<![CDATA[Buckman's Home & Garden - Blog]]>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 22:31:22 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[There's Always Room to Plant]]>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 19:41:25 GMThttp://www.buckmanshomeandgarden.com/blog/theres-always-room-to-plant
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Megan had such encouraging things to say about my first blog post, I decided to continue on with my blogging journey…

Some of you who know me know that I have lived in a big house with eleven acres with lots of beds for flowers and lots of patio space ideal for potted plantings. I think the final count for pots at that house was up to seventy.  My husband informed me of this, as he was the one watering them.  At one point I removed a cascading water pond and put in a three level cutting garden.  Basically, it was the house of our dreams. 

Three years ago, I moved into a smaller house on an acre and a half.  Even though we rented, I felt I needed to make it my own.  It was a charming house with a cute front porch, a fenced in side bed, and a walk to the back door with a very small patio attached.

We moved in November so I wasn’t able to do much gardening.  Instead, I stared out my kitchen window looking at the unsightly amount of weeds lining the stockade fence to the rear of the property and dreaming up ways to put in gardens. I was also trying to figure out how to make a patio big enough to fit our large table with eight chairs and two lounge chairs. 

At the first sign of spring, I was out the back door and into the yard. The first thing I did was spray all those yucky weeds along the fence.  As you know from my last blog, I like to spray twice - a week apart - to make sure I have gotten all the weeds before starting a new bed.  I had about twenty yards of garden soil, which is a mix of top soil and mushroom soil, dumped along the fence.  Then this all needed to be raked out, which I have to admit I had some help with. 

Then I started to plan my garden. Of course, that did not take me long and, within a month, I had that pretty well-designed and mostly planted.

Any gardener will tell you: a garden is always a work in progress. 

The next project I tackled was the fenced-in side garden, which was sun all day long.   This area had gone untouched for two summers so it was overrun with wild grass and lily of the valley that had runners, and a thick periwinkle ground cover.  What a mess! Several neighbors told me it had once been a gorgeous perennial bed with flowers blooming all summer long. There were iris, sedum, and a few other perennials that started to make an appearance in early spring.  I dug most of those out and relocated them to my garden along the back fence. There was a lilac bush at one end and a butterfly bush at the other.  By the time I moved in, the butterfly bush was twenty feet tall and falling over. That got chopped back to three feet high immediately. I then proceeded to dig out the lily of the valley and periwinkle and move them to a shady wooded area to the rear of the property.  I then rototilled the whole area, sprayed any remaining weeds that were left several more times and put in some veggies.
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We have a friend, Bill Kemp from Kemp Landscaping in Gardenville, come and add a semi -circle EP Henry patio addition to the existing  concrete pad that was there.  I also used the leftover blocks to add an edge along the concrete walk to tie the whole thing together. 

With the patio completed, I could get going on my pots. I started by digging out the pots I had brought from the other house, much to the movers grumbling.  My count the first summer came to about thirty-five when all was said and done.

The following year, I added a small patio off the garage and under an apple tree.  I set up a bistro set, and added a flagstone walk around the tree that I decorated with, guess what? More pots. I called this my secret garden since it was a little oasis tucked away behind the apple tree and the garage. 

The second year I removed an overgrown hedge that was along the walk to the back door that broke from all the snow and ice over the winter.  It was so overgrown, the branches just snapped from the weight of the heavy snow that had fallen.  This is a good reason to trim your hedges and trees.  Compact, neatly pruned bushes withstand heavy snow much better than long-limbed branches. I replaced the hedge with a picket fence and added a very English cottage feel to the already cute looking garden.  Of course, at this point, I believe my pot count was up to about fifty-four.  I love to do different pots with different combinations in order to see what works.  This way, I feel I can make better suggestions to customers at Buckmans when they are planting their pots. 
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This past spring we moved yet again. We are now down to a townhouse with a deck, but never fear, I still have over fifty pots, not even counting the hanging baskets. What is really nice is that the heuchera I planted in several pots last year has come back and are filling the pots so nicely I did not need to plant anything else. 

I also have two hostas, an astilbe and chives that came back in several other pots, as well as Creeping Jenny that came back in all my hanging baskets.  To those I added million bells, verbena or trailing torenia to make them all look full and blooming. I used large nursery stock pots for three of my pots, put obelisks in them and planted some tomatoes.  I added carrots around the edge of two and red beets as an edging in the third. The one with a patio tomato in it I add basil to that pot also.  I have parsley as the center of one of my pots with million bells around it, and I used variegated lemon thyme to accent some of my flowering pots.  This will also some back year after year. 

I put cucumbers in a deck railing box and they’re now trailing down the side of the deck.  I laid ninety-eight EP Henry 8x8 blocks to create a patio between my deck and the townhouse next door. I carried every single one through the garage, up three steps, through the house, out the kitchen door, across the deck and down five steps. But boy was it worth the effort. The result was a little area for my bistro set and pots. I added a fence to hide the air conditioner, put up shepherds hooks with hanging baskets, and added a birdhouse on a metal stand to the middle.  My secret garden has returned.

I decided not to plant anything directly in the garden, instead, opting to use pots situated among the sweet autumn clematis, bleeding hearts and sedum already growing in the flower beds. A few birdhouses and hanging baskets made my little garden utopia complete. 

The moral to my story here is this:

Whether you have eleven acres, one acre, or a deck, you can create a wonderful garden setting using annuals, perennials, and herbs in order to have a very easy, eye-pleasing and usable garden.
]]><![CDATA[Lovin' Life by Nana Jul]]>Thu, 01 Aug 2013 20:45:52 GMThttp://www.buckmanshomeandgarden.com/blog/lovin-life-by-nana-jul Welcome to my blog! I’ve been told I am to write about personal, interesting, informative, funny, witty things. Soooo… here goes… 

Next year, will be my thirtieth year working in the gardening business, which makes me a wee bit older than 30 years old.  When I look back over the time that has passed, I think of customers who have come in with small children or who were pregnant and now they come in with those children who are all grown up.  I love that about my business and my job. 

I love new customers who have never been in the store, who come in and are amazed by how big the store is and by the amount of unique things merchandise we have.  I love seeing customers who have moved away, and when they come back to visit friends, they say they absolutely have to visit Buckman’s because there is no store near their new home that has the unusual collection of items that we do.  That always makes me proud of our buying choices and our talent for displaying product so that you want to buy it and make it part of your home. 

It has been fun watching the product change over the years.  I remember stuffed lawn sheep and how we could not keep them in stock one season.  I remember when we started carrying banners and people would buy a pole for a family member and then be able to give the gift of a flag for the next holiday, birthday, anniversary.  There were Webkinz, and cutout “Welcome” signs attached to the tops of wreaths.  There are so many different phases to speak of I could go on for days.

I actually think the hardest phase is the boutique we have now.  It is so personal and everyone has different tastes.  When decorating a home, there are basically two color tones people choose from, warm tones and cool tones.  We tend to veer more toward the warm tone side of the color spectrum since that is what our customers tend to decorate with, and we all are efficient with working in those color schemes, but the boutique is a whole different animal. There is no set pattern and as much of a challenge as it is, I love that my customers constantly keep me guessing and on my toes. I am sure my taste has evolved and become more sophisticated, but that is, again, due to the fact that my customers has have become more demanding of high quality and a reasonable price. 

I also love that I still am in touch with my very first employee and that I have employees who will be my friends for life.  I feel very fortunate. I love that customers still ask me about my brother who hasn’t worked with me for 18 years.  He must have made a lasting impression to make people still inquire after him.  I have also had the privilege to work with my sister for most of her life.  She is the really definitely the most creative talented one in the family.  She is like the Energizer Bunny, .  She is always putting more on her plate to do than any two people I know, but she always gets everything done and it always turns out fabulous. Soooo now that you know that I love my customers, my job, my employees, and my family, let me move on to more informative items.

When I was talking to Megan, my social media person, she suggested I put informative things in my blog.  I asked, “Like what?” She said, “Anything. Give people personal, witty tips about gardening and decorating their homes.”

A light bulb went off.  I thought about an instance a couple weekends ago when I was at my stepdaughter, Lauren’s house for dinner.  Her daughter, Gracie, asked me if I wanted to see her garden.  I, of course, said yes, so we equipped ourselves with a basket to put our bounty in and set out. and she Gracie said to me, “Mom says to pick the basil as it is getting big.”  I watched as Gracie started to pull off the big bottom leaves near the bottom instead of picking from the top where there were lots of flowered spikes sticking up.  So I explained to Gracie that what she needed to do was pick those flowered spikes off because doing so will make the plant keep producing leaves and make it bushier, too.  I said if she needed to pick some she should pinch down the stem from the top.  She needed to pinch the leaves off just above the point where they meet the stem.  This way, the plant will push out two new branches and keep producing more leaves. 

When we took our harvest back inside, I explained this same thing to my Lauren.  She said she never knew that was how you kept basil growing and preventing it from going to seed.  So for those of you new to gardening this may be a tip that us old gardeners know, but it is a helpful hint for gardening newbies when tending to your herb plants. 

I also encountered another interesting situation the other day while planting a bed at a local restaurant.  First, all the old bushes needed to be dug out of the bed and the overgrown weeds needed to be pulled and sprayed.  I am a huge proponent of Roundup Weed & Grass Killer.  Any time I am planting a new bed or area, I always make at least two passes with the Roundup, about a week apart, before I plant with new fresh flowers and shrubs.  The young man from the restaurant, who was assisting me with the project, pulled out all the old plants and sprayed the weeds.  He then added soil to the bed.  When I got there to plant he asked if he should spray again before I planted.  I was a little confused since there was nothing but fresh soil in the bed.  He said he didn’t know if all the weeds had died, and wondered if he should spray again, just in case. 

HERE is the secret: weed killers only work if there is a weed to spray.  Almost all weed killers work systemically, which means when you spray the weed, it pulls the killer down into the plant and down to its roots, which then kills the plant.  If there is new dirt with nothing showing, there is nothing to spray.  At this point in the project, I will have to wait for the weeds to come up and carefully spray the weeds and not our new plantings.  You can spread an herbicide, which will prevent weed seeds from germinating in the bed, but it will not keep established weeds from coming back up in that bed. 

I can give you another for instance.  I moved into a new townhouse this spring.  The flower bed in the front had not been kept up, and there were thistles coming up everywhere.  I must have sprayed those thistles at least six times.  Thistles are the kind of weed that, if you pull them and break the stem, a new plant will push up from the break because they have long, underground roots.  They are very hard to get rid of.  I think I’ve conquered them, but I would bet that next year, I will have to spray them several more times before they are gone for good. 

If you live never an open field that has thistles growing, it will be an on-going problem in your beds.  I have always felt that the local municipalities should start a program to try and control thistles in the wild to lessen the problem for homeowners. Home- and landowners should have to mow any fields that have become overgrown with them so they do not go to seed and then send thousands of those seeds across other fields and homeowners’ properties.  I know that when I lived in Plumstead Township there was a field overrun with thistles. The township came in, mowed them, sprayed and then mowed several more times. The result was a beautiful grassy meadow that was a lot nicer to look at and thistle free.

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