Your potted plants are (probably) thirsty
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Myrydd Wells
8M ago
Many potted plants require a lot of water. Photograph by iStock / Getty Images Plus Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief. The best thing I’ve ever grown in a container was a Meyer lemon tree—when I lived in DeKalb County, I put fresh citrus from my own porch into my Thanksgiving recipes. I could do it because four feet away from that tree, a water faucet stuck out of the wall. Potted plants dry out fast—and I’ve learned a gallon of water weighs eight pounds. Part of my teenage plant nursery job was helping haul hoses and nozzles, trying to keep the stock al ..read more
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Your dead leaves are far more valuable for your garden than you think
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Myrydd Wells
1y ago
Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief. If your Ring camera caught somebody loading your brown paper bags of yard leaves off the sidewalk and into a hatchback, it might have been me, and I’m not sorry. Those leaves are mulch now and will be rich garden soil in the future, and I couldn’t let the city take them away. In my youth, when I still lived next door to my Aunt Debbie in the woods that Sugarloaf Parkway would replace, I asked her where dirt comes from. She told me dirt is made of rotted leaves. The soil in the backyard woods, under a new leaf duvet ever ..read more
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Room Envy: A garden made for relaxing, even in late-summer heat
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Lisa Mowry
1y ago
Gardens can get a bad rap in late summer—with wilting flowers and fewer blooms than in spring—but interior designer and author James Farmer added architecture and heat-tolerant plants so that his backyard excels even in August. Structural integrity Raised beds lined with white-painted brick provide the base of Farmer’s parterre garden in Perry. (For more details, see his latest book, Celebrating Home.) Japanese boxwoods add classic shapes. Plant particulars Heat-tolerant caladiums produce lush foliage. “Late-summer gardens benefit from being planted a season ahead,” says Farmer. “The caladium ..read more
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A coleus for all of us: How to grow the colorful plant in Georgia
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Myrydd Wells
1y ago
Coleus shimmer with most all the pinks and greens and yellows of other flowers—without a single bloom Photograph by Patty C. / iStock / Getty Images Plus Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief. On the sunniest Deep South day, wisely planted under the dark green backdrop of a shady tree, a clump of coleus will shimmer with most all the pinks and greens and yellows of other flowers—without a single bloom. When Vincent van Gogh wanted to study the play among pure red and rusty orange and lime green and blue, he painted a coleus. It’s a plant grown just for the m ..read more
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How to grow easy countertop sprouts
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Matt Walljasper
1y ago
No sun? No rain? No dirt? No problem. Sprouts can do without. All it takes is a jar and a week to get baby radishes, broccoli, and other sprouts to pile on a salad, stuff a sandwich, and garnish some noodles. When I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Clarkston, I didn’t have much of a garden. But I did have a kitchen with a counter and a window. That’s enough for sprouts year-round, whether days are long or short, cloudy or sunny. First, take a jar and put in two tablespoons of whichever kind of sprouting seeds you prefer. A whole packet of seeds from the hardware store is fine, too. Besides ..read more
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Ginger? Snap! Here’s how to grow it easily in Georgia
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Myrydd Wells
2y ago
Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief. As Georgia’s weather starts its spring ascent toward another sweltering summer, it’s time to plant ginger. There’s usually just enough hot weather in metro Atlanta to coax out the tropical plant’s tall, glossy crowns of leaves and trigger its tasty underground growth. Start in late March or any time in April with a hunk of organic ginger. That hunk is an underground growth called a rhizome, which tunnels just under the surface of the dirt, splitting all the way into new, delicious, gnarly fingers. A cut-up ginger finge ..read more
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The kudzu of herbs: Why you should grow mint during the winter in Georgia
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Myrydd Wells
2y ago
Mint is an easy-to-grow plant and will make your cocktails taste much better. Photograph by Tobias Titz via Getty Images Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief. Winter has driven most plants to death or dormancy, but no Deep South freeze is bad enough to kill mint, the kudzu of herbs—and the gardening slack season is as good a time as any to start growing. No person is so bad at gardening that they have to muddle their mojito with soggy grocery store leaves or affront their tabbouleh with dry flakes. Mints like as much sun and rich soil as they can get, but y ..read more
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This landscape designer helps homeowners turn their yards into self-sustaining ecosystems
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Matt Walljasper
2y ago
Brandy Hall Photograph by Audra Melton Landscape designer Brandy Hall is an advocate of permaculture, a science that integrates human activities into natural surroundings to establish ecosystems that are self-sustaining. In other words, she believes your yard should take care of itself. Her firm, Shades of Green, creates environmentally friendly residential and commercial landscapes that require less irrigation, fewer chemicals, and limited maintenance. Her projects have ranged from an organic fruit orchard that produces beer yeasts for Monday Night Brewing to the site design for Cottages on V ..read more
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Pearl Cleage’s fantasy garden
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Atlanta Magazine
2y ago
I love gardens. I have bought innumerable calendars with beautiful photographs of Japanese Zen gardens, French flower gardens, Italian vegetable gardens, formal English gardens. I even visited one of the most famous British landscapes, the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, which were created by Vita Sackville-West, a poet, novelist, journalist, and close companion of writer Virginia Woolf. The grounds were huge, wilder in some parts and more strictly organized in others but overall very peaceful, with little gravel paths to separate the white blooms from the purple bearded iris. I closed my eyes ..read more
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So, you want to start a garden? You couldn’t have picked a better time.
Atlanta Magazine » Gardens
by Myrydd Wells
2y ago
Lemon, radishes, and sage in the author’s backyard. Photograph by Gray Chapman On a Saturday in mid-March, the streets of Atlanta seemed emptier than normal—but the gravel parking lot at GardenHood, a neighborhood garden center in Grant Park, was bumping. Parents and their kids dragged wagon-loads of azaleas and trays of herbs to the cash wrap; young people stood in line with potted philodendrons and staghorn ferns on their hip. It was a bluebird morning on the cusp of the spring equinox, but it was also the last weekend Atlanta would have before large swaths of the city shut down and resident ..read more
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