Have you ever wondered who grows the beautiful cut-flower bouquets you see on display at farmer’s markets? Here’s a glimpse into one flower farmer’s life—Lisa Ziegler of The Gardener’s Workshop in Virginia.

Lisa Ziegler is living her dream as an organic flower farmer, popular guest speaker and owner of an online business called The Gardener’s Workshop based in Newport News, Va.

Lisa is an urban farmer, growing her flowers in the middle of a city of 200,000 people. For the first 11 years of her growing operation, she produced 3000 to 4000 stems of flowers a week on only ½ acre of land.

She later acquired additional acreage to triple the size of the working gardens.

“We grow annuals like zinnias, cockscomb, sunflowers, snapdragons, sweet William and many others,” Lisa says. “We also grow a smaller portion of perennials and shrubs such as peonies, lisianthus, and hydrangeas.”

The truth about tomatoes is evident when tastefully arranged in a 1930s vintage glass bowl. “Scientifically speaking, a tomato is definitely a fruit.”

It’s the first of September and now that tomatoes are being eaten at every meal, it’s easy to say gardening here is just a bowl of cherry tomatoes.

The frustrations of a cold spring are a distant memory with such a bountiful harvest of tomatoes.

I planted 13 different kinds of tomatoes–and this fruit bowl is filled with 12 of them. The Giant Belgiums won’t be ready for a while.

On display here are Sungold, Crimson Carmello, Tomaccio, Sweet Treats, Supersweet 100, and Early Girl mixed together with heirloom tomato varieties Black Prince, Black Krim, Yellow Pear, Great White, Yellow Taxi, and Stupice.

It would be hard for me to choose a favorite from this bowl because all are delicious in their own way.

If you’re looking for a way to attract more bees to your garden, plant a patch of Lemon Queen sunflowers and join The Great Sunflower Project.

In May I planted a packet of Lemon Queen sunflower seeds so I could be one of the citizen scientists counting bees for the The Great Sunflower Project. The project is the brainchild of Grechen LeBuhn, a professor in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University.

The project encourages gardeners to plant sunflowers and collect data that will help gauge the health of urban bee populations.

I’m one of about 50,000 gardeners who have signed up to plant and count. So far I’ve submitted the results of three observations.

I don’t know how many bees gardeners are counting in other areas, but I have to say, the bees are loving my Lemon Queens.

During each of my observations honeybees have landed on these sunflowers at nearly one landing per minute during each 15-minute observation.

Thanks to the Better Denver Bond Campaign–and Denver voters–the new Denver Botanic Gardens Greenhouse Complex is almost ready for its debut. This morning, the Gardens hosted members of the media to a sneak peek of the shiny new facility.

The Denver Botanic Gardens Greenhouse Complex opens to visitors on September 4, but if you’re a Denver County resident, you might want to wait until September 6 when you can get in for free. Marketing and PR director Robin Doerr told me the free day is DBG’s way of saying thank you to the community for approving funding for the project.

“We’re humbled in a time of difficult economic conditions to be able to do this,” she said.

More than $15 million was allocated for the major construction project that includes 50,000 square-feet of greenhouses, labs, offices, classrooms and other amenities. The exterior shows creative blending of existing structures–the Tropical Conservatory on the right–with the new Marnie’s Pavilion (left).

It’s time to start harvesting and donating your Plant a Row for the Hungry produce to a food bank, soup kitchen or food pantry near you.

This morning I spent time picking and packing 7 pounds of home-grown organic tomatoes and French yellow beans to drop off at The Friends of Saint Andrew in Aurora.

It’s taken most of the summer, but I finally had grown enough fresh veggies to play a small part in the Garden Writers Association national Plant a Row for the Hungry effort here in the Denver Metro area.

I called ahead and spoke with Sarah Norton, program director, to confirm the times volunteers would be there to accept produce and to ask the best way to package it. She said individual packets would make it easier for the volunteers to distribute, so I spent about 15 minutes packaging all sizes and colors of tomatoes and handfuls of long golden beans into small baggies.

Do you have a floriferous container you’re especially proud of this year? If so, you may want to enter the Zone 4 Magazine container contest. But hurry…the deadline for entries is September 1.

In June I posted a blog called Plant a Hypertufa for Small-Scale Gardening and I showed how to create a container rock garden. In just a few short months, the ice plant and mock strawberry in my hypertufa have filled in and spilled over the edge, just like I hoped they would.

I’m thinking of entering a picture of it in the Zone 4 Magazine container contest.

To enter just send a digital photo, with a description of the container and its contents, to the nice folks at Zone 4 Magazine.  Be sure to include your name, mailing address, email address and telephone number.

Zone 4 is a quarterly magazine based in Bozeman, Montana, and it’s one of my favorites. Every issue is filled with helpful information for gardeners trying to grow in difficult climates–like ours–and Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

Did you plant and grow any flowers, vegetables or herbs from Renee’s Garden seeds this year? If so, you can enter Renee’s 7th Annual Photo Contest and receive more seeds.

I’m having a hard time deciding which vegetable pictures to submit to Renee’s Garden for the gardening photo contest this year. Everything I planted did so well this year, including these round baby carrots called Romeo.

If you planted any of Renee’s Garden seeds, now’s the time to take a picture of the flowers, herbs or veggies and enter the contest. Every entry receives a free packet of seeds and a chance at a $50 gift certificate.

In addition to the main contest, there’s a special kid’s garden contest, too, for anyone under age 16.

For more information about the photo contest, visit Renee’s Garden website.

Renee’s Garden is known for its high-quality seed and every year the company offers a number of new flower and vegetable varieties.

These Atlas “Touch” Gloves are my first pair of gardening gloves to last an entire season of heavy-duty use.

Can you imagine how many pairs of gardening gloves I’ve worn out in a lifetime of gardening chores? I couldn’t begin to count them.

Any gloves that didn’t get worn out, probably weren’t worn. Like most gardeners, I start out with my gloves on, but about halfway through the gardening tasks I take them off. Sometimes it’s to get a better grip on a teeny-tiny weed or it’s because the gloves start to feel uncomfortable.

Then I forget to put the gloves back on.

However, that changed this season when I found the super-duper durable Atlas “Touch” Gloves.

I’ve put these gloves to the test throughout this spring and summer. They aren’t as attractive as they were they day I got them, but they’re still in one piece and the fit is just like wearing a protective second skin.

The shovels featured in the work, Palas por Pistolas by Pedro Reyes of Mexico City, were used to plant trees on the grounds of one Denver elementary school during The Nature of Things art exhibit in July. The 20 shovels lying in a row on the floor meant there were 20 fewer weapons on the streets of one city in Mexico.

July was a busy month around here, but John and I managed to block out an entire day to take in several Biennial of the Americas events during the month-long celebration in downtown Denver. We’re so glad we did.

The Nature of Things was the title of the contemporary art exhibit at the reopened and partially-renovated McNichols Building. The exhibit featured artists from North, South and Central America who expressed themes of innovation, sustainability, community and the arts through their work. Many dealt with issues of social change.

If you’ll be traveling to New Mexico in early August, you may want to plan a stop in Taos for the Los Jardineros Garden Club’s annual garden and home tour.

I got a nice note from Jeannie Admire of the Los Jardineros Garden Club in Taos inviting WesternGardeners.com readers to join the group for its annual garden and home tour. This sounds like a terrific event for any gardener headed to New Mexico August 7.

The tour includes four private homes with fabulous southwestern gardens. According to the garden club’s website, the tour includes:

A custom built, free form adobe that sits on two landscaped acres featuring a meditation garden.

A contemporary adobe filled with one-of-a-kind furnishings surrounded by architectural outdoor entertaining spaces opening onto natural pinon and sage.

A family home in Ranchitos with water features and an abundant vegetable and flower gardens.

A rambling rancho in Las Colonias surrounded by an orchard and specimen gardens filled with roses, succulents and edibles.