, vision, funds, or experience. If you, too, want to upgrade your outdoor space but keep getting thwarted by uncertainty or overwhelmedness, get out of your own damn way! Even modest acts of landscaping can vastly improve a bare, overgrown, or disorganized yard, and I have a few tips for starting the process.

I don’t have any authority to do this, but I’m declaring 2018 the Year of the Spider Mite. Spider mites thrive under drought stress, which could help explain why there were so many of them in 2018: the past summer was considered abnormally dry throughout almost half of Minnesota. In both my home garden and in the many gardens I tend professionally, I saw countless spider mite infestations, mostly on plants that I didn’t even know that they could eat.

It’s almost the end of the gardening season, but I feel like my gardening tasks are still never-ending. The late fall nights can feel frantic as I make my end-of-the-season preparations -- harvesting and drying herbs, digging up tropical flower bulbs to overwinter in my basement, dragging my houseplants back indoors, freezing and canning fresh produce. The ever-shortening days are even shorter when you’re constantly hustling.

“How can you have both a dog and a garden?!” she marveled. I could sense the panic in her voice, almost as though she was imagining my dog crashing wildly about in her own yard, breaking off her precious labor-intensive lilies with reckless abandon.

I’ll start this column with your new vocabulary word: phytophotodermatitis. The definition is as follows -- a skin condition resulting from sensitivity to chemicals in certain plants, that, when exposed to sunlight, triggers a chemical reaction that causes blisters, rashes, and/or skin discoloration.

When it comes to garden weeds, I’ve come face-to-face with the worst. There’s creeping charlie, quack grass, and my old nemesis, buckthorn. I’m uncomfortably familiar with bindweed, chickweed, purslane, and woodsorrel. But there’s one weed that’s worse than all of these, whose very name strikes fear into my (usually) optimistic heart. It’s the gardening equivalent of Voldemort in Harry Potter -- “The-Weed-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

The owner of this particular new suburban abode wanted to minimize the vastness of her house, especially on the back side, where the design is heavy on height and drastic corners. She also wanted a private outdoor sanctuary where she could sit and enjoy a spectacular view of the marsh behind her house. To accomplish these goals, the Phillips designers needed tall plantings that could both define spaces and connect the house to its surrounding natural landscape.