Design & Plan Your Garden

21 Best Free Seed Catalogs in 2023 [Vegetable + Flower Seed]

Nothing helps cure a gardener’s cabin fever like a thick stack of seed catalogs.
As you page through each one, your garden springs to life in your mind’s eye … green shoots poking up through the soil, seedlings soaking up the sun, juicy tomatoes, ripe and ready for backyard dinners. There’s a lot to look forward to in your garden this year, and it all starts with a few good seed catalogs. But how do you know which ones are right for you?

Low Maintenance Gardening

gardening venn diagram of gardening happiness

You want a beautiful garden, but you don’t want to spend all your free time pulling weeds, dragging your hose around from plant to plant, or drowning Japanese beetles in soapy water to keep them off your roses.
Maybe you’re busy with work, a family, and piles of laundry, or you’re getting older and slowing down a bit, or perhaps you just want to join the lazy gardeners’ club.

What You Need to Know About Garden Microclimates

sunflower and a partly cloudy sky, depicting microclimate factors

As a beginning gardener, one of my biggest frustrations was getting things to grow in parts of my yard that were too dry, shady, hot, or windy. Sun, shade, heat, wind, slope, precipitation, and soil type all work together to create microclimates in your yard. Do you struggle to understand your garden’s climate and microclimates? There’s more to it than knowing your gardening zone. I came up with five steps to track and measure my garden and learn more about the different microclimates. This helped me tremendously when I planned and planted the garden at our current house. And I’ll share the five steps with you.

Garden Design How To: DIY Garden Design for Beginners

Have you ever watched a landscape makeover on TV and thought “how hard could it be to design my own garden?” They do make it look easy, don’t they? Good landscape design adds value to your home without breaking the bank. And it creates a space you and your family can enjoy for many years. But before you run out and buy a bunch of plants, follow my step-by-step instructions for designing your garden. You’ll learn a few basic design principles. And I’ll help you avoid the mistakes most beginning gardeners make.