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  I got the idea for my living ornaments from a magazine called "State-By-State Gardening," whose author, Lisa Eldred Steinkopf, filled her glass balls with air plants and shiny bling. She bought Christmas floral picks at a craft store and cut them apart so she had a collection of tiny sequined balls, miniature lights, jingle bells and more. For mine I chose to keep it simple. I used a couple of air plants, plus some artificial berries and dried flowers on a bed of moss. I used Spanish moss for o...

My friend the horticulturist Ruth Clausen told me about a great activity to do with kids indoors.  She calls it "garbage gardening" because it involves planting vegetable scraps that would otherwise be headed for the garbage pail or compost heap. Ruth asks, 'What sounds like more fun to a child than growing garbage on a windowsill?' It's a good question. Start with carrots and onions, potatoes, pineapples and other vegetable waste, and use recycled cottage cheese or yogurt containers as your pots. Be...

[caption id="attachment_1457" align="alignleft" width="180"] Stretch #1[/caption] Best Exercises for Gardeners-- I asked my favorite physical therapist, Mallory Aquilino, of Brewster Physical Therapy, what exercises she would recommend to prepare for gardening season. She recommended some stretches from VH1 and these are my favorite three. I try to do the stretches in the morning and evening everyday. The first two are especially good for the back. In Stretch #1, pull one knee in to your chest until ...

Elizabeth Buchtman works at Womanswork, and on weekends she's been making and decorating holiday wreaths with Stephen Chamberlain of Dutchess Farm in Castleton, VT. She agreed to share her secret with us for producing festive bows for her holiday wreaths. Step One: Get your supplies lined up. This includes ribbon (3 in. wide with wire edges), a spool of wire, sharp scissors, and her Womanswork pocket stone to keep her scissors at peak performance for cutting the ends of the bow. Step Two: P...

  We spoke with Lisa Ringer of Two Pony Gardens in Long Lake, MN about how she prepares for the dahlia season. Many parts of the country are experiencing a late spring, so her advice on how to lengthen the growing season is particularly relevant this year, even to non-Minnesotans. Here's what she told us, commenting that she has two feet of snow on the ground and it's the middle of April (!)  This is not typical, even for Minnesota. Since Lisa's growing season can be cut short by a mid-Septem...

One lucky reader each week in January will receive a free pair of Womanswork High Performance Gloves! Send us your gardening resolutions for 2010 by adding a comment below, and we will pick one lucky winner each Thursday in January to receive a free pair of Womanswork garden gloves to help you with your resolution. We'll get the ball rolling by telling you ours:  Dorian Winslow's 2010 Gardening Resolutions-- Get my clivia miniata to bloom. I bought it in full bloom in Jan 2008, and since then ...

It's time to wake up your houseplants!  As the days grow longer and the sun gets stronger, now is the time to wake up two of my favorite flowering houseplants, clivia miniata and agapanthus.  Because it takes so much energy to produce a flower, they have been resting over the winter between bloom times. Here are some techniques gardeners use to get them ready for spring. Clivia miniata [caption id="attachment_3572" align="alignright" width="229"] My clivia miniata blooming.[/caption] Clivias a...

It’s time to publish Ruth Clausen's list of heat and drought tolerant perennials. The heat came early this year and it is taking its toll on some plants.  Over the years I have been planting many of the perennials on her list, with the goal of creating a water-wise garden! By drought tolerant we mean they can withstand dry conditions for a few days and will recover from drooping during the day.  It doesn’t mean they should stay dry for several days. Drought resistant plants, by contrast, can stay...

[caption id="attachment_4173" align="alignright" width="190"] Marianne in her Virginia garden[/caption] Like many gardeners Marianne Willburn started small. First she had window boxes and containers, then she moved to a tiny duplex where she managed to squeeze in a small vegetable garden next to the parking area. As she and her young family moved to larger properties, hopscotching from California to London to Maryland and finally Virginia, the space given over to gardens kept getting bigger. But thatâ...

Lately we have heard a lot of talk about microbes and the biology of soil.  In the past we spoke of plant fertilizers in terms of N-P-K (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) and that seemed to be the end of discussion. [caption id="attachment_1345" align="alignleft" width="84"] Annie Haven[/caption] Last Spring we approached Annie Haven of  Haven Family Ranch in San Juan Capistrano, California, a farm run by the Haven family for more than 160 years. She sells muslin bags of aged cow and horse manure, ...