NANCY WITH THE LAUGHING FACE

July 18, 2026

Helpful Strategies for Parched Summer Gardens

As we enter the hottest and driest time of the year here in New England, I’ve been thinking about some helpful strategies to keep our gardens hydrated and happy during July, August, and early September.

When rain becomes scarce in summer, it helps to establish a regular watering routine, because when we neglect our gardens to the point of acute dryness, the soil actually repels water! A good plan is to water early in the morning or late in the afternoon, while the sun isn’t beating down on your plants. Take your time and let the water soak in. Thoroughly watering a couple of times a week is ideal, but if you only have time to water once a week, make sure it’s a deep one. Pay particular attention to any new plants in the garden first, such as annuals, new perennials, shrubs, or trees added during the spring.

There are many ways to water our gardens, but, like so much in life, it really comes down to personal preference, and my absolute favorite watering tool is the long-handled wand. By replacing my hose spray nozzle with the wand, I can target individual plants with a generous waterfall that reaches those moisture-starved roots. The lowest setting is gentle enough for seedlings and young plants, and, because the wand allows for deep watering, I don’t have to water as often.

When pressed for time or the weather is just too hot for standing outside, I also use a sprinkler to cover large garden areas. The downside with sprinklers is that they can take hours to really soak a garden, and using them at night can encourage mold or mildew. If you choose to use an overhead sprinkler for watering, use it early in the morning or late in the afternoon, allowing time for your plants to dry off before evening settles in.

Once you’ve got your watering approach figured out, how do you keep the soil from drying out between soakings? Honestly, your greatest garden ally in the fight against dryness is mulch — a moisture-retentive organic covering for your soil. Gardens lacking in organic matter can’t hold moisture, no matter how much water you throw at them, so regular mulching is the easiest way to keep your soil hydrated and your garden looking lush.

The beginning of a sloped woodland garden to be mulched with oak and maple leaves

The same garden today with natural leaf mulch

Over the past couple of years, I’ve grown away from using traditional bark mulch in favor of the abundant oak and maple leaves that litter our property every autumn. When shredded by the lawn mower, these leaves make a lightweight mulch that can easily be applied to gardens in late fall. For more on leaf mulch, see my previous blog: Utilizing Autumn Leaves in the Garden – NANCY WITH THE LAUGHING FACE

Leaf mold, the byproduct of these decaying leaves, is said to hold up to 500 percent of its own weight in water, thereby reducing evaporation and keeping roots cool during the dog days of summer. And supplementing the leaf mulch with compost or thin layers of grass clippings around your plants only adds to this nutritious and moisture-retentive mix.

Low-growing groundcover plants create their own living mulch

Another strategy for keeping moisture in our gardens is by utilizing a living mulch – low-growing plants or groundcovers that spread around larger plants, filling in gaps and creating a natural barrier between the soil and the hot sun. Not only do these plants provide shade and retain moisture, they can also help prevent weeds from germinating. Some living mulches to consider are Ferns, Lamium, Forget-me-Nots, Ajuga, Creeping Jenny, Sweet Woodruff, Hardy Geraniums, and even Hostas. A word of caution here: Some groundcovers can spread aggressively, so do your research before planting!

Beautiful gardens aren’t made overnight — they’re the product of consistent care, season after season. By sticking with a regular, deep watering schedule, letting groundcovers do their quiet work, and mulching generously with organic coverings, your garden will reward you with lush, healthy growth even through the hottest months of the year!

All photos by Nancy Marie Allen

May 30, 2026June 17, 2026

Romantic Spring Shrubs for Woodland Gardens

The months of May and June are all about romance with these lovely woodland shrubs!

Spirea

If ever there was a shrub that brings to mind white weddings, it’s the Bridal Wreath Spirea. It’s an absolute stunner when in full bloom with long, cascading branches that go all the way to the ground. Even the buds are romantic – they look just like clusters of tiny pearls! After blooming, this shrub turns a lovely shade of blue-green for the rest of the season.

Tall Azaleas

Tall azaleas, many of them native, bring colorful blooms to eye level and upwards, some even growing to 20 feet! Their slender, graceful growth habit lends them well to tucking behind lower-growing shrubs or planting near the base of larger trees where they enhance the understory in a woodland setting

Rhondodendrons

When a large shrub is needed for impact, but you lack full sun in your yard, consider rhododendrons. Some can grow into huge shrubs over time, so make sure that you have the space needed for these massive beauties. A mature shrub in full bloom will take your breath away!

Lilacs

Not only do lilacs provide us with big, flouncy blooms, they are also one of the most fragrant of all the spring shrubs. The Beauty of Moscow sports porcelain-pink buds that mature to a soft white after they open, and the heady scent of just a few cut flowers will fill your entire home!

Leucothoe

Though not well known, the Rainbow Leucothoe is an invaluable four-season shrub for the woodland garden. Best appreciated up close, I find that photographs really don’t do it justice. Evergreen and ever lovely, Rainbow grows to about four feet high by five feet wide with long, cascading branches that flower at the tips in spring. But it’s the foliage that makes this shrub so special, for it changes over the seasons with highlights of red, pink, and cream, and these magical color shifts positively light up the dappled shade!

Mountain Laurel

This old-fashioned Mountain Laurel is a mid-sized shrub that blooms beautifully alongside Azaleas and Rhododendrons. Deep green foliage makes a quiet statement in the garden most of the year, but there’s no missing this beauty once it starts to bloom in spring. To me, the new chartreuse leaf growth on these shrubs is just as pretty as the blooms!

All of these shrubs grow well in Northeastern Massachusetts, zone 6a

Photos by Nancy Marie Allen

February 15, 2026

The Environmentally-Friendly Cottage Garden

Lately, the world of flower gardening has become weighed down with recommendations that often sound more like commandments, such as: “thou shalt go native,” “attract pollinators,” “make it sustainable,” and “provide habitat for wildlife.” Although these practices are all beneficial for our gardens and planet, to the average home gardener they can sound daunting. Over the years, I’ve created gardens that boast of all those good things, but I never followed a rule book, only my own common sense.

Fortunately, for new and old gardeners alike, one of the easiest ways to establish a garden that is environmentally-friendly, sustainable, full of pollinators, native plants and habitat for creatures is by planting a classic Cottage Garden just like our ancestors did!

The carefree Cottage Garden style is based on old English country gardens that incorporated a mix of herbs, flowers and vegetables – everything a family would use – conveniently growing just outside the door. Today’s gardeners can use the same diversity of plantings, and by doing so, create a garden that is not only beautiful but sustainable and teaming with life!

Some perennials to include for a classic cottage garden vibe are: Roses, Foxglove, Lambs’ Ears, Nepeta, Peonies, Iris, Daisies, Echinacea, Rudbeckia, Coreopsis, Hardy Geranium, Lady’s Mantle, Daylillies, Allium and Monarda. Annuals like Sweet Alyssum, Cosmos, Petunias, Zinnias and Nasturtiums help provide a long season of bloom and attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees. A quick internet search can help you find native options for your growing zone. Personally, I never shun beautiful plants just because they aren’t native; instead, I include native versions wherever possible.

And, don’t be afraid to add some herbs to your cottage garden mix. I like to use chives, thyme and parsley with my flowers and, if you have room, Borage makes a big statement with its sparkling sky-blue flowers. Vegetables also make colorful companions. Leeks work really well with their tall, blue-green leaves, and growing some peas on an obelisk could be another charming addition; just be sure to choose vegetable plants that don’t take up much room and won’t compete with your flowers.

The art of gardening should be a pleasure, and gardens a place where we can escape the cares of the world! I encourage you to rekindle the joy of gardening, plant what you love, and don’t get bogged down in all the rules!

All photos by Nancy Marie Allen

January 26, 2026

Winter Houseplant Rescue Tips

Caring for our houseplants over the winter months can be a challenge, but here are a few quick tips to change up your indoor nurturing routine:

Healthy houseplant foliage (photo courtesy of Pixabay)

Clean off those leaves! Houseplants can be dust magnets, especially during heating season. That’s right – I’m looking at you, Peace Lily! If you only have a few plants, you can easily wipe the leaves off with a soft, moist cloth; but for those of you with many houseplants, I suggest placing them in a bathtub, sink or shower and gently hosing them down. Your plants will thank you for all that moisture by looking super perky again!

Peace Lilies are notorious for collecting dust (photo courtesy of Pexels)

After you’ve cleaned up that foliage, give them lots of light. Just like us, plants crave sunlight in the winter! This may seem obvious but we have to remember that winter sunlight is weak and fleeting, and a simple change to a brighter location can really make a difference in your plants’ health. To help them out, place your plants where they can enjoy the maximum amount of light from a window or add a few grow lights to your table lamps and congregate plants in their glow.

Houseplants enjoying winter sunlight (photo by Nancy Marie Allen)

Upgrade your watering routine! I water my houseplants more frequently in the winter months, every 4 to 5 days. When in doubt, pick up the pot – if it feels heavy, the plant still has plenty of moisture and you can hold off watering for another couple of days. As a general rule, the colder the weather outside, the drier the atmosphere inside. To combat the desert-like air in your home, humidify rooms if possible and give plants regular, generous waterings to keep them hydrated.

A little plant food goes a long way (photo courtesy of Business Insider)

Give them a snack! Although I stop fertilizing in November and December to give my houseplants a rest, by late January I usually see signs of new growth which signal to me that my plants are ready to be fed again. Go ahead and start feeding them with an all-purpose fertilizer made for indoor plants.

Winter houseplants (photo by Nancy Marie Allen)

If you follow these tips, I’m confident your houseplants will look happy and healthy as they patiently await the return of Spring!

October 10, 2025

In Praise of Garden Volunteers

If you love flower gardening and have been at it for a while, you’ve probably come across some garden volunteers that you didn’t plant but that magically decided to take up residence at your place. These plants might have seeded in via a breeze, from bird droppings, spores, or even hitchhiking in the pot of a purchased plant. However they manage to do it, they are usually welcomed guests and some even turn out to be garden gems.

Native Black-eyed Susan with July perennials (Photo by Nancy Marie Allen)

One of my all-time favorites is the native Black-eyed Susan, or Rudbeckia Hirta, a cottage garden classic that has been with me now for many years. Technically a short-lived biennial, this charming plant reseeds itself so prolifically that you are pretty much assured of enjoying it yearly as a perennial! At about 24″ tall and 18″ wide, native Black-eyed Susan is a well-behaved plant that takes up modest space and combines beautifully with other summer bloomers. In my Northeast Massachusetts Zone 6a garden, this beauty starts blooming in late June and continues into October, making it invaluable for season-long color.

Another volunteer is a more recent arrival in my garden – perennial white yarrow or Achillea Millefolium. I have a lovely ‘Pink Grapefruit’ yarrow that blooms with fervor in early July and then in lighter flushes throughout the summer, but this unknown white volunteer has turned out to be a garden workhorse, blooming pretty much non-stop from early summer to fall. Yarrow can be a vigorous spreader in rich garden soils, so I like to give it some room to spread out into a two-foot-wide clump.

Ghost Fern (Photo courtesy of Johnson’s Nursery)

Ferns are notorious for spreading themselves around, but one unusual volunteer turned out to be a Ghost Fern, a stunning Athyrium whose silvery fronds light up the darkest shade. It has an elegant, upright habit, and with adequate moisture, the foliage remains fresh-looking throughout the entire season. Vigorous and very hardy, the Ghost Fern grows to about 30″ tall and 18″ wide and combines well with other shade perennials.

Ghost Fern and Friends (Photo courtesy of Johnson’s Nursery)

As the gardening season comes to a close, I like to reflect on those plants that have proven themselves to be both reliable and beautiful. The three plants I mentioned in today’s blog are certainly that and the fact that they are essentially a ‘gift’ from Mother Nature makes them even more special!

October 20, 2024

The Slow and Steady Approach to Fall Garden Grooming

When it comes to seasonal garden chores, the term ‘annual fall clean-up’ makes me think of lugging a huge vacuum out into the yard and gobbling up every last bit of dead vegetation! That’s why I prefer ‘fall garden grooming’ which speaks of a slower and gentler pace that allows this gardener to fully enjoy each month of the season while still taking care of business.

Perennials ready for dividing and replanting

In Northeastern Massachusetts, fall garden grooming begins in September – the month of adding, dividing and transplanting perennials. Even though many gardeners plant well into the colder months, I prefer to give my plants a good head start on next year’s growing season and that means getting them in the ground by the end of the month, the idea being that early planting ensures good root growth before the ground freezes. While I’m at it, I’ll also add some homemade compost to any planting holes to give those perennials a boost of beneficial nutrients that will carry them well into next spring.

Fall-planted early spring bulbs poking through the soil

October is the month of bulb planting and garlic is a fall-planted bulb that I usually tackle late in the month, once it turns cold enough to keep them from sprouting. And who can resist adding more flower bulbs? How pleasant it is to spend a golden fall day imagining all the beautiful daffodils and alliums I’ll enjoy next spring! If you’re new to gardening and interested in planting flower bulbs this fall, check out my previous blogs: The Wonderful World of Bulbs and Extending the Beauty of Spring Bulb Season.

While planting bulbs, I take the opportunity to cut back faded perennials and remove any weeds or diseased foliage that I don’t want to winter over. Working in one area at a time, I tidy up each garden’s appearance, often making a second pass later in the season.

The seed heads of perennial grasses look beautiful well into winter

By late November most of my perennials have died back to the ground and the gardens are stripped to their bare bones. Although I’ve cut back many plants by this time, I still leave some showy seed heads for the birds and winter interest. On mild November days, I concentrate on adding compost to my flower beds to feed and protect them over the winter months. A true labor of love, this process can take several weeks, but I’ve found that nothing is better for your soil and plants than an annual layer of compost!

The grand finale of my fall garden grooming is a blanket of shredded leaves and grass clippings generously applied to all flower beds, small trees and shrubs.

Birdbaths and other garden structures add winter interest to our gardens

Early December is a great time to decorate any outdoor containers. I like to add different evergreens from the gardens and surrounding woods to fill out a large planter on the front porch. A bright holiday bow is usually all that’s needed as a final touch! I admit it’s a minimalist approach to outdoor decorating; however, with so many gardens in my yard, there’s always something to catch the eye and celebrate the season whether a small evergreen, dried hydrangea blooms, red berries, or a birdbath.

Dried ‘Little Lime’ Hydrangea blooms provide color well into December

By Christmas, the gardens are contentedly lying under their blanket of compost and leaves and my fall garden grooming is done for the season! And, magically, there’s always a stillness that comes over the gardens, just before winter sets in, as if the earth is holding her breath in anticipation of the snows soon to come, marking the end of yet another gardening year.

All photos by Nancy Marie Allen or courtesy of Pixabay

June 15, 2024

Exploring the Hardier Side of Succulents

Succulents are a huge genus of plants that have the ability to store water in their leaves, allowing them to endure long periods without rain. This ability makes succulents useful in xeriscape gardens where regular rainfall is unreliable, but many popular succulent varieties are tender and can’t survive cold weather or frosts.

Fortunately for us northern gardeners, hardy succulents can tolerate temperatures as low as -20 degrees Farenheit and live happily in colder snowy climates for many years. They are a versatile group ranging in size from miniature fairy garden plants all the way up to huge agaves!

The most well-known of the hardy succulents are the ever-living sempervivums or “hens and chicks,” aptly named because of the mother plant’s ability to produce many babies or chicks as the plant spreads out and grows, thus ensuring that the plant lives on. This clump-forming habit allows sempervivums to fill in pockets of soil around rocks, small statuary or driftwood in creative garden settings. Striking colors and forms, even white cobwebbing, add to their charm and they require little care other than an occasional morning drink in dry conditions.

A cobweb variety sempervivum in the garden

Personally, I find that sempervivums are especially fetching in natural looking hypertufa pots. These rugged stone-like planters enhance the beauty of hardy succulents while providing a frost tolerant environment where they can overwinter outside. That’s right, you don’t have to do anything special to protect the plants or pots when winter arrives; in fact, they’ll be perfectly safe under a soft blanket of snow while waiting for spring!

Hypertufa planters filled with hardy succulents and mosses

Planting hardy succulents in pots allows us to elevate them to a patio table or stand where they can be enjoyed close-up and we can also move those pots around as light conditions change over the summer months. These plants thrive in a half day of sun but morning sunlight with afternoon shade is best during the hottest months of summer.

Hardy succulent plants include sedums and ice plants amongst others. These companion plants to sempervivums make pretty fillers and spillers in planters and gardens alike, and they enjoy the same growing conditions. It’s always fun to mix the different colors and forms of hardy succulents and, delightfully, many produce beautiful flowers as well!

Grouped Sempervivum and Sedums — Close-up of hardy succulents in a hypertufa planter

The true beauty of hardy succulents is that they need little care other than an occasional watering when they become dry. After potting in fast draining succulent soil, I like to add a top dressing of worm castings which slowly feeds the plants over time. Additionally, small rocks or gravel can be used when planting directly out in the garden. The plants will need an occasional grooming to remove debris such as pine needles or dried leaves, but that’s really all the fussing they will require.

These charming, easy-care plants are an excellent choice for beginner gardeners, those with physical limitations and children, and I hope I’ve inspired you to try a few of these very special succulents in your own garden space!

The colors of sempervivums change with the seasons

April 15, 2024April 16, 2024

Extending the Beauty of Spring Bulb Season

Flower bulbs push the gardening year right up to the edge of winter and there’s nothing more uplifting than the first garden blooms! For me, one of the greatest joys of gardening is seeing those first spring bulbs breaking through the earth as if by magic.

If you enjoy an early spring bulb garden, you’ve probably thought how wonderful it would be to keep those beautiful blooms going from early spring to summer. Fortunately, with the extensive variety of flower bulbs available today, you can easily achieve a long spring season by planting early, middle, and late-blooming bulbs.

Anemones tucked at the feet of perennial Lady’s Mantle

While spring bulbs are in their glory, take a few minutes to evaluate your own garden and perhaps visit others for some flowery inspiration, then plan on ordering your bulbs early before they sell out. As you browse catalogs or websites, try to visualize what you’d like to see in your garden and choose a color palette that appeals to you. Next, pick your favorite early spring bloomers and extend their season’s beauty by using the early, middle, and late-flowering variety plan.

Later-blooming Daffodils with Anemone and Heuchera

For example, Daffodil bulbs can bloom as early as late February here in Northeast Massachusetts and bright yellow Rijnveld’s Early Sensation is one of the earliest. Snowdrops and crocus are also very early bloomers and would make good companions. Ice Follies, a classic early to mid-season bloomer, looks stunning with the smaller bulbs of Early Snow Glories (Chionodoxa forbesii), Hyacinth, and Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica). Thalia, a pristine white beauty, blooms next along with Grape Hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) and old-fashioned Bleeding Heart while late-season Pheasant’s Eye looks lovely with the stately globe alliums as well as early spring perennials.

Thalia with old-fashioned Bleeding Heart and Vinca

You can try this method with many spring bulbs including Tulips, Alliums, Hyacinths, Daffodils, and of course the earliest bloomers such as Snowdrops and Crocus. Something to keep in mind is that smaller flower bulbs make great supporting stars for their larger spring cousins!

Alliums make a bold exclamation point in the late spring garden

Seek inspiration and plan your bulb garden now, purchase and reserve bulbs early to get the best varieties, and plant this fall for a colorful and long-blooming display next spring!

November 1, 2023

Utilizing Autumn Leaves in the Garden

If you live with trees, you’re probably blessed with an abundance of leaves every fall. For many people, fallen leaves are just a seasonal nuisance to be disposed of as quickly as possible. Fortunately, savvy gardeners know that using leaf litter is a natural and effective way to protect, feed, and beautify our garden spaces, and it’s free!

Blue Star Juniper with natural leaf mulch

Utilizing autumn leaves in our gardens can be as simple as letting them lie where they fall, especially in woodland settings. Undisturbed, the leaves provide not only nourishment for all the varied plant life but also shelter for creatures and overwintering insects. Plus, I happen to love the natural look that leaf mulch creates in my home landscape.

Using leaf mulch in this garden ties it into the woods beyond

Another way to use fallen leaves is to shred them with a lawn mower for flower bed mulch. These smaller leaf pieces will break down quickly to add nutrients to the soil and won’t suffocate your perennials under their weight. Dry, shredded leaves are incredibly lightweight to carry around and make any mulching chore that much easier!

A newly planted garden with traditional bark mulch

Two years later, the same garden with leaf mulch just naturally blends into this forest edge setting

Want to save your leaves for later use? Whole fallen leaves can be piled up and composted in their own designated spot or added to an existing compost pile. They will break down more slowly than shredded leaves but, over time, you will end up with rich leaf humus – the best garden soil additive around!

Japanese Painted Ferns appreciate a humusy soil

Leaf humus is beneficial in the garden as a nourishing soil conditioner, improving aeration and encouraging healthy root development while also aiding in moisture retention throughout the hot and dry summer months.

A Rainbow Leucothoe fits right into this woodland garden

If you haven’t utilized autumn leaves in the garden before, I urge you to give it a try. Your future garden will thank you!

All photos by Nancy Marie Allen

June 8, 2023

The New England Spring That Almost Wasn’t

The spring of 2023 may go down in local history as “the spring that almost wasn’t.” For those of us who love spring flowering shrubs and look forward to a colorful display every year, this spring’s performance was a bitter disappointment!

What I’m talking about is the significant lack or loss of blooms on many early spring shrubs and small trees. When my golden forsythia, that most dependable harbinger of spring, didn’t bloom, I was heartsick!

When the forsythia bloom, spring has definitely arrived (Photo courtesy Pixabay)

As the season progressed, there were more shrubs that suffered the same fate. To name a few in my own garden, the Winterhazel, Pieris, Dogwood and Azaleas either never bloomed or produced so few flowers that I barely noticed them. So, what happened to those long-awaited and coveted spring blooms?

Dogwoods have a serene beauty all their own (Photo courtesy Pixabay)

Like many mysteries of nature, there’s no short answer here, but if we look back over the last year we can better understand the causes. Our relatively mild winter with sporadic record-cold temperatures was coupled with low snowfall which offered little protection for our plants, shrubs and trees. Add to this the ongoing drought of 2022 and 2023 and it’s easy to see how the combination of these adverse conditions has profoundly affected our plants, literally nipping many of them in the bud!

Pieris shrubs normally begin blooming in late winter (Photo by Nancy Marie Allen)

Though there is little we can do to protect our gardens from record-cold temperatures, we can help them better cope by keeping them well watered, even into late fall. Products like Wilt-Pruf are useful in preventing desiccation due to water loss, and a winter mulch of compost around young shrubs and trees will also keep them hydrated and help protect them from extreme temperature fluctuations.

Old-Fashioned Mountain Laurel (Photo by Nancy Marie Allen)

There will never be a “perfect” year in terms of growing conditions, and Mother Nature has her own agenda that doesn’t include consulting us! As gardeners, we must learn to accept the bad with the good and focus on those small triumphs that always seem to come along. Who would have thought that 2023 would be a banner spring for the humble Mountain Laurel, but I’ve never seen them more beautiful!