Want to sell your house fast? Then add a little sizzle to your curb appeal, so potential buyers can see from the road how pretty your house is before they book a showing.

Sizzle is as simple as adding one or more fantastic flowerpots. Even an empty pot screams, "Hello, I have potential!"

The trials and tribulations of dealing with scale in the yard and garden

Last week, I was outside in the shed sorting last year's plastic pots before bringing them inside for cleaning.
When I came in, I noticed a sticky mess on my little lime tree. Sadly, I knew what the trouble was. It was the same trouble I have been tackling since I bought the tree a year ago.

The trouble was scale — insects that have a crawling stage where they march up stems to new leaves, insert their pointy beaks into the leaf and build a hard tortoise cover over themselves, often looking like bumps on a branch.

Five tips for big gardens in small spaces

A dog needs to bark and a cat needs to meow. Does that mean a gardener needs a garden to garden?

Not really.

Some of the best gardeners have tiny balconies or do all their gardening on their front step. I learned this lesson in Dubrovnik, a centuries-old city in Europe where entire gardens are built on front steps.