The idea behind a mailbox garden is to bring eye-catching color to the base of your mailbox, lamp post, or bird house pole. If planned properly, this garden should be able to cheerfully greet visitors season after season. For a truly spectacular garden, make sure to include plants with flowers that bloom at different seasons, cover the entire color spectrum and/or have interesting foliage or year-round interest.

It takes some pretty tough plants to put up with the harsh growing conditions surrounding a street-side mailbox. Because most mailbox locations are surrounded by pavement, this special garden takes plants that thrive in full sun and can tolerate heat and drought.

With the exception of perhaps one taller focal plant or a vine that wraps around the post, most plants in a mailbox garden should be varieties that stay under 2' in height. This way you don't block the view of your home or interfere with backing out of the driveway.

Before planting, prepare the area. Shape the bed, remove any existing weeds or sod, then dig down at least 6-8 inches and turn over the soil, mixing in a soil amendment, such as Kellogg Amend, 50/50 with the existing soil. Add a starter fertilizer to the entire area. This will mix into the soil when you plant your plants.

Remember, it takes 3-4 months for most plants to get established. For best results, water regularly and feed every few months during the growing season with a good flower food, such as Gro-Power Flower N Bloom 3-12-12, and your plants will reward you with long-lasting beauty.

We have a great selection of plants perfect for mailbox gardens. Stop by for a visit and one of our staff of nursery professionals will be happy to help you make your selections.

Blooming from mid-spring through early fall, it is particularly prized for its ability to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and songbirds. The most popular species originally hails from China, but buddleias are now grown throughout the United States.

Butterfly bushes are valued for their clusters of beautiful, tubular-shaped flowers. The blossoms come in a variety of colors including white, pink, red, blue, purple, orange or yellow flowers produced by different species and cultivars. Adding to their attraction is the fact that they are rich in nectar and often strongly scented.

The taller varieties add the most value to the garden when they are grown as a background shrub or as part of a mixed border, while the dwarf varieties look great as focal plants or as part of a colorful perennial bed. Butterfly bushes prefer to be planted in full sun locations but can tolerate partial shade if needed. They go completely dormant in the winter in colder areas but can remain semi-evergreen in warmer climates.

The butterfly bush is a fairly low maintenance shrub. Once established it can become fairly drought tolerant and needs only to be fed with an all purpose plant food once in spring and summer. It can be pruned back hard every spring if needed; this will produce a denser and more rounded shrub.

Every garden can use a few--and your birds and butterflies will thank you too!

We’ve been discussing which veggies to grow, and the best time to plant them, but we’re now finding ourselves at the time of year when our initial efforts are beginning to pay off, and the nascent gardener may be feeling a bit overwhelmed as the tiny seeds, or starter plants, that were placed in the carefully amended soil a few weeks ago are now becoming big plants that obviously need help to remain upright! We’re here to offer suggestions that not only serve a functional purpose, they are also attractive additions to your vegetable garden.

Experienced gardeners may have included heavy supports prior to planting in anticipation of their garden’s fruition, but take heart; there are many ways to support your growing plants. Stakes can be bought in many heights from the garden center. Lightweight trellises make vining vegetables a vertically visual delight, while also providing a privacy screen. Some vining veggies have tendrils (also known as "holdfasts") that wind around the support you’ve provided, thus supporting their stem’s weight. Other plants will need your assistance; carefully wind the vines and stalks around the supports as they grow, loosely tying them in place with twine, plastic-coated ties, or stretchy plastic plant tape. Whichever you use, remember to allow for flexibility as your plant grows.

Let’s talk now about what is probably the single most popular vegetable to plant, the tomato. If you’ve done a large planting, place sturdy 4 by 4 supports in the ground. Run a 9-gauge wire from anchors beyond each end over the top and ensure that it’s tight. Run twine from the base of each plant up to the wire, and tie the stems to grow up the wire. This is an English-style trellis known as the Long Row. This method can also be applied to a smaller scale planting; it provides excellent air circulation for your plants.

A quadrapod is similar to the methods used in the Far East and the Caribbean. Simply lash four ¾ inch, 8 foot long bamboo stakes together at the top with twine. Set the canes 2 feet apart in every direction and then lean them together. This method is simple to build, easy to break down in the autumn, and adaptable to both large and small tomato gardens.

One of the most common supports for your tomatoes is tomato cages. These are best used for individual plants in small-space gardens. Choose a wire cage at least 4 feet tall, measured from the bottom ring. Center the cage on your young tomato plant, and carefully push the wire prongs into the soil until the bottom ring is about 4 inches above the soil. Hammer three stakes alongside the cage, parallel with the wire uprights. Then secure the stakes to the wire uprights with wire ties. Remember to wear heavy gloves, or even better, to use pliers to attach the ties, so as to avoid any finger cuts!

The stakes lend added support to the wire cage, thus better supporting your plant as it grows. If vines begin to extend outside of the cage, train them back into its center, tying them, or pruning the excess growth. Tomato cages are inexpensive, readily available at the garden center, and are best for determinate varieties.

Here's a fun fact; if you are growing heavy fruit such as pumpkin or winter squash, use solid vertical supports--in appreciation, the plants will develop thick, strong stems that are self-supporting. You can further aid them by loosely wrapping the fruit in a stretch nylon net, tying the net to the supports. Visitors to your garden will love seeing your melons, gourds, and squash just dangling in mid-air from your supporting frames!

Another plus? Vertical supports hold vines above the soil’s moisture, keeping burrowing and crawling insects at bay, along with any fungal disease spores. And by growing vertically, you’re giving yourself more space in which to plant.

Let your creativity loose when it comes to providing support for your vegetable garden; and always remember that our garden center experts are here to advise you every step of the way to a happier, healthier way of life.

When planning a landscape, it's important to look at the whole area at once. Most of us tend to focus on one area and miss others. Perhaps the most overlooked area in landscaping is the area by the curb--or between the sidewalk and the curb. It is the first area visitors (and potential buyers) see, yet often it receives the least thought and attention in the garden. Landscaping this area can also be more challenging because of heavy foot traffic, reflective heat from the street (and the sidewalk, if you have one) unique water needs, and city codes.

Many times homeowners opt to just fill these areas in with lawn, but turf in a curb area does little to add any visual appeal, requires weekly maintenance, and uses a lot of water. With a little planning, grass can be replaced with sturdy ground cover plants and/or drought tolerant shrubs, and then finished off with decorative mulch.

It's important to use mostly low mounding plants so you don't obscure the view of your home. This also allows small children to be better aware of traffic. You might choose dwarf versions of barberry, breath of heaven, cotoneaster, escallonia, germander, holly, Indian hawthorn, juniper, potentilla, spirea and weigela.

To add some texture and interest to the area, consider grassy-textured plants such as dwarf Lily of the Nile, daylilies, fortnight lily, dwarf New Zealand Flax or Mexican feather grass. If more color is desired, add hardy perennials such as cranesbill, gaura, lamb's ears, lavender, meadow sage and yarrow.

Complete the design with hardy, sun-loving groundcover like gazania, ornamental strawberry, trailing lantana, dwarf heavenly bamboo, or creeping thyme. To help get all of your plants established faster and to give the area a finished look, top-dress with a decorative mulch. This will also help keep the ground moist longer between each watering.

Curb areas don't have to be difficult and they certainly don't have to be boring. Give your curb the attention it deserves and make it the first thing people notice about your home.

Plant warm-season lawns and tall fescue this month. St. Augustine, Bermuda, and dichondra get off to a fast start when planted in May. (Hold off until June to plant zoysia). Salt-tolerant Adalayd grass can also be planted this month. It's too late to plant most cool-season grasses from seed, but tall fescues can be planted from sod. (Note that tall fescues use much more water than Bermuda or zoysia.)

Lawns can be planted in several ways: sown from seeds, plugged in from flats, or rolled out from sod like an instant carpet. Bermuda, zoysia, and Adalayd can also be planted from stolons. Whichever method you use, be sure to prepare the ground properly. Before beginning, decide whether to plant a warm- or cool-season lawn and choose a variety appropriate for your lawn needs.

Select the best variety for you. When you research grass types be sure to consult with successful neighborhood gardeners and the University of California Cooperative Extension Office. Consider these factors: St. Augustine is better adapted to shade than other lawn grasses but needs a lot of water. Dichondra is best used as a design element in small areas only. If you live close to a Bermuda golf course it will seed itself eventually into any cool-season lawn, making it look ratty. To minimize this, plant a hybrid or selected strain of Bermuda for your own lawn in the first place. As mentioned before, don't plant such troublemakers as bentgrass or Kentucky bluegrass--they'll die in the first drought. Common Bermuda and Santa Ana hybrid Bermuda grass are the two most drought-resistant choices.

Fertilize lawns. Continue to feed warm-season grasses with Dr. Earth Super Natural Lawn Fertilizer. this month, and in coastal zones apply fertilizer to cool-season lawns once more this month at the same rate as you have used during the winter. But in interior zones stop feeding cool-season lawns now, other than an occasional light application (one-fourth to one-half the normal dosage) applied only when necessary to maintain a healthy green color. Tests done by the University of California Division of Agriculture show that heavy feeding of cool-season grasses such as ryegrass, bluegrass, and fescue during the warm season of the year subjects them to unnecessary stress.

Check dichondra for flea beetles, and control them before they cause damage. These tiny black 1/25 inch long insects skeletonize leaves and cause brown areas that often are confused with dry spots or fertilizer burn. To look for the culprits get down on your hands and knees, put a piece of white paper on the lawn, and tap it. The beetles will jump on top and you'll be able to see them. Control them with a pesticide-containing fertilizer or spray with a product containing diazinon or chlorpyrifos.

Tomato hornworms are the larvae of a large sphinx moth that is about the size of a hummingbird. In spring the moth lays eggs on the underside of tomato (and related plants like pepper and eggplant) leaves. Although the hornworms are quite small when they first emerge, they are big eaters (of leaves) and grow up quickly. Usually, you won't even discover this fellow until it is large--about 2 inches long and fat! They are quite distinctive, actually handsome with their diagonal white stripes and horns on the rear.

Don't be afraid of the hornworms. They look more frightening than they are. They don't bite or sting, just try to look big and ferocious. You can easily handpick to remove from your plants and just throw them away. When they are younger and smaller, use Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) as an effective management technique.

Some gardeners have a different approach to the tomato hornworm. While handpicking a hornworm, look to see if you find little white cocoons attached to its back. If you do see this, that cocoon is a pupating braconid wasp, which is a garden-friend predator. Capture the hornworm and keep it (or all of them) in a container, feeding them tomato leaves. You are creating a nursery for the braconid wasps that can then be released into your garden! These wasps will help control the hornworm population.

Other natural predators are birds and the larvae of the green lacewing. Plant your gardens to create an inviting habitat for all of these natural predators, and you'll control this voracious eater of your tomato leaves. Luckily, hornworms don't eat the tomato!

How deep should I plant my new plants?

Answer:

Most plants will benefit from being planted with the top of the root ball at the existing soil level--not the top of the container it came from.

If a plant is installed too high, it will dry out faster, scalding the top of the root ball and stressing the plant out to the point of requiring therapy and potentially expensive medication. Just think how you would feel if the top of your feet were scalded--and you'll understand how important this is.

On the other hand, installing a plant too deep can slowly rot the roots and eventually kill the plant. Most plants that are planted too deep will have a dark soil ring stain around the base of the trunk or crown of the plant. The roots will also emit a most malodorous aroma that no amount of antiperspirant can remedy. It's what the plant would call "payback" for planting it too deep. (Please note: there are some exceptions, such as tomatoes, that prefer being planted deeply.)