The Kansas Gardener

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Andrew Mitchell, also known professionally as the Kansas Gardener, is a Horticulturalist, Nursery Crops Specialist, and Landscape Maintenance Supervisor for Grimm's. He has a B.S. Degree in Horticulture from Kansas State University and a A.S. Degree in Agronomy from Cloud County Community College. Andrew is a Lifetime Member of the National Home Gardening Club and a member of the American Horticultural Society. He is a regular writer and on the Board of Directors of the Kansas Native Plant Society and the Eternal Hope Worship Center. Andrew lives on an oak-hickory remnant forest edge with his wife and 3 children. He is an avid collector of plant species, and has an interest in heirloom vegetables. Andrew spends his free time in photography, hiking, spending time with his family and church, and working in the garden.

Posts by The Kansas Gardener:

  • Allium ‘Millenium’ the 2018 Perennial Plant of the Year

    Each year the Perennial Plant Association chooses a perennial of the year, based on its landscape value, popularity, floral characteristics, and pollinator friendliness. The 2018 Perennial Plant of the Year was chosen to be Allium ‘Millenium’. There are beginning to be a plethora of new alliums on the market, and some are closely related to [...]

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  • Year in Review: Annual Color

    Every year, I review the annual color performance to help decide what plants to plant next year at all my commercial and residential locations. This year was a tough one for annuals; we had winter that stayed around until nearly May, torrential rains of over 25 inches in May, another 20 inches of rain in [...]

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  • Kansas Gardener’s Garden August-Septemer

    Part 3 of my gardens. The saga continues….   This is the Monarch Waystation in late summer, full of rudbeckias and garden phlox and grasses. The double-flowered rudbeckia variety is ‘Hortensia’ from my grandmother’s garden in Cloud County, KS. The tallest grass in the middle is switchgrass ‘Dallas Blues’, one of the first things I [...]

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  • Kansas Gardener’s Garden June-July

    Here is the second part to the garden tour. enjoy the photos and comments!   Above you can see my driveway Border Garden. I had to put in this fence to keep visitors from parking too close to the edge of the drop off where the culvert it. I added some of my favorite rustic [...]

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  • Kansas Gardener’s Garden April-May

    This year, my garden did so well that I had to break my tour of it into 4 separate posts. Up first is April through May. I cannot remember a wetter May than what we had this year – 26 inches of rain! Most of the plants handled it by putting on tons of lush, [...]

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  • DIY Holiday Wreaths by The Kansas Gardener

    After Thanksgiving is over and only a few weeks until Christmas, I like to finish my outdoor decorations off with a few DIY wreaths. After weeks of cleaning out landscapes and gardens, wreathmaking is a welcome break and a time to rekindle my imagination. Even though making a DIY wreath is easy , every wreath [...]

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  • Year in Review – Insects of 2019

    Although 2019 is not quite over yet, with the early snow and extreme temperature changes, the majority of insects have begun their hibernation periods and so we can discuss this year’s populations. With the advent of extremely wet weather ( over 70 inches of rain in Northeast Kansas) we have seen a population explosion in [...]

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  • Creating Homemade Holiday Decor

    Christmas is right around the corner and my wife is already starting to get the boxes of Christmas decorations from the garage. With just 2 weeks until Thanksgiving, I am beginning to gather materials for our annual Holiday Creations – setting up outdoor décor for businesses and some homeowners. I try to use primarily locally [...]

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  • Can You Predict the Weather by Woolly Bear Caterpillars?

    With our first hard freeze and snowfall having borne down upon us this week, many folks are starting to “guess” the weather by the colors of the woolly bear caterpillar. I say guess, because that is all it is, guessing. There is no scientific research to back up claims that you can predict the weather [...]

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