Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia
Over 40 Years of Growing Gardens and Gardeners
Regional Gardens: Chanticleer Garden
Chanticleer Garden, located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, about a three-hour drive from northern Virginia, is a wonderful destination for gardeners and non-gardeners alike. With its stately buildings, broad lawns, and wide vistas, Chanticleer Garden (Chanticleer) retains the feel of the private estate it once was, while serving as a demonstration garden with more than 5,000 plants.
Leslie Fillmore is proof you don’t have to be born with a trowel in your hand to become a Master Gardener. Her parents don’t garden and the closest she came to gardening growing up was spreading pine needles, a “prickly and hot” task she hated.
December is an ideal time to visit Longwood Gardens, the expansive botanical gardens located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, about 120 miles from Arlington.
Fall is the time to tally up the results of our gardening year. We plan, we plant, we weed, prune, maintain. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Life happens, and sometimes we don’t attend to all the chores we meant to do.
A number of plants native to our region provide continuing value and interest in our gardens into the winter. Their evergreen foliage or interesting bark add beauty to the landscape, while their berries, seeds, or stems provide support to wildlife through the cold months.
THE MYTH: The best way to disinfect pruning tools is to use a bleach solution.
A common and much-debated garden myth is that a chlorine bleach solution is the best way to disinfect pruning tools. So popular, in fact, that a Google search on the topic comes back with 1.7 million!
