We are absolutely ecstatic to announce that this year’s Wayside Gardens Collector’s Edition is now available on our website.  Unfortunately, we no longer have any copies of this publication. We’ll keep you up to date throughout 2014 for any new additions. We got to work with the amazing Ken Druse (I listen to his podcast, Real Dirt, every Saturday, and so should you), which was a tremendous honor and pleasure for everyone at Wayside Gardens.  The collection includes some of the most amazing plants I’ve ever seen, both woody and herbaceous.  Some of these plants are truly unique, and beautiful beyond almost anything currently in my garden (I’ll be including some of this new collection in my garden this year, you can be sure of that).  With this great collection finally being released, I can’t help but take the chance to write about a few of my favorites.  Making the cover of our Collector’s Edition catalog this year is the Epimedium Ogisui.  It’s a stunning flower that, as a great bonus, will throw out those elegant blooms very early in the season.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of flowering vines, or that Clematis is one of my favorite flowers.  It should be no surprise, then, that the flower that excites me the most in our new collection is the Clematis ‘Haku Ookan.’  Besides producing blooms of an amazing purple reminiscent of the popular Clematis Bourbon, it is one of the most prolific bloomers we’ve ever seen.  It also has two blooming seasons, which is something that I can rarely resist.  Once a vine has stopped blooming in mid-summer, I almost never remember that it will start blooming again later in the year, making the second season a fantastic surprise.

With more and more gardeners becoming deeply concerned with the effects that their gardening have on the environment, planting native flowers is a great option for nearly everyone.  We are offering as part of this collection one of my favorite native
plants, Trillium erecta.  This flower’s stunning color and unique blooms make it a great accent perennial.  It could even hold its own as the centerpiece of most gardens.  It is actually a red flower with pale green sepals that make it seem like a distinctly two-color bloom.  It is native to woodland areas up and down the Eastern US, all the way from Georgia to Ontario, and I have often encountered these while hiking in the hills of Georgia and Tennessee.  I wondered for years what these great flowers were, and this year I’ll be planting some of my own.

I was at my mother’s house this weekend, and I couldn’t help but notice that the backyard fence seemed a bit more exposed than usual.  I could easily see out the back window all the way to the road.  It seems that my father’s late-summer yard cleanup exposed a bit more than he’d expected.
This isn’t uncommon at all.  People often get overzealous with trimming or even eliminating trees and shrubs when they are lush and covered with leaves, only to discover come winter that they’ve cut away much of their privacy.  Winter, then, is the best time to plan where you’ll be planting fast growing evergreen trees and shrubs to serve as privacy hedges.  Evergreens are best for privacy because they maintain a mostly uniform level of screening throughout the year (plus they certainly liven up the yard in the bleak winter months).  Thujas are some of the most popular privacy evergreens, as they grow as much as three to five feet in a single year.  They have thick, dense foliage year-round, so they provide great privacy as soon as the first winter after planting, and they require little or no pruning to keep a wonderful conical shape.  Wayside Gardens carries both the classic Thuja ‘Green Giant’ and the newer, denser Thuja ‘Steeplechase.’  For faster growth, be sure to water thoroughly for the first year or two, and keep in mind when planting that it will need either room to grow to more than 25 feet tall or trimming in a few years.

After my last post about growing beautiful black bamboo indoors, I thought that I would keep a sort of theme going today and write about a stunning new nearly-black Delphinium that Wayside Gardens is featuring this year.  Our Delphinium elatum ‘chocolate’ is absolutely unlike any Delphinium that I’ve ever seen.  From several feet away, it’s flowers look to have petals of the deepest, richest black.  When examined more closely, though, you discover a variety of colors on one flower.  From the bright lime-green at the base of the petals, it quickly darkens to the deep purple that dominates the flower.  It also has white flecks and slight pink spots.  It is a far cry from the more traditional Delphiniums, such as the popular Delphinium ‘blue lace’.  It is also more heat-tolerant (hardy all the way from Zone 3 to Zone 10) and blooms earlier, but is no less attractive to butterflies.  Unlike most butterfly-attracting flowers, with Delphiniums you don’t have to sacrifice beauty of your flowers to bring in butterflies, which is a big part of why they’re so popular every year.

I'm very excited about my next houseplant project.  This year Wayside Gardens has one of the most stunning and hard-to-find bamboo varieties you'll ever see, Phyllostachys nigra.  It is a deeply colored black bamboo, and I've always heard that it makes an excellent large indoor plant.  I've got a perfect spot for it this year, left empty when I finally planted my container-bound Japanese maple tree outside. 

Black bamboo is a great choice for indoor planting for a few reasons.  Most obviously, the dark culms are very dramatic and interesting.  It is a relatively slow-growing bamboo, so it requires less pruning and thinning to keep it looking wonderful.  It is also a larger bamboo than most varieties commonly grown indoors, so it will grow taller and with a straighter upright habit, which is great for a very impressive effect and can give an entire room, even a large room, an amazing exotic feel.  I'm hoping that, as it gains height, it will draw the eyes upward and emphasize the tall ceilings in my living room.  Of course, as with any large houseplant, it can dominate a small room, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  This bamboo in a smaller room could create a wonderful meditative feel of being in a perfectly calm outdoor temple somewhere in China.

Bamboo is never a houseplant requiring no care at all, but it is a relatively easy plant to care for.  It is important whenever growing bamboo indoors to keep it trimmed, but with taller varieties, such as Phyllostachys nigra, it is especially important to keep it from overgrowing the ceiling.  Trim the tops of the culms (they're technically not "canes" until after they've been cut) just above a high branch.  This pruning shouldn't harm the plant at all.  You'll also want to thin it, cutting off most of the smaller new shoots and culms at the soil, especially once the plant is well-established (though you'll probably want to keep some of them, as the green of the new shoots looks wonderful against the black of the older culms).  Trim the branches from the lower third or so of each culm to emphasize the shape and wonderful ebony color of the bamboo, and prune the branches above that to the second or third branching.

If black bamboo indoors isn't for you, keep in mind that it thrives in zones six to nine, and makes a fantastic privacy or border plant, or it can just be grown as an interesting grove.  It is one of the best bamboos for landscaping not only for its beauty but also because it is a less invasive variety of bamboo, requiring less work to keep.

When you’re blogging about gardening, there is often a tendency to
write about what you’re doing now.  This means that we’re talking about new planting in the Spring, conserving water and weeding in the Summer, planting tulip bulbs in the Autumn, and cleaning up the yard in the Winter.  While that stuff is all great, sometimes we just want to talk about what is actually going on in our gardens, especially what’s currently in bloom.  When it comes down to it, gardening bloggers are gardeners first, and so we love to brag.
Winter is always tough on gardeners, as our supply of color in the garden is so much more limited than in the rest of the year.  Fortunately for me, I live in Greenwood, South Carolina, and we get some great winter color down here.  I’ve been enjoying my Helleborus niger, which has been giving me blooms for almost two weeks now.  I still find myself envious, though, of my boss’s Camellias.  He came into a meeting yesterday and announced that his wonderful hedge of Camellias is now in full bloom.  My envy is not without product, though.  I’ll be planting a small hedge of Camellia ‘Yuletide’ this Spring (Not, of course, because I want to
have earlier blooms than my boss next year.  Well, not just because I want to beat out his Camellias.).  Which, of course, brings me to the "what I’m doing" side of things.  If you want winter color, than now is the time to be planning what you’ll plant this spring and fall for next winter.  It is far easier to plan for the current season, as you’re able to see the lines of your garden, the position of the sun, and all of those other things that go into great seasonal garden design.  Of course, it’s not yet time to plant winter bloomers, such as Camellias or Helleborus, but if you plan now and order soon, you should be able to get them happily in the ground this spring to have maximum growth by next winter.

If you’ve got a poinsettia or amaryllis sitting in your home, making it look festive and bright for the holidays, don’t send those beautiful plants to the landfill with that dried up Christmas Tree. They are perfectly healthy and can be made to bloom year after year.

Many people buy Amaryllis
for holiday decorating–the huge, brightly colored blooms have become a
familiar centerpiece in many homes. But Amaryllis require lots of light and
water, and may be difficult to maintain indoors indefinitely. The solution?
Move your Amaryllis to the patio when the weather warms up. Or think completely
outside the box—or porch, as the case may be—and transplant your holiday
Amaryllis into your garden, where you can enjoy it well beyond the holidays.

Bloom-happy Amaryllis is desirable in almost any garden, given the
various colors and shapes of its many cultivars. Amaryllis makes a great
landscape plant. Of course, these beauties are much easier to care for in a
garden if the climate and soil are right.

You can also train your poinsettia to be bright red again next year

It's not too late to order those Wayside Gardens gift certificates. If you order one of our gift certificates, it will be gift-wrapped and delivered with one of our brand new spring 2008 catalogs for you friends and family to browse and make their decisions. These gift certificates can be used over the phone, through the mail, or conveniently at waysidegardens.com.

The new catalog is full of all of your favorite roses, perennials, trees, and shrubs. We also have many items exclusive to our website. If you order now your gift certificate may still arrive before Christmas. If you're not looking to get anymore gifts, you can request our free Spring Gardening 2008 catalog and start browsing for the coming spring season.

It's almost that time again–the cold of winter is setting in,  and gardeners are twiddling their thumbs. What do we do to pass the time? Well, browse gardening catalogs of course. And, I've got a brand-spankin' new copy of Wayside Gardens Spring Gardening 2008 catalog lying on my desk, fresh of the presses. You can request a copy of your very own at waysidegardens.com.

This book is probably our most beautiful yet, starting with the giant, bright gold Paeonia 'Bartzella' bloom bursting from the cover. There are new items on almost every page, like the succulent tumbleweed, Senecio 'Kilimanjaro' or the new variegated cottoneaster. There are also many classic Wayside favorite rose varieties, perennials, trees, and shrubs. So, if you are going to be spend the winter inside anyway, why not spend it planning a beautiful garden.