By Tricia Fleck

Hull Garden Club

Summer is here and that means more time on your porch or patio to enjoy the sounds and scents of the beach and summer sea breezes. Tomatoes are rounding out on the vines while kale, zucchini, and peppers are loving the regular rain and heat. It can be overwhelming to keep up with weeding, watering, fertilizing, and shooing away those cute and hungry rabbits, but your plants will thank you with a hearty harvest.

**DAISY DAISIES.** The early summer blooms of a field of flowers accentuate the Victorian charm of this home on Strawberry Hill. [Richard W. Green photo]

This summer we have been rewarded with gorgeous blooms on everyone’s favorite flowering bushes, the pink, white, and blue hydrangeas. Cut a bouquet and bring it to your neighbor. Set another on your mantel or in a guest room to welcome your friends and family.

Successful gardeners will tell you that deadheading spent flower blooms, pruning yellow leaves and stringy vines, weeding, regular hand watering, and occasional fertilizing will keep your flowers blooming for weeks on end.

Don’t have the time or energy for being outside in the heat and maintaining a vegetable or flower bed? Try an arrangement of houseplants to enhance your living space. Inside or out, there are many flowering and foliage-type plants that can bring a smile to both your place and your face. Perhaps you have some plants that need a refresh. This is a perfect time to bring your spiders, aloe vera, begonias, jades, peace lilies and more outside. Many of your favorite flowering plants like marigolds, nasturtiums, and impatiens will also grow beautifully in pots.

Plan a “potting party” with your friends and neighbors. Invest in a large bag of potting soil and scour the thrift stores, yard sales, your basement, or garage for some interesting containers. That old watering can that’s been missing a spout may be the perfect container to hold a newly potted geranium, some marigolds or a colorful coleus plant. Share your resources, a pitcher of refreshing iced tea, some laughs and come away with some happy new house plants!

Did you know that many plant varieties will propagate by simply placing cuttings in fresh potting soil? Beautiful red bloodleaf plants, begonias, geraniums, echeveria, aloe vera, and the ubiquitous baby spider plants are all good examples of this type of propagation.

Some plants will require you to take cuttings, that when placed in water will quickly grow roots and be ready for potting in fresh soil. Examples of these are abutilon or flowering maple, coleus, and impatiens; all familiar favorites that add visual interest to your surroundings.

Many other varieties of heat tolerant, moisture-loving plants are readily available in your local nursery, farmers markets, or home improvement stores. Spruce up a corner of your porch by placing plants on stepladders, upside down empty clay pots, old boxes, or side tables to add a colorful dimension to your space. A glass jar filled with shells and seaglass, personal mementos and a string of twinkling lights will add sparkle and match the stars twinkling down at you at night.

Plants are happiest when they are nurtured, fed, watered, sung to and confided in; sound familiar?