Steve Boehme
Steve Boehme is a landscape designer/installer with a lifetime of experience. “Let’s Grow!” simplifies landscape topics in clear, direct language, for non-technical readers, with no ads or popups.
This popular weekly gardening column appears weekly in 16 southern Ohio newspapers, reaching over 300,000 households.
Experts can disagree, and there are always exceptions, but these simple columns give you the basics. Search by topic or keyword to quickly find simple answers to your landscaping questions!
This Weeks Column
Pruning Evergreen Trees
Evergreen Baby Branches Have to Go Have you ever noticed how mature evergreen trees have lots of dead branches on them? They tend to be the lowest ones on the tree. Eventually they rot and fall off, making a mess and leaving unsightly st...
Pruning Evergreen Trees
Evergreen Baby Branches Have to Go Have you ever noticed how mature evergreen trees have lots of dead branches on them? They tend to be the lowest ones on the tree. Eventually they rot and fall off, making a mess and leaving unsightly st...
Shrub Management for Best Bloom
Multiplying the Blooms on Flowering Shrubs It’s easy for home gardeners to double or triple the number of blooms on flowering shrubs like Lilac, Hydrangea, Spirea, and Weigela. All it takes is regular shearing once a year, particularly...
Color from your Winter Garden
Winter Color – Plan For It At this time of year we’re already starting to get weary of winter’s drab color palette, and longing for spring color. Once Christmas decorations are put away for another year, seed catalogs will start ar...
Firepit Basics
Understanding Fire Pits Gathering around a warm fire has brought people together since the beginning of mankind. Whether it’s a campfire in the woods or a fireplace in your living room, fire adds warmth and comfort while attracting peo...
Christmas Tree Tradition
Enjoying a Traditional Christmas Tree In today’s fast-paced, high-tech world, the ritual of a real Christmas tree captures the genuine spirit of the holidays. Decorating with live greens is an important way to connect with tradition, a...
Landscape Edging Saves Maintenance
Landscape Edging Saves Maintenance You may have noticed that the easiest landscape beds to maintain are those surrounded by concrete. For instance, most homes have a concrete walk between the driveway and the front door. This arrangement...
Hedgerow and Woodlot Management
Is Your Hedgerow a Savings Account? As I drive around southwest Ohio, I pass by miles of hedgerows along fences and property lines. These are places where, because it’s difficult to cut them regularly, volunteer trees and brush are all...
Tree Colonnades
Ornamental Pears Are Illegal in Ohio Those of us with long driveways often fantasize about having a stately planting of matching driveway trees on both sides, forming a shady “tunnel”. This type of planting is called a colonnade. We...
Pine & Spruce Tree Ailments
Is Something Wrong with Your Pine Tree? Is your white pine tree dying? Perhaps, but probably not. Let’s take a close look at your tree and see if there’s anything to worry about, or anything you need to do. Many White Pine trees turn...
Williamsburg Brick
Building With Brick in Colonial Williamsburg On our recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg, we saw lots of brick. Bricks were the paver of choice throughout the historic area, not to mention the surrounding neighborhoods and the Visitor...
Catalpa Trees Revisited
Catalpa Conundrum As I write this, the many catalpa trees surrounding our farmyard are raining leaves. Last night we had our first frost, an occasion that causes all the catalpas to simultaneously shed all their leaves the very next day....
2022 Garden Tours
Touring Destination Gardens Marjorie and I spent the first two weeks of September on a road trip, touring some of our favorite gardens and historic sites. It was a vacation of sorts, but also a sentimental journey, and a voyage of discov...
Water Your Plants in Fall
Fall Watering The next few weeks are a critical time to water your landscape, particularly your evergreen shrubs and trees. A thorough soaking during late September and October will help your trees and shrubs thrive, and may well save th...
Topping is Harmful
Topping Trees is Not the Answer It still shocks me when I see large trees being “trimmed” or “topped” in this day and age. Topping is the drastic removal or cutting back of large branches in mature trees, leaving large stubs. The...
Lawn Restoration in Fall
Now is the Ideal Time to Restore Your Lawn Early Fall is an ideal time to restore your lawn. There is a way to do this successfully at a reasonable cost, and following this recipe just once will give you terrific results, but if you real...
Bulbs Give Early Spring Color
Plant Bulbs Soon for Early Spring Color Soon it will be the season to plant bulbs for early spring color. You can have a colorful garden very early next spring if you plant some bulbs right now. Early-blooming Daffodils, Hyacinths, Tulip...