Learn to manage humidity for your houseplants with Senior Horticulturist Leslie Hunter. Humidity is a measurement of water vapor in the air (and is usually the culprit of bad hair days), but it's very important to plants, especially houseplants. Houseplants appreciate a humidity level between 60 and 80%, which would be difficult to [...]

Fall Gardening with Senior Horticulturist Leslie Hunter Learn how to protect your gardens—and your houseplants— from the cold temperatures while encouraging the best possible spring blooms. Roses At this point in the season, you can leave your roses alone and allow the blooms to form rose hips while growth slows. Typically, we do [...]

Garden Design with Senior Horticulturist Leslie Hunter Although designing annual gardens is a creative process, I have a clear framework that I follow each time. These are the four steps I use to create dynamic garden spaces that will generate interest throughout the season. 1. Determine a Theme The first step is to [...]

The Wells Fargo Rose Garden If you've visited the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden between spring and fall, you were first greeted by the dynamic, colorful Wells Fargo Rose Garden. We carefully design and organically maintain this garden to challenge the definition of traditional rose gardens—you'll find more than roses here! As the [...]

Five Striking Purple Ornamentals The 2018 Pantone Color of the Year was Ultra Violet, which just happened to coincide with the dominant color scheme throughout the espalier border in the Koehn Garden last fall. In its announcement, Pantone described its chosen color as “dramatically provocative and thoughtful,” adjectives that make a lot of [...]