Monterey cypress
Cupressus macrocarpa Hartw.                                     
Cypress family (Cupressaceae)
Post-Cook introduction
Medium-sized to large introduced aromatic evergreen
tree with small scalelike leaves. Trunk straight, to 110 ft
(34 m) high and commonly 21⁄2 ft (0.8 m) in diameter,
with conical or spreading crown. Bark dark gray, rough,
thick, furrowed into flat ridges. Inner bark light brown
with outer dark brown layer, slightly bitter, resinous.
Twigs [...]

Description: “Medium-sized tree (sometimes very large in cultivation), pyramidal at first, with broad crown when mature. Bark thick, reddish brown beneath, often becoming whitish on surface. Adult foliage in dense, dark green masses, aromatic when bruised; branchlets systems not flattened. 1-3-year shoots terete, reddish brown, with leaves appressed except [...]

Exquisitely Detailed, Amazingly Lifelike
If you love flowers and you’re looking for a decorative element that fuses high fashion and high color, silk orchids from SilkFlowers.com are a wonderful addition to any home. Our silk orchids feature exacting attention to detail and are incredibly lifelike. And there are many ways to bring the beauty of silk [...]

Having plants in your home can be a great way to add life and nature to every room and decor style. However, caring for and maintaining those plants can be expensive and time consuming. With a silk plant, you not only get the beauty of a live plant, but you don’t have to worry about [...]

When buying silk flowers, I like to look for the best quality and price available.  Although when an item is designed by artisans, one knows it is a labor of love.  So when [...]

Glorious beauty! As a little girl, my fantasy was to be surrounded by gorgeous, cheerful, fresh flowers. I just knew my home would have flowers everywhere – huge vases filled with buds and blooms of every color [...]

On this spring afternoon one corner of our vegetable garden is dominated by a clump of volunteer coriander, from seed I ‘missed’ last year. The opposite corner is marked by a bright spray of canary yellow broccoli flowers, from a few side shoots we left in place when we harvested the crop. A few feet [...]

The Rose Bug. - “The Rose-chafer, or Rose-bug, as it is more commonly and incorrectly called, is also a diurnal insect. It is the Melolontha subspinota of Fabricius, by whom it was first described, and belongs to the modern genus Macrodactylus of Latreille. Common as this insect is in the vicinity of Boston, it is, [...]

Beneficial Garden Insects
Beneficial insects will help to keep your garden free of harmful pests and reduce the need for much of the use of insecticides in the home garden.
Encourage beneficial insects to visit your garden by growing plants and flowers which provide food and a home for them. You an also purchase many good [...]

There are many things you can do with the flowers from your garden so that you can enjoy them a little longer. Drying flowers is a wonderful way, and you can use your dried flowers in various arrangements. You can also eat some of your flowers as well! This article will explain the steps to [...]

Yellow Wedding Flowers by Price and Season
A bride who has her heart set on yellow wedding flowers should consider the season in which her wedding will take place, before selecting a type of flower. In addition to the many meanings associated with yellow wedding flowers, the flower itself can symbolize a time of year.
Brides can [...]

Determine Which Flowers Come in Pink and May Be in the Wedding Budget
One of the big decisions that any betrothed couple must make for their wedding has to do with colors. What color dresses? What color flowers? With the latter there are so many options available and one of the colors of choice is pink. [...]

Can’t Find Seasonal Flowers to Fit Your Wedding Plans? Take a Look!
If you’re planning on having a red accent color in your wedding, as I am, you are going to need to find the perfect flowers for your special day! Here are some suggestions on popular red flowers, broken down by season!
There are certain [...]

If flowers could talk, what would they say? What does their language consist of? Well, we will probably never know. However, we can know what we think they are saying. Here are just a few of the things you can say when you give flowers as a gift.
During the Victorian era, people gave bundles of [...]

When choosing flowers for our wedding, we basically choose any flower whose color fits ours wedding colors without knowing the meaning of that particular flower. On average, most of use aren’t superstitious and doesn’t think that the type of flower we choose will predict the outcome of our marriages. I am one of those people. [...]

There are many options to choose from for centerpieces, however wedding flowers centerpieces are probably the most popular. There are many great flower choices regardless of the season of your wedding.
To get you started, listed below are 6 hints to consider when thinking about flower centerpieces.
- Set a budget for your wedding flowers centerpieces. Flowers [...]

Because I live in Georgia, writing this article about annual fall flowers should be easy as pie for me. I have a few plants that come to mind automatically, but then I start thinking…maybe I should check out some places in town to see if there’s anything new out there (I know what you’re thinking). [...]

Wedding flowers are one of the essential parts of a wedding, and silk wedding flowers are a great way to make sure you have great flowers at your wedding without breaking your budget. Why would you buy silk wedding flowers instead of real ones?
Of course the head always says real flowers. It’s traditional, it’s real, [...]

Everyone loves having fresh flowers in their home to bring a little cheerfulness into their day, but has the high price of fresh cut flowers sent you down the artificial plant route? The following are some great tips that will keep your flowers healthy longer and you’ll never have an empty vase again.
Water, water, water
Make [...]

1. Make sure that your vase is clean – dirty vases encourage bacteria, and bacteria kills flowers
2. Use fresh lukewarm water and add the supplied flower food – lukewarm water has less oxygen and helps prevent bubbles which can block up the stem and hinder water uptake.  The flower food supplied will help to kill [...]

Summer will be over before we know it, so it’s time to prepare your flowers for the fall. Here is a very informative article about how to get the most from your flowers by Kelly Heidbreder from The Toledo Blade:
I always thought my grandma was talking about me when she said “I’ll give you a [...]

It’s time we started showing some respect and gratitude for the underappreciated earthworm and his boy back-up band, fungi & bacteria. They are the true humble heroes and workhorses who do the necessary dirty work to keep your soil full of nutrients.
It’s time we started showing some respect and gratitude for the underappreciated earthworm [...]

Drying flowers is an age old tradition to preserve memories and create a beautiful rustic look. The tradition of drying flowers is not taken lightly and the possibilities are endless to the arrangements you can create with dried flowers. To preserve these memories you only need a little patience and a few items.
Once your flowers [...]

Now that it’s starting to heat up, the color in my garden is fading fast. I was wondering if there is any way to keep perennials blooming for a longer period during the summer.
An easy way to keep your yard filled with color during the warmer months of the growing season is to deadhead. As [...]

When it comes to flowers, Weddings are one of the largest events.  More flowers are used on a single wedding day than any other day of the year.  Weddings are big occasions for everyone involved; from the bride all the way down to the caterer - and the flowers are no exception.  The flowers are [...]

“ I just wanted you to know that I am so very happy with all of the arrangements I have had you send, over this entire year. Thank you so much for keeping the arrangements so close to the pictures I chose. This last one to my Aunt where I requested the angel , was perfect. [...]

Yellow Fall Mum Pot

Fall mum pots are outdoors everywhere after about mid September every year.
Fall is the natural blooming period for these garden variety mum plants. The plants have a vegetative period after planting that is normally allowed to proceed until the plants are about 6 inches tall.
To produce a multi bloomed plant like this [...]

The Christmas Poinsettia
Poinsettia have become the plant of choice for the Christmas season.  These colorful Christmas plants are sold everywhere from high quality florists to chain stores. The quality and price differential is huge but there is a poinsettia for everyone. It hard to miss this Christmas plant no matter where you go.
Companies send poinsettia as [...]

Christmas flowers are unique to the holiday season, and apart from the Christmas tree they are one of the few organic items that indicate the holidays are here once more. Christmas flowers bring the soft gentle fragrance of the holiday season into your home. There are many varieties to choose from and each Christmas flower [...]

The contrasting colours in this container of annuals make for a bright and cheery showpiece.

Coleus ‘Amora’ is the focal point of this planting and in addition to being pretty spectacular itself, the hybrid’s butter-coloured leaves with green edges form a wonderful background for the purplish-blue petunia and the coral-red blooms of the verbena.
Osteospermum adds [...]