Gardening Ideas

I’ve spent the last fifteen years with a permanent crescent of soil under my fingernails and a recurring dream that my tomato plants are staging a coup. I’ve killed more “unkillable” succulents than I’d like to admit, and I once spent an entire July trying to convince a wilted hydrangea that it wasn’t actually dying, … Read more

If I see one more “aesthetic” gardening reel featuring a $500 cedar raised bed for two heads of lettuce, I might actually lose it. After 15 years of getting my hands dirty, I’ve learned that plants don’t care about your Pinterest board. They care about drainage, sun, and enough room to stretch their toes. That’s … Read more

I’ve spent the last fifteen years engaged in a slow-motion wrestling match with Mother Nature, and let me tell you, Mother Nature usually wins. My fingernails haven’t been truly clean since 2011, and I once lost a pair of expensive pruning shears inside a particularly aggressive tomato plant for an entire season. If you’re staring … Read more

I’ve spent the last fifteen years battling a patch of dirt I call a yard, and let me tell you, I’ve committed every horticultural sin known to man. I once got so aggressive with a vertical mower that my backyard looked like a crime scene for earthworms. Then there was the “Summer of the Great … Read more

Look, we’ve all been there. It’s January 2nd, the tinsel is looking a bit sad, and your poinsettia is starting to drop leaves like it’s getting paid for it. Most people treat these plants like festive paper plates—use once and toss. But I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to anything with roots. … Read more

Look, if your lawn feels like you’re walking on a giant, waterlogged sponge, or if you can literally roll up your turf like a cheap rug, you’ve got grubs. I learned this the hard way back in ’12 when I thought my grass was just “tired.” I spent three months whispering sweet nothings to a … Read more

I remember the summer I decided my backyard needed to look like a villa in Tuscany. I bought three overpriced olive trees, a truckload of gravel, and enough terracotta to bankrupt a small nation. Two weeks later, my “Mediterranean paradise” looked more like a dusty construction site, and my olive trees were shedding leaves faster … Read more

If your backyard looks like the set of a low-budget horror movie—all dark shadows, damp moss, and a vibe that says “nothing lives here but spiders”—don’t throw in the towel just yet. I spent my first three years as a gardener trying to force sun-loving marigolds and zinnias to grow under a massive, stubborn red … Read more

I still remember the first raised bed I ever built back in 2011. I was young, broke, and had just read a magazine article about “intensive gardening.” I marched myself down to the big-box hardware store, loaded up a rickety cart with those heavy, greenish-tinted 4x4s, and spent a whole weekend sweating and cursing while … Read more

I used to think that November marked the “death” of my garden. I’d look out the window at a sea of brown stalks and gray mulch, sighing as I waited for the first tulip of spring. But then I realized I was looking at gardening all wrong. Winter isn’t a time for the garden to … Read more