Tips for Building and Maintaining Outdoor Fireplaces & Fire Pits

Tips for Building and Maintaining Outdoor Fireplaces & Fire Pits

After months of work, you finally have the backyard of your dreams. Maybe you’ve paved a new patio and set out chairs perfect for relaxing in, or maybe you’ve landscaped an immaculate garden and draped glowing string lights from trees. But despite everything, once night falls, guests wander inside. As the months grow cooler, less time is spent enjoying your hard work. You need something to draw conversation back outside, and nothing is quite as attractive as an outdoor fireplace or fire pit. Whether it’s family s’mores nights or casual dinners with friends, a fire is a center of community. People naturally gather around a warm, rustic fireplace or pit. In this one-stop guide, we’ll take a look at ways to build your own fire pit, as well as tips on how to maintain them, so you can be free to enjoy your outdoor fires for years to come.
How to Prepare Your Garden for Fall

How to Prepare Your Garden for Fall

Who doesn’t love the sight of their garden in the spring and summer? During these beautiful seasons, your garden is bursting with color and life, flowers and shrubs, bumblebees and sunshine. Fall might not typically be a season we associate with beauty in the garden, but this season can be an amazing time for your garden as well. Even though this is typically the season when many of your summer plants begin to return to their dormant state, plenty of other plants are just starting to open up and enjoy the sunlight. Think of mums, asters, ornamental kale and more. There’s a lot to love about your garden in the autumn. Of course, fall isn’t without its unique challenges. Because this season is characterized by so many plants shedding their blossoms and becoming dormant, it’s important to know how to care for your plants and your garden as a whole as it prepares to face the upcoming winter. Since this season is full of difficulties that come with readying your garden for the fall, we want to make sure you’re ready. To help you out, we’ve pulled together this guide to fall garden preparation: what it is, why you can benefit from it and how you can get started with some simple steps today. Ready? Let’s jump right in.
Less is More for Your Flower Garden

Less is More for Your Flower Garden

In our plastic-taxed world today we need to find a way to shrink our man-made footprint! At Patuxent Nursery, this has been on our minds for several years. We have been working towards a biodegradable pot that can be planted in the ground and will break down in the soil leaving the soil in better condition.
The Best Potted Plants for Father’s Day

The Best Potted Plants for Father’s Day

Father's Day is fast approaching. With this special day comes the opportunity to show your dad, grandfather or father figure just how much you appreciate him. This year, why not look to do so while breaking free from conventional or expected gifts? You've given ties galore. His kitchen cabinets are awash in "World's Best Dad" coffee mugs. Tools and kit accessories? Been there, done that. You might have even spent hours online or in stores selecting these items, trying to match your dad's personality with fun and functional pieces he both wants and needs. This yearly effort of finding Dad the right Father's Day gift shouldn't cause headaches — or worse, break the bank. A potted plant for Father's Day is a simple and thoughtful gift you'll both enjoy. We've got you covered in picking potted plants Dad will love, and you will love giving, all with the help of a few expert tips and tricks.
How to Keep Potted Plants Alive

How to Keep Potted Plants Alive

Do you love plants, but find that gardening stresses you out? Do you cringe every time someone hands you a plant and tell them you’re “sure to kill it within a week?” Do you envy the green thumbs of your neighbors, friends and relatives, while struggling to keep even one houseplant yourself? If this sounds like you, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Plenty of people struggle to keep plants alive at first, but with time, practice and a little instruction, anyone can learn to do it. Just because it isn’t something that comes naturally to you doesn’t mean you have to accept that you’ll never be able to do it. Keeping potted plants alive is a learned skill, and there is no reason you can’t learn to do it, too. To help you out and get you started on your plant-care journey, we’ve put together this tutorial on everything you need to know about how to take care of potted plants. By the time we’re finished here, you’ll be ready to put these skills into practice. So grab your gardening gloves and potting soil and let’s get started.
How to Plant Annuals

How to Plant Annuals

It’s that time of year again. The trees are full of leaves. The sun is shining. And everywhere you go, the flowers are out blooming. Your neighbors have beautiful gardens featuring flowers of every shape, color and size. Even your local shopping centers probably have flowers planted along the walkways. Are you wondering how your neighbors get their gardens to look so gorgeous? They must spend hours and hours every day working on them, right? Not necessarily. You can have a beautiful garden without sacrificing hours of your time. All it takes is sunshine, water and a little bit of knowledge.
Best Potted Plants for Mother’s Day

Best Potted Plants for Mother’s Day

If you’re like many of us, Mother’s Day is one of those holidays that sneaks up on you. You know it’s sometime in the late spring, but the exact date always slips your mind. Unlike holidays like Christmas, which most of us would have a hard time forgetting, Mother’s Day is just one of those holidays that tends to slip through the cracks. Too often, we go from one day where Mother’s Day isn’t even on our radar, to the next day, when we suddenly realize Mother’s Day is tomorrow and we still don’t have a gift prepared.
Tips for Keeping Your Lawn Green in the Summer

Tips for Keeping Your Lawn Green in the Summer

Summer is the time when we want our lawns to look their best. But it’s also the time they undergo the most stress. Drought and hot temperatures threaten to fry our carefully cultivated, lush, green lawns. Increased traffic from pets and kids cause more wear and tear than we’d like. Warm weather can cause insect and disease issues to arise. Combined, all of these factors can leave our once-green lawns looking brown and dry.
How Much Mulch Do I Need

How Much Mulch Do I Need

Well, it is that time of year again. The days are growing longer and the trees and shrubs are starting to bud. Now is the time we start to think about enjoying the great outdoors again as the sun starts to warm things up. Prior to it getting too hot out, it is always a good time to do a thorough spring clean up of your yard. Reference our spring yard cleanup tips to learn how to properly prepare your lawn. Along with that clean up, a fresh layer of mulch always says spring is here. So, today we want to address many of the questions we get that involve Spring Mulch.