Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Caleb Melchior
Snowflake Geranium Appeals with Its Large, Fragrant Leaves
Imagine a tiny greenhouse in winter. Dust-gray skies loom outside, a chill wind blusters around the structure’s fragile panes. Inside, everything is moist and fragrant and warm. Orderly rows of small terra-cotta pots line the walls. Each one holds an individual scented geranium. Every variety has a different leaf form—this one is heavily furred, others are scratchy and skinny-lobed, others are puckered, pleated, frilled and almost crispy to the touch. Every variety has a different fragrance.
Add Spice to the Summer Garden
Contemporary gardeners may not likely journey into the remote hillsides of Nepal, but we can create romantic versions of such wilds in our own gardens. Himalayan spring-blooming flora is well represented in many American gardens, with our abundance of saucer magnolias (Magnolia xsoulangeana), Sikkim rhododendron and primroses (Primula). But to really replicate the full lushness of those landscapes, we need plants for late-summer excitement as well.
Ginger Lilies Add Spice to the Summer Garden
“There’s no adventure anymore.” That’s the text message I received the other day. A friend was reading about the late-Victorian plant explorers, with their treks above rushing waterfalls to rustle up rare magnolias and their secret shimmies into monastery gardens to nab precious tree-peony seeds. Contemporary gardeners may not likely journey into the remote hillsides of Nepal, but we can create romantic versions of such wilds in our own gardens.
Pointers for Placing Plants with Strong Fragrance
Few things bring as much pleasure as the sudden rush of perfume of lilac as you turn the corner of a path, or the woodsy turpentine fragrance the thyme sends up as you kneel weeding between paving stones. Garden fragrances are pleasant enough as happy surprises, but how can a gardener use fragrance more intentionally? In order to understand how to incorporate fragrance as an aspect of garden design, it is essential to know how plants disperse their scent in space and over time.
Pointers for Placing Plants with Strong Fragrance
Few things bring as much pleasure as the sudden rush of perfume of lilac as you turn the corner of a path, or the woodsy turpentine fragrance the thyme sends up as you kneel weeding between paving stones. Garden fragrances are pleasant enough as happy surprises, but how can a gardener use fragrance more intentionally? In order to understand how to incorporate fragrance as an aspect of garden design, it is essential to know how plants disperse their scent in space and over time.
Earth-Kind Roses Are Beautiful and Low-Maintenance
Roses are often thought of as demanding and difficult to grow. To contradict this notion, the Texas AgriLife Extension Service developed the Earth-Kind rose trials. The trials are designed to recognize varieties that thrive with little help from their owners and without harmful chemicals. Earth-Kind roses are not treated with pesticides or chemical fertilizers and receive no protection during winter.
Perennials That Die Back Beautifully
As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases made through affiliate links. Back when herbaceous perennial plantings were the monopoly of the wealthy and luxuriantly post-employed, gardeners sheared everything in the autumn, leaving the garden clean and bare—and missing out on the beautiful death of many plants. At Chicago's Lurie Garden, the perennial planting was designed by Piet Oudolf to wither and winter gracefully. Pictured here in November.
Expand Your Butterfly Garden with Less Common Milkweeds
As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases made through affiliate links. You've probably heard that monarch butterflies are in trouble, and that a good way to support them is to plant swaths of milkweeds (Asclepias), because these plants are the only ones the monarch larvae will eat. Perhaps you've planted some of the three species that are commonly available: orange milkweed (A. tuberosa), common milkweed (A. syriaca) and swamp milkweed (A. incarnata).
Dark-leaved Plants Add Depth to the Garden
Drawings need shadows, music needs bass notes. Similarly, gardens need dark leaves. I'm never one to shy away from a bright plant (or dozen), but I've found that dark foliage adds a depth and definition to planting schemes that you just won't get with anything else. This is particularly true in containers, where every element must be as color saturated as possible.
The cost of poor performance
Mike Fisher demonstrates how the RFID scanner, tag (on post) and app work in tandem in Hibernia Nursery’s inventory management system. Shea Rose Photography New technology can be daunting, especially when it has a reputation as being user-unfriendly. RFID, or radio frequency identification, isn’t new by any means. But it has never reached its potential in the green industry.
E-nnoying
Mike Fisher demonstrates how the RFID scanner, tag (on post) and app work in tandem in Hibernia Nursery’s inventory management system. Shea Rose Photography New technology can be daunting, especially when it has a reputation as being user-unfriendly. RFID, or radio frequency identification, isn’t new by any means. But it has never reached its potential in the green industry.
Horticulture Magazine, March/April 2018 digital edition
You’ll love this issue of Horticulture if: Order the March/April 2018 issue of Horticulture and download it immediately. You’ll find tips and techniques from gardening experts, plant selections that are proven winners, plus page after page of gorgeous garden photography to inspire you.
Fresh Clips: Grow Aloysia Virgata, the Baby Powder Plant
• Aloysia virgata • Unlike lemon verbena (A. triphylla), which smells like citrus, almond verbena smells like baby powder. We frequently encounter products that attempt to mimic natural fragrances, but it’s highly unusual to find a plant that smells like a household product. Enter almond verbena. It smells strongly and unmistakably of baby powder. All About Aloysia Virgata or Almond Verbena Driving home from the nursery with the blooming plant, I found the scent to be almost overpoweringly sweet.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Caleb
Contact Caleb, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack