Today is an exciting day for us here at Wayside Gardens.  We're shifting our main website over to the fall season offerings, which means a great deal of work, but it also means that we get to start talking about all of the great new plants we've got available this year.

I have my copy of the 2008 Fall Gardening Catalog on my desk now (I promise, getting the catalogs first isn't the only reason I work here), and it is, of course, beautiful.  The cover photo is, I think, the most stunning I've ever seen on a catalog.  It is of the new Coreopsis 'Redshift.'  This Darrell Probst creation is a true improvement over previous red Coreopsis.  The flowers are a blend of a bright, rich burgundy and clean, intense yellow, starting off deep red and maturing through shades of red and yellow to finish a lovely creamy hue.  The flowers are plentiful and large enough to be truly impressive as in a vase (cut or deadhead them to stimulate new flower growth; this Coreopsis repeats heavily).  The most impressive feature of 'Redshift,' though, is that it is a genuinely hardy, vigorous red Coreopsis.  No more will red Tickseeds be grown only as annuals in much of the country; this one is hardy to zone 4!

Of course, for those of you in the Southeast, don't forget that tomorrow is Flower Day!  Come by our home here in South Carolina for guided tours of our beautiful trial gardens and a chance to meet HGTV's Paul James!

This weekend I bought a big bag of kumquats.  I had never actually tried one, though I’ve been fascinated by the little guys for years.  Not only is it one of the most fun fruit names to say, they’re like tiny, perfect little oblong oranges.  I was pretty sure that you’re supposed to eat the fruits whole, so I rinsed one off, popped it into my mouth and bit down, ready to savor the citrusy goodness.  Not, as it turns out, how you eat a Kumquat.  The taste of the pulp is much closer to that of a lemon than that of an orange (only even more tart), and when you just eat it like that the rind is very bitter.  To the internet I went, looking for the proper way to eat them (peeling them all seemed just too ridiculous to contemplate).  The trick, I discovered, is to roll the fruit between your fingers before eating to release the essential oils in the rind.  Then you need to chew thoroughly.  The sweetness of a kumquat is in the rind, and it needs to be chewed into the sour pulp.  Once you’ve got the trick down, though, it is an amazingly delicious, complex fruit.  Man, I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be amazing if I could grow fruit like this for myself?

It turns out that I can.  Wayside Gardens has several citrus trees that thrive in containers, so all of us can grow delicious citrus fruit almost anywhere in the country.  I might just grab up a Washington Navel Orange which will produce juicy, flavorful and nutritious fruits which all are sure to love.  Plus, it’s blooms are fragrant and the tree itself is handsome enough to become a living ornament indoors. If you’re looking to grow limes for Mexican cuisine or mixing drinks, you can’t go wrong with the seedless ‘Bearss’ Lime.  You also might consider the Meyer Lemon one of the most popular container citrus trees ever.

Each year, Wayside Gardens and Park Seed open up our amazing trial gardens to the public.  For one day we have our professional horticulturists give guided tours of these beautiful 9 acres of garden.  This year we will have over 2,000 varieties of plants at their peak, and anticipate that thousands of visitors from hundreds of miles around will be joining us in our Greenwood home.

This amazing day is called Flower Day, and it is the very soul of the South Carolina Festival of Flowers.  It is an opportunity for you to meet many of the people behind this company and to see the passion that we all have for bringing you the finest plants in the world.  More importantly, it is a chance for us to meet you, the most important people we know of.

This year we will be featuring Eric Johnson, our Director of Horticulture and Cohost of PBS's GardenSMART, who will be speaking at 8:30 on New and Exciting Plants for 2008.  Stephanie Turner, Park Seed's Director of Seed Product, will be giving a presentation on "Great Annuals and Tropicals for Containers." 

Most exciting, though, is that HGTV's Paul James will again be joining us for tours of our gardens as well as Q&A Sessions at 9:30 AM and 2:30 PM.  If you don't know, Paul is the star of HGTV's Gardening by the Yard, one of the most popular National gardening shows (as well as my personal favorite).  He is known for is uniquely oddball and personable approach to gardening advice, so be prepared for anything.

Our gardens will be open from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM on Saturday, June 21st.  I have been attending this event with my family for many years, and I hope that you will join us this year.  [Directions to Wayside Gardens]

We're always on the lookout for unique and interesting trees and shrubs, and it always pleases us to find a quality plant that will really stand out in your landscape.  Our Korean Fir 'Horstmann's Silberlocke' (Abies koreana 'Horstmann's Silberlocke') is definitely one of those plants.  Korean Fir is a real show-stopper, featuring dark green needles that are recurved back to show the bright, silvery-white undersides, making the irregular branches almost seem to glow.  It produces many cones that sit upright on the branches and are an eye-catching steel-blue with hints of violet.  These cones take several months to mature, meaning you get these interesting accents on your tree for much of the year.  This particular selection of Korean Fir is exciting, because, as natives of the high mountains of Korea, most Korean Firs do not do well in warmer climates.  Horstmann's Silberlocke, on the other hand, is noteworthy for its ability to tolerate the heat all the way to zone 9.

If you are looking for a quick growing tree, Korean Fir is not for you.  It is an unusually slow-growing conifer.  However, the beautiful growth of this unusual plant is more than worth the wait for a majestic tree, and it is stunning almost from day one.  Several of my coworkers are already finding planting spots on their landscapes for this exciting Abeis koreana.

Hydrangea are some of the best flowering shrubs around.  They're remarkably easy to grow and bloom reliably with great displays.  However, because they're prevalent and mostly display showy blooms, they don't appeal to a lot of younger gardeners who associate them with their grandmother's garden.  There are, though, a lot of Hydrangea choices that are much different from the "pink puff" style hydrangeas that many gardeners think of these days. 

The Halo™ Hydrangea series is one of the best of these interesting Hydrangeas  The flowers have lovely creamy color that is rare on shrubs, but it is the unique picotee edge that really sets these shrubs apart.  My favorite of these is the Hydrangea Angel Song, which features a sharp pencil-thin white picotee.

I love Daylilies (Hemerocallis) for great midsummer color.  The blooms are interesting, with great form and colors, and they’re really easy to grow.  To me, though, the best thing about Daylilies is that these unique blooms last only a day.  Normally that might be a bad thing, but on Hemerocallis it’s wonderful.  You see, healthy Daylillies bloom profusely all along their stems, and they replace fallen flowers very quickly, so you’ll often have loads of flowers for the entire bloom season.  Because they’re different blooms every day, though, the plant is amazingly dynamic, truly a different plant every day.  For an easy gardening centerpiece,  you just can’t beat that.

I’m especially excited about the new Hemerocallis ‘Prarie Wildfire’ that we’ve just made available exclusively to our internet customers.  It’s a large plant, reaching about 23 inches tall, and its particularly prolific blooms are attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies.  It’s also relatively drought-tolerant and disease-resistant, meaning that it’s especially easy to grow.  While all of that is great, it’s the rich, intense color of the blooms that really sells me on this plant.  I have only rarely seen hemerocallis display such deep red tones, and they are set off perfectly by the yellow throats that each bloom sports.  So, if you’re looking for a truly jaw-dropping centerpiece for your summer garden, consider this stunning Daylily.

45032 – Rosa ‘the fairy’ 45104 – Rosa ‘Blanc Double de Coubert 45318 – Rosa double knock out