Gnomes and Fairies -- Oh My!

If you follow me on social media or this blog for a while, you've seen glimpses of my Gnome and Fairy collections. I am always on the look out for new characters to add to my garden. Here are a few fun ones from Twig & Flower. I think my favorites are the Ohm Gnome and the two fairy sisters with their ginger cat. Pictured above and below, they are posing in a couple spots in my late winter garden with their friends.

Twig & Flower has a store on Amazon.com where you can order these at: https://amzn.to/397iQh2

AND they have offered our followers 10% off when you use the code "10Washington" This offer will be good until 3/21/2020!

By the way, while you are over their shopping on Amazon. The Washington Gardener Amazon Store is at www.amazon.com/shop/wdcgardener - scroll down and hit "Fave Gardening Tools" for some of my tried-and-true garden helpers.

Win Passes to the Maryland Home & Garden Show in the February 2020 Washington Gardener Reader Contest

For our February 2020 Washington Gardener Reader Contest, Washington Gardener is giving away five pairs of passes to the Maryland Home & Garden Show (including Craft Show) at the Maryland State Fairgrounds (prize value: $24).
  The Maryland Home and Garden Show (www.mdhomeandgarden.com/spring) is back at the Maryland State Fairgrounds for two weekends (Saturday, February 29–Sunday, March 1, and Friday, March 6–Sunday, March 8) with 400 contractors and experts to make it all possible. This year’s theme will showcase gardens with beautiful outdoor entertaining spaces. In today’s busy world, we all need an inviting outdoor place to enjoy with family and friends. The Maryland Orchid Society will present a stunning flower show and sale with thousands of orchids on display on the second weekend. Visitors will be amazed at the many varieties of these spectacular flowers! Several Maryland wineries at the show will offer free tastings with bottles available for purchase.
   To enter to win a pair of passes to the Maryland Home & Garden Show, send an email to WashingtonGardenerMagazine@gmail.com by 5:00pm on Wednesday, February 26, with “Maryland Home & Garden Show” in the subject line and in the body of the email. Tell us what your favorite article was in the February 2020 issue and why. Include your full name and address. Winners will be announced by March 1.

UPDATE:

We have chosen the pass winners at random from among the submitted entries. They are:

- Beth Blum Spiker, Laurel, MD  

- Wendy Pond, Silver Spring, MD 

- Anne Hardmann, Silver Spring, MD  

- Robert Alonso, Glen Burnie, MD

- Jeavonna Chapman, Baltimore, MD

Congratulations to all!

February 2020 issue of Washington Gardener Magazine - Award-Winning Garden Photos, Hakone Grass, and Much More

The February 2020 issue of Washington Gardener Magazine is out now.

It is posted online at: https://issuu.com/washingtongardener/docs/feb20wgmag-final

Inside this issue:

• 17 Award-Winning Garden Photos
• Hakone Grass: A Multi-Season Stunner
• Meet Inspiring Agriculture Educator Lori Mayhew
• Create Instant Winter Cheer with Pre-Forced Bulbs
• What To Do in the Garden This Month
• DC-MD-VA Gardening Events Calendar
• Expert Tips for Speeding Up Seed Germination
•  and much more…

Note that any submissions, event listings, and advertisements for the March 2020 issue are due by March 5.

>>  Subscribe to Washington Gardener Magazine today to have the monthly publication sent to your inbox as a PDF several days before it is available online. You can use the PayPal (credit card) online order form here: http://www.washingtongardener.com/index_files/subscribe.htm

Discuss The Overstory: A Novel with the Washington Gardener Magazine's Garden Book Club

For our next Garden Book Club selection, we will be reading: 

The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers

"The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours―vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe."

You can order it new or used at our Amazon link: https://amzn.to/39pM8aA

Our Winter 2020 club meeting will be on Thursday, March 12 from 6:30-8pm at Soupergirl, located right next to the Takoma metro stop. Soupergirl offers soups for sale that are incredibly healthy. They are 100% plant-based, low salt, low fat, and most importantly, absolutely delicious, so plan to come a bit early to purchase and eat your dinner with the garden book club. 

Please RSVP to washingtongardenermagazine (at) gmail.com or at the book club event page at facebook.com/WashingtonGardenerMagazine, so we know how many chairs to reserve for our group.

The Washington Gardener Magazine's Garden Book Club is free and open to all. We meet quarterly on a weekday evening near a metro-accessible location in the DC-area. We will announce the details of each upcoming meeting about two months in advance. Please check back on this blog for schedule updates and announcements.

Want to read ahead? The next book club selections are:

• Spring 2020 - Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Doug Tallamy

• Summer 2020 - The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone 

• Fall 2020 - Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence--A Friendship in Letters 

PIN THIS FOR LATER:

Thank You to Our Generous 2020 Seed Exchange Sponsors and Donors

Thank you to our generous sponsors and donors for contributing products, support and information to our annual Washington Gardener Magazine Seed Exchanges.

• American Horticultural Society

• American Meadows and Landreth's Garden Seeds

• Bloom Soil

• Botanical Interests

• Brookside Gardens

• Burpee

• Calvert Farm

• Cobrahead

• Cool Springs Press 

• Corona Tools

• Cultivate the City

• The Espoma Company

• Gardener’s Workshop Farm

• Green Spring Gardens

• Homestead Gardens

• Lilypons Water Gardens

• Plant NoVa Natives

• Prior Unity Garden 

• The Small Town Gardener

• Stadler Nurseries

• St. Lynn’s Press

• Tudor Place

• Valley View Farms Garden Center

• Washington Gardener Magazine

• Zanfel Laboratories

2020 Garden Photo Contest Winners

Here are the 17 winners in the Washington Gardener Magazine 14th Annual Garden Photo Contest. There were close to 220 photos submitted in this year's contest from 26 entrants. I know our expert judge had a Herculean task picking out the best of the best! It was great to see several first-time entrants place highly. Many of these photos come from the photographers own home gardens, while the majority of the rest of the images were taken at public gardens in our region.

Note that what you are viewing online here is a low-resolution version of the photo images. Winning images will be published in the next issue of Washington Gardener magazine and as large format prints in a local photo exhibit this spring/summer at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, VA.
The winners were announced live during the Washington Gardener Seed Exchange on Saturday, February 1, at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, VA.

Congratulations to the 2020 Garden Photo Contest winners and thank you to all who entered! 

And a BIG Thank You to our Prize Sponsors: 

• Capital Photography Center 
• Fiskars
• Washington Photo Safari
• Washington Gardener Magazine

Here are the Garden Photo Contest category definitions:
These photo entries must have been taken during the 2019 calendar year in a garden located within a 150-mile radius of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.
• Garden Views: Beautiful, dramatic, or unusual perspectives of a garden landscape, including wide shots showing the setting. Subject can be a private or public garden.
• Garden Vignettes: Groupings of plants in beds or containers, unusual color or texture combinations, garden focal points, and still scenes. Subject can be photographed in a private or public garden.
• Small Wonders: Tight close-up images or macro shots of single flowers, plant parts, fruits, vegetables, etc. Subject can be photographed in a private or public garden.
• Garden Creatures: Images of insects, birds, frogs, domestic pets, etc. in a private or public garden setting.

DIY: Valentine's Day Seed Card

Make your Valentine a card with a seed pack enclosed. You can choose seeds that have a particular significance to you or look up the Victorian flower meanings. For instance, Gentian flowers mean gratitude.

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a few pennies from Amazon, but it will not effect your purchase price.

Level: easy
Cost: minimal
Use: holiday/gift

Materials:
Construction Paper
Seed Packs
Double-sided Tape
Markers
Scissors

Optional Materials:
Valentine's Stamp and Inkpad
Glitter

Step 1: Cut a pot shape from folded colored paper. (You can use an orange or terra-cotta color for authenticity).

Step 2: Cut a strip of paper off and use the double-sided tape to affix it to the top of the card in front and back to simulate a pot rim.

Step 3: Place a packet of seeds inside the fold and secure with double-sided tape. 

Step 4: Decorate the outside of the pot and add a message to the inside. This is where you can let your creativity run wild. Embellish it as you like and write in a personal message. I found it easiest to stamp a flower and color it in with gel markers.

Step 5: Give it to a budding gardener in your life.


This is a monthly blog series on DIY projects for the beginning home gardener. Look for the other installments in this DIY blog series by putting "DIY" in the search box here at washingtongardener.blogspot.com.