You may be used to seeing small yellow signs warning you to keep your children and pets off a neighbor’s lawn because it had recently been sprayed with a pesticide. A different kind of yellow sign is displayed in the front yard at 82 West Humboldt, Buffalo: “Pesticide Free. This area safe for children, pets and other living things.” “To me, it’s worth avoiding pesticides,” Dan Cadzow said. “You track it inside on your shoes and the kids play on…
by Connie Oswald Stofko Lyn Rezabek of Julius St., South Buffalo, got into fairy gardens about four years ago. Her husband Bill suggested creating a raised bed for her fairy landscape. Over the years, her collection of fairy items has grown, and they added three more raised beds. Now they have something of a fairy village. You can see her fairy garden on South Buffalo Alive, a garden walk that will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday,…
Looking at objects in a different way– in this case upside down– can help you create unusual container gardens. Bonnie Bagwell flipped a glass light shade and used it as the base for this eye-catching container garden. Bagwell won first place for her design in the traditional category of the container garden competition at the Lewiston GardenFest, which was held Saturday and Sunday, June 22 and 23. The event also included a vendor fair, garden walk and speakers. The event…
You don’t need a lot of space to grow fruit bushes or even fruit trees. New varieties have been developed to be smaller, more compact and more attractive in the landscape, according to Fred Safford, who is in charge of trees and shrubs at Lockwood’s Greenhouses. Safford will discuss how you can grow your own fruit and berries at home in a class at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 19 at Lockwood’s, 4484 Clark Street, Hamburg. He will explain how to…
Surprise– I have sunchokes to share Normally I don’t share sunchokes until fall when the tubers are ready to harvest. But I happen to have a few plants popping up in a spot where I’ve decided to plant something else this year, so they all have to find new homes. I am offering the plants for free, but I don’t want to mail them. If you’d like one, you must arrange to pick it up at my house– I’m in…
Items that normally might have been thrown away found new uses in a student exhibit in March at Plantasia, Western New York’s premier garden and landscape show. Aluminum cans became plant tags, coat hangers helped support vining plants and pallets became an A-frame vertical planter and an entire suite of patio furniture! The exhibit was created by students in the horticulture programs at Niagara County Community College (NCCC) and the adult education program at McKinley High School as well as…
You’ll be able to plant cool-weather vegetables soon, said Julie Emerling, who is in charge of herbs and vegetables at Lockwood’s Greenhouses, 4484 Clark St., Hamburg. People know the rule of thumb is that you wait until Memorial Day to do most of your planting. That’s because for many of our plants, we need to wait until the danger of frost has passed and we have warm weather. The vegetables that we’re talking about today should be planted earlier because…
Want to add a tropical feeling to your yard? Here are seven plant suggestions from the folks at Mischler’s Florist and Greenhouses, 118 South Forest Road, Williamsville. You can see some of these plants when you visit Mischler’s next week at Plantasia, which has a theme of “Backyard Oasis.” (See the related article for details on Plantasia.) Check out these plants to add a tropical feeling to your backyard. #1, 2 and 3: Anthurium, peace lilies and other indoor plants…
by Connie Oswald Stofko “It’s quite interesting; it’s not beautiful,” Fran Evans of Hamburg said about his voodoo lily, an unusual plant from Cambodia. Last year Evans showed us his many gardens that were filled with early spring flowers. At the same time, his six-year-old voodoo lily (Amorphophallus konjac), a potted specimen, bloomed for the first time. The blossom has a cool pitcher shape, decorated in regal colors of maroon and gold. I’d say the voodoo lily was pretty– if it weren’t…
Hypertufa is a concrete-like material that you can use to make planters that can stay outside all winter. In December, Anne Brierley of the Parkside area of Buffalo took us through the steps of making a hypertufa planter. But she had so many great tips, we couldn’t squeeze them all into one video. In the video below, Brierley gives tips on using leaves to make impressions, talks about coloring hypertufa and goes into more detail on the process of making…
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