The first winter I got brave with pruning, I “tidied up” a lilac on a sunny January afternoon. Come spring, the shrub was ...

I got an email from one of my readers a couple of weeks ago who has enjoyed my column for a number of years, and she asked me whether she should prune her lilac now and how she should go about pruning ...

In this stressful spring, we’ve been cheered by the bright blooms of flowering shrubs and ornamental trees such as forsythia, quince, viburnum, lilac, cherry, crabapple and redbud. If these plants ...

December can be a nerve-wracking time for many gardeners. The weather gets colder every week, snow begins to accumulate on ...

It seems lilacs always have been in one part of my mother’s garden as it was with my grandmother. Most of the time you really don’t think much of the things that normally are a part of your life. I ...

I’ve pruned a lot of plants in my time as a gardener. Some I had to tackle from atop a wobbly ladder, and at least once I had to take shears with me in a cherry picker, to confront a rather ...

Q: What’s growing on the trunk of my lilac tree? — Phyllis D. A: Your photo shows mushrooms growing on the trunk, which are the visible, exterior "fruiting bodies" of fungi. Mushrooms generally live ...

Answer: Good news — you can wait even longer. For maximum flowering effect, keep your clippers in their scabbard until after the lilac flowers have senesced (faded). Lilac bushes bear flowers on last ...

The lush fragrance of lilacs is one of the delights of spring. Most neighborhoods have a few lilac bushes, covered in late April or early May with clusters of tiny purple flowers shaped like bunches ...

October is not the best time to prune lots of trees, but there is one job you can quickly do this month that will benefit many popular backyard trees. That is to remove suckers before they get too ...

I have three sugar maple trees in my yard. Is that enough to tap for maple syrup? Where can I find information on how to tap trees and make the syrup? - Nicolas, Kenosha. Yes, you can tap three maple ...

If you squint your eyes real tight and look at a grove of deciduous trees you are likely to see just a slight casting of green. I did and there is. Looking at the calendar you realize daylight saving ...