The Garden Mixer

Besides the soul sucking noise of mowers and blowers in your neighborhood, are you aware that the internal combustion engines that make these machines run contribute more than their fair share of pollutants to our air? Matt Berry of Dos Amigos Landscaping is doing something about it. Every time a piece of equipment needs to be replaced, Dos Amigos is adding another electric battery powered tool to their arsenal. They have two electric vehicles and plan to get more. What if YOUR landscape crew could do this? What if EVERY landscape crew could? I hope you listen to this episode, but more than that I hope you share it.

The Plant of the Week is the Daffodil, and in the Play List you will hear a little primer on rose pruning.

The Philadelphia Flower Show and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society pre-date the Chelsea Flower show and the Royal Horticultural Society. If that weren't impressive enough, the money raised because of this important event goes to community service efforts all over the state of Pennsylvania. Seth Pearsoll, the Creative Director of the show, fills us in on the history and behind the scenes information on what it takes to put on something of this scale. The Plant of the Week is the Crocus, and spring is coming!!

We all garden a little bit differently and I love to check in on Amanda the Ever Hopeful Gardener on Instagram to see what she's up to because she's always trying something new. In this episode we discuss compost tea and why you may or may not want to go to the trouble to make some. We also have a regular old garden chat about just about anything that occurs to us. In addition, I summarize four gardening presentations I heard at the Piedmont Landscape Association from Thomas Rainer, Cole Burrell, Peggy Cornett, and Doug Tallamy. The Plant of the Week is the Galanthus, or Snow Drop.

This is a long one, but worth it in terms of information gleaned about some of the best perennials you can choose. Richard Hawke runs the famous evaluations at the Chicago Botanic Garden and in this episode he talks about the evaluations and what they mean and how they can help any gardener to know WHICH darned plant to choose. We talk about the process and then I insist that we go over the ones that I was basically forced to buy after hearing him talk at Speaking of Gardening at Asheville last summer. Forced is strong-- how about 'Unable to Resist'?

Apropos of nothing other than a little vacation I took in Florida recently, the Plant of the Week is the Banyan Tree (Ficus benghalensis), and in The Play List I talk about seed starting and winter pruning.

Because this is the FIFTIETH episode of Into the Garden with Leslie we celebrate by choosing the Golden Alexander as the Plant of the Week. Amanda the Ever Hopeful Gardener talks to us about compost (6:40) and we go on to the NEXT type of Hydrangea, the paniculata type, (45:16) with pruning tips. Remember-- you never have to prune!