If you enjoy your home landscape, you’ll agree that it’s important for us lawn care nuts to keep our grass strong and healthy as the stressful heat of summer approaches.

Well, I let it slip this year. My friend Gertrude (not her real name) emailed me a couple of weeks ago to let me know the latest poll of which cities in the United States are noted as the best for gardening in our birthday suits, that is, naked. I always got the latest poll numbers in late w…

With all that commiseration of the past long since gone under the bridge, let us today search diligently and see if we can find any color but brown at Tennessee Dixter.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend remarked to me that winter surely was about over. Say wha? Surely you jest.

Immediately to the west of our present abode of going on a half-century now, there is a vacant field of some three acres or so. For all intents and purposes, most people would say, and do say from time to time, that it is a mess of weeds and a few scraggly trees.

A common mistake when planting a number of trees and/or shrubs is spacing the plants too close together. It is an easy mistake to make, and one which I am still, after 60 years of gardening, making.

Here we are with April staring us in the face. Most years, it is one of the most colorful months we see. This is not most years.

We talked last week of some of the so-called “minor” bulbs that can, when massed, make into a major slab of early color in your spring garden. Today we will look at the first bulbous color that presents, with even just a clump or two, an even more exciting picture just when that is what is n…

Two notable times in the year are the best to discuss the subject of spring bulbs. 

BROWNSVILLE, Tenn., March 8, 2023 — Hey, wait a minute, this ain’t Brownsville. No, wait a minute, yes it is. Just look out your front door.

The landscape can be dreary in January and February, so trees or shrubs that offer a bit of cheer with winter blooms can be a welcome addition to almost any yard or garden. Underused in the landscape, the Japanese cornel dogwood is just such a plant. In midwinter it defies the gloom with sho…

Today is March 1, 2023. The cusp of spring, if you will. The Ides of March are only two weeks away, and there is no telling what they will bring. Julius Caesar was not sure, either, but he got his comeuppance with a fatal stab in his back. Maybe we won’t have it that bad.

There is a small town down toward Memphis known as Brownsville. Our town might soon be named the same. Brown, brown, brown.

You’re tired, I am sure, of me talking about our brown city and its environs. Well, hang on, because I am going to keep on about it as long as the subject is viable enough for the press. Which, it is.

Sharply shorn, shaven hedges,

Of all the plants I have lost over the years, the leader of the pack has been fruiting, that is edible, crops. Let me qualify that a bit more. Edible to people, that is.

S

I took an unofficial poll last week about everyone’s favorite month. Guess what came in last? You guessed it, January. Remember Janus, the Greek god who had two faces, one facing the future and the other the past?

It is over!

Dear Santa,

When I was a wee slip of a lad, it seemed like the hiatus between Thanksgiving and Christmas was something like 10 years. Now it’s more like 10 minutes. I was no good at waiting then and I am no good at it now.

We’ve talked vines the past couple of weeks here, some good and some not so good, and some terrible, primarily because of their invasive tendencies, i.e., climbing all over where you don’t want them, the Chinese wisteria for good example.

As promised after last week’s tirade here on the horrors of Chinese wisteria, let us look today at some ornamental vines that do their job without romping from Paris to Como in a week or so.

The tag end of October usually brings us a vast firework of foliage color on trees and even some herbaceous perennials and shrubs. This is later than most people reckon, with a lot of references calling for mid-October as our highlight. Not so most years.

“Monkey see, monkey do, monkey grass could be for you.”

Falling in love with October,

W

All you snob gardeners out there can now look down your noses, sniff with the same organ and go on to the comic pages. I am going to talk today about a first class small tree or shrub that has been around since Hector was a pup and graced the grounds of your grandmother, and mine, and, no, i…

The first month that is partially autumn is staring us in the face. Thursday it will be September, the month that cheeringly provides us with the autumnal equinox. Hang on, it will be here on Sept. 21. The long range forecast calls for the introduction of more moderate weather, no matter wha…

Dog Days leave us tomorrow for another year. Durn good riddance.

Re: Our series on woody plants — shrubs and small trees — that offer substance in mixed settings where herbaceous perennials and annuals need help in showing their wares. 

Our series on shrubs and small trees that are appropriate ingredients in a mixed bed or border and, in fact, are a powerful strengthening factor there, would be incomplete without mentioning those woody plants that contribute flowers or other attractions at just the same time the other mater…

We’ve beaten the dead horse of hydrangea over the past couple of weeks into a state of ad nauseum, notwithstanding the fact there were some bits of information that might have done you, and your garden, some degree of good with them.

Last week’s rather terse perspective on a few hollies was by no means even a skim of the surface of the subject. It was all I could think of at the time, and since then I have been thinking again. It takes a lot more effort than it used to. 

June of the Year of Our Lord 2022 will, after Thursday, be part of the annals of history and we will be facing the two most miserable months of the year, according to the Paris Pessimist Club.

The second day of astronomical summer seems an appropriate time to review and preview what the gardening season has held for us and what it is yet to hold. Even such a garden eminence as the famed Gertrude Jekyll of the south of England in the early 20th century lamented on the comparative d…

You may remember the several years I used this space to condemn an unruly giant sycamore tree west of our house. A wilding it was, having been dug from the woods and moved as a sprout to our property. Among the plethora of mistakes I have made in the past 40 years, it ranks as the costliest,…

Say someone — or you — becomes, after years of gardening, enamored of such and such a plant, or such and such a color. Before you know it, you have swamped your garden with those plants or that favorite color.