Sure. Ozarks Gardens has three simple goals:

     1) to help folks find plants that really thrive in the Ozarks, along with tips on how to grow them. Every plant that appears on Ozarks Gardens does beautifully in the Ozarks and all similar climates.

     2) to give a richer, broader, more useful picture of gardening in our region;

     3) to have some fun

   You can browse the site at your leisure or search for what you want--e.g., a search for "hosta" turns up many, many varieties--or you can search for plant characteristics such as colors or plant types. The search engine isn't perfect; like gardening, it can return some odd results, but most will be useful.

     The best way to approach the website is to relax, take your time, and enjoy whatever you find here. And you don't have to see everything in one visit; you can always come back when you have more time.

The Ozarks region has no fixed, precise, universally accepted borders. Some define it as 40,000 square miles of southern MIssouri and northern Arkansas, others say it's 50,000-60,000 square miles that include parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Virtually all sources, however, agree that the region is generally bordered by the Mississippi River on the east, the Missouri River on the north, the Arkansas River on the south, and the Great Plains on the west. That's good enough for us. Thanks for the question.

Sorry, but no. All plants require some care, however little it may be.

We've had great luck with the soil pellet kits sold in nurseries and garden centers. The pellets are about a quarter-inch tall and come packed in a tray of as many as 72. Add water to the tray and the pellets expand. Then use a pencil, pen tip or similar item to scrape a shallow depression in each pellet's soil mix and drop in two or three seeds and cover them with the mix. Put the tray where it won't be in the way--indirect light is fine. Add water now and then to keep the pellets from drying out, and before long, you'll have beautiful, healthy seedlings. It's absurdly easy, and here's good news: You don't have to rush to plant the seedlings; they'll live in the pellets for quite a long time.

The best guideline is to plant after the average date of the last frost in your region. In the Springfield, Missouri, area, that date is May 2nd (according to the National Weather Service). The wisest gardeners we know advise always waiting until May 10th, to avoid any risk of losing plants to a freezet. 

A great question. If your garden site has reasonably good soil and about a half-day's sun, planting Salvia, or Sage, is a terrific solution. Salvia species and hybrids come in so many beautiful colors, sizes, and textures that they can make a highly diverse and colorful garden by themselves. (Search this site for "sage" to find some good varieties.) The only care sage need is watering when dry and removing spent flowers to prolong bloom. Bonus: Most sages are perennial in the Ozarks, so don't need replanting. We know of no easier plant path to a lovely, low-maintenance garden. You can add other plants to the mix, too!

Boy, do we. The best info ever on choosing and growing hostas is the Establishing Hosta page on the American Hosta Society website. You'll find it here.

Lynda and Jim Franco grow many herbs at Earth Mother Gardens in Buffalo, Missouri. (See them in Plantsellers on this website.) Lynda says the best way to dry herbs is to "Put 'em in a paper bag, label 'em, and put 'em in the refrigerator. In two weeks they'll be ready with good color and their original taste." She adds, "If you wash the herbs first, be sure to put them in a dry towel for at least 24 hours before bagging them up."

Wow, this question may be unanswerable. "Best" how? In taste, size, color, quantity of yield, disease resistance, or in all characteristics combined? We've put the question to some Ozarks gardeners who know much more than we and none could name a "best" tomato for the region. They all say this is great tomato-growing country and can name varieties they especially like and recommend. 'Big Boy', 'Better Boy', 'Early Girl', and 'Brandywine' are the highest on the list. (We'll add more as we talk with more gardeners.) Note: You can find superb info on growing tomatos in general in Missouri here.

Some are, but some are too hot to eat and a few others actually poisonous. Also, peppers sold as ornamentals are treated with toxic pesticides to be blemish-free. For eating, it's best to stick to peppers grown expressly for the table.

We're sorry, but we don't sell plants or, for that matter, anything. Our Plantsellers section has some good plant sources. You can find them here. Others can be found on the Internet or in the phone book.   

Nearly all photos here can be viewed in three sizes. The largest are for folks who like sharper detail for plant identification or who just prefer bigger pics. They take 10-12 seconds to open with DSL and 1-3 seconds with cable modem. If downloading these is too slow with dialup, you may prefer sticking with the two smaller sizes.

Commercial baits and home remedies (saucers of beer, etc.) run a poor second to going out with a flashlight at night and handpicking pests, with perhaps one exception. Hosta grower Lee Coates of Highlandville, Missouri, says that in the fall when slugs are most active and laying eggs, baits are useless. "They're up in the leaves feeding and they're not coming down to eat bait and then going back up for the food they prefer." Coates advises putting baits down in the spring before plants develop any foliage--"That's when the eggs are hatching and you can wipe out 90 percent of them right off the bat." He recommends Sluggo and other phosphate-based baits, which, by the way, are not toxic to pets. Where pets are not present, Hosta grower Laura White of Springfield, Missouri, recommends the liquid bait Deadline as being highly effective.

Rest easy, because our region has way too many excellent plantsellers to name here. We know more than 100 sources for healthy, beautiful plants at fair prices. Some can be found in the Plantsellers section on this website. Places that sell overfertilized, poorly maintained, or overpriced plants are rare. We can count them on one hand. (No, we won't name them, because they might improve.)

The nurseries, growers, garden centers and other plantsellers you see on the website are those who we've met and talked with. This is why you see so many Farmers' Market sellers--they're all in one place and easily accessible. We hope eventually to list every plantseller in the Ozarks who's doing anything of special interest to gardeners. We don't purposely exclude anyone. We just haven't gotten around to everybody. If you know of a nursery, grower, or other plantseller you think would be worth listing on the website, please go to Contact Us and tell us about them, and we'll follow up.

Nearly all photos on Ozarks Gardens are taken with an older Olympus C-4040Z digital camera. We chose it for faithfulness to natural colors, lens clarity, and color balance. Tip: Many companies produce superb digital cameras now. You can compare them at www.dpreview.com, which has galleries of photos taken with many different cameras.

We can't take the credit. The design and organization of Ozarks Gardens are due to MachineWare, the software created by Jim Teters that "drives" the website. The program is so logical and easy to use that creating a messy or disorganized site with it is, in our opinion, impossible. We feel very lucky to have its use.

Blame the Google ad program, which we joined to help defray expenses in keeping Ozarks Gardens online. Google then decided to allow anyone to place an ad on any website without permission of the webmaster. Since then we've had to delete and block a great many non-garden-related and sometimes annoying ads. If the practice continues, we'll drop the program, which only brings us about $100 a year anyway.