The Personal Garden Coach

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The Personal Garden Coach THE PERSONAL GARDEN COACH (Christina Salwitz) Container & Landscape Design

10/02/2026

YES. YES I CAN.
Can I make fall look this damn good without resorting to a pumpkin in sight?
YES. YES I CAN.
Can I put chartreuse, burgundy, copper, pink, gold and electric blue in the same garden and somehow make it look like they were meant to be together?
YES. YES I CAN.
Can I use foliage as the main event instead of treating it like the boring green stuff you put around the flowers?
Oh, honey. YES I CAN.
Fall is when foliage starts showing its receipts.
The colors get louder. The textures get richer. The contrasts get downright delicious.
And this is exactly why I keep saying:
STOP SHOPPING FOR FLOWERS. START LOOKING AT THE WHOLE DAMN PALETTE.
Because when you learn to SEE LIKE A DESIGNER, you stop asking, “What’s blooming?”
You start asking:
“What happens if I put THAT next to THAT?”
And THAT, my friends, is where the fun begins.

YES. THE CROWS AND RACCOONS ARE AT IT AGAIN. And before the 50th person comments, “WHAT is doing this?!” and “HOW DO I S...
09/25/2026

YES. THE CROWS AND RACCOONS ARE AT IT AGAIN. And before the 50th person comments, “WHAT is doing this?!” and “HOW DO I STOP IT?!”… let’s talk about what’s actually happening.

Those crows aren’t randomly destroying your lawn for entertainment. They’re foraging for the insects and larvae living underneath it. The raccoons are doing the same thing, just with significantly less finesse.

And here’s the part I wish I didn’t have to say for the 100th time: Your soil is the problem.
Not the crows. Not the raccoons. Not some mysterious garden pest conspiracy.

If your lawn is routinely fertilized with synthetic products, treated with W**d & Feed, stressed by summer drought, compacted, or otherwise neglected, you’ve created an environment where certain insects are perfectly happy to move in, lay eggs, and raise a family. And then the wildlife shows up for the buffet.

You can throw grub killer at the lawn. You can try the home remedy your cousin swears by. You can declare war on every crow in the county. But if you don’t address the underlying soil and lawn health, you’re treating the symptom—not the system.

Healthy soil supports a healthier, more resilient lawn and a more balanced soil ecosystem. So before you ask, “How do I get rid of the crows?!” ask the much more useful question:

“Why is my lawn feeding them?” That’s the question a gardener should be asking. And yes, I will apparently be saying this again next week.

09/25/2026

I refuse to participate in the annual Mum, death march. 😏

09/25/2026

IT’S FALL, Y’ALL. PUT DOWN THE MUM.
Every September, millions of perfectly reasonable gardeners walk into a big-box garden center, see a giant chrysanthemum for $9.98 and think:
“Well, THAT will make my front door look festive!”
And for approximately 11 glorious days, it does.
Then comes the crispy brown flower apocalypse. Meanwhile, over here, we’re asking a slightly different question:
What if your fall container looked GOOD without requiring a weekly funeral? This is a collector conifer doing the heavy lifting, with foliage, form, texture and color that actually earns its keep long after the pumpkin-spice industrial complex has packed up.
Because here’s the thing, a bargain plant that looks fabulous for two weeks isn’t necessarily a bargain.
Buy the weird one.
Buy the beautiful one.
Buy the plant you’re going to grow on and eventually plant in the landscape as a SHOWPIECE.
That’s how you See Like a Designer. And yes, I fully expect the Mum People to come for me.
I have snacks.

Only one spider bite, one bee sting and now these FINALLY go to their incredible new landscape! After babying 45 hydrang...
09/06/2026

Only one spider bite, one bee sting and now these FINALLY go to their incredible new landscape! After babying 45 hydrangeas through July and August (you can’t even see some hiding in here!) I’ll drive these and unload them like nuclear warheads until they’re planted. PHEW!!!!! But, we DO give good van BABY! Monrovia Proven Winners

Non-negotiables I have as a landscape and container designer; I have rules.Not rules rules. More like “things I will abs...
09/02/2026

Non-negotiables I have as a landscape and container designer; I have rules.
Not rules rules. More like “things I will absolutely die on a horticultural hill over” rules.
1. CONTRAST IS NOT OPTIONAL.
If everything is the same color, texture, height and shape… congratulations, you’ve made a green smoothie.
I want tension. Red against chartreuse. Fine texture against bold leaves. Big against little. Calm against chaos.
2. FOLIAGE EARNS ITS REAL ESTATE.
Flowers are fabulous. I love flowers.
But foliage is the architecture that keeps the party standing after the blooms have gone home.
3. SCALE MATTERS. A LOT.
Tiny pot. Tiny plant. Tiny little “meh.”
Nope, not for me. But, if YOU can carry it off with style, my hat is off to you! I want plants and containers with enough presence to hold their own in the landscape.
4. REPETITION CREATES A STORY.
One fabulous plant is a plant.
Three or five fabulous plants repeated through a space? Now we’re designing.
Your eye should know where to go next without being handed a map.
5. THERE MUST BE A LITTLE BIT OF “OH, DAMN.”
This is perhaps my most important rule.
If I look at a container or garden and think, “Well, that’s perfectly nice…” Back to the drawing board. Because a garden shouldn’t just be pretty. It should make you FEEL something.
And yes, sometimes that feeling is:
“Holy crap, I want that.” 😏

08/29/2026

“You design pots, right?”
Well… yes. But I also design gardens. Lots of them. Big gardens. Small gardens. Fussy gardens. Wild gardens. Gardens that need to behave themselves. Gardens that absolutely refuse to. And while I love a great container (clearly, I did just write a book about them), containers are only one little piece of how I see the landscape.
I’m obsessed with the whole picture: foliage, color, structure, texture, how you move through a space and most importantly, how a garden makes you feel.
So, for the record…
I’m not a “pots” designer.
I’m a garden designer who happens to REALLY love pots.

08/21/2026

The Bold Container Garden arrives in January of 2027! But until then we have lots of design chats ahead. How BOLD will you go this fall?
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