A Prairie Garden Journal 2006 The word hedge evokes images of a row of dense, tall, neatly trimmed shrubs dividing one neighbor’s yard from another. Hedges are very common in the eastern U.S. landscapes. they are somewhat less common in western landscapes even though the need for hedge-like plantings is fairly universal... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2007 I am often asked if I have favorite plants, and I can answer without reservation that I don’t. That said, I do have a list of plants, or more precisely a list of types of plants that I think are essential to a successful Wyobraska landscape. These are plants that meet two criteria—1. they... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2007 The strongly vertical lines of grasses are unlike any other garden plant, which makes them stand out in almost any landscape or garden scene. Grasses have a longer period of seasonal visual interest compared to almost any other garden plant. Their interest lasts into or though our long winters.... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2007 No, they’re not the three kinds of adolescent slasher movies showing at the Monument Mall this weekend, it’s how you select your flower and foliage plants to get those dramatic flower-filled planters, pots, and containers that you’ve been seeing in catalogues and magazines all winter. Click... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2007 Que serra serra plants fall into two main categories—those that come out of dormancy early, but whose early spring foliage can handle at least the cold of a two-dog night—somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees by my reckoning. This group of plants includes Click to read full article  Read More →

A Prairie Garden Journal 2005 Don and Carol Meyer of Kimball are retired…so they just sit around all day and watch their grass grow. No, they don’t watch their lawn grow, because they don’t have much lawn. They watch their grass grow, because they have a lot of grass—ornamental grass, that is. I visited the Meyers’... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2005 The eastern Nebraska farm on which I spent the first 17 years of my life was bordered on two sides by creeks, one of which meandered through a small field that was known to all in our family as “the hay meadow”. My grandfather had been the original European settler to farm the ground, and the... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2005 “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”—Walt Whitman A hundred years before physicists, astronomers, and chemists discovered that stars are the cauldrons in which hydrogen is transformed into all of the heavier elements necessary for life, the great American... 

A Prairie Garden Journal 2005 Trees Ponderosa Pine: A large native pine, because it drops its lower branches as it grows taller, it can and should function in Wyobraska landscapes as an evergreen shade tree. Typically 40-60 feet tall and 25-40 feet wide at maturity in landscape settings in the region. It is much more drought...