Green spaces—gardens, parks, nature trails, urban forests—are a lifeline at any time but especially, as many of us have discovered, during a pandemic.
Category Archives: Research
Planning a Garden? First Choose the Trees
Trees are a natural choice for creating the framework of a garden, marking the perimeter, serving as focal points or a kind of sculptural art, and providing shade and privacy for intimate areas within the larger space.
Native Shade: The Willow Oak
A Willow Oak (Quercus phellos) blends the solid structure of the red oak family — think of the Northern Red Oak or the lesser known but similarly impressive Shumard Oak — with the fine-textured appearance of a willow tree’s leaves. Given room to grow in full sun, it is magnificent.
Why Plant Native?
Native plants have virtue. They’re good for the environment. Planting them is the right thing to do. Planting them may even save the planet. How could any gardener or landscape designer not choose native plants? I confess to reacting with a bit of resistance when I first heard statements such as these.
Virginia Sweetspire – A Close Look at a Native Shrub
Itea virginica – Virginia Sweetspire – is recognizable in the landscape not for its memorable shape so much as its impact when planted as a mass. A close look reveals the individual features that combine so well to create this effect.
Grace in the Garden: The Hinoki Cypress
Chamaecyparis obtusa, the Hinoki Cypress (or Falsecypress), stands quietly in the garden, commanding attention but requiring minimal care.
Sweetbay or Swamp? Either Way, a Magnolia to Consider
A native of the eastern U.S., the Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) grows as a small tree or multi-stemmed shrub with an airy feel, more delicate than the better-known Southern Magnolia. It lightens the garden with leaves that open chartreuse in spring, grow longer than wide, and show silver when turned by the wind. The clustered leaves provide a clear view of the plant’s graceful stems, and in a breeze, the leaf clusters seem to float.
What Is Winter Burn?
Walking around a neighborhood in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. earlier this year, evidence of winter burn appeared on street after street: hollies, azaleas, euonymus, rhododendron, even nandina, crisp-edged, the outermost leaves appearing blow-torched, dead. What happened?
An Edgings Favorite – The Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder
It’s 34 degrees outside with freezing rain, the shrubs are bending with ice, and you’re staring at your garden, imagining spring. You find a blank space in the landscape, an area calling to be filled in, a problem to be solved. Visions of plants float through your mind, but you wonder, will they work?
Edgings Garden Research and Design 