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It's been just over fifty years that age and health forced my grandmother to leave her gardens, ending one of my most cherished childhood memories. Gardening was different then but one of my favorite annuals from back then has remained a favorite.

Modern breeding and selection has greatly changed the coleus, but even 50 years ago it brought a wealth of color to the garden. Back then it was supposed to be a shade plant but we pushed it into the sun.

Thirty years ago, when I first started growing flowers commercially, I remember we would start coleus from seed. I don't remember seed from grandmother's day, but maybe the seed was too small. When your age is still in single digits, maybe you only get the big ones like marigolds and zinnias.

In grandmother's day, as the end of the growing season approached, we would carefully take cuttings and place them in water. With a bit of luck they would survive the winter. They faired better in water than they did if planted in a pot in garden soil. That was before the day of commercial potting soil. A sterile soil has sure made growing seeds and starter plants a lot easier.

The scourge of our coleus over-wintering was the white mealy bug. Many times I dunked my plants in soapy water hoping for success. Occasionally the bugs won, but somehow there were some coleus for next year's gardens.

Coleus grown from seed remain today but vegetatively produced ones are largely replacing them. Today there are more varieties than one can count. I know the names of impatiens, geraniums and the like but I pick coleus by sight. Every seed catalog is loaded with coleus varieties.

Another advance with the vegetative selections is that they are often called sun loving. That's true and fine, but my childhood coleus survived the sun, and the new varieties today will do better if they receive a bit of protection from the hottest sun. The newer varieties seem to bloom less, too. That's a plus, since we grow coleus for the foliage and usually pinch off the blooms.

Identified by their square stems and bright foliage there is significant size variation between varieties. Most are rather tall and large and will fill a lot garden space or serve as an accent plant in a container.

Several years ago I attended a business meeting at a country club just north of Lancaster and was stopped in my tracks by a massive planting of mixed coleus. The mix included at least five varieties and was highlighted by a red and a yellow selection.They were under a light cover of trees and shrubs along the north side of the building.

Needless to say, the next year I tried to duplicate that look in two locations. The first location had a bit too much sun for the yellow variety. Leaf burning and timid growth resulted. In more shade I got close.

Another amazing observation I have made about coleus is that the same variety will vary greatly depending on its location. I know of no other plant that responds so significantly to the slight environmental changes that occur in each of our gardens.

Grandmother would be impressed with today's coleus selections, but good gardeners can get results with the plants they have. My grandmother always did.

It's been a dozen or so years since I found this neat little plant on a perennial list somewhere and of course I had to have it. I remember the exact spot where I planted it, enjoyed it all summer and mourned its death when I looked for it the following spring.

I think I did this happened at least twice maybe three times before I gave up on it. This was a marketing failure and they seem to occur more often than I like. I'll save the marketing failures for a future effort because I want to talk about the return of the plant.

Diasia is the plant and it is now grown as a cool season annual. That means it blooms wonderfully in the early spring and in the fall. The newest releases also show rather good blooming habits in our summers.

The common name of diasia is twin spurs for the double coiled spur on the back of each flower. The top of the flower looks a bit like an impatien but with multiple flowers on each of the many slender stems. The spur almost reminds me of a snapdragon.

It remerged as an annual maybe eight years ago as a low pink weaver for mixed containers. It was a great filler and hugged the bases of the taller plants in the container. The only problem was that it looked a bit worn and bloom tired by mid summer.

I gave the plant a rather severe haircut and a bit of extra fertilizer and within two weeks it was back. The newer varieties offer a wider range of colors including corals, pinks and reds and differ a bit in growth habits. Some are a bit upright while the others ramble more.

The chief use of diasia today is in mixed containers but I suspect they would be fine at the gardens edge. They like lots of light but the hottest sun might increase the water needs. My first effort, twelve years ago was under high shade, was quite successful.

Foliage is light green to green and consists of numerous wispy stems with rather small leaves. The stems quickly give way to dense columns of flowers.

Since diasia is usually grown in a container, let me briefly touch on soil, water and fertilizer. I would use a lighter commercial potting mix. If you are starting with a partially grown plant from a greenhouse, a barky mix works well.

Most commercial mixes have a ph ranging from the low fives to near six. Diasia likes the 5.8 to 6.2 range. Often our water and fertilizer will slowly raise the ph in a container, but that is seldom a problem with diasia.

If you have a tired looking container from the petunia look alikes, the problem may be from the upward ph creep. Avoiding ammonium based nitrogen fertilizer usually is enough to prevent this.

Fertilize diasia in the middle range and try not to over water. Again, moderation is the key. Diasia is rather easy to grow.

It's been thirteen years since we perched a new house on a ridge overlooking the west branch of the Octoraro Creek. From day one the daylight basement cried for a patio. So did my wife. Immediately, I used landscape timbers to shore up the bank and even built a series of wooden steps toward the needed patio.

But then activity stopped until about a year ago. I guess I was busy building greenhouses and was short on both time and money to tackle the patio project.

The now finished project consists of a 15 by 60-foot cobblestone patio, 35 feet of waist high retaining wall and 16 steps to reach the grade of the main floor of the house. I'm not a certified "do it yourselfer", and while time and money was an issue, I was just plain scared to tackle such a project.

My intention now is to spend a few paragraphs explaining my process to accomplish this significant improvement to my landscape and to suggest that if I can do it, you can, too.

I started by visiting several local venders and studying the information they supplied. Next, I attended a dealer demonstration where they built a small section of a patio. That was confidence building, but I still wasn't ready to proceed.

Next, my wife and I traveled to New Jersey to observe another, more complicated, demonstration. This one involved a walk with a step or two. In addition to watching their procedures I began to carefully study their work. Close up it wasn't perfect.

Finally, I was in Quarryville and paused to study a new brick building. From ten feet it looked great. From ten inches it looked pretty bad. At that point I realized that one would view the whole project and not study it for the small flaws. I was ready.

Given the size of the project and the amount of dirt that needed to be moved, I hired an excavator to move dirt, place the six inches of stone dust base and roll it. That was in late October. I immediately started with the wall. When I got to the right turn for the steps I realized that I should have started there so I tore the wall down and started over. That was my only disaster.

I spent last Thanksgiving morning working on the steps but quit a few minutes before the extended family arrived for dinner. My brother-in-law studied my work and was amazed that a contractor would leave and let his tools lying around. That was a confidence builder.

The wall and steps were nearly finished by the end of December. Fortunately, the first week in January was warm and my wife and I laid the 15 by 60-foot patio in four days working hours appropriate for our age. We used half-inch pipe and a two by four to level the layer of sand ahead of laying the cobblestones.

Unfortunately, winter then set in, and given our busy springs we did not get back to the project until a month or so ago. The finishing touches included cutting a few blocks to fit since our patio and wall are at a slight angle. We also needed to level the edges with topsoil and plant a bit of shrubbery.

At ten feet, it looks great. Thanks to a helpful vender and a helpful and patient wife, I'm happy. I can't wait to start my next project.

I never gave falling leaves much thought until I had a recent conversation with the newest home owner in the family. Last spring he moved into a small enclave on the other side of the Solanco area.

In addition to learning that living in your own home brings responsibilities that didn't exist in the small apartment, he expressed fear that he was living in a community of compulsive leaf rakers. You guessed his question.

My guess is that most leaf raking is done for cosmetic reasons. There must be a written commandment on the subject somewhere that I have never found. Living in the middle of nowhere, with no close neighbors, my usual leaf control consists of a few passes with the riding mower and letting nature take its course with what is left.

If you rake them, they are, with one exception, a great addition to the compost pile. That exception is the leaves from black walnuts, which contain the same toxic substance that causes problems growing many plants in their root zone. Fortunately, this tree is generally sparse with leaves and they seem to disappear early in the season.

The other problem leaf is the one from the Norway Maple. If you have a landscape maple that is more than 15 or 20 years old, you probably have one. It's the one with the huge maple leaves that are deep green in the summer and bright yellow in the fall.

These leaves are large and papery and will form a heavy mat if left on their own. This mat can smother and thin grass in your lawn or damage other timid plants. This tree has fallen from grace recently for its perceived invasiveness.

Another hazard with masses of dry leaves is fire, as I recently discovered. I added a patio beside my house, but that is another story. Several days ago I pushed the leaves off the patio into a pile and set them on fire on a day that was a bit too windy.

It took no time for the fire to spread into my most unkempt flower bed. Fortunately, the bed was surrounded by grass so there was little serious risk. I pulled the leaves away from the few plants that the fire might damage and left it burn. I might add that my wife was away for the day. Clean up in that one just got a lot easier.

I admit that I will never be a converted leaf raker but one needs to think about leaf management. I almost forgot the biggest benefit of raking leaves. Piles of leaves are great to jump into. Unfortunately, I don't bounce nearly as well as I did 25 or 50 years ago.

My wife and I just returned from two wonderful weeks visiting, studying and hiking in the national parks of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. We are talking about the big trees, high waterfalls, beautiful vistas and some record unexpected early season snow.

Of course I was very interested in the plant communities along the way. What struck me most was the importance of microclimate. The Yosemite Valley is just a mile and a half wide and yet the opposite sides of the valley support an entirely different group of plants.

With the high mountains, the side of mountain that catches most of the sun is much hotter and thus drier and vegetation is more sparse and challenged. The other factor is elevation. In those mountains a day trip is the same as traveling from the Florida border to north of the Hudson Bay if you are studying the plants.

While no where as pronounced here, microclimates are important in our local gardens. Soil, moisture, exposure, hills, wind and our proximity to the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean and the Susquehanna River all come into play. Factors like these blur the lines between science and experience or art.

When I had the orchard I knew that a fruit blossom was most subject to freezing for a very short period just before they opened. If you can plant on a hillside, the air movement will drag the cold temperatures down the hill.

Another prudent move was to plant the same varieties of a given fruit on the north and south side of a hill. This usually staggered the bloom time and extended harvest season several days.

One of my favorite tales came from a man from Delaware. He was enthralled by the taste of our strawberries and wanted to grow the same ones in his garden a short hour away.

I told him the variety I planted and he ordered them. He wasn't happy. He repeated the process and again was not happy. He came to my fields and dug runners and again failed. Blame the microclimate.

On the ornamental side, I planted two identical coleus in identical patio pots and put one on the north side of my house and the other on the southeast side. You guessed it. You would have had a difficult time saying that it was the same plant.

Another example was the reseeding perennial blue flax. It danced through my garden and yet was a total failure on the other side of the hill several miles away.

This story has a moral. Many ornamental plants are easy to grow and will thrive regardless of what we do to them. Many others have rather exacting requirements. When you find a new plant try it, but don't make it the centerpiece of your landscape until you are sure you can grow it.