A flourishing garden is an orchestra of plants together in perfect harmony. Learn how to give each leafy friend the care they require to flourish on your horticultural canvas.
Interpreting the signs of plant illness can be challenging. It’s essential to realize that dry tips don’t always indicate disease; an increase in size does not automatically signal disease either.
Spring
With spring’s return, flowering shrubs such as azaleas and rhododendrons come alive with cheerful yellow blooms and vibrant foliage – creating an explosion of colors throughout your garden! Hostas and ferns offer a lush backdrop to these fleeting beauties.
As spring progresses, tulips and daffodils blossom into vivid displays ranging from white to deep purple hues. Their vibrant flowers contrast beautifully with their parents’ green spiky leaves, which form an eye-catching backdrop to these cheerful blooms.
By summertime, gardens reach their zenith. Perennials like dianthus, foxtail lily, and peonies bloom with vibrant hues in various sizes and shades; deep hydrangeas, dogwoods, and rhododendrons bring more vibrant hues; leafy plants such as hostas, hollyhocks, coleus, and lilyturf provide texture and structure in an otherwise static landscape.
At this point, your vegetable garden should be experiencing its first harvest of the year, with tomatoes, beans, and squash flourishing beautifully. Weeds may have started to sprout up, too; to minimize them further, you should use companion planting as an effective strategy.
As fall approaches, gardening season slowly winds down – but don’t put away those tools just yet! In your landscape, goldenrods, asters, and chrysanthemums still shine while sedums and impatiens continue to impress – giving an outstanding display to enjoy for weeks more. Now is the time to plant your fall garden, ideally in October or November. This is perfect for perennials, roses, and berries, as their roots will have time to establish before the ground freezes over winter. Autumn is also the ideal season to plant shade trees, shrubs, and hollyhocks, as their hearts have plenty of time to settle before winter weather sets in.
Furthermore, warm soil temperatures enable optimal root development. Cooler temperatures also slow the rate of water loss from roots, encouraging robust root systems for resilient plants that can withstand extreme conditions. Furthermore, cooler temperatures also help protect plants against diseases that often appear during rapid growth, such as rust.
Summer
Summer is the warmest month and features more hours of daylight, which promotes plant growth at an unprecedented pace. Flowers bloom, trees produce fruit, and grass becomes taller as days become longer and sunnier; people spend more time outdoors.
Summer’s warmer temperatures often result in drought, while its tropical counterpart can bring heavy rains and flooding. A period of very high temperatures during summer is known as a heat wave – in the Northern Hemisphere, summer begins in June and lasts through September.
As temperatures heat up, gardeners focus on plants that thrive in warm environments. Popular tropical foliage plants include bromeliads, ficus trees, palms, and succulents, while tropical flowering plants such as hibiscus and roses thrive in hot temperatures. Perennials like Astilbe, Lillyturfa, or Coleus may also be permanent features in warm-weather landscapes.
Other plants that do well in summertime include asters, echinaceas, and mountain asters from the daisy family – particularly the aster genus, with over 180 species!
Asters are widely renowned for their vibrant blooms and long-lived beauty. Commonly planted during fall planting seasons but popular during the spring and summer, the Utah state flower “Sego Lily” is also an Aster.
Other popular summer flowering plants include tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils. Roses also flourish during this season in many gardens; as perennial plants, they can produce numerous varieties, from compact single-flowered cultivars to larger rambling roses with various color and form options like white through deep red to deep apricot and exotic purple or pink hues. Hydrangea cultivars also flourish throughout North America and worldwide gardens.
Fall
An exquisite garden develops throughout the seasons, and leafy plants serve as its canvas. From spring’s vibrant blooms to winter’s frost-coated landscape, each season’s changes create an ever-evolving showpiece guided by sunlight, water, nutrients, and care its gardener provides.
As summer progresses, hostas and ferns serve as the cornerstone of the garden aesthetic, providing lush green backgrounds for colorful blooms to thrive against. But as autumn’s colors begin to turn the landscape orange-red, it’s time to consider filling empty spaces with evergreens like hollies or evergreen spruces that can survive the harsh conditions of the fall season.
Fall is also ideal for planting some of the season’s most gorgeous blooms, including perennials like asters and goldenrods, annuals like blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella) and cleome hassleriana. Don’t forget daisylike varieties like late-blooming sneezeweeds (Helenium) and Rudbeckia hirta Irish Eyes with quilled petals!
An autumn garden stroll can be relaxing and rewarding, allowing fresh greens to be harvested for salads or meals. Few crops thrive as quickly in this season as lettuce does – or, if growing from seeds, now would be an excellent time to sow your sources to ensure an abundant crop that can withstand the cold of winter!
Winter
Imagine your garden as an orchestra in which each leafy companion contributes its distinct sound to the ensemble. As the conductor, you serve as the baton bearer to guide its success by caring for essentials like sunlight, water, nutrients, and respect. With your attention to these fundamentals, your botanical masterpiece can flourish with boundless vibrancy!
Spring marks its arrival with the return of perennial flowers and shrubs. Azaleas, tulips, and rhododendrons come back into bloom, while ferns and hostas add lush green backdrops. As summer progresses, the garden blossoms further with exuberant hydrangeas and whimsical coleus delighting us with stunning petals while ferns and hostas display vibrant leaves, eventually culminating with maples, oaks, and sweetgums painting the landscape in deep reds and oranges come autumn to complete the circle of life!
As temperatures begin to dip, carefully rake leaves before applying mulch, and wait until temperatures consistently reach 50 degrees before engaging in any fall garden cleanups. Doing so too early could disturb insects that have overwinter as eggs, larvae, or pupae in plant stems and trunks – leaving cut perennial and woody plant stems at least 8 inches long will serve as a future home for insects.
Winter brings an opportunity to fertilize houseplants organically using specially formulated organic fertilizer. Houseplants need constant light sources to remain healthy and vibrant; for maximum effect, use a natural fluorescent bulb that mimics sun wavelengths closely. Also, be sure to fertilize regularly and provide additional lighting as required.
