Category: Outdoor

Gardenia is a beautiful and fragrant plant for your home or garden. Delicate blossoms and a deep, sultry scent make these an attractive flower for many gardeners. Gardenia care takes some effort, as the plant is quite finicky about temperature, moisture and soil requirements. With a little care, you can have beautiful gardenias each year, but they may be too needy for the novice or distracted gardener.

Gardenia is often disappointment because it is extremely demanding. Gardenias should be planted in fall or spring, and need consistent temperatures of between 65-70°F (18-20°C) year round. For flower buds to form a night temperature of 60° to 65°F is required, and during the day it should be about 10°F higher.

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There are some splendid bulbs, corms and tubers for your summer garden. Most are well known, with some surprise inclusions that botanically belong in this section. The stars include richly scented, beautifully colored lilies and gladioli, beautifull Allium, Begonias, Agapanthus and Dahlias.

Summer bulbs are seldom used in large drifts, or with other bedding plants, as are spring bulbs. The majority of them are best treated like ordinary plants in herbaceous or mixed borders, or perhaps used to add foreground interest and color in a shrub border.

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Planting lavender (Lavandula) is a great way to start off the spring gardening season. Easy to grow, these fragrant flowers can be pink, blue, grey, white or purple. A little effort now will pay off for years to come as this low maintenance perennial yields its aromatic and useful blossoms. Purchase a plant from a nursery, choose the right location, prepare the soil and plant. Just add a little fertilizer and water and watch it grow. Following these simple tips will provide a high likelihood of success.

The easiest way to plant lavender is to start with an established potted plant purchased from a nursery. Many lavender varieties can be started from seed, but that is more difficult and doesn’t have a high success rate. Choose a plant in a 4″ to 8″ pot with healthy leaves that are green (or gray depending on the variety) but not brown.

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Hyacinths are a beautiful, scented spring bulbs. They are the most popular of all indoor bulbs. Hyacinthus orientalis (Dutch hyacinth) is the common garden Hyacinth. The leafless flower-stalks bear 30 or more crowded bell-like flowers with a fragrance that can fill a whole room. Roman hyacinths differ in a number of ways – 2 0r 3 stalks are produced by each bulb and the flowers are smaller and less tightly packed. The flower-stalks are thinner and the color range is restricted to white, pink and blue.

Growing hyacinths in your garden is a process that starts with bulb selection. The bulb is actually planted and left dormant before any flower is seen. Based on the growth climate, growing hyacinths are relatively easy. Follow these 6 steps to grow hyacinths in your yard.

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