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The Nursery LedgerA guide to specialty plant nurseries and mail order growing

Parterre 06 · Growing Guides

Growing guides and the planting calendar

A planting calendar by USDA zone, and the first-season care that carries a mail order plant from the box to established: heeling in, potting up, watering in.

Garden notebook open beside a soil thermometer and trays of recently potted mail order perennials on a weathered potting bench

Every guide on this site leans on two references: the calendar that turns USDA zones into planting windows, and the first-season routine that carries a dormant mail order plant from the box to establishment. The calendar is the signature page of the site, and it is built to be argued with: it gives windows and soil temperatures, not prophecies.

The first-season guide is the other half of the craft. Heeling in when the bed is not ready, potting up when it is too early to plant out, and the disciplined watering that decides whether a bare-root tree leafs out or sulks. Between them, the two pages close the loop from order form to established plant.

In this parterre

  1. A surveyor’s clipboard resting on a low stone wall at the edge of a suburban park in Hertfordshire, late afternoon light, a printed site map and a pencil visible, park hedge and playing field soft in the background.

    How a PPG17 Open Space Assessment Worked

    A PPG17 assessment is an argument built from three pieces: a survey of what exists, an audit of what each site offers, and a catchment map of who can reach it.

  2. A child’s hand, soil under the fingernails, pressing a single radish seed into a four-inch pot on a wooden balcony table in flat morning light, shot from above at arm’s length.

    Gardening with children: what actually works

    A family plot works when the ground is small, the crops are quick, and the adult accepts that the children will harvest more than they plant.

  3. A raised garden bed edged with a low wire fence, a soil thermometer pushed into dark amended soil beside three catmint plants, late afternoon side light, shot from a kneeling height with the bed running diagonally across the frame.

    Pet-safe garden: budget the first year

    A pet-safe garden is a budget decision before it is a plant list, and the first year is the one that decides it.

  4. A wooden farm stand table at the edge of a gravel lot in mid-morning light, half-filled crates of tomatoes and a hand-lettered price card, shot from a few steps back at eye level with the field visible behind it.

    Local farming and family farms: a buyer’s guide

    Local farming runs on a simple trade: the grower carries the risk of weather and harvest, and the buyer commits early, in cash or in a season-long share.

  5. A field edge planting with dense low shrubs beside tall grasses and an open strip of bare ground, seen in flat morning light

    Cover stacked close: what game birds ask of a planting

    A ground bird does not ask for good habitat. It asks for three different habitats stacked within a few hundred metres of each other, and it leaves any field that offers only one.

  6. A chestnut draft horse standing harnessed beside a wooden cart in a field edge, morning mist low over a row of young nursery trees

    Horsepower on the small holding

    Between the tractor and the wheelbarrow sits a third option with a pulse. On a small holding of a few acres, a draft horse is not nostalgia but a tool with specific edges.

  7. A single old oak standing alone in an open field under low morning light, its wide trunk and heavy lower limbs casting a long shadow

    Witness trees: the battlefield stock still standing

    Some of the oldest living residents of American battlefields are not monuments but trees, and a few are still in the trade’s care. Here is how a tree becomes a witness, and how one is kept.

  8. A young native shrub border planted along a garden fence with a shallow bird bath and seed heads left standing through late summer light

    Planting for birds: native species that bring wild visitors to the garden

    A bird garden is planted before it is fed. The right native stock brings the visitors; the feeder, if you keep one, only schedules them.

  9. Garden planning table with a zone map, seed packets sorted by season and a hand drawn planting calendar in a gardener notebook

    A planting calendar by USDA zone

    Every seasonal claim on this site resolves to the same table. Here are the planting windows by zone band, what a zone actually measures, and the way to bend the table to your own garden.

  10. Bare root plants heeled into a trench of moist soil at the edge of a vegetable garden with their labels tied above ground in rows

    Heeling in: a mail order plant’s first season

    Between the box and the border lies the most underwritten part of gardening: the first season. Heeling in buys time, potting up buys growth, and a watering habit buys the plant.

Every guide in this parterre reads against the planting calendar by USDA zone, and two neighbouring parterres extend it: Find a Nursery and Plant Specialties.