Browse Tag: woodland garden

Lessons at (and from) the Overland Park Arboretum & Botanical Gardens

Botanical gardens are amazing classrooms; kids can learn to appreciate the natural world, adults can learn to look up from our smartphones and appreciate the present, and gardeners can learn that it’s easy to have a beautiful garden when you have an army of staff and volunteers!

Beyond the lesson that we should give ourselves a break and not compare our own gardens with those that have full-time caretakers, we can pick up a few other ideas that are easier to implement than finding money in the budget for a full-time gardener. Continue Reading

Japanese Maple in a woodland garden in front of waterfall

Beginning to Naturalize the Water Garden with Fish and Plants

A backyard waterfall, stream, and pond is a water feature.  When you add plants, it becomes a water garden.  When you add plants and fish, it becomes a magical place you could sit by all day if you didn’t have to do adult things like go to work and buy groceries.

Alas, I am neither independently wealthy nor close enough to a store to qualify for any kind of delivery, so I do have to leave my oasis more than I would like to.  Now the last time you saw the water garden it was under snow and looking pretty darn empty — probably not what you would consider an “oasis” — so let me rewind a bit. Continue Reading

Coffee cup and water garden in April

A year’s progress in the garden

It’s easy to look at pictures in gardening magazines, Pinterest, and Instagram and feel a bit discouraged when you compare them to your own garden.   At least I feel that way — there’s a big gap between where my garden is and where I want it to be.  I still have a lot of plants to buy, work to do, and time to wait for young plants to mature.  But it hit me yesterday that I have only been on my gardening journey for one year — and I’ve made an incredible amount of progress! Continue Reading

'Funky Pink' Begonia seedlings at 8 weeks.

Garden musings on a snowy April day

Today is second straight Sunday in April where the high is in the 30s and we have winter precipitation falling from the sky.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Mother Nature was intentionally trying to prevent me from having some beautiful spring garden pictures to share with you.   I can’t say that we haven’t had any nice weather lately — it’s just been all over the place.  I went from having to cover plants on Tuesday night (a 22° low), to a Thursday so warm Beau needed a dip in the pond, to again having to cover plants for a 20° low Friday night.  Craziness!   Continue Reading

Woodland garden bench - GardenTails blog

You never know where you’ll find gardening inspiration–or who YOU will inspire

I’ll never forget the moment I walked into Rick and Stephanie’s backyard.

My mom and I were on the annual KC Water Garden Tour, and their garden was one of the last stops on the itinerary for the day.  We were greeted out front by one of their young daughters, who guided us to the back gate.

Their house was in the middle of the suburbs, where you’ll generally find a patio, tidy landscaping, and/or a small flower bed.  On the water garden tour, you’ll generally see a pond and waterfall added to the standard mix.  As we walked around back, I expected to see just that — but instead we walked into the woodland garden that would inspire my gardening journey.

This was no ordinary suburban backyard. Continue Reading