Cold Climate Gardening
One of the longest-running garden blogs on the web, Cold Climate Gardening also provides links, book reviews, and plant profiles to help you garden successfully. Freelance author Kathy Purdy shares her gardening insights with you. Come join the conversation!

• Ethel Garden Gloves: Review and Giveaway
  span class=”drop_cap”>I used to think garden gloves were for other people, not me. Oh, sure, I’d put a pair on to deal with brambles, nettles, and wild parsnip, but, on the whole, gloves kept me from feeling the moist earth and from grasping small weeds near precious seedlings. Most gloves didn’t fit me well enough [...]
• All Annuals Planted Now
  Planted 6 Henna coleus and the last 2 Mint Mocha coleus and Midnight Lace vine. All annuals finally in the ground. Weeding next.
• Basil Decimation
  My daughter just went out to her garden and found all her basil seedlings snipped off and left. Not eaten and not even wilted yet.
• Rain Plus Warmth Equals Weeds
  In the past 4 days have gotten almost 3in rain. Now it’s supposed to warm up. I see weeds in my future. Weeds and blooms.
• Planting Coreopis and Rearranged Heucheras
  Planted Redshift coreopsis and rearranged some heucheras last night and weeded here and there. The coreopsis is a trial plant from Skagit Gardens. On the tag it looks like it has a maroon ring around the center, so I planted it near the purple smoke bush. But in the accompanying literature it is pictured with [...]
• Planted Two Shade Lovers
  Just planted Invincibelle hydrangea and Burning Hearts dicentra, beating the rain by minutes. Both are trial plants and quite small. Invincibelle is from Proven Winners and Burning Hearts is from Skagit Gardens. I removed a huge clump of Siberian iris to make room for these, replanting the irises in front of the single white lilac, [...]
• Garden Bloggers Bloom Day June 2009
  To every plant, there is a season, and I find that pretty much the same plants are blooming that were blooming last year and the year before at this time. So even though I’m intoxicated with my peonies and wowed by my poppies, I’ll use this post to showcase some of the other plants that [...]
• Is Your Comment Missing?
  Just found 6 valid comments in my spam catcher. My apologies! If you ever write a comment and it doesn’t show up, please alert me via email or contact form. Sometimes my spam catcher is a little too zealous.
• Uncovered my ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea
  I finally uncovered my ‘Endless Summer’ and ‘Forever&Ever’ hydrangeas. I had discovered that dumping a bunch of dry leaves over them in the fall was sufficient to protect them from the erratic spring freezes that we have. The old branches help hold the mulch in place, and I cut them down in the spring when [...]
• More Annuals Planted and a Bit of Weeding
  Planted 2 King Tut papyrus and 3 Augusta Blue Skies nierembergia, and weeded the front bed where I put the nierembergia.