It’s true. Most people born in and around the greater Puget Sound area are wimps when it comes to really hot weather. As the thermometer soars and the dog days of summer linger on and on, locals whimper and wilt and scurry indoors … read more

Has gardening been on your mind but you don’t know where to start? The Manette Edible Garden Tour is one idea. The biannual tour, now in its fifth year, is geared to aspiring local gardeners who wish to learn from Manette’s veteran gardeners, … read more

It’s not every day that you can watch a performance of one of the Bard’s most-popular romantic tragedies under the open skies. In July, William Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” comes to the Bloedel Reserve, where you’ll be able to watch the long feud … read more

If a hiker in a Kitsap forest were to come upon someone looking through a pair of binoculars, it is only natural to ask what he or she is seeing. If the response is “brown creeper,” some people may think the individual is … read more

Expanded, or foamed, polystyrene (EPS), which people usually call Styrofoam, has long been on the radar of the environmentally conscious. Not only does this material take up a lot of space in the landfill, it’s also not biodegradable. And if you’re like many … read more

When the Kousa dogwoods are in bloom from May to June, the world takes notice. This region needs to turn away from the popular, prone-to-disease, ornamental cherry trees and turn to some great trees such as the Cornus kousa. Imagine walking down a … read more

This year’s Gig Harbor Garden Tour is going to tell some enticing stories about gardens and how they came to be. Each garden, no matter how small or large, simple or exquisite, has a story to tell. Now in its 21st year, the … read more

Last month, my husband and I visited a small public garden in Southwest Washington called the Wildlife Botanical Gardens. The garden is a project of the NatureScaping organization, devoted to showing homeowners ways to attract birds and other wildlife to their yards by … read more

All plants have stories. Perhaps the plant was Grandma’s favorite cut flower. Or it was that green bean variety passed down through generations of family gardeners. Or that pretty veronica whose name you learned on that hike at Mount Rainier. Every kind of … read more