Lift your spirits and improve your indoor environment by taking part in the indoor gardening movement. An apartment or home filled with tropical, succulent and flowering plants can provide beauty, extend your garden season, improve air quality and create a peaceful environment to … read more

Most gardeners view the same kinds of colors in their garden year after year. You’ll see the bright shades of green as well as hints of red, yellow and even orange. It’s time to think outside the green box and spice up your … read more

Considered the queen of winter flowers, camellia is beautiful and stately; it reigns in beauty in every season. The shrub’s evergreen presence is quiet and demure when not in flower. But when the weather cools, Camellia sasanqua adorns itself in floral finery from … read more

On a south-facing bluff in Indianola sits a botanical “salad bowl” known as Windcliff. A garden mixture of plants from around the world, it houses a diverse array of species. Plants from China and Vietnam are well represented but South African species especially … read more

Gardeners know the benefits of digging in the soil. It elevates a person’s mood, improves mental and physical well-being, and the outcome is always good — added beauty or tasty nutritional food. But many of us are stuck indoors for the winter, have … read more

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt adapted from Byron Smith’s book, “Slow Down and Grow Something: The Urban Grower’s Recipe for Good Life,” recently published by Murdoch Books. Plants have naturally adapted to the climate in which they have evolved — that’s why … read more

When Don and Lenore Lynch moved to Kitsap County from Pasco, Eastern Washington, about 10 years ago, they each began a gardening love affair. Lenore, with a strong design background, was swept away by the wondrously greater plant palette of foliage and flower, … read more

For a shrub that looks like it belongs in the tropics, Fatsias are surprisingly hardy in our region. The plant provides spectacular foliar effects to the West Sound garden, whether it is a plain green-leaf species or one of the variegated cultivars. It’s … read more

In the middle of Bainbridge Island, there is an unusual garden gem. “This started out as a permaculture project, but mostly I just have a lot of fun with trees,” says Mark Shaffer. In 1978, Shaffer and his wife, Susan, purchased 1908 farmhouse … read more