A website from UGA Cooperative Extension

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  • Perennials grace our gardens year after year with their variety of brilliant colors and unique foliage forms. Perennials come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors and can bloom from early April until late October.  Some excellent perennial flowers for the area include the following: Blanket Flower (Gaillardia X ‘grandiflora’); Foxglove (Digitalis ‘purpurea’); Rose…

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  • Fall presents a time of year that gardening can be more enjoyable. Usually, temperatures are going to be cooler, making it easier to work outside. As with any garden or planting, you need a plan. The first step is prepping the soil.  Pull out the remains of your summer garden that has stopped producing.  Don’t…

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  • You can enjoy a beautiful garden while spending less on watering with a few simple strategies. Reduce your need for water within your landscape 1. Plant selection matters Begin by choosing plants that are known to be drought resistant. Native plants typically require less watering (once established) and tend to be low maintenance. 2. Install…

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  • Allen Jones was recently awarded the Paulding County Master Gardener Extension Volunteers 2023 Scholarship.  Allen will attend Kennesaw State University in the fall working towards a degree in Biology.  Allen is a 2023 North Paulding High School graduate and a Paulding County 4-H’er.  Allen has demonstrated exceptional academic performance and community engagement as Paulding County…

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  • Creating a pollinators’ garden is an easy and inexpensive way to start an adventure in gardening. Anyone with a desire to grow plants and affect the environment in a positive way can grow a pollinators’ garden. These are things to consider before starting the garden: Pollinator plants are just as the name describes, plants that…

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  • By Amy Rhoads, Paulding County Master Gardener Extension Volunteer With Spring nearly here, the thoughts of many new plant enthusiasts turn to beautiful flowers and luscious gardens. The phrase, “right place, right plant,” is a guiding principle in any gardening effort, and brings our attention to basic horticulture practices. “Right place” refers to light, temperature,…

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  • broad beech fern frond

    By Rachel Dutton, Paulding County Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Every Spring and Fall, when wildflowers, ferns, native shrubs, and native trees awake from their dormancy, I have noticed the variety of ferns and wildflowers in my yard. Being a curious gardener, I wondered how many varieties of ferns could be found in Paulding County. One…

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  • Do you have a Christmas cactus that seems to bloom early each year, and you wonder what you’ve done wrong? It could be that Thanksgiving is in fact the right time for your plant to flower. The sharp-toothed edges of this plant suggest it is a Thanksgiving cactus, a species of its own. A Christmas…

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  • Honeysuckle is a common invasive in our landscapes.

    Have you enjoyed the sweet smell of Chinese privet blooms or the loved the privacy provided by Callery pear trees? Have you wondered why so many plant enthusiasts hate them? Sometimes it is hard to see beyond our own backyards to the ecological and financial harm afforded by privets, kudzu, mimosas, English ivy, Callery pears…

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  • Summer is here and so is the onslaught of summer weeds.  A weed that is problematic for many gardeners is Chamberbitter (Phyllanthus niruri). It is also referred to as “Little Mimosa” because its leaf resembles the Mimosa leaf. Another name for it is, “Gripeweed,” maybe because folks “gripe” about how hard it is to eliminate.…

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