Heidi Brosseau, our retail manager has selected these as our featured perennials this week and offers the following:
‘Once upon a time, long,long ago in the late 1960′s there lived a beautiful plant named Belamcanda. Belamcanda was 18″-24″ tall with brilliant golden to orange star flowers and long sword like leaves. One day a Mr. Sam Norris introduced Belamcanda to a handsome plant named Pardanthopsis. Pardanthopsis was a cousin of the Iris family. It wasn’t long before Belamcanda & Pardanthopsis fell in love and started a family of their own. They named their newest family member Pardancanda. Pardancanda was very attractive, growing to 36″ tall and producing a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors in its star-like flowers. They all lived happily ever after in full sun and moist but well-drained soil!’
Heidi Brosseau, our retail manager will be putting on a fall seminar. We’ve had a few different questions from customers and we decided to ask you what topic Heidi should discuss at her seminar. The topics to pick from are:
Gardening for Winter Interest
The Butterfly Lovers Gardening Seminar
Who’s Doin’ the Blooming? (fall bloomers)
Let us know what topic you’d like to see discussed at our fall seminar in September!
Our Perennial of the Week is the Stokesia – ‘Stoke’s Aster’. This showy summer bloomer can do full sun to part shade and produces dozens of wide blue/purple flower heads with petal like rays with warm white fuzzy centers.
A dramatic and easy to grow additiona to the flower garden, it’s attractive to butterflies. Growing best in average soil that is moist (but well drained). Thick wiry roots help it to endure periods of drought. The Stoke’s Aster is 10% right now as our perennial of the week!
This unique and exotic looking perennial thrives in full sun to part shade. It makes a wonderful companion plant to a wide range of perennials. Fine textured plants like ornamental grasses, liatris and yarrow show off the lily like flowers beautifully. When paired with larger flowered perennials such as daylilies or echinaceas it become a terrific accent plant.
Candylily blooms in a variety of colors and patterns ranging from yellow to orange and red to maroon. The strap like foliage (much like Iris leaves) are clean and disease resistant all through the season. As the flowers fade they twist shut later becoming showy black seed pods. This perennial makes an amzaing addition to any perennial border or cutting garden.
The above article was submitted by Heidi Brosseau, our retail manager.
The Red Admiral butterflies have been all over the last couple of weeks. It’s great fun walking through all of the perennials blooming right now – either in the display gardens or the sales areas and seeing the butterflies fluttering around.
We have a list of plants for butterfly gardens under our plants page, and you can always find help with these from any of our retail staff. Shown here is the Purple Coneflower. Rudbeckia, Heliopsis, Butterfly Weed and Butterfly Bush are just a few of the many plants that will attract the butterflies to your garden. Several of our perennials are on sale and there’s always a new perennial of the week that is discounted.
It is finally blueberry picking time and the following is my recipe for blueberry crisp. I’ve had this recipe for years – and it is for two servings. I jump at recipes that are just for two. It can easily be doubled for dessert for a special dinner. Super easy.
The fruit mixture:
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries, 4 teaspoons sugar, 2 teaspoons lemon juice, 1 1 /2 teaspoons cornstarch. In a small bowl, combine these ingredients and transfer to two 10 oz. ramekins or custard cups coated with cooking spray.
The topping:
2 tablespoons each of the following – all purpose flour, quick-cooking oats, brown sugar, butter, and chopped pecans. And a dash of cinnamon. In a small bowl, combine the flour, oats, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the pecans. Sprinkle over the fruit miture.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until topping is golden brown and fruit is tender. Serve warm with whipped topped.
It’s almost blueberry picking time!
For anyone that remembers the fall of 2009 – we had one of the wettest Octobers – if not the wettest on record, followed by a beautiful November. We have always had good luck with our late fall plantings and decided it was time to get blueberries into our garden. These were planted the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 2009. I watered them in and applied a 3 inch layer of mulch around them and this spring they started growing as soon as they woke up in early April! The blueberries are abundant!
The lessons that we have learned over the years is that don’t be afraid to try things. Pay attention to what you read – but never be afraid to try something “outside the box”. Most things you read say not to plant berries after September – but I hadn’t gotten it done earlier so I did it quite late. The only “extra” work I had to do was to mulch them. The results speak for themselves!
We carry a nice assortment of blueberries, raspberries, grapes, kiwi, and rhubarb in our small fruit section.
The perennial of the week – on sale at 10% off is Veronica – also known as Speedwell. Dark green mounds of foliage produce spikes of flower blossoms that bloom for long periods of time. Veronica comes in a variety of colors – mostly blues, purples, and pinks. It is a perennial that does require lots of sun. Combined with ornamental grasses, yellow blooming perennials, different groundcovers – it is certain to make a beautiful statement in your perennial garden.
Dakota Pinnacle Birch is beginning to make a statement in landscapes across the Upper Midwest. Slender and upright in it’s form, and very uniform in growth habit, Dakota Pinnacle Birch is extremely hardy, thriving in climate zones 3 to 7 and tolerant of many soil types including those with alkaline pH. Growing quickly to a mature size of 30′-35′ tall by 8′-10′ wide, Pinnacle becomes an eye catching feature of the landscape as its bark changes from brown in youth to a striking white.
This nice hybrid birch can serve as a focal point specimen tree, or being clumped with 3-5 trees close together, or in a grove of randomly scattered individuals. It is a perfect tree for narrower spaces where you want a tree, but a larger one just won’t work. In just 3 to 5 years, a modest sized Dakota Pinnacle Birch will develop into a lovely tree. Pinnacle has been touted as having better resistance to birch borer than other white bark birch varieties, but we still recommend a once a year, one minute treatment with the systemic insecticide, Imidacloprid. Imidacloprid is now widely available under a variety of name brand labels. It’s very easy to apply. Pour a few ounces in a 5 gallon pail, add a couple of gallons of water, and pour the solution onto the soil within 12 inches of the trunk. The tree roots will absorb the protection and send it throughout the tree.
We gave Dakota Pinnacle Birch available in containers – single stem and some in clump form.
I have also shared my blog here with the Northfield News.
Hosta ‘Rhino Hide’ – You have to feel it to believe it! (a quote from the hosta tag) The leaves of this hosta are some of the thickest of any hosta measured and with this attribute – it is exceptionally slug resistant. The leaves are cupped, puckered and have wide blue margins and a narrow light green center that will brighten to yellow during the season. Classified as a medium sized hosta – the flower will be white. Hosta ‘Rhino Hide’ comes from the growers at Walters Gardens, in Zeeland, Michigan.
I have had several calls the past day or two from area hosta fanciers wanting this particular plant. We have them in stock at the present time, but with the national hosta convention this week – I’m sure we’ll be selling out!
Heidi Brosseau, our retail manager has selected these as our featured perennials this week and offers the following:
We are running an Independence Day Themed Discount Special on many trees, shrubs and perennials. Some of the items with special discounts of either 30% or 50% off are 
