A cheery glimpse of color on a gray and wintry day: That’s why we plant shrubs with bright bark. Colorful bark is a main feature of red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea subsp. sericea), Siberian dogwood ...

IF I’M honest I’d never even thought about the possibility of a native dogwood. I’ve certainly never consciously seen one in the wild. Those eye-catching dogwoods that populate motorway embankments ...

WE’VE MADE IT past the winter solstice, when the shortest day of the year offers up a scant eight hours and 25 minutes of daylight. Even in the depths of darkness, gardeners reassure themselves that, ...

On a bright winter’s day, the M1 motorway south of Dundalk to just north of Dublin offers one of the best displays of shrubbery anywhere on the island. The eastern facing flank, which gets the most ...

It really seems like one of the wettest Novembers I can remember. That, combined with the shortened daylight hours, means we all could use a little pop of colour in our landscapes to lift our spirits.

The year 2012 disappeared in a sodden puddle, the UK’s second wettest year on record, and my own garden ended up flooded, muddied and thoroughly bedraggled. Under such conditions, it is hard for ...

This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's ...