A tree or a shrub can create a delightful focal point in your patio garden design.

Many of our gardens have at least one specimen plant, usually a tree but sometimes a shrub. A specimen plant is one that is eye-catching, beautiful, often architectural in form, and can stand alone in a yard or garden. Such specimen plants do not only have to reside in the ground. You can bring one or more onto your patios, decks or balconies and create the same visual effect.

Many smaller scale patio trees are absolutely wonderful specimens, and they can remain perfectly happy living in a container. Even if you don't have a backyard, you can still have a tree on your patio.

Also, many people forget to consider shrubs for their containers. Many of our shrubs are just as happy and healthy in a container as in the ground. How simple it is to bring foliage and flower color into your patio gardens! Just pick your favorite shrub and design your patio garden around its color and form.

And you know what else is great? You can prune many shrubs into an open tree form, creating a beautiful specimen piece. They are beautiful in an open graceful form, like an oriental painting.

Now, you may be tempted to plant flowers at the base of your tree. They will add color but their roots will compete with the root system space of your new tree or shrub. Instead, try mulching using colored landscape glass, stones in your favorite colors and textures, or bark.

Of course, container selection is very important--your container must be large enough for the plant's future root system growth. Potting soil and fertilizers are also very important. Select a high quality potting mix, and do not forget to mix in a controlled release fertilizer. Also, remember that moisture retention is frequently a problem with containers, so mix in a soil polymer that will hold on to the moisture between waterings.

We'll match you up with the correct products once you've selected your tree and/or shrub.

Well, what are you waiting for? Summer is here and it is time to redecorate your outdoor living space. So come on in! We'll be looking for you in our tree and shrub section.

Gardening can be a tremendously enjoyable and rewarding activity. But it can also be the source of accidents, many of which can be preventable. Most accidents happen when gardeners take shortcuts, lack the skill or training to do a job properly, ignore potential risks, don't plan well or just have plain old bad luck.

While lawnmower accidents top the list of reported incidents, flowerpots (surprisingly) are the second highest cause of incidents: falling on people, cutting them or being the source of lifting injuries. Most accidents can be avoided just by using a little common sense, and while the ideas below may seem obvious to some, it's amazing how easy it is to forget them when we are wrapped up in a project.

Start by making your garden a safer place to enjoy. Design a garden that reduces the need for high maintenance. Double check for potential tripping hazards such as hoses, sprinklers, irrigation pipes and loose slabs of paving. When designing walkways or patios, incorporate surfaces that provide a good grip and aren't slippery when wet.

Avoid the garden when conditions are slippery. Don't leave sharp tools lying around--and if you are swapping tools, be sure to put the ones not in use with the sharp side (or tines) down. I'm sure we've all seen the cartoons of people stepping on a rake and knocking themselves in the face...but that's only funny in a cartoon.

Don't use electrical tools in wet weather, and make sure to wear safety equipment such as safety goggles, ear plugs and gloves when operating them. Also tuck in loose items of clothing.

Don't plant poisonous plants--or make sure that children and pets can be kept away from them. Lock away chemicals like pesticides and weed killers, or at least store them out of reach of children and pets. Never leave a barbeque unattended while cooking and make sure flames are extinguished before you go inside.

Empty wading pools after your children have finished playing in them. Avoid building a pond until a child is at least five years old and position it where it can be seen from the house. Grow plants around the deeper sides of a pond to help prevent children getting near the edge, or build a fence around it to keep them out.

Make sure ladders are put away or hung up when not in use. Ensure that the ladder is in working condition and the steps are structurally sound before using it. Never leave tools on the platform at the top of the ladder where they can cause injury if the ladder is accidentally bumped. Don't leave clippings on the rungs of the ladder where they might cause you to slip or trip.

When using a ladder, make sure it is tall enough to do the job. Be aware of the safety marks for standing on your ladder, and make sure it has rubber feet for solid footing. Always place your ladder on level, solid, non-slippery ground. Face your work and never lean sideways, overstretch or stand too high on the ladder. Last, keep one hand firmly on the ladder at all times.

Gardening should be fun and shouldn't be dangerous. Taking a few minutes to exercise caution will make gardening a much more enjoyable experience.

Pretty, isn't it? Like grass, only taller, wilder, less restrained. A true sedge and not a grass, it is a nuisance in the lawn--although the occasional plant can show real beauty in the very lack of its nice, neat, small blades.

Howard Garrett, a long-time organic advocate in Texas recently wrote: "There is only one guaranteed, foolproof method to completely kill nut grass (also known as purple nut sedge). First, dig out every tiny piece of the plant including the seeds and nutlets. Make sure you sift the soil through a mesh screen. Dump the collected material on the driveway and burn it. Sweep up all the ashes and seal in a concrete box. Drive to the coast and dump the sealed box 20 miles off shore."

A good sense of humor may be necessary in dealing with nut grass. It grows by spreading sideways, with multiple rootlets searching underground for water. When it finds moisture, the small root turns downward towards the water, sending another tender plant thrusting upward.

The most famous Cyperus family member is papyrus, an aquatic plant from which paper was first made. They both love sopping wet feet, thus are often found in overwatered lawns with poor drainage. Lawn weeds demonstrate that problems most generally exist with the lawn, rather than with the weed; provide the desired environment, and the weeds will come!

Most of us inherited poor lawns, or in search of the perfect suburban expanse, raced to plant our lawns without doing the necessary research. Did we use high-quality, amended soil? Was the grass seed used appropriate to the native conditions, taking into consideration the light and shade conditions? Was the seed an all-perennial blend? Probably not.

Removing the underground "nuts" is the best answer to ridding your lawn of nut grass, but they are recalcitrant, and most home owners will tell you that you can pull out nut grass, stomp it flat, cut it off, or poison the leaves, but with the roots still underground you will never be able to get them all. Regular mowing will at least keep nut grass from seeding, and combined with vigilant hand-pulling, you may eventually eliminate the problem.

Aeration of the turf is probably the most direct method to get some drainage going so that the battle with nut grass has a chance of being won. A core aerator--which pulls out plugs, allowing air to enter your impacted soil-- can be rented from your local garden center or hardware store. Then apply a "weed and feed" to give your grass a good feeding and to prevent the nut grass seeds from germinating.

If you live with ducks, geese and guinea hens, they will unearth and eat the tubers for you! Barring that, experiment with a mechanical weed-puller designed to remove dandelions, like the Weed Hound; hopefully it will pull out those little tubers. Either way, you'll be aerating the ground, and doing everything possible to fight the good fight!

Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State, and his colleagues are fascinated with small things that are huge discoveries in the world of biology. They discovered the world’s smallest frog and lizard species, both found on Caribbean islands, and now Hedges has identified the world’s smallest species of snake; adults are just 3.9 inches in length and are as thin as a spaghetti noodle.

This tiny thread snake, named Leptotyphlops carlae after Hedges’ wife, was found in a tiny forest fragment on the eastern side of Barbados. It is the smallest of the 3,100 known species of snakes. Hedges believes the species to be rare due to its natural habitat's being replaced with buildings; because these animals live on islands, they have nowhere to go when they lose their habitat.

Natural selection prevents these animals from becoming so small, however, that their offspring have nothing upon which to feed; it is believed that this thread snake feeds on the larvae of ants and termites.

Larger species can lay up to 100 eggs in a single clutch, while the smallest of both snakes and other types of animals usually lay only one egg, or give birth to one offspring. The Barbados thread snake produces a single slender egg that occupies a significant portion of the mother’s body, suggesting that natural selection keeps the size of the hatchlings above a critical limit for a greater chance of survival.

Click here to view more Strange Species!

White grubs are damaging pests that begin invading lawns in early spring and again in summer. Grubs do their damage below ground, so the problem often goes undetected until too late. Beetle grubs can turn a fine looking lawn into a patchwork quilt of yellow spots. In addition, birds and other animals will often start digging up your lawn looking for the tasty grubs to feed on.

The grubs are actually larvae of beetles and other insects; most are C-shaped and off-white with a dark head.

There are several types of grubs that are capable of damaging lawns, with two life cycles in a year. When you have grubs, the damaged areas of grass can be easily lifted and many times the grubs can be seen feeding on the edge of the healthy grass in the damaged area.

Natural controls include beneficial nematodes or milky spore (a disease that specifically attacks Japanese beetle grubs), although it takes a number of applications for milky spore to become established in lawns. It's an excellent long-term solution, but doesn't help much right now.

There are chemical products that are very effective for a grub problem, but only at certain times of year.

Answer:

First, your plants won't look happy. (Surprise) The foliage will look dull and lack the luster and intense color of a healthy plant. If it is a blooming plant, it may produce few blooms or none at all. When the condition becomes severe, the plant will drop its leaves from the interior first, eventually working its way to the leaf tips.

The second sure sign is if you are not watering much but the ground stays continually wet or even has moss or algae growing on it. The soil may also have an odor to it. What is important to remember is that every time plants are watered, it lowers the soil temperature by up to twenty degrees. Most plants are stimulated to grow as the soil temperature warms up. If the soil is always wet, the soil temperature will be cooler than the plant desires and it won't grow much.

Poorly draining soil also attracts bad bacteria that can attack the root system, in addition to providing less oxygen for the plant. If you think you have bad drainage, gently lift the plant out of the ground with a shovel--being careful not to damage roots.

If the soil is wet at the bottom of the hole, dig it deeper and back-fill with at least six inches of gravel. Then build a mound that will raise the plant 3-6 inches higher than the surrounding soil level and re-plant so that the top of the root ball is level with the top of the mound. If that doesn't work, you may need to find a different location for the plant.