The striking blue flowers, called commonly Blue Daze, are vibrant in this blue-ribbon perennial from Proven Winners. It is extremely weather tolerant in spring, summer, and fall, and will survive short periods of temperatures near freezing. It’s a must have for summer and patriotic gardens.
Better Lawns and Gardens
Better Lawns and Gardens Hour 1 – Coming to you from the Summit Responsible Solutions Studios. Garden expert and host, Teresa Watkins is joined by Quality Green Specialists Nursery owner, Dana Venrick to talk about excellent trees for Father’s Day gifts. Teresa’ Top Five Pieces of Garden Art. What to plant in June in your landscape. Garden questions include staghorn fern fell – what to do? Can you grow tomatoes in summer in Florida, using moss from trees as mulch, podocarpus declining, is there an olive variety that is pitted and filled with pimento cheese, and more. https://bit.ly/4diIsZH
Better Lawns and Gardens Hour 2 – Coming to you from the Summit Responsible Solutions Studios. June is National Rose Month! Roses grow well in Florida if they are the right ones. Teresa provides rose care selection, care, and her favorite roses. Teresa’s Dirty Word of the Day is Caliper and DBH. Garden topics and questions include mulberry not looking good, hibiscus dropping leaves, and propagation, and more. https://bit.ly/4diIsZH
Sign up for Teresa’s monthly gardening newsletter, “In Your Backyard” where you can read Teresa’s what to do in your landscape tips, Landscape Malpractice: How to know when to fire your landscaper,” Teresa’s Design Tips; and more. https://bit.ly/2YRBbsT
Art in Bloom Garden Tours Buffalo Garden Walk and Niagara Falls, Canada, The Gardens of Scotland, and The Gardens and Grandeur of the Hudson River Valley. Come join Teresa on incredible garden tours! https://bit.ly/4fe9m62
Graphic credit: Teresa Watkins,
Listen every Saturdays from 7am - 9am EST on WFLA- Orlando. Call in with your garden questions and text messages on 1-888.455.2867 and 23680, Miss the live broadcast? Listen on Audioboom podcast 24/7. https://bit.ly/3c1f5x7
Join me on Facebook, Instagram.
#WFLF #WFLA #FNN #WNDB #BetterLawns #gardening #Florida #planting #gardeninglife #radio #southflorida #northflorida #centralflorida #Deland #SHE #Orlando #Sarasota #Miami #FortLauderdale #podcast #syndicated #BLGradio #WRLN #WiOD #gardening #SummitResponsibleSolutions #QualityGreenSpecialists #BlackKow #gardensonInstagram
The Banquet Hall Ruins
Sudeley Castle and Gardens. Join us on sublime garden tours at www.artinbloomgardentours.com.
#gardentours #gardens #gardenadventures #gardensofInstagram #tours #travel #artinbloom #rousham #roses #trellis #botanicalgardens #vines #landscapedesign #natural #landscapes #gardendesign #inspiration #flowers #plants #england #uk #privategardens #bordergardens #castle #Sudeley
Variegated Dogwood, Cornus alba ‘Variegata’ Zone 2 - 8
Fatsia japonica ‘Spider’s Web’ Zone 7b - 10b
Giant Double Begonia, Begonhia spp. Zone 9 - 10
Variegated Liy of the Nile, Agapanthus praecox ssp orientalis 'Variegata Zone 7 - 10
Ornamental Allium, Allium aflatunense, Zone 7 - 10
Flowers that are in bold can be planted in Florida. Alliums must be planted in the Fall.
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
~ Jane Austen
“Mansfield Park”, 1814, p. 85
Our spring has been rough. Summertime temperatures teasingly near the 90’s with nary a drop of rainfall last month. Usually in April, Central Florida receives 3.78 inches of rain, but last month, Orlando only received .37 inches. Since the beginning of 2025, our rainfall is down 7 inches for the year. Fortunately, this month, in the first two weeks of May, we should catch up with the rainfall. We can hope for 6” to 7” just this week.
What does drought stress look like in the landscape?
Drought stressed blueberries, podocarpus, and viburnum.
So what should you do if you find your shrubs?
Handwater your plants on the days you cannot irrigate. Make sure you saturate rootball.
Make sure irrigation system is hitting the base of the plant. Remember its the rootball that needs water, not the leaves.
Hold off on fertilizing till rains arrive.
Cut the brown fronds or foliage out.
Do not spray pesticides.
Two ways to help prevent drought-stress in Spring and WInter:
Right Plant, Right Place based on your soil conditions, either xeric, mesic, or hydric soils.
Add organic amendments to your soil. One bag of topsoil or compost, one bag of peat, and one bag of manure for every 10 square feet of area.
Here is a great chart for building healthy Soil with organic amendments:
Find out how to have a great landscape in May, despite the heat and lack of rain. Check it out!
In April, our Art in Bloom Garden Tour traveled to Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. We visited hidden gardens in Savannah, toured historic homes and plantations, learned how to propagate beautiful irises, and enjoyed a delicious cooking lesson of classic Southern cuisine, and dining in style with a night dinner cruise! Don’t miss another garden adventure. Go to Art in Bloom Garden Tours! Tony and I would love to have you join us!
Lizzie’s showing off her amaryllis and warns about being a jive turkey! Her life experience with a bird in the hand and two in the bushes is real. Lizzie talks turkey in her post this month.
Savannah and Charleston have beautiful, shade-tolerant pocket gardens in nearly every landscape. They use dwarf mondo grass as turf, Confederate jasmine on wrought iron fences, and this fun ornamental plant survives Zone 7 winters, and Zone 11 hot temperatures. My Plant of the Month also has yellow Asteraceae flowers. In the shade! Find out what it is and try it! Its architectural foliage is perfect for elegant, whimsical, or classic gardens.
When I go to the theme parks, I admire their instant landscapes that provide that ‘Wow’ factor around every corner. The designs, plant selections, and colors are inspiring. But usually, the theme park attraction landscapes are used as seasonal plantings and expensive. They are designed to be short-term, and believe me; we pay for it in every ticket. City and county landscapes on the other hand, should be examples of sustainable landscapes. My Landscape Malpractice this month was beautiful but not sustainable or cheap, and the location was on a rarely used avenue. It will be interesting to watch it over the next year and see how these new hybrid perennials will do.
My design tip this month is a creative exercise for a landscape that has great bones and potential. Let me know what you would do with an empty slate landscape with a beautiful fountain.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who are Moms! Moms with children, Stepmoms, Moms of fur babies and reptiles, Frat Moms, and teachers who serve as Moms in the classroom. My Mom loved roses. Our family consisted of six children in nine years, so she was running from morning till night. She only had one rose bush at a time. But it was always a beautiful rose when it bloomed. Great memories.
If you don’t want to get up early to listen to Better Lawns and Gardens, you can always listen to our podcast here.
Take it easy this month in the landscape, try not to stress out your lawn with excessive chemical treatments. The rainy season will be here shortly.
City beautification is an important part of a community’s aesthetics. Beautiful garden beds in medians, along main thoroughfares, and streets add to the ambiance and sense of place in a city. Attractive municipal landscapes can help educate the city’s residents and provide support for environmental programs, like “protecting and providing resources for pollinators”. Correct landscape municipal garden beds can also be inspirational
At first when I turned onto this street and saw the bright explosion of this colorful red and orange groundcover. I was pleased and appreciated the effort. As I drove down the street though, it was evident that these landscape beds were not sustainable and will eventually be chaotic, likely to stress, and become high maintenance. And the cost was on an attraction park’s instant landscape level, meaning very tightly packed and 2x the cost and labor necessary. What’s wrong?
The groundcover plants, Lantana camera. ‘Bloomify Red’ were planted two 1-gallon plants every foot in the 12” wide bed. The three individual beds measured 750’ in length with a total amount of plants numbering approximately 800+ plants.
The problem is that each of these plants will get to be 11: wide and 10” tall. This instant landscape has double the number of plants it actually needs. To be sustainable, there is only room for 450 - 500 plants.
When assessing plants for your landscape bed, space plants according to their mature width, not the initial size when plants are installed. I’ll be watching this “Bloomify Red” lantana lining this street to see how the flowers do, how many survive, and how they look after a year. 7
Source: Deng, Zhanao, and Sandra Barbour Wilson. ““BloomifyTM Red” and “BloomifyTM Rose”, Two Infertile Lantana Camara Cultivars for Production and Use in Florida.” EDIS, vol. 2017, no. 5, 30 Oct. 2017, edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP544, https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-ep544-2017. Accessed April 2025.
In my daily travels, I see yards that have potential. Would I love to have a crack at designing this landscape! Great bones, easy slope, full sun, and wonderful accoutrements, like a Spanish tile roof, water fountain, statues, and plants that could enhance the Mediterranean-style home. But in its current state, the encoutrements are not positioned well around the home. The property is a large enough to expand the landscape with a classic pergola that welcomes guests graciously into their home. What would I do?
Move the water fountain closer to the home.
Add and transplant the bougainvillea.
Add a flagstone patio. Install a rectangular pergola that runs lengthway i
Add three 6’ x 6’ or 10’ x 10’ cement paver steps where each one goes down 8” down the slope with smaller steps further down the slope to road. On each side of three pavers plant perennial lantana or drift roses.
Transplant Yucca to succulent and agave landscape bed in front of house on each side.
Add 4’ x 2’ cement pavers to side of house.
Add Live oak and Olive trees on sides of front yard.
My design incorporates Florida-friendly principles with low-maintenance plants. My plan could be done in phases. I would plant the oak and olive tree first. Install the flagstone pathway, then move the water fountain. Transplant the yucca, add the arbor, transplant the bougainvillea, then add the pergola and walkway, finally add the succulent and agave landscape beds. Remember to retrofit the irrigation system.
Now, how would you design the yard to utilize the immense sloped front yard and create a welcoming landscaped entrance?
A warning and a sad lesson if you are thinking of purchasing a turkey poult.
Broad breasted turkeys are not suitable as lifetime pets. They are for meat production due to their rapid growth and large size. Once they reach 14 to 18 weeks of age, it's crucial to butcher them to avoid health, mobility issues and self-inflicted injuries.
On a positive note. My onions are thriving and are ready to be harvested and my Amaryllis ‘Sunshine Superstar’ Teresa gave me last year has survived! It has produced the most beautiful blooms (after I killed it 3x).
Updates through “Lizzie Said What” Facebook and Instagram social media. Remember, life can be a joyful journey. Enjoying all moments is up to YOU!
