Posts By

Katherine Rowe

Katherine is a garden professional with a background in design, conservation, and public horticulture. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture and a love of gardens, parks, and natural lands alike. Katherine enjoys exploring gardens and wild spaces through work and travel and designing gardens with nature at the helm.

Female gardener in red gloves with pruning shears, trimming a blooming rose bush with large peach-pink double flowers on a blurred background in the garden now.

Shrubs

Time is Running Out to Prune Roses: What to do Right Now

In late summer, our roses may benefit from a little refresh. With final rounds of deadheading, our reblooming types put on a late-season show. Removing declining canes in all types improves overall health. Explore rose pruning to do now for vigorous roses heading into winter.

A neat, well-structured landscape in front of a large soft blue house with various evergreen shrubs, well-trimmed boxwoods, flowering perennials and bulbs, ornamental grasses and tall trees, showing one of the easy home landscape ideas.

Ornamental Gardens

9 Easy-to-Install New Home Landscapes that Look Great

From a harmonious foundation to a perennial border to an evergreen screen, easy landscape ideas evoke a seemingly effortless appeal that works across sites. While no landscape is free of maintenance or challenges, incorporating a few staple components creates the basis for a yard that works. Garden designer Katherine Rowe explores simple home landscape themes to inspire the next installation.

A close up shot of a person holding a small basket with spent flower heads showcasing how to cut dahlias after flowering.

Flowers

How and When to Cut Spent Dahlia Blooms After Flowering

Dahlias, unparalleled in their floral forms and extended display, bring high color and visual interest to the arrangement. With a simple cut after the dahlias flower, we can promote even more of the stunning flowers more quickly than if they stay on the stem. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe outlines how and when to cut dahlias after flowering (and when not to) for the biggest bloom show.

A person holding a potted conifer and fertilizer to fertilize plants August, doing so while wearing gloves with other plants appearing in the background

Fertilizer

7 Plants That Need a Boost of Fertilizer in August

While fertilizing in August isn’t the protocol for all plants, certain specimens benefit from a boost after a long season of active growth. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe explores select garden plants to fertilize this month as we look ahead to the cool season.

A meadow where plants fill gaps, showcasing colorful flowers in shades of pink, orange, yellow, and white with thin, feathery green leaves and stems.

Ornamental Gardens

15 Best Plants That Quickly Fill in Garden Gaps

Whether making a quick refresh to weary beds or creating a new look for the season, fast-growing plants bring swift rewards. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe highlights selections that perform across garden scales and conditions with high visual interest and lasting color.

Woman holding a large crate filled with freshly harvested root vegetables in August, knowing what to plant in August

Vegetables

9 Root Vegetables You Should Start From Seed in August

This month marks the time for many gardeners to start fall crops, balancing the seeding with seasonal transitions and the first anticipated frost. As the summer harvest wanes, we can look forward to a fall bounty. Enjoy the easy sowing and growing of favorite root vegetables to start in August.

A close-up shot of a person's hand in the process of inspecting a ripe and round fruit, showcasing how to tell if melons are ready to harvest

Harvesting

How to Tell if Melons are Ready to Harvest

Melons are a labor of love, or at least patience, as we await their long development. With full, sweet rounds that ripen quickly in their final days, picking them at peak flavor takes gauging a few cues. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe outlines what to look for to make sure we catch melons at the right time for the sweetest, juiciest slices.

A lush hydrangea bush with large purple flower clusters showing small, slightly drying flowers and green leaves with brown, crispy edges from drought.

Shrubs

9 Tips to Keep Your Hydrangeas Happy During a Drought

Hydrangeas are standout flowering shrubs in the summer garden, offering one of the biggest bloom shows of the season. Durable, they perform across growing zones. But the moisture-loving ornamentals benefit from extra care during drought situations. Gardening expert Katheirne Rowe outlines how to protect hydrangeas during heat waves and dry spells for long-lived, healthy shrubs.

A female gardener holds a freshly picked bunch of orange carrots with lush, feathery green foliage showing how to avoid common summer gardening mistakes.

Gardening Tips

Don’t Make These 9 Late Summer Gardening Mistakes

Late summer is a time of balancing plant health while navigating fluctuating weather conditions. It’s also an opportunity to look toward fall and the bounty yet to come. For the best foundation for future growth, avoiding late-season gardening mistakes increases resiliency across seasonal conditions.

A gardener with black pruning shears prunes flowering dahlias with large red-burgundy pompon-shaped blooms on tall stems surrounded by lush green foliage.

Flowers

How To Prune Dahlias for More Blooms

Dahlias bring dramatic mid to late-season blooms that usher in fall with their lasting beauty. The long-developing buds, well worth the wait, are unrivaled in their form and symmetry. For more blooms throughout the season, simple dahlia pruning lets us double the display.