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Use the daily rhythms to help you. Water the soil rather than the plants, so that leaves won't get scorched on hot days. Heat and wind will both speed up water loss in plants so that the need for water in these conditions may be greater. Use the calendar, too, and concentrate your watering efforts at times when the moon's influence is strongest.

Freeze drying is a commercial method of freezing the flowers first before drying them. Flowers are placed in large refrigerated vacuum chambers, which removes the moisture from the plant tissues. The flowers look very natural and hold their color. The cost of the chamber is prohibitive for most people.

Gradually you begin to learn about connecting various events in a bed or border, joining up separate incidents, separate groups, to make a single flowing tapestry of plants. In this enterprise, you need to learn who your best friends are. They will be big, soft billowing plants like catmint, good enough to be stars themselves, but also capable of reaching out softly and ion-ling hands with other plants around, plants that were not part of the orbanal group you had set the catmint with.

Patrick M. Synge, one of the greatest living authorities on small bulbs, in his book Collins Guide to Bulbs, quotes the expert George Maw who, on seeing Chionodoxa luciliae in bloom at a height of in the mountain meadows of Turkey, described it as "one of the most sumptuous displays of floral beauty I ever beheld, a mass of blue and white resembling Nemophila insignis in colour, but more intense and brilliant."

However, it is not so very easy to enjoy the splendor of dahlias. They do require care and attention. But a little care is well rewarded, many times over. After the first frost, you will need to dig out your dahlia tubers and gently knock the soil off them. Then place them in peat or dry sand and keep them over the winter in a frost-free, cool, well-ventilated room.

Mostly native to Japan, the Himalayas, China, and the Balkans, the genus is best-known for the most widely distributed species, Aesculus hippocastanum (horse-chestnut). The genus Aesculus consists of hardy deciduous trees and shrubs. In its numerous varieties and forms, the horse-chestnut, native to Albania and Greece, is extensively planted in public parks, private gardens, and as street trees.

ossibly it is its culinary associations that have caused the quince, or Cydonia oblonga, to be so neglected in the modern flower garden; although this does not explain why the fruits have also disappeared from shops. At one time the plant and the fruit were much more widely cultivated, but now their place has been taken by their close relative the chaenomeles many of whose hybrids are progeny of the cydonia.

Helleborus niger, which often blooms at Christmas, has inspired many legends, nearly all of Northern origin. One of these relates that as the Three Wise Men were offering their gifts to the Babe in Bethlehem, a young shepherdess stood apart from the manger, weeping, sorrowful at being unable to offer the Infant even one flower.

Genista is rich in historical associations, myths, and legends that date back to the most remote times, although it is always possible that the plants referred to by Classical writers might have been Cytisus or Spartium. Virgil used the word genista, which appears to have derived from the Celtic gen (shrub).

"If I had the memory of Themistocles, who greeted every citizen by name; of Cyrus and of Scipio, who knew the names of all their soldiers; if I could, like Cineas, ambassador of Pyrrhus, name every senator and every citizen of Rome; it would still be impossible for me, entering a garden, to know all the dianthus by name; so great is their number."

Here we come to a complex and sometimes agitated realm in which even professional botanists are not always in agreement. Indeed, it is a popular fashion in some quarters to malign the botanists who give plants their Latin names. But if studied objectively these Latin names are not so difficult or so complicated as they at first appear.

The name of genus Anemone derives from the Greek anemos (wind), but there is considerable diversity of opinion regarding the reason for the name. Pliny the Elder wrote: "Flos numquam se aperit, nisi vento spirante: unde et nomen accepere"and Theocritus stated : "Vocatur Anemone quod subito flos cadat; caducus enim est et facile corrumpitur".

Native to the Mediterranean regions. Parent of the present-day annual Larkspur Hybrids. The original species is now rarely seen in gardens, but it is an attractive plant high with small finely divided dark-green linear leaves about long.

Native to Sikkim and China. An erect, very leafy shrub which, although moderately hardy, is frequently winter-killed to ground level by severe frost. The plant will then assume the habit of a herbaceous perennial and produce new growths from its base in spring. Branches and stems reddish maroon and covered with soft hairs. Foliage large, heart-shaped ,long, wide, rounded at the base; dark green above and sparsely covered with short erect hairs, lighter coloured or reddish on the undersurface.

These attractive, brightly coloured summer-flowering annuals or perennials have a remarkably long flowering period, and in districts where the autumn weather is warm, dry, and sunny, the flowering period is protracted until the advent of winter. There are about twenty species, which are all native to North America.

Among Classical writers and poets the hyacinth was always one of the most popular flowers. We find it mentioned and exalted by Virgil, Pliny, Theocritus, and Ausonius. From what we can deduce from their writings, the hyacinth of Antiquity was a violaceous-red, and it is perhaps for that reason they associate'd it with blood.

The sorts of paths that you use for wandering slowly around the garden don't need the same sort of base as serious paths by any means.

The name of this spectacular climbing flowering shrub comes from the celebrated French navigator and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville , who introduced the genus into Europe from Rio de Janeiro. The genus is native to tropical and subtropical South America and contains about fourteen species that are now widely cultivated in most tropical or subtropical countries.

The name of this spectacular climbing flowering shrub comes from the celebrated French navigator and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville , who introduced the genus into Europe from Rio de Janeiro. The genus is native to tropical and subtropical South America and contains about fourteen species that are now widely cultivated in most tropical or subtropical countries.

This is the best method to use for hardy annuals and vegetables. You can also use it for seeds of perennial and biennial flowers in early summer. Don't bother trying this method with half-hardy plants, as you can't sow them outside until after the frost and so there won't be any flowers until late summer, when the season is nearly over.

Taking the theme of self-sufficiency further, the cleaning-up of contaminated water by the use of flow forms is an unexpected side benefit of using these contraptions. To paraphrase British designer, socialist, and poet William Morris (1834-96), I don't just believe flow forms to be beautiful; now I know them to be useful.