Blog grid – Lee Reich

Hedges need repeated shearing with hedge shears each season

TEN ESSENTIAL PRUNING TIPS

March 11, 2026

Most, but not all, cultivated trees, shrubs, and vines need periodic pruning be at their best, both in appearance and health. Pruning can be complicated so I've distilled it all into 10 tips, which should leave your plants reasonably healthy and happy. It's all in my latest blog post, here:

WITH GOOD REASON, FAMILIES MIGRATE AROUND MY GARDEN

March 3, 2026

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So many different families visiting my vegetable garden this year -- plant families. Yes, they exist! Learn what makes a family, characteristics of some familiar families, and -- most important -- who know the families will make this year's garden better. Read here:

THE DARKER SIDE OF TINKERBELL

February 25, 2026

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Tinkerbell in your garden? Well, not Tinkerbell, but these little gals could each pass for her. Unfortunately, she needs to be controlled. Fortunately, she’s relatively easy to control Read more here:

Another relative, this one called Amorphophallus

AND THE REAL SPLIT-LEAF PHILODENDRON IS. . .

February 18, 2026

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A “philodendron” that’s not really one, and this one has eerie flowers, followed by a unique fruit — imagine of corn on the cob tasting like a melding of pineapple and banana.

BARKS OF ANOTHER STRIPE

February 11, 2026

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Think of the bark of white birch in winter and you're not barking up the wrong tree, just that there are many others worth "barking up." Yew, for example, hackberry, and many more. Shrubs also. Here are some of them:

Grapefruit chimera, illustration from my book Fruit: From the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection

MYTHOLOGY COMES ALIVE!

February 4, 2026

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Like the fire-breathing chimera that was part lion, part goat, part dragon, and feasted on humans, plant chimeras are weird-looking. What’s more, they do, in fact, exist. How do they come about and what is their appeal? Read more about these botanical freaks here:

MINIATURE LANDSCAPE CARE

January 29, 2026

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A bonsai evokes a landscape in miniature. Like any landscape, regular care is needed, even the naturalistic landscape of a bonsai. Of course, the landscape care won’t have you working up a sweat, but you do need to follow three basic steps:

ALL FOR A SLICE OF PIE

January 22, 2026

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Key lime is not your ordinary lime. And, for an even more extraordinary lime, there’s finger lime. And even more extraordinary is are hybrids of both of them. None are hard to grow, even where winters are cold.

JUMANGI!!!

January 14, 2026

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The “True” Jimangi Back in 1995, Robin Williams starred in a rather bizarre movie, Jumangi. The rhinoceroses charging through the living room and the crazed, great white hunter caused more terror than did the bizarre plant that kept threatening Robin Williams. After all, rhinoceroses and great white hunters, even crazy ones, are real enough, but that plant surely had to be no more than a moviemaker’s fantasy. Well, let me tell you, that odd looking plant bore an eerily strong resemblance to a real plant. The moviemakers did not have to stray too far from botanical accuracy to make…