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Tips, guides & insights for your garden
Do the Chelsea Chop This Week to Stop Your Late-Summer Perennials Flopping
Cutting a third off your sedum, phlox, and helenium in mid-May feels brutal and looks worse for ten days, but it produces shorter, sturdier, longer-blooming plants that never need staking. The Chelsea chop is the single most useful late-spring technique most gardeners have never tried.
Pinch Your Annuals Now for Twice the Flowers This Summer
The single best thing you can do for newly planted zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons, dahlias, basil, and most cottage-garden annuals in early May is take scissors to the top. Pinching feels brutal the first time and pays back tenfold by July.
Plant a Salsa Garden the First Week of May for Pico de Gallo from July to October
A salsa garden is the easiest themed bed to plan because the plants want the same things — heat, sun, steady water, deep soil. Get the layout right in early May and a single 4-by-8-foot bed will keep a household in pico de gallo, salsa verde, and roasted hot sauce from midsummer through first frost.
Move Your Houseplants Outside for Summer Without Wrecking Them
Most houseplants grow more in three months outdoors than they do all winter on a windowsill — but the move is also where most of them get ruined. A May checklist for moving them out, slowly, without sunburn, wind damage, or hitchhiking pests.
Direct Sow These Summer Annuals in May for Months of Cheap, Easy Color
Zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, marigolds, and nasturtiums all do their best work when sown straight into warm garden soil in May. Done right, a five-dollar packet of seeds turns into a border that flowers from June until the first hard frost.
14 Best AI Garden & Landscape Design Apps (2026 Tested)
We tested 14 AI garden and landscape design apps hands-on. Compare prices, free tiers and plant-list quality to find the one worth paying for in 2026.
Stop Slugs and Snails Before They Wreck Your Spring Garden
Late April is when slug and snail populations explode and tender new growth is most vulnerable. Get ahead of them now with a layered approach that actually works — habitat changes, targeted barriers, and the few baits worth using.
Stake Your Tall Perennials Now, Before the First Big Rain Flattens Them
Peonies, delphiniums, dahlias, and other tall perennials always look fine in late April — until one heavy May rain knocks them flat. The window for getting supports in is short, and the right method depends on the plant.
What to Do With Tulips and Daffodils After They've Bloomed
The decisions you make in the six weeks after your tulips and daffodils finish blooming determine whether next spring's display is brilliant or disappointing. A practical guide to deadheading, foliage care, feeding, and when to lift and divide.