I always love quick and easy gardening tips, particularly when they come from great friends. Take, for example, my great friend Sue Coy. She and her family live in northern Durham County, and her garden is overly natural and shady and just beautiful. Filled with ferns, hosta, columbine, lilies, foxglove, azaleas, dogwoods, deciduous trees and hardwoods, and pines, it's a classic North Carolina garden.

The Coys have also always had a really successful and sustainable vegetable garden. They're the first true naturalists I've known. Their garden is chock full of asparagus, tomatoes, herbs, and the unusual pairing of tart, delicious cherries. But given the bumper crop of veggies they have each year and the abundance of wildlife in their back yard, it's long been a wonder how the two coexist. 

It's simple: Milorganite. 

"I've tried dried blood," she said, "and mixing eggs and water, which...

Gardeners of the Piedmont ... Unite! 

It's Earth Day, and aside from my disappointment with not having Dave Matthews tickets tonight, it's a great day for gardeners. I thought it would be nice to share a few eco-friendly ideas and tactics my family practices ... and hope you'll share some of your great ideas with us! I posted some photos of my gardens for reference.

• Replace your outdoor light bulbs with CFLs.
• Be good stewards of nature: place birdhouses and bird feeders in peaceful, low-trafficked areas of your garden.
• Plant perennials, bulbs and trees.
• Plant a vegetable garden or some fruit trees.
• Keep your garden weed-free; weeds are water and nutrient hogs, and are fierce competition for your "real" plants.
• Combat mosquitoes naturally, like with lavender.
• Notice the little things, like the ladybugs and butterflies.
• Use canvas shopping bags at the grocery...

I found a great statement about pollen from Achoo Allergy: "Trees, weeds, plants, and grasses release small reproductive cells called pollen, which cause allergic reactions for millions of people. Most pollen are light enough to be windborne and are found everywhere, both indoors and out." 

Which totally confirms what I've known for years—pollen is a predator. And there's nowhere to hide.

I'm struck by the duality of early spring, where my expectation level and excitement grows by leaps and bounds with each bloom on the Cherry trees, and every lovely daffodil and tulip and hyacinth ... and then crashes when the pollen duststorms whirl down the street.

Pollen is everywhere—in the weeds, grass and trees. It's a fine, grainy powder consisting of the male gametes of seed plants. And when it floats freely through the air or is carried from plant to plant by bees and insects...

Poor Narcissus, the handsome fella doomed by the avenging goddess Nemesis to fall in love with the water nymph Echo, who could only repeat the words of others. The early-Spring flower is said to have sprung from where he died by the riverbank, and it's also fabled to have been the last flower Persephone picked before being swiped by Hades.

I love a good story, particularly when it carries over to my other favorite pastime, gardening. The narcissus is a great example, in mythology and gardening and in still life art, of the concept of veritas ... the idea that every living thing must come to an end. Like Narcissus' young life, narcissus flowers have a very short blooming period. Narcissus is one of dozens of varieties of daffodils, all of which are pretty easy to grow.

According to the American Daffodil Society, "plant the bulbs when grounds have cooled, in some climates September and for...

I thought about calling this "The Orchid Exterminator," in honor of Susan Orlean's book, The Orchid Thief, but figured that was a little maudlin. Important to note, though, is that of the two orchids I have ever owned, I have managed to kill them both. John Laroche, I am not. 

But everyone who knows me will tell you that I'm an eternal optimist, particularly when it comes to gardening. So for my birthday on Saturday, my mother-in-law gave me a spectacular orchid. She's got faith in me, and I hope I won't let her (or the orchid) down. I'm doing my homework this time, researching everything I can about my elusive orchid. 

I love Orlean's description of orchids from her 1995 article in The New Yorker magazine called ...