BUY IT
Art accents recirculate water
Need a whimsical addition to a backyard or garden pond? Pond Art from the Beckett Garden Accents line includes frogs, dolphins and ducks that recirculate water. Features retail for $12-$19.99. (Pumps to recirculate water aren’t included in the kits.) For more information, visit 888beckett.com or 888-232-5388. Pond Art kits are available at Ace, True Value, and lawn and garden retailers.
READ IT
Hands-on guide, with smudges
One of the first pages of “Waterwise Garden Care: Your Practical Guide” (High Country Gardens Publications, $14.95) is titled “How to Use This Book.” This advice follows: “Get it dirty. Smudge the pages. Write in the margins. Sprinkle it. Wrinkle it. And take it into your garden.” Written by David Salman, owner of High Country Gardens, and edited by Cindy Bellinger, this hands-on guide offers advice on everything from fertilizer to fall planting and creeping thyme lawn to critters. Written in a headline/paragraph format, topics are easy to find and easy to understand.
PLANT IT
Put some fire in autumn
The autumn garden is often overlooked by those who design gardens. A spectacular new Sedum called “Autumn Fire” will add flame to your landscape. Its coral flowers glow in September on plants that are 18 inches high and wide. Plant it with Artemisia “Powis Castle” and Zauschneria “Orange Carpet.”
– Kelly Grummons, Timberline Gardens
TIP
Ancient amaranth is hot again
The hottest new plant on the block is amaranth, which offers edible leaves that rival spinach, a nutritious grain, and leaves and flowers in splashy colors. It’s really not new: Amaranth was a sacred plant to the Aztecs. You probably already know two or three amaranths. Love-lies-bleeding is a large, annual plant grown for its magenta flowers. Joseph’s coat has sedate flowers but leaves of scarlet, gold, and green. Pigweed is a common weed of vegetable gardens because it likes the same rich soils enjoyed by vegetables. With almost 20 percent protein that is rich in lysine, amaranth seeds are more nutritious than those of most other grains. Eat the seeds by popping them or grinding them into flour. Amaranth leaves also are nutritious, being especially rich in calcium, iron, and vitamins A and C.
