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2/16/11 UPDATE: The Azaleas have been saved (for the moment). As a longtime resident of Washington DC, I am used to controversy. It is as much our mother's milk, as celebrity gossip is to LA. The current controversy surrounding the US National Arboretum's plans to remove thousands of azaleas from their collection has all the elements one would expect coming from a scandal befitting the reputation of our nation's capital. It involves  a shortsighted decision that will carry long-term imp ...

An IzelPlants video, in which we poke fun at the US National Arboretum's decision to cut down 10,000 azaleas. For background info on this viral hullabaloo: check out Washington Gardener Magazine, GardenRant and the Washington Post.

Across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and just an hour drive from our nation's capital, you enter a unique landscape. The gentle hills of the mainland have all but disappeared and been replaced by flatlands where farms and random development are punctuated by the remnants of once vast wetlands. This is the Eastern Shore. An area seemingly abandoned in time where you can walk into a gas station and find a line of local customers waiting for the meatloaf daily special or the fried rockfish s ...

Ever see something in a garden that's so cute you just have to wip out your camera to take a picture (even if it means you'll be late in picking up your kids) ... Tired of plants with a short flowering season?  Try my neighbor's trick... …just ‘plant’ plastic flowers in the your front yard.  NO ONE will know! I can't wait to see if these beauties are still here come winter... stay tuned. I loves me some morning glories...

I was pretty excited when I bought a cow skull at a yard sale last spring.  I had  wanted one ever since going on vacation to West Texas. My inspriation? This garden wall at the historic Gage Hotel in Marathon, about 70 miles outside of Big Bend National Park. However, my long suffering husband, thought that hanging a cow skull in our house was rather gruesome. While we were on vacation, I lobbied long and hard with him, arguing it would add some fun to our interior decor.  We ha ...

Hawaii is known for having a very diverse climate, right? Rainforests, dry forest, alpine, sub alpine shrubland, it has got them all. On my last trip there, I saw several souvenir businesses dedicated to sending fresh "Hawaiian" flowers to friends, family or even to yourself on the mainland. Seems like an interesting idea, no? Seems like the plant choices should really be diverse, yeah? Then why are they shipping a "little piece of Hawai'i" that does not include any NATIVE plants? Fo ...

Well, this is what my yard looks like out the window behind my laptop: Which means there's not a whole lot of gardening going on 'round here.  But I did come across a fun gardening quiz over at the Washington Post.   Here's a sample question: 18. What plant don't deer eat (unless they are literally starving)? Don't know the answer?  Go check it out.

"Don't forget your booties...it's coooold outside!". Indeed...as in many other parts of the country, the cold front has hit us hard here in DC.  Without any snow to provide me with a scenic backdrop for my comatose garden, and considering the only plants that had not gone dormant, until giving up the ghost this week, were a few clumps of wandering Jew that I had planted as annuals...I'm moving inside! My furnace has been working double overtime, and the dry, forced air has been wrecki ...