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Rainy weather this spring helps fungal diseases thrive in your garden. Here’s how to treat them.

A rainy spring can help fungal diseases like rose rust or powdery mildew thrive in your garden. Here's how to treat affected plants.

How to identify and eradicate weeds in especially rainy season

Lots of rainy weather has meant little time to deal with weeds while it also promoted heavy weed growth.

Chicago Botanic Garden turns 50

The Chicago Botanic Garden celebrates its 50th birthday with "Flourish: The Garden at 50."

How to get rid of grass growing in garden beds

Grass is difficult to eradicate once it gets established in the crowns of perennials and in beds of groundcovers.

Time to water the garden. Plan ahead to avoid stressing plants.

By thinking ahead, you can help your plants avoid water stress that can weaken them and make them more vulnerable to pests and diseases.

Choose lilacs carefully, or end up with high-maintenance shrub

Old-fashioned lilacs need full sun and have a short pruning period, but more modern varietals require less intensive maintenance for your garden.

Instead of power raking your lawn this spring, try these best mowing practices

Power raking can be too much for your lawn, but aerating it once a year is a good practice, as is keeping the grass slightly longer than you'd expect when mowing.

Trees can be surrounded by flowers, mulch in your garden — but not raised planters. Here’s why.

Planting flowers around your tree is a good idea, but raised planters can damage a tree's roots and cause serious harm. Here are alternatives.

Use trunk flare to determine how deep to plant a new tree

Many trees and shrubs are planted too deeply in lawns and gardens. Use the trunk flare instead of the root ball in calculating the depth of your planting hole.

Before digging in your garden or yard, here’s how to get utility lines marked for free

Before digging in your yard or garden, free services in Chicago and Illinois will mark where your gas, electric, cable and water utility lines are underground.

Chicago’s Tomato Man on mission to help others rethink the plant by offering more than 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes

Bob Zeni has more than 4,000 heirloom tomato plants in a greenhouse that stretches as far as one city block.

Remove — by hand or herbicide — invasive lesser celandine that can take over lawns

Dig out or use an herbicide to eradicate lesser celandine (Ficaria verna), invasive spring ephemeral perennial plant that shows up in lawns and gardens.

A guide to planting trees that will leave you confident about survival, longevity

Planting a tree correctly will determine whether it survives and how long it will live.

How to prevent pooling water in your yard, garden

To correct drainage problems in the garden, consider tile drains or grading the landscape or yard.

Tips for finding healthy plants at the garden center

Roots will tell you a lot about health of plant, so look under the hood when shopping for house plants, trees and shrubs.

Already seeing green? It’s still safe to prune some shrubs in early spring

While experts recommend pruning shrubs in winter, when you can better see branches, you can still trim some shrubs in early spring if you're careful.

Divide and conquer those encroaching garden perennials in April

Most perennials are best divided in spring when they are showing a couple inches of growth, so April this is a good time to do it.

What to know about rascally rabbits feasting on your shrubs

Rabbits can eat plant buds and prevent shrubs and other garden plants from blossoming in the spring. Here's how to keep them away from your spring-flowering plants.

Spring cleaning: Cut perennials back before new growing season

It is generally best to cut perennials back before they begin growing in spring to avoid damaging new growth, but if you get to it later just be more careful.

Weed early and often to make summer gardening a breeze

Tackling garden and lawn weeds in early spring, when they first appear, can reduce the amount of weeding required later in the growing season.

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