A good potting shed earns its space every time you reach for a trowel. It keeps seed packets dry, gives muddy tools a proper home and saves the kitchen from trays of compost. Yet many sheds…
Renting a home shouldn’t mean putting up with a bare concrete entrance, a tired strip of grass or a front yard that never feels like yours. You may be there for one year or several. You…
A flat table runs out of room long before a good harvest does. By eight in the morning, tomatoes have claimed the center, greens are spreading over one end and squash is creeping toward the card…
The tray of petunias looks cheerful at checkout. Two weeks later, it is sulking in the window box under the porch roof, all stems and almost no charm. You water more, then less, then stand back…
The tomatoes are finally ripe, your zinnias are taller than your fence and the kitchen counter has disappeared under a mountain of cucumbers. It’s time to load up the car and claim your spot at the…
Shade containers fail because everyone starts at ground level. For years I filled the dim corners of my rental patio with the usual suspects: low ferns, creeping jenny and those dwarf hostas that look like they…
By noon, the front path is blazing, the lawn edge is fading and that bare strip beside the driveway looks like it lost the fight weeks ago. This is where front yard borders full sun have…
A good 10 x 10 farmers market booth layout starts with the way your stall needs to work on market day. Before choosing tables, crates or display stands, look at what you sell, how much stock…
The truck is packed before sunrise. Tomatoes are rolling in shallow crates, basil is wrapped in damp towels and a folding table is wedged against the back door because of course it doesn’t fit the way…
The first hot week of summer is when a window box tells on you. The flowers that looked sweet at the garden center start sagging by Tuesday, the soil turns dry by lunch and the whole…
The front yard starts looking messy before anyone admits it. A pot gets dropped beside the door. A shrub outgrows the window. Someone adds solar lights along the path, then a curved border, then a few…
The Saturday you notice the real estate agent eyeing your neighbor’s house, your own front yard suddenly looks like a crime scene. Patchy grass. A walkway that’s more crack than concrete. One sad shrub that hasn’t…
You are wrestling a tangled green hose across a dying patch of grass. The neighbor two doors down is edging his driveway with surgical precision. Your weekend is evaporating under the hot sun. You drop the…
You are standing in the dirt with a pair of loppers, staring down a perfectly healthy row of bright yellow daylilies. Your neighbor leans over the fence expecting you to prune them. Instead you chop them…
A sudden gust catches the rim of a cracked plastic pot. Soil scatters across swept pavers. Water pools near the sliding door. You grab a broom and decide right then that your patio deserves containers that…
