4. Think before getting an invisible fence

5. Make your dog not WANT to escape!

A fence is necessary to keep your dog in your yard, but as a behavioral fix, it’s only a starting point. Creating a dog-friendly yard is one way to keep your dog entertained between the fence walls.

Not everyone has a spacious yard or the ability to provide a large dog with ample exercise. That’s exactly why big dogs aren’t for everyone, but the right fence does go a long way in terms of keeping your dog safe and secure. Managing massive dogs can be a massive challenge, but for owners that are able to take that challenge, it’s worth the effort so you can keep your dog around for massive cuddles.

How do you keep your big dog from getting out of your yard? Have you made any special modifications to your backyard fence? Leave a comment with your experiences and suggestions with other dog owners!

I learned to garden as an adult by poring over gardening magazines and watching shows on HGTV, like “Gardening by the Yard.” Remember that one? Sadly, none of the instructional and inspirational shows that taught me to garden are still on the air, since HGTV replaced them with shows about outdoor decorating. Furniture, fabric and fireplaces galore, but not much that grows.

A few regional gardening shows are still aired on public television, but for most of the U.S., there’s nothing for people who learn best by watching, like I do. And what’s more visual than gardening, anyway? It’s even more visual than cooking, which is all over television.

Lucky for people wanting to learn to garden, now there’s Youtube, the number two search engine (after Google) and number one source of how-to instruction, whether it’s cooking, setting up your new Fitbit, or gardening.

Which is great, but have you ever looked for gardening help on Youtube only to find conflicting information or really bad advice? I sure have. Or I’ve found how-to advice from someone somewhere in England, where I’m unfamiliar with the climate and don’t know how to adjust the advice for where I garden. (Videos of Alan Titschmash pop up often in search results but what are his growing conditions? I haven’t a clue.)

So I started a project called Good Gardening Videos to find and promote good videos, the ones that can be trusted to teach viewers to succeed at gardening (by providing information that’s accurate) and are watchable (no shaky cameras or traffic noise, please).

To help with this nonprofit project I asked a bunch of smart garden communicators and scientists for their advice and am proud that they include GGW’s own Fran Sorin, along with two members of the famous Garden Professors bloggers and a few more actual experts. We are all unpaid except for horticulturist Charlie Nardozzi, whom we’ve recently hired to curate videos about growing edibles, a subject about which I know literally nothing.

The almost 600 good videos selected so far were made by 18 state Extension universities and a variety of garden communicators, like GGW’s very own Debra Lee Baldwin. (We’ve chosen six of her videos to feature so far.) Some of the plant world’s most reputable companies are also making instructional videos, and we’re happy to promote the best of them, as long as they’re truly instructional, not infomercials.

So how do we provide useful information for gardeners across the drastically different growing regions in the U.S. and Canada, our target audience? By prominently revealing each expert’s location, no matter how difficult it was to find that bit of vital information, and letting viewers make any necessary adjustments for where they garden.

You can find our curated videos on the website or the Youtube channel by searching or browsing the topics. And to help people find the videos they need when they need them, we’re creating Seasonal Guides, collections of the best videos on such timely topics as lawn care, seed-starting and bulb-planting.

Admittedly, you can’t learn everything from videos, so we’ve compiled a list of websites and books we find ourselves recommending over and over – in “How to Find More Accurate Gardening Information.” That includes how to find research-based information using good old Google.

GGVideos is pro-science, pro-environment, ad-free and nonprofit.

How to Video Your Own Garden

It didn’t take long to discover that more good gardening videos are needed! To help gardeners share their gardens, their plant collections or their make-over projects, our website includes tips on “How to Make Videos Yourself.” One take-away is that making a good-enough video is easier than you think – especially if you compile still photos into a slide show with captions or your own narration. No budget for videos? There are free editing programs, and good-enough videos can be made with point-and-shoot cameras or even smart phones. You can click on this guide to video marketing to help you get started on promoting as well if you’re a business owner.

We’re also nudging gardening companies, public gardens and anyone who’ll listen to make more good gardening videos. In the 21^st Century, video marketing is widely recommended because it’s very effective.

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Guest Post Author Bio:

Susan Harris pursued her passion for helping people succeed as gardeners through writing and garden-coaching before her recent retirement. Online, she co-founded and contributes to the team blog GardenRant and promotes public gardens and gardening in the Washington, D.C. area at DC Gardens.

Want to buy that special person who happens to be a gardener, a lover of flowers, or just a creative soul at heart an extraordinary Mother’s Day Gift?

Well, guess what? This year I’ve come up with a two part present that will knock the socks off of the “Mom” in your life.

All you have to do is follow my directions below so that whomever you choose to give this special Mother’s Day gift to will not just receive a bouquet of arranged flowers: Rather, she will be given the opportunity to have an experience to play, create, connect and experience a profound sense of well-being and joy.

This first part of the gift is the following:

1. Take a trip to the nearest street vendor, farmer’s market, grocery store or florist that sells locally sustainable flowers, fair trade, or organic. Whole Food Markets  has a Whole Trade Guarantee for fair and ethical trade. Slow Flowers is a constantly expanding site that lists American grown flower sources.

2. Pick out a slew of flowers. My rule of thumb is to buy at least 6-12 of one variety. Just let your eye go to what it likes and add them to your bunch.

3. Ideally you want at least three different varieties of flowers, in a range of colors. If you want to add some greenery or flowered branches, feel free to do so.

4. In order to be successful, take your time selecting the flowers. By the time the salesperson is wrapping these beauties up in cellophane with a bow around them, you should feel thrilled that the flowers are so glorious and that you personally chose them.

The second part of the gift is to buy a copy of my book, Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.

It’s filled with simple and fun exercises on how to use gardening as a tool for unearthing your creativity. Plus it offers user friendly steps on how to design your garden from the inside-out.

I just got online and saw that the distributor or Amazon is listing the paper book at a discounted price of $10.66. I have never seen it sold that inexpensively: So my suggestion is to order it ASAP before the priced is marked back up to$15.95.

In Digging Deep, I’ve created an exercise called Playing with Flowers. Readers and folks who come to my talks or workshops absolutely love it. It’s listed in the Table of Contents.

It’s important when you give her the gift that you explain that she needs to set aside an hour of quiet of time for herself in order to get the most out of this exercise.

And if you are at a loss for words about the profound impact that flowers make on our lives, I’ve added a few quotes that you are welcome to use if you are writing a card to go along with this special gift.

“The earth laughs in flowers.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.” Walt Whitman

“Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. ” Eckhart Tolle

Wishing you and yours a Mother’s Day filled with much love, blessings, and a slew of magnificent flowers!! xo –  Fran

Julie Moir Messervy is a renowned and beloved garden designer, author and lecturer. She has now become the creator of an app, Home Outside, that enables any gardener to get first rate garden design help at a reasonable price. I’m delighted to have Julie as a guest contributor at GGW. Please welcome her to our community!

Wish you had an outdoor room for living or dining out under the stars?  Need guidance on where to locate a shade tree, a veggie garden or perennial borders?  Want to give your property a face-lift or some curb appeal?

No matter what your needs, Home Outside® makes it easy and fun to get expert landscape design help at a price you can afford. With the online service, Home Outside design experts stand ready to work with you, step by step, to create the home outside you’ve always longed for.

A family landscape

Take the example a young family in a Boston suburb who sought the help of Home Outside designers for their small backyard landscape. The couple wanted to create a space that enabled their young children to play, included lots of colorful plantings along with their small cobble terrace for outdoor eating, and allowed clients to be seen in their charming little cottage/office that sat in the backyard behind the house. The whole family filled out their Home Outside workbook; then our designers created two different designs to share, getting enough feedback to create one final conceptual design the family then approved. We continued to work with them as they selected the plantings and gave them pointers on how to prepare the beds and edge them for maximum effect. The result is amazing—a complete transformation from a bland backyard to a one-of-a-kind Home Outside design that the family loves.

When you have a plan that complements your home and your lifestyle, you can install it in phases or all at once, secure in the knowledge that you have a design that works.

How can we create a personalized landscape design without ever setting foot on your property?

Here’s how:

1. Share Your Dreams

Our easy online workbook walks you through how to submit your property information, photos, ideas, goals, style and preferences., Your designer creates a base plan, studies your workbook, and creates a draft plan and image board for your review.

2. Get the Design You Love

Based on your feedback, your designer creates a colorfully-rendered final design that suits your site, style, and needs. You also receive notes and an image board that explain the elements you’ll need to build your design.

3.  Make It Happen!

Build your landscape yourself or give the design to your contractor to install.  And then enjoy the Home Outside you’ve created!

The Home Outside App

We believe everyone should have the tools to create beautiful landscapes.

So we created the Home Outside app—a mobile landscape design app with functions that enable landscape professionals like ourselves to create on the go and share ideas with clients, yet simple and user-friendly enough for homeowners to mock up their property and try out new ideas.

Home Outside is the only free app that offers users these features:

• Mock up an entire property in plan view
• Import map images or property plans as backgrounds
• Select from over 700 hand-drawn elements to tap and drag into place
• Sketch tools, notes, and layers
• Share and edit designs back and forth between users and devices

Tap-and-drag functionality lets you mock up your entire property, not just your veggie garden, with hundreds of useful and fun elements, from trees to pools to paths to chicken coops.

Unlike garden apps that limit users to specific garden shapes and sizes, Home Outside lets you personalize your design to match your real-life yard or the landscape of your dreams. Map your property, import your property base plan background, add descriptive notes, and share your designs with friends. Design for fun, or get more precise with rulers, snap-to-grid, and sketch tools.

Julie Moir Messervy is the CEO of JMMDS, a landscape architecture and design firm in Saxtons River, Vt., creators of parks and residential gardens around the country. She is a distinguished lecturer and the author of eight books on landscape design. Julie has a mission to use digital technologies to bring great design to everyone. She created the Home Outside® online design service and Home Outside® landscape design app to do just that. For more information, please visit www.jmmds.com.

AND THE WINNER IS: BECKY KIRTS! Becky was chosen at random and has been notified. (If I don’t hear from Becky in 48 hours, another winner will be chosen.) Thank you all for participating. I have more giveaways in mind, so stay tuned!

“Gardening with Foliage First” by Karen Chapman and Christina Salwitz is a book I wish I’d had when I began gardening 25 years ago. I think most of us start out wanting flowers. I had a thing for roses and cannas, but whenever I’d see a new flowering perennial, I had to have it.  After several years, my mish-mash of a garden just looked like a salad, except in spring.

I don’t know about you, but one glorious month out of 12 just isn’t good enough. (I’ve made numerous changes since, and now I pretty much like how it looks year-round. You can see it on YouTube.) I’ve not stopped cultivating flowers—foliage, after all, comes with them (all plants bloom, even moss and trees). However, from a garden design standpoint, I think that flowers are mainly icing on the cake.

When I speak to gardening groups, I often say (partly because I like the alliteration): “Flowers are ephemeral, they flash and fade, and then you’re left with…” (pause for dramatic effect) “foliage!” My specialty is succulents, but they’re not the only plants with highly structural leaves and dramatic forms, as “Gardening with Foliage First” abundantly illustrates.

This book belongs in every gardener’s library, so I asked publisher Timber Press if I could offer a copy to you, dear GGW readers. To enter to win it, simply leave a comment below. (To qualify, you must be 18 or older and have a mailing address in the US or Canada.) The winner will be chosen at random and notified March 31. 

To further entice you, here are a few photos from the book. Most feature succulents, many include seasonal flowers, and all show textural combos that don’t need flowers to be fabulous.

I often quote one of the book’s authors, Christina Salwitz, who quipped on Facebook, “Angelina will go home with anyone,” referring to this stonecrop’s multizone versatility. Here it’s shown with Diascia barberae ‘Darla Orange’, but that’s not all that’s going on; note the contrasting forms and textures of bulb foliage and boulder.

This stonecrop (Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’) isn’t in bloom yet, but it doesn’t matter; its broccoli-like flower heads and glossy green foliage look stunning with a feathery artemisia that suggests Spanish moss.

When Christina’s co-author Karen Chapman visited me here in southern California, she shot this vignette of an acacia, agave, and variegated myrtle, a plant I grow for its dainty foliage and the witch hazel scent of its leaves.

Karen also photographed my neighbor’s front garden for the book. The pencil-like stems of Euphorbia tirucalli ‘Sticks on Fire’ (lower left) keep their orange color year-round. I love how they contrast with the blue and green agaves and black aeoniums, don’t you?

Stipa tenuissima reseeds invasively in some regions, so I hesitate to recommend it, yet it’s one of my favorite plants for texture. According to the caption, “…the real surprise lies in the way the bleached Mexican feather grass echoes the color of those stiff spines, drawing attention to a detail that would otherwise be overlooked.” Yes!

OK, now it’s your turn! To enter to win a copy of “Foliage First”, leave a comment below. (To qualify, you must be 18 or older and have a mailing address in the US or Canada.) The winner will be chosen at random and notified March 31. I’ll also post their name here, at the top of this post. Best of luck! 

Freshly Bought Flowers In Sink of Cool Water

I’m re-publishing this article in honor of Valentine’s Day. I can think of no greater gift than buying a slew of flowers for someone you love and spending a few hours together (with no interruptions) creating some playful arrangements. Directions and benefits are listed below.

If you think that buying fresh cut local flowers and creating stunning floral arrangements for your home is a luxury, think again.

Research has shown that being in the presence of flowers increases your level of optimism and sense of security, helps to decrease stress, and can have a significant effect on your ‘happiness’ factor.

So a suggestion this Valentine’s Day.

Rather than grabbing whatever flowers you can find at the florist or grocery store, why not slow down and transform the act of creating floral arrangements into both a playful and meditative practice…..while designing something beautiful?

Ten Steps For ‘Playing with Flowers’

1. If possible, locate a sustainable local flower grower in your area. Very often you can find them at your farmer’s market. If not, check out Debra Prinzing’s  Slow Flowers directory to see if there is a grower or florist close to you that carries locally grown flowers.

2. Buy at least a few dozen flowers. My strategy is to purchase larger numbers of one variety–similar to what I do in the garden so that I end up with at least 6 of one type of flower.

Don’t rush. Take your time and decide what pleases your eye. Often what we’re initially drawn to is our instincts saying “This is what I desire.” Remember, it’s only flowers you’re buying. If you’re unsure about what you like, experiment and try something new.

3. Bring flowers home and place in a cool sink of water. Using a sharp pruner, remove all foliage near the bottom of the stem and cut an inch off of the bottom of the stem.

My rule of thumb is to cut less than more from the stems. Until you start placing them in vases, you probably won’t know what height you’ll want them to be.

Flowers Cooling in Sink

4.  Treat this 30-45 minutes as a meditative, silent experience. Make a pact with yourself that you will have no cell phones, TV, computers, or kids running around.

5. Experiment with how different colors, shapes, and sizes of flowers look together. What combinations are you drawn to? There’s no need for you to have an immediate response. Playing with flowers is a great opportunity to begin to familiarize yourself with what you like.

Soft pink ranunculus with purple/magenta anemones and faded whitish/pink gerbera daisies

Magenta anemones, purple tulips, purple asters and pink ranunculus

Notice how different the composition looks when the whitish pink gerber daisies are removed and replaced with purple tulips and asters.

Butterscotch ranunculus with purple tulips, asters and anemones

Adding a splash of the butterscotch colored ranunculus adds an entirely different feel to the composition. Do you like the contrasting colors or is it too much color for you?

6. Do have water in the vases before putting flowers in to keep them fresh. I fill my vases about 1/3 of the way up.

7. Start placing flowers in vase. I often put several flowers in a few different vases concurrently. I rarely have an idea of what I want the composition to look like. I just start adding flowers to vases to see how it looks and cutting stems to appropriate lengths.

Strawberry pink gerbera, purple anemones and tulips

8. Even during the colder months, I forage in my garden to bring in branches, evergreens, or veggie leaves, In the photo above, I’ve used large leaves of burgundy chard to add an extra dimension of color, shape and texture.

9. If you don’t like something, no problem. That’s part of the fun of Playing with Flowers. You can experiment, try a flower combination for a day or two and if you keep on passing by it and thinking “I don’t love this”, then take flowers from a few different vases and play again!

Strawberry gerbera daisies with butterscotch, pink, and burgundy ranunculus and  silver leaved sage from the garden

10. The purpose of this exercise is for you to let go of control, to play purely for the sake of play, and to train yourself in mindfulness. Trust me, the more you work on letting go and playing, the more you will unleash your creativity and design beautiful floral arrangements. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of time!

If after time spent doing this, you return to your day feeling more relaxed, with a sense of well-being and happiness, then I’d say you gained a lot from Playing With Flowers.

What do you think?

The exercise Playing With Flowers can be found in the recently updated edition of my book, Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble and independent book sellers.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with others on social media. It will help get the word out on how to have an extraordinarily special Valentine’s Day and it’s good karma. With gratitude..xo-Fran

On a visit last week and again yesterday to Dilworth Park,  Philadelphia’s outstanding green space abutting City Hall, I was delighted to discover a newly constructed pop-up garden.

As many of you know, I am a big fan of Bryant Park in New York City and have written a few articles about it: You can check them out here and here.

Dilworth Park, renovated in 2014, is a 120,557 square foot space that has become a multi-faceted public meeting place: It consists of well executed perennial plantings with tree groves, colorful seating areas, and a seasonal ice skating rink.

When it first opened in 2014, after a major renovation that cost $155 million, it was met with less than stellar reviews as written about in Philadelphia Magazine (September 2014):

Architecture critic Inga Saffron of The Philadelphia Inquirer weighed in with an analysis of the park, a park which she says really isn’t a park at all:

“They’ve reconstructed the space in front of Philadelphia’s palatial City Hall, furnished it with a cafe, a high-tech spray fountain and movable chairs, and rebranded it Dilworth Park. But the vast granite prairie is still very much a plaza, with all the weaknesses the word implies.”

In the end, Saffron declares that the “aesthetic is all wrong for a city eager to remake itself for an expanding creative class.” Dilworth Park is, she writes, “a suit in a jeans-and-t-shirt world.”

“Visited today and was underwhelmed. If it was “barren” before the $55 million makeover, that nice (in good weather) fountain takes up most of the space in front of City Hall. There’s a cafe? I didn’t see it. All the trees are relegated to the perimeter. You can walk through the fountain, which is neat, and the kids loved it, but I have a feeling most of that $55 [million] was on construction, not on appearances. Yes, it’s a bit better, but if it is supposed to be the new town “gathering place” it might have had more “wow” factor.”

Perhaps it was the addition of this year’s newest addition, The Capital Garden Maze, that transformed the park from what was described above to what I would now describe as festive and playful.

The America’s Garden Capital Maze took over the patch of grass at Dilworth Park during the winter season as part of a $300,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation. It was designed by Groundswell Design Group, the same firm behind other iconic pop-up public spaces like Spruce Street Harbor Park and the Blue Cross RiverRink Winterfest. The maze is festooned with willow-branch archways and well chosen and colorful plantings, all in raised beds.

The Made in Philadelphia Holiday Market, featuring 35 local vendors, is still in the process of being constructed. There is even a lovely old fashioned  merry-go-round on one side of the courtyard. Like the Christmas Village, which will be located in City Hall’s inner courtyard this year, the holiday market will remain open until Christmas Eve.

Is this Philadelphia’s answer to Bryant Park? Not quite. But contrary to what the critics have written, I feel strongly that Dilworth Park is a positive addition to the outdoor spaces in the City of Brotherly Love.

After all, it was no easy feat to build an appealing public space around the elaborately ornate, city block long, Philadelphia City Hall, built in the late 19th century.

Whether you’re a Philadelphian who is looking for something to do with the kids on a weekend or an out-of-town visitor, I highly recommend a visit to Dilworth Park!

If you enjoyed this article, please share with friends and colleagues on social media: it’s important to get the word out and it’s good karma!

Also, you only have a few more week to take advantage of my 1000 FREE Book and Course Giveaway. We are almost sold out!!  To take advantage of receiving a free copy of my book, Digging Deep:Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening and my 3 part online course, click on HERE.

And in honor of Thanksgiving, I’ve priced the e-book version of Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening on Kindle for only .99. The price will never be this low again so grab it while you can!!