Several months ago I got a call to do a Bristow landscape design project (for those not in the know, Bristow is a little town in Prince William County, Virginia). The client, Janice, wanted to take the boring expanse of…
One of the benefits of being quite possibly The Most Approachable Guy in the World is I get into a lot of conversations. When these conversations are with folks from the gardening community, and the subject of native plants arises, it…
The great thing about this time of year is that the days are cooler (well mostly, it’s supposed to hit 87 today), the humidity drops, and we start to shake free from summer’s brutal grasp. The not-so-great thing is that…
When I design a landscape there’s an order of operations that I always follow. Hardscape elements (decks, patios, walls, etc) get designed first, followed by trees, and then shrubs and perennials. The reason for this is simple: shrubs and perennials…
There are a lot of blog posts that extol the virtues of trees, but man! They are all soooo serious. I won’t disagree that trees do a lot ecologically and even sociologically but we’re humans. We have petty, silly reasons…
Over a year ago I wrote a blog post on why I think the internet’s popular vinegar-based weedkillers are BS. I had sort of hoped that they’d go away like just another passing fad, like pogs or Reebok pump sneakers.…