An undeniably beautiful shrub in any season, mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) explodes into bloom in late spring to early summer. One of our nation’s greatest contributions to the botanical world, mountain laurels possesses beautiful, shiny, deep green foliage.

Do you work all day in an office, on the road or even in the garden, but never have the time to enjoy the beautiful plants you spend time nurturing? Evening gardens are meant to help us relax, encourage savoring a refreshing evening and wrap us in their brilliance, and one of the best ways to enhance your nighttime garden is with the right lighting to make it shine even in the darkness.

So, you’ve just installed a water garden and you’re wondering how to landscape around it without looking like the pond was a mistake or haphazard addition to your yard. A pond looks best if it appears to “belong” in your landscape.

Hydrangeas and are widely acclaimed for their large, showy blossoms that lend fabulous color to gardens from mid- to late summer. Their luxuriant dark green foliage offers a striking background to their large round or smooth blossoms.

You can enjoy much more than plants in your garden every evening and into the night, and in fact the right accessories can beautifully enhance your garden even as twilight falls. Consider these stunning accessories and accents to turn your daytime garden into a nighttime paradise.

Smoketree, the common name for the genus Cotinus, aptly describes the hazy, smoky look of the flowers sported by this fabulous plant. Best described as a deciduous large shrub or small tree, Cotinus boasts species with varying heights, unique summer flowers, outstanding fall color and low maintenance requirements, all features that can make it an excellent addition to your landscape.

Tall or short, red, pink, purple, blue, white and shades in between, few shrubs provide the versatility of hydrangeas. Generations of gardeners have loved and designed their gardens using these showy shrubs as summer privacy screens, landscape focal points and beautiful cut flowers. Now, thanks to new hydrangea introductions, there are even more ways to use them.

Adding structure and an aspect of year-round permanence to any yard, small shrubs are excellent for enhancing the perennial border. Thought of as the spine and bones of good landscaping, small shrubs hold the soft body of flowers together and add consistency between areas.

Ornamental Grasses lend a unique dimension to any landscape with their texture, sound, motion and architecture. By planting ornamental grasses, you can also add multi-seasonal excitement to your landscape.

There’s an unfounded rumor that raspberries are difficult to prune. This isn’t true if you understand the type of raspberry in your garden. Summer-bearing raspberries produce only one harvest per year while everbearing, or fall-bearing, raspberries can produce two harvests.