Mulching your vegetable garden helps maintain soil moisture and reduces evaporation. It also blocks weed seeds from seeing the sunlight & sprouting, which means a whole lot less work for you. Want to know just how much work? *Most weed species are prolific manufacturers,...
A neat garden edge is like a picture frame enclosing a beautiful picture. It completes the look. Edging defines a garden. Edging could be of stone, aluminum, steel, brick or materials. It could be flush with the ground or raise. Or it could be ‘au...
Planting in multiples makes for a showier garden. ‘Gumdrop’ gardens (one of everything) can cause indigestion. Odd number groupings (three, five, seven) create more natural, flowing impressions than using a lot of even numbers. In general, the smaller a plant’s size, the more you...
Creating vertical interest in the garden is another dynamic design element. The eye is drawn upward and the sky becomes a ‘borrowed view’. Flower or foliage covered trellises, arbors, and pergolas work nicely. So do tall perennials like Thalictrum ‘Lavender Mist’ or ‘Slendide’ (6′-8′),...
Well placed urns, benches, containers, bird baths, statuary and other objects allow the eye to take a refreshing break from moving among flowers and foliage. I love using large pottery pieces or antique urns in the garden. The objects provide a dynamic change, not...
Yes. Repetition in the garden is a good thing. Repeating the same plant (or color) at various intervals creates a rhythm and ties one or more gardens together.
by Kerry Ann Mendez, Perennially Yours
For gardens mostly admired from a distance, be careful not to use too many darker colors. It will be difficult to see them. Colors also trigger emotion. My twin sister loves her garden jammed with hot colors. Orange flowers next to fuchsia and red....
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, bloder colors, carefully placed exclamation marks in the arden, colors trigger emotion, cool colors, exclamation marks of color, fell like had five cups of coffee, full sun, jammed with hot colors, make people feel thirsty, using color to accent depth and size of garden
Color is a powerful design tool. Hot colors (red, yellow, orange, fuchsia) grab our attention quickly. These bold colors excite and appear closer than they really are. White is also considered a bold color. Cool colors (blue, silver, purple) are calming, appear farther away...
In general, flowering shrubs require less maintenance, water and fertilizer than many other plants. One showy, no-fuss panicle hydrangea can do the job that might require 7 or more perennials to accomplish in the same space. Some outstanding choices include Fothergilla, smooth (H. aborescens)...
Let’s ‘annualize.’ Even low-maintenance gardeners rely on annuals to carry the ‘color baton’ May through October, especially in shade. A few well placed annuals can unify gardens and ‘keep the light on’ when others around the have checked out. Some great picks are Supertunia,...
Use spring, summer and fall blooming bulbs as fillers. I pack spring blooming bulbs Tulips, Daffodils, Fritillaria, Camassia, Allium, Erythronium (trout lily), Martagon; summer blooming bulbs Asiatic, Trumpet, Oriental, Orientpet; and fall blooming bulbs Crocus and Colchicum in among my perennials and shrubs to...
Foliage, unlike flowers, provides interest and drama three, if not four seasons of the year. Some standouts: Coral Bells ‘Caramel’, ‘Citronella’, ‘Obsidian’, ‘Southern Comfort’, ‘Cherry Cola’, ‘Dolce Cinnamon Curls’; ornamental grasses; Ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’ and others in this family; Lamium ‘Pink Chablis’, ‘Beecham’s...
Amelanchier or shadbush or serviceberry is our favorite this during May. They are blooming for Mother’s Day – smooth gray bark, small white clusters of flowers that turn to dark purple berries. This is a favorite of many birds, including cedar waxwings. It comes...
Yes, they will be in bloom this year. Growers were able to peel back the greenhouses and pot up roses in early March due to the snowless and warmer than usual winter. Some of the hardy shrub roses we carry are Knockouts, Drifts &...
I had a visitor/customer come to the nursery a couple weeks ago, who was a succulent collector. She was looking for a donkey tail succulent that we had in just a 6 inch hanging basket and told me that she would be taking it...