It’s summertime and that means vacations. You’re a good plant parent and you want to make sure your plants are well taken care of but you don’t need to stay home all summer. I talked to the people who have years and years of knowledge gleaned from experience: the Swansons’ team! They offered their best tips for keeping your outdoor and indoor plants happy and healthy while you’re away.
While hoses, sprinklers, and watering bags are all excellent ways to water, many gardeners are turning to drip irrigation systems for their manifold benefits: once set up properly, a drip irrigation system is efficient, precise, and a relatively low-effort method for keeping our plants well-watered throughout the year. This post is an introduction to the key components and setup of a drip irrigation system.
One of the more common questions that newer gardeners might ask is, “when is the best time of year to prune __________?” This pruning calendar can help guide you to the best times to prune your garden plants. You’ll also find links to other posts with more in-depth information on how to prune, pruning specific plants and categories of plants, and pruning in individual seasons.
You and your rose soul-mates have found each other. Now what? How do you keep them happy and thriving in our maritime Pacific Northwest climate? Roses are not completely carefree, but with a few basic care guidelines, you can grow them successfully and enjoy their beauty for years to come.
Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes: bees, moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, and even bats, just to name a few. Knowing which plants serve our pollinators the best helps create a healthy and vibrant ecosystem where flora and fauna thrive. It also creates a diverse and beautiful garden for us to enjoy. Here are a few of our favorite flowers to attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to your garden year after year.
Thanks to everyone who was a part of this amazing year at Swansons! We launched a blog, started the Grow With Us Project, interviewed Seattle gardening celebrities, created kitty-friendly planters for a houseboat, pruned, weeded, planted and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. Here's a quick look at 2014 in photos from Digging Deeper. And this is just a taste of our year! See A Year in Photos, our Facebook album, for more fun.
With our recent chilly temps and current dreary, grey drizzle, it feels like the perfect time to stay inside and cozy up with a mug of tea and a good book. With that in mind, I offer up a curated selection of Swansons' literary offerings, available in our conservatory gift shop. From cookbooks to gardening classics to gorgeous coffee table books, there are more than enough choices to while away the long rainy season.
What a glorious and beautiful time of year. The leaves are turning vibrant colors and this year the tomatoes were still ripening well into October! Besides the traditional autumnal activities like decorating with corn stalks and gourds, carving pumpkins and exploring hay mazes, with the shorter days comes a gentle slowing down of the garden and time to think about how to handle the abundance of produce that this long, hot summer has provided.
Indoor plants are beautiful to look at and they can have a significant, positive impact on our health. Houseplants improve indoor air quality by adding oxygen and humidity to the air in our homes and offices. NASA scientists have found that many also remove harmful gases such as benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene from indoor air.
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