Make maximum use of garden space by using vertical vegetable gardening methods.
The Garden Shed
A Community Newsletter published by the
Piedmont Master Gardeners
April 2026-Vol.12,No.4
The Storm Before the Calm: Preparing an Ornamental Garden for Construction
Protecting your plants through a temporary upheaval.
Cultivating Knowledge: Using ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity for Gardening and Everything Else
Cultivate knowledge by using ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity for gardening and everything else with comment on Alexa+.
April in the Edible Garden
Getting ready for the new growing season.
The Ornamental Garden in April
Tasks & Tips
Invasives Watch
Wavyleaf grass, Callery pear, garlic mustard
Upcoming Events
Mark your calendar!
The Garden Shed
A community newsletter published by the Piedmont Master Gardeners each month.
Piedmont Master Gardeners has published The Garden Shed monthly since January 2015. All articles are accessible full text in our archives. There you can browse or read entire issues. To find an article on a specific topic, use the search tool below.
Please Excuse Our Work-in-Progress
Please bear with us as we restore photos and finish the update to our archived newsletters and blog posts. While some photos are missing, article content is still available in past issues and posts.
We — the writers of The Garden Shed — would like to introduce ourselves and our free online community newsletter. We are members of the Piedmont Master Gardeners, which simply means we have all been trained to share the scientific expertise of Virginia Tech and the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service. More important, we are your friends and neighbors with a passion for gardening – and learning more about it. Each month we will communicate the tasks that we are performing in our ornamental gardens, edible gardens and lawns. Each month’s newsletter will also contain a featured topic, ranging from growing roses to preventing pests and diseases in your vegetable garden, plus a recipe for something fresh from the garden.
For comments, questions or suggested topics for future Garden Shed articles contact us at: garden-shed@piedmontmastergardeners.org