Garden Stories

Ground hog eradication  I too had the same problem with Groundhogs in the garden but since I live in a small development I probably should'nt urinate down the Groundhog hole and ...

Cyclamen PIcture of One That Died and Came Back  Here's the cyclamen that died a couple of times and came back.

The Cyclamen That Keeps on Growing...  Hello, I have an amazing beautiful cyclamen that has never once gone out of bloom! It is amazing. I keep it in a sun room, where there also happens to ...

Pets and Tomatoes  About 7 years ago we moved to a new house in town. My neighbor on the north side of my house loved to grow tomatoes in pots and did so each summer. They ...

The Hummingbird and the Red Barron.  This is a fantasy story I recently wrote for my personal webpage.


The Hummingbird watched from his perch in the nearby willow tree. He didn’t dare ...

so many little lives  The life of our yard has many colors and faces. I want to share them with those of you who also enjoy color and beauty.

I thank all of you for the ...

city paradise  our little world is our paradise. we started by taking down a rusted old swing set, and then saying "hmmm" where to start. Mike and I met late in life,...

Free Water for Chicago's Community Gardens  Watering our vegetable plots in the Brickyard Community Garden in the South Side of Chicago used to be the kind of garden disaster Doug wrote he was in ...

Juliet Tomato Plant  I have a Juliet tomato plant in a small above ground garden. It is our first year growing one here in Connecticut. I recently moved here from NJ, the best ...

Do we really have control?  As an avid gardener I believe that if I plan the garden, add soil, compost, water and tender loving care, I will be in control of the outcome (The good ...

Herons in my koi pond  Hi everyone,

I've had problems with herons coming in to feed in my koi pond for the last three years. I hand-dug my pond about ten years ago. It's ...

These pesky rabbits again  We live uphill from the neighborhood park filled with what should be great rabbit food. But these rabbits love gourmet food! I was reading Doug's stories ...

beginning gardeners big mistake  In 1972, my husband and I decided to start vegetable gardening for the first time. We decided to plant enough of everything so there would be some for ...

cat and the groundhog  I am a senior citizen who raises her garden in containers and two small raised gardens. My cat Mittens, who passed away one month ago, loved to sit on ...

It's almost Gardening time in Tennessee.!?!?  Ahhh, It's almost that time again. We have experienced a few 65 to 78 degree days. already. Last Tuesday we mowed for the first time. It's done nothing ...

my first time  my name is Theresa, i am 10 yrs old, from Philippines and i'm fun of planting vegetables in our backyard. well it's my first time planting vegetables in ...

Alien pecans?  We have a young pecan tree in our back yard and underneath it our young grandson's swing set.

One day last year, the first year we got pecans, I was ...

Deer in the Limelight  This summer I planted a Limelight Hydrangea in my garden an

d waited a while anticipating its blooms. I was rewarded with a dozen lucious green blooms ...

Sweet Potato Vines from Spaaaace!  Part of my yard is terraced, supported by a stone wall with three steps to move between the levels. It's a lovely spot - in fact, my husband & I were ...

A New Friend  This year there is a little bunny living in my city yard. I have lots of shrubs around the fence line and that is where he lives. He is there every day ...

One Hot Squirrel  During the heat of summer with upper 90s to over 100 degrees, this little squirrel was found on my birdbath several times.

He is not in the water just ...

Peony Madness  On a warm June morning I was in my garden and bent over to smell a full-blown peony ,Sarah Bernhardt,and my foot slipped.I fell face first into the flower....

They are WHAT  I was a young girl,homeless and wanting someone to teach me how to take care of myself and my child. i wanted to learn how to cook. so that is where my ...

The bad garden guest  This a little bit scary. I knew I had Spider that had taken up residence in my Daylilies,I figured, well, thats ok,I'll let it maybe kill some grubs that ...

No lilies that year  One year in the mid-nineties, in the garden of my largest account, I had been watching the lily buds developing, getting bigger, getting fatter, and anticipating ...

The Farm  The Farm

A couple years ago, I decided to retire and move from my neat, compact apartment in the city and move to the countryside. I dreamed of a place ...

SNAKES  Last summer while I was weeding my garden a little wren, who had built a nest in our bird house, was fussing with me. I kept telling her we would not ...

Two Birds in the Hand  Early one morning I needed to go to the store in town. If I was to have my cereal I needed some milk. I stepped out the front door and discovered one ...

Compost Enthusiasm  When I decided to start making my own compost I became some what obsessed and dragooned my husband into making a pallet bin. Well, of course one bin worked ...

It's A Dog's Life (in the garden)  We had 2 golden retrievers and then 2 years ago we got another retriever puppy, Sydney is her name. She thought the world belonged to her, including the ...

They aren't all bad!  A few years ago hornets were making a biiiiiiiigggggggg nest over my strawberry patch.They are mean, territorial and pack a punch! How would I be able ...

cobwebs on my trees and Lugustrom bushes  Wish I had taken a photo, but was so freaked out by what I saw I couldn't wait to get away! All over two trees by our lagoon was a web that completely ...

What's that AWFUL smell?  It was a miserably hot Midwestern August when a gardener friend of mine and I volunteered to plan and plant a large courtyard area in our local middle ...

Why Do We Cut Down the Garden at the End of the Season?  One fine October day, my friend and I were cutting down an extensive perennial garden that followed a picket fence around the borders of the lawn in front ...

Is this some kind of joke?  We always had a big garden when I was a kid. One year my mom went kind of crazy and she planted about forty tomato plants. When the tomatoes became ripe ...

The Little Hummingbird  I just held in my hands a ruby throated iridescent HUMMING BIRD! I am thrilled.

I don't know what happened, but it was on the ground, I picked it up ...

A favourite garden story.  Hi Doug

A favourite but not original garden story. I don't remember exactly where I picked it up. I know it was on a collection of jokes but it isn'...

Late Bloomers  This year our nation has had some wild weather changes. South Carolina's spring was great and we had lots of rain, then the land dried up and parched our ...

Fall in the South  One day we had a fantastic clear blue sky. I took this picture through the branches of my dogwood tree. The birds have since stripped the tree of its berries....

The first thing you have to learn about gardening  One of the first conversations during a garden consultation seems to always include an incidental reference to "lilies" whereupon it turns out that the ...

BBQ in the garden  We had a pet rooster among the chickens who liked beer. As we often had BBQ in the garden "Gruts" got used to drinking from everyone's glass It would ...

Magnolia Story from Wild Bill  A woman calls to tell me there is something wrong with her magnolias. They aren't growing the way they're supposed to. I arrive at her house to find her ...

A Small Bed   This is a small bed on a short side of a house.

This bed was planted three years ago. It was a new construction. I was the landscaper and designer ...

wind chimes  While wnd chimes are not plants they are very popular and in most gardens. I started years ago with a maple tree at the front of my home. Over the years ...

Coneflower display, summer 2011  I wanted to share this picture because I was so pleased with the display this summer. I planted last summer from nursery stock, which bloomed but insignificantly....

Tribute to 911-Natural Rock Formation of a Firefighter  I have a collection of rocks that surround my garden areas. This rock appears to be 2 different types of rock naturally fused together. When I collected ...

Ger's Garden in East Nashville Update  I posted "A Simple beginning" a couple months back and would like to update you on how well my Garden is doing. Despite the heavy rains that caused terrible ...

The Straw Gate  The back yard at our previous house had a woods behind it and a trail going along the back end of the houses on our street. I had several flower gardens ...

September wedding  Granddaughter Erica wanted a 'Ranch Wedding' and could she please have it at our ranch. "Of course" we said. Then "how many do you expect to be coming ...

Grasshopper Love  I haven't seen large grasshoppers here in 20 years. I was glad to see this!

The Buddha's Crown  I met Bob five years ago after 20 years on my own. We had 3 wonderful years together before he became ill with multiple myeloma and died only 2 months ...

No weeding required  I used 31 gal Rubbermaid toters, drilled holes in the bottom, placed the lids on top of bricks, puts some drainage rocks in the bottom of each toter, then ...

Herons in my koi pond  Hi everyone,

I've had problems with herons coming in to feed in my koi pond for the last three years. I hand-dug my pond about ten years ago. It's ...

pond building from jacuzzi  My daughter had a jacuzzi in the back yard and she has wanted to get rid of it for years. So two weeks ago I got out my circular saw and bought a blade ...

BLUE JAY  Our daughter was visiting us from Wisconsin last week.
She came in from the cold tundra to the hot tropic's. Any way I was taking a shower one morning,...

A Bonsai Gift  For Mother's Day my son bought me a Bonsai Tree. I'm determined that this poor thing will not die. My computer bookmarks are full of information all about ...

HOUSE OF WISTERIA!  I LIVE IN CENTER LINE MICHIGAN A SMALL SUBURB NORTH OF DETROIT. I'VE LIVED AT MY HOME SINCE 1988. THERE WAS ONE WISTERIA TREE IN THE YARD FOR THE LAST ...

A Short Story About a Green Pepper  I had picked green peppers from my garden. I noticed that one of the peppers had a very tiny hole in it. When I cut the pepper open, I found inside a very ...

A Really Good or Really Bad Case of Mistaken Identity  Several years ago, I looked across my garden-yard and saw a lovely, white-flowered bush, just covered in blooms. I couldn't think what bush it was, couldn'...

A Virgin Garden  My husband and I moved into a house nearly 18 months ago and it was like walking into a 1970's time warp!

But the garden was without any shape or form....

humming Bird Shower  One Hummingbird (every time it would rain) stood on my tomato cage and preened it's wings.

I watched it from the kitchen window and I loved it. I had ...

My Heritage Garden  Brookside Farm is the name of my special “heritage garden”; I call it that not because I own it, but because I “inherited” it when Brookside Farm, a former ...

Golden Retriever and Strawberries  My Golden will eat any vegetable or fruit. He is especially fond of Romaine lettuce, but that is beside the point.

I can't get many things to grow....

Flooding Summer of 2008  I live in southern Wisconsin and was in the area that had high water from the rain in late may and june. I was soo upset to see all of my flowers under ...

Deer fencing and birds  Doug, I may have used the wrong avenue to suggest this caution but I would like to tell of my experience using the so-called deer fencing.

The material ...

inexpensive bog garden/weekend project  I wanted a water feature that would double as a bird bath.

I went to my local home improvement store and purchased: a plastic barrel liner, a small ...

Hummingbird  Last summer I grabbed a bunch of flowers in the garden and just stood still. A hummingbird came and sat on my hand that was holding the flowers right ...

Our new little family  I was weeding panseys one day and found this nest of bunnies in our front yard. It would not be a problem except we have 5 cats. So we found a cage to ...