Tips to protect your plants, as Florida enters the deep freeze

“It’s freezin!” This is the number one topic in Florida the first week of January. One has to laugh because lots of Floridians are transplanted northerners. I have heard many garden owners complain about covering their plants. Depending on where you escaped from, covering your plants for a few nights is nothing compared to shoveling snow for six months.

Siobhan's veggies and annuals that need protection

Here are some Garden Fairy tips for protecting your plants from Florida’s once-in-a-while deep freezes.

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Parading around with pets

Siobhan and Lisa love a parade

You can imagine how much work it is to decorate a golf cart right around xmas– which is what a flockette of GFairies did last year for the Tarpon Springs xmas pararde. This year we thought let’s decorate dogs. Surely, this would be a simpler project. So… we all agreed, let’s add dogs dressed as fairies.

Simple ehh! Haaaa– maybe the making the doggy costume part. But the parading around with keyed up dogs- yikes. They sit when you want to go and you can fill in the rest. It was worse than trying to take a child on a walk, when all they want to do is sit around and cram all the candy canes on the tree in their mouth.

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Adding color to troubled teens lives over the holidays

For the fifth year in a row, the Garden Fairies have made the holidays a bit nicer for the troubled adolescent girls who live at the Brookwood Home in St. Pete FL. We always come up with colorful and creative gifts for the girls as Brookwood– fitting with our credo, to beautify the world. This year we decorated 50 presents–  makeup bags and filled with an assortment of teen pleasing makeup. Read more ›


Lemon Dilemma

As bad a year as it was for the economy, that’s how good a year it was for lemons at my house. Imagine 600 lemons coming ripe at the same time and then one day, a major lemon tree catastrophe. The top of our big lemon tree snapped in half.

We had to remove 2/3 of the top and in the process, we found ourselves with maybe 300 extra-large lemons on our driveway. What do you do with a large load of lemons?

I gave some to the neighbors, friends and family. I travel around with bags of lemons looking for lemon lovers. Gave some to the mailman, the garbage man and the FedEx lady. Basically, I would say, “like lemons?” to anyone I came in contact with.

But alas, all my attempts to lighten my lemon load were not enough.
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Barbara’s Bodacious Broccoli n’ Sue’s Curvy Cabbage

One of the great things about being a Garden Fairy is we inspire each other to try new things. I gave up on growing veggies in Florida awhile ago, but seeing Barbara’s veggies has reinvigorating an old passion of mine. Barbara, Sue and I all grew vegetables up north and have fond memories of such pursuits. Growing veggies in Florida is more of a challenge, but can be done. I will do a blog on “How to grow veggies successfully in Florida” at a later date.

If you read gardening publications, there is a trend to to plant veggies in your front yard. If done right you can add some ornamental value to your front garden. Barbara is growing three types of veggies that have ornamental appeal in her front yard (broccoli, Chinese cabbage and just plain cabbage). The rest of her mini farm is in the backyard, stuff that is not as neat in appearance. Tomatoes for instance, Barbara feels should always be in the back yard.

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Garden Fairies Web Log arrives for 2010

Welcome to the magical world of The Garden Fairies.

The Garden Fairies are a co-op of creative gardeners and artists in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

…a garden club that digs doing it!  We go way beyond planting perennials and petunias…we teach each other how to make magical Florida gardens. From the basics to the big projects we dig it all. It all started with three friends and their gardens, the rest is fairy history…

See the Garden Fairies Slideshow