Christmas at The White House is magical - both for volunteer decorators and visitors. And I got to be a decorator again for the fourth time this past Thanksgiving week and never tire of doing it. People from all over the country converge on The White House on Thanksgiving week to decorate the People's House …
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Christmas porch pots are the easiest method to decorate your outside entrance inexpensively and quickly. If you need some pizzazz to greet visitors, create a live green arrangement with evergreens and twigs cut from your property. Jazz it up with something sparkly and you can leave it in place for weeks without any care. Long …
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McLean Nursery is gearing up for a big Christmas holly decorating season! Hundreds of fluffy festive bows are hanging from the workshop ceiling and the 'elves' are busily making the many wreaths and boxwood trees that are destined to deck the halls of some lucky customers. And those customers come back year after year as …
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Porch pots are an old fashioned way to decorate a deck, porch, or other entrance to and give you instant fall color. Burning bush, dogwood, viburnums, hydrangea flowers, and other fall colored branches are available for the taking along road sides or your property. Foraging in the Wild Burning bush has escaped to the wild …
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"Should I leave the leaves? " is a question I am getting more and more frequently. With all the recent information flowing out about "re-wilding" and keeping things "natural", I wanted to address the dilemma of raking or not raking your leaves. You certainly don't want to bag them up and add to a landfill! …
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Celebrate the fall season by these top 10 ways of pumpkin decorating. From mini chalk-painted pumpkins to gorgeous hand-painted marble creations, step up your style this year with these no-carve painted pumpkin ideas. These creative painted pumpkins think outside the box with modern metallics, fresh florals, and gold studs. Get inspired to take your pumpkin …
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Garden mums should be in every garden for that last blast of color before the first freeze withers everything. One of the last plants to bloom before frost, I savor the blowsy colorful flowers that come in a range of reds, oranges, and pinks. Attracting many pollinators as they are the few things that are …
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Deer resistance is a huge buzz world in the gardening world and for good reason. Many of us battle these animals daily and too many just throw up their hands and give up. All it takes is to educate yourself on the many possibilities that are available - both native and non-native - and throw …
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Bottle Brush Buckeyes are blooming everywhere and if you are in the know, you are planting more of them. Attracting hummingbirds, butterflies, and other native pollinators by the dozens, this native is a great understory plant for shady woodland areas. Deer and rabbit resistant, it forms a dense, mounded, suckering, deciduous, multi-stemmed shrub which typically …
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When COVID reared its ugly head in March, I started to spend a lot more time at home as my garden travel schedule was cancelled. Trained as a floral designer, and also an avid gardener, I decided to grow more plants that I can use in floral arrangements using my preferred method "garden style". Arranging …
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Fig feasts were part of my late summer meal planning. Growing figs was always something I thought was beyond my reach here in MD zone 6b, but I harvested for the first time an avalanche of tasty large brown turkey figs this summer. Rarely found in stores, occasionally at farmers markets, there is nothing better that …
I declare 2021, The Year of the Tomato! Forget COVID, late frosts, and marauding ground hogs, I have harvested the most tomatoes that I can remember in my many years of gardening. Bad Start to a Tomato Year With an inauspicious start - an unusually late killing frost around Mother's day - I was left …
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