Heart’s racing, hands shaking, you reach for the doorknob. The hinge creaks. Cobwebs stretch and snap as a widening crack of light seeps in, crawling along the floor and up the back wall to illuminate something you thought you had long since forgotten, something you wished would just disappear. But there it sits, metallic teeth…

“It’s taking over,” exclaims another exasperated homeowner, examining their bumper crop of spreading perennials. “It’s crowding everything else out” and “I’ll be pulling this up for weeks.” Sound familiar? I talk with hundreds of homeowners every year during on-site landscape consultations, and one of the most common issues people look for help on is controlling…

Fall garden clean-up isn’t my favorite chore, but it’s something that can be done in a bare-minimum way or more thoroughly. I know some gardeners like to cut down every perennial and pull every annual and practically vacuum their beds, but I think it’s a good idea to leave some perennials untouched for winter interest….