This Week's Podcast: Try Growing the "Right Plant" with Andrew Keys
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There are plenty of gardeners who love a challenge. When
I travel to the West Coast, I drool over plants that I really can’t grow in my
climate. Of course, I have fallen for some of these plants and try to grow the
“wrong plant in the wrong place.” Those individuals that I place in horticultural
Intensive Care Units usually don’t make it. Do I really have the time and
energy to coddle certain plants, and frankly, is it fair to them?
Our guest this week, Andrew Keys, is a writer and garden
designer who may have a few suggestions for people like me in his new book Why
Grow That, When You Can Grow This? For
example, I have a few citrus plants clinging to life in the indoor garden. But
I also grow a hardy orange outdoors. Now, you cannot have juicy fresh citrus in
Zone 6, but you can have other
beautiful aspects of orange trees by growing Poncirus trifoliata, which blooms in spring [below], has gorgeous
deep green foliage and is loaded with fuzzy yellow fruits in the fall. The
fruits are sour and seedy, but people do use the rind in cocktails and I have
heard of trifoliate orange marmalade.
Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it
presents tough and dependable stalwarts for gardens in all zones. The subtitle
– 255 Extraordinary Alternatives to Everyday Problem Plants says it all.
Learn more at www.andrewkeys.com.
“Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it presents tough and dependable stalwarts for gardens in all zones.”
Definitely agree on this one..