Clematis Sweet Autumn is a wonderful treat for anyone who wants to extend the life of their garden. This fall blooming vine will reach up to 30 feet covering your garden with bushy white fragrant blooms. With silvery seed-heads and beautiful star-shaped flowers, this plants will really show out once it gets going.
It usually takes a couple seasons for Clematis Sweet Autumn to establish, but once it does, it is hardy and fairly low maintenance. It will perform best if the roots are shaded and the top part of the plant gets full sun. This will be the star of any garden from late summer to fall.
Read More
If you’ve ever taken a walk in the woods, and noticed the plants along the edge of the trail, you know prevalent ferns are. They are tough plants that will grow just about anywhere given the opportunity. They are ancient plants, standing the test of time, and adapting to many different climates.
There are many varieties with many different looks – they can be red, green, or silver – tall, short, dense, or sparse. There are evergreen varieties, and ancient tree ferns. They always have an interesting look and that is why gardeners love to have them.
If you have a partially shady spot in your yard, you should fill it with ferns. Most of the hardy ferns prefer, good loamy soil and lots of moisture but very good drainage. However, many varieties are pretty tough and will grow in less than ideal conditions.
Read More
It’s almost time to plant those bulbs! You can plant your summer bulbs this fall and they will have plenty of time to establish, giving you a much stronger display and longer bloom time than if you planted them next spring. So, go ahead and order your lilies and iris now to have a great flower garden next summer.
Planting bulbs is one of the least expensive ways to fill your garden with a huge variety of colorful flowers in all shapes and sizes. Bulbs can brighten your garden from early spring until it’s time to plant for the next year. Most bulbs are planted in the fall to bloom the next spring. And most plants grown from bulbs are perennials that come back year after year. If you choose strong varieties and care for them properly, the flower bulbs you plant this fall may become the most important feature of your flower garden.
Read More
Topiary is an art-form for the advanced landscaper, but a simple formal hedge can be attained by any novice gardener willing to give a little extra care and attention.
Preparing The Soil
To get the dense green growth typical of the traditional formal hedge, your will need well drained, nutrient-rich soil. Cultivate a trough about four feet wide and 18 inches deep. Mix in rich organic matter like peat or a nice dark compost. Because your hedge will be in place for decades, amending the soil will a large amount of future work.
Training and Trimming Your Formal Hedge
Once your shrubs have grown together into a thick hedge, you will only have to trim them a few times a year to maintain the perfect hedges.
If you have planted a fast growing hedge of thujas or cypress, trim the hedge to the desired shape the first winter. If you are trying to achieve a thick boxwood hedge, shape the sides, but allow the top to grow – trimming new growth will hinder the shrub from reaching the desired height. For a nice dense hedge, always shape your shrub to be a little wider at the bottom than at the top, allowing light to reach all of the visible leaves.
Read More
Curled up on your couch, sharing a blanket with Fluffy, and nursing a sweet warm tankard of cocoa, you look up from your book to notice that something has gone notably awry. Your jade plant has sprouted new jewels and your spider plant is crawling all over the floor. They are serenading you with the songs of spring, no matter how wildly you gesture towards the thermometer and shiver. The days are longer and your house plants are looking to stretch their legs. Spring cannot come soon enough.
If your babies have gotten much larger than they were last season, it may be time to re-pot. Just remember, don’t upgrade the container’s size too much. Allowing too much soil beyond the root ball will allow moisture to stand in the soil, possibly causing root-rot. Never increase pot diameter more than an inch or two, to ensure your roots will effectively pull the moisture from the soil.
Make sure your re-potted plant has good drainage, which means a deep pot with drain holes in the bottom. Do not put rocks in the bottom of your pot because that will just bring the wettest part of your soil right up to the tenderest of your roots which will cause root-rot.
With a new slightly wider, deeper home with good drainage, your growing house plants will do great this spring.
For more information, here is the Container Gardening Culture File from GardenerHelp.org.
Read More
We have been shown the importance of color from the artistic point of view, your garden as a masterpiece, colorful and pretty. But what do those colors mean? Why do plants have color and what causes plants to be different colors? Almost everyone has heard of chlorophyll, but have you heard of the other two type of plant pigment? Do you know what their functions are?
It is not exactly simple, and most gardeners might not even care. However, I think it would be safe to make the assumption that for just about every person who sees their garden as a medium for artistic expression there is another who could only describe a flower in terms of its morphology and functional benefits for the particular plant. From my experiences here at Wayside Gardens, I can also promise you that neither will do so with more or less passion.
American kids officially learn about chlorophyll in seventh grade life science, though they may be introduced to it a little earlier. So we’ve all heard of it. We know what photosynthesis is- the method by which plants turn light into usable energy. Plants store this energy, animals eat the plants, animals eat animals that ate the plants, and humans eat plants and animals. Ultimately, almost all energy for growth and movement on Earth comes from the Sun via photosynthesis. Yay! Everyone give a round of applause to plants for shouldering such a huge responsibility for the rest of us.
Chlorophyll is the pigment responsible for absorbing most of the light during photosynthesis. There are two different kinds: a, green to blue-green and b, red. Chlorophyll a is the most common. Thus, most leaves are usually green. You’ll notice, in the summer that trees are completely covered with leaves because this is when they are doing the bulk of their growth.
Butterfly™Rainbow Marcella Echinacea shows off its pink and orange tones
Carotenoids are the pigment that give plants, carrots for example, colors ranging from yellow to orange. They have many functions in nature, and though they are important to many animals, they cannot be synthesized and must be ingested. In plants they also have functions in photosynthesis. During Autumn, the leaves of deciduous trees change color because they no longer need to collect sunlight and the green chlorophyll thins out revealing the colors of the carotenoids and another reddish chlorophyll before the leaves fall.
Flavonoids are the third kind of pigment and provide the largest variety of color to flowers, ranging from red to blue. When combined with the first two, the overall combination determines the look of a particular plant.
Read More
Clematis Sweet Autumn is a wonderful treat for anyone who wants to extend the life of their garden. This fall blooming vine will reach up to 30 feet covering your garden with bushy white fragrant blooms. With silvery seed-heads and beautiful star-shaped flowers, this plants will really show out once it gets going.
