Early spring is when you learn that “rabbit-resistant” does not mean immune.

I know that color. I had been once before, years ago, with my younger sister, long before I ever thought of myself as a gardener.

It didn’t look like much then. Just a defined edge and a pair of evergreen anchors.

There’s a point, about a week in, when the trays stop making sense. Some seedlings are already reaching for the light. Others look the same as the day you planted them.

A first look at the Test Garden — what I’m growing from seed, the setup, and what’s starting to take shape.

Yes, deer will eat hydrangeas, especially certain types, but the damage isn’t always obvious at first glance.

Follow a real-time Test Garden growing flowers and vegetables from seed in a coastal New England garden. See what germinates, what struggles, and what’s worth repeating.

This checklist is designed for May in the Northeast, where the garden may be ready, but the weather may not always cooperate.

A quiet shift into early spring, with hellebore containers outdoors and kokedama arrangements inside, two ways of welcoming the season.

Dianthus sit low at the front of my beds, softening the edges before the rest of the garden begins to fill in.

The whole place had a fairytale feeling—artful, a little whimsical, and just loose enough not to feel overdone.

Pre-emergent works by preventing weed seeds, like crabgrass, from germinating. Timing is what matters.

In the next week or so, I’ll start pruning my hydrangeas, something that used to confuse me until I finally understood how to prune them properly.

The farm was quiet, but inside was a magical surprise: tables filled with elegant flowers in bloom, in a wash of colors from pale green to whisper pink tipped in rose, to deep, saturated merlot.

A long-blooming, deer-resistant perennial in Northeast gardens.

Today is noticeably warmer, and early daffodils are beginning to emerge in the beds, the first real sign of spring.

One of the earliest and most reliable flowers in a Northeast garden.

These are the plants that have actually survived deer, and how I manage stubborn wildlife in my garden.

Early spring is the time to address garden cleanup and minor lawn repair, before growth accelerates.

Mid-March in the Northeast. While the stylist in me wants to edge the beds immediately, the gardener in me says, “Wait. It’s still too wet.”