We have added the native Yellow Lady Slipper (Cypripediuim calceolus) to our perennial offerings this year. One of the prettiest native orchids, it will reach a height of 1-2 feet with the lovely yellow flower atop a stalk of bright green foliage.
This woodland native needs mostly shade – filtered sunlight to thrive. Moist organic (slightly acidic) soil will give this plant just what it needs. Blooming in early to mid-May, it is a long-lived plant that you will enjoy for many years.
Early summer is an excellent time to plant trees, shrubs and perennials to make your landscape beautiful. Approximately 130 days remain in the growing season and this provides a long period of time for establishment of new root systems that will power vigorous growth for years to come.
The keys to success are: Good quality plant materials, proper site preparation that eliminates soil compaction in the areas where new roots will be growing, aggressive root pruning of any matted roots that have developed inside the container, avoiding planting too deep, and consistent watering that is just enough, but not too much. (most plant death we see is from over-watering)
At Knecht’s Nurseries we have developed our own new one page planting guide that gives the simple, easy to follow steps that you can follow to achieve summer planting success. Our experienced sales staff can help you select the right plants for your special site conditions. It’s available under our instructions page – just click and print!
The picture here shows the beauty of the Gold Heart Bleeding Heart growing out of a blanket of emerald green Sweet Woodruff. This springtime display is on the edge of our hosta garden in the woods. The lime green of the bleeding heart brightens up this corner of the garden. The flowers are just like the flowers of the Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart and the little flower buds of the Sweet Woodruff are just forming and will be like little white stars amidst the green.
Sweet Woodruff is a vigorous ground cover, easily managed and incredibly gorgeous. The Gold Heart Bleeding Heart will soon become your favorite! Both perennials are available for planting this spring here at the nursery.
This morning before heading into work – I had to go into one of the perennial gardens just to look at the awesome color of the Virginia Bluebells. This color blue has to be the prettiest blue there is. The Lenton Rose is also in bloom right now – one on these plants are at each end of this particular flower bed.
Virginia Bluebells – a native Minnesota wildflower will grow to a height of 10″-24″. Groups of light blue bell-shaped flowers will light up any corner of your early spring flower garden. They prefer moist, shady areas – such as on the edges of deciduous woods or clearings in the natural habitat. Plant yours in a shade garden with other shady perennials. Since it is a native woodland plant, once it has done it thing for spring- it quietly disappears during the rest of the year and waits to delight us again in the spring!
The Lenton Rose – or Helleborus are long-lived, easy to care for perennials. Planted in moist, well drained soil it will tolerate summer shade if it receives sunlight in the spring. These plants take a little longer to get established than some perennials, but they are also considered “ever green” meaning you should not prune them back in the spring or fall – just leave them. If any leaves have died over the winter – prune those leaves off but mine just spring to life in early spring. One is in a more shady area and that is just now flowering – the one in the picture is in almost full springtime sun and has been blooming for several weeks.
Companion plants? Both of these are on the edges of a hosta garden with Cimicifuga and Ligularia also planted there. The sunnier parts of the bed, I also have some shorter upright sedums planted. Great combinations. We have all of these plants in the nursery available for sale.
The following blog article was submitted by Heidi Brosseau – our retail manager….
A new perennial that we haven’t carried before has already pushed itself onto my favorites list.
Silene ‘Rollie’s Favorite’ aka Campion has already started to fill it’s pots and open up it’s brilliant pink flowers. It is going to keep blooming right through spring and summer, attracting oodles of butterflies. It grows in clean compact mounds that reach about 18″ tall in full to part sun.
Sounds great so far doesn’t it? In addition to all these amazing attributes, it has a little Minnesotan in it. Hardy from Zones 3 to 9, it will survive a minus 40 degree winter. It has quickly impressed me in the greenhouse. I’m sure it will become a favorite to many in no time. This perennial would be beautiful with deep blue Salvias, bright blue Forget Me Nots, or vivid yellow Coreopsis and a wonderful addition to container plantings. Stop by the nursery soon to pick yours up – I don’t think they’ll last very long!
Spring has arrived in the greenhouses! We have been planting perennial plugs for the last several days and the houses are filling up quickly. We’ll have the usual go-to perennials, but we have many of the newest releases coming this spring as well. I asked Heidi – our retail manager – what she was excited about so far in the ones that they have potted up, and she said the Jade Phlox and the Geums looked awesome, but the one she sounded most excited about was the Red Knee High Echinacea. A deep, deep pink color with a mature height of 24″ makes this an echinacea for use in front of the taller perennials or shrubs where a more compact plant is needed.
Our plant lists have all been updated with the plants available now in 2010, and our Plant Search has many of these plants on it and will be soon updated with many more.
Baptisia australis
The following article is being submitted by Heidi Brosseau – our retail manager.
I am so excited about the 2010 Perennial Plant Associations pick for Plant of the Year! Baptisia australis, aka False or Wild Indigo. This is one of my all time favorite perennials. It is a hardy native prairie perennial that has never let me down. It reappears each year as a strong, healthy shrub-like clump. Beautiful small blue-green leaves on sturdy stems end in tapered spikes of indigo-blue flowers in early summer. The showy flowers turn into green pods that kind of blend in until late summer and fall when they start to dry and turn black. That’s when this plant becomes interesting to children (big and small) because the dry pods rattle when you shake them. If you put this plant in a location where a stiff wind might stir it in late summer and early fall, then the False Indigo will rustle and rattle for you all on its own! Read More
Now – my favorite subject! Hosta!
The past two days (which were really nice!) were sort of depressing for me. I had the task of cutting back all of our production hosta plants here at the nursery – signaling the end of this growing season. Sunday night we walked through our hosta garden at home, and then while cutting the plants here back – I once again was prompted of the excellent attributes of a few of these incredible plants!
Paul’s Glory – in the picture here it’s the hosta that is directly behind the pink impatiens. It’s a wonderful hosta variety. It’s considered a large hosta and has multi-colored leaves that provide very good substance. The thing that makes this a true winner in the hosta world is that after all of the hard frosts that we’ve had now in October, it still was holding up better than almost all of the other ones. The color had changed a little bit to a mellower yellow – but was still beautiful. From May – until almost November – you can enjoy this plant! Others that impressed me by making it through such heavy frosts without looking really tired – were Diana Remembered, Summer Breeze, many of my blue varieties, Guardian Angel and some of the traditional varieties. We have over 400 varieties of hosta in our gardens at home so it’s hard to even come close to picking a favorite but I must say that Paul’s Glory is right up in the top 10!
Hosta are such tough plants – so easy to grow and provide beauty and interest all during the spring, summer & fall. You can still plant hosta so they’ll be ready to emerge in the spring and become part of your landscape! Years ago – when we first started our hosta garden at home, we moved some clumps around in the fall, and we forgot one in the undergrowth on the edge of the woods. The next spring when we were on the deck, we could not figure out what was growing in amongst the weeds that was getting higher than the weeds. It was that clump of hosta that we had forgotten to plant. It made it through all winter – above ground. We don’t promote doing this with hosta – they do need to be planted – but it just shows how tough they can be. We have all of our plants on sale now at 30% off so if there were a variety of two that you were thinking of doing this year and didn’t – it’s still not too late to plant them. Just be sure to adequately mulch around the new plantings once we have a couple of inches of frost.
I asked my retail manager – Heidi Brosseau – what came to mind on the perennials right now that say “fall”. She immediately said – “If you take Mums and Asters out of the list (which are the two most popular fall perennials) I would say “Sedums, the Ornamental Grasses and Autumn Bride Heuchera”.
This morning, I had Cory Holcomb, our assistant retail manager – make a display of these perennials so I could take the picture here. Ornamental grasses are one of my favorites because of the versatility of these plants. They provide interest almost all year round. In the spring – you cut them back and they start to grow. They then provide a nice backdrop to other perennials which are spring and summer bloomers. Depending on the type of grass you plant – it will start to “blossom” with its seed head anywhere from mid to late summer right through fall now with many of the Miscanthus grasses looking awesome! You leave the grasses standing through the winter and they provide visual interest all winter. There is nothing prettier than when you have stalks of ornamental grass catching the hoar frost of early December – the sunlight just glistens off of the frost on the stems of the grass.
The sedums are much like the ornamental grass. They provide visual and textural interest in the spring and summer perennial garden and in the fall they blossom from a muted white to light pink to a brilliant deep pink/red color. There are two different types of sedum – the groundcovers (or low growing) sedum and the upright type which when you get a mature plant – will look like a small shrub.
Heuchera – one of my favorites since it is a great shade perennial as well. The Autumn Bride Heuchera – nice green leaves all season and then when you think the heucheras have finished with their flower stalks of tiny pink or white flowers – the Autumn Bride sends up it’s flower stalks with beautiful creamy white flowers. A pleasant surprise for the fall garden. Mixed in with other fall flowers or with a pumpkin or two added in the midst of the plants – a delightful autumn arrangement.
It’s time to think about planting your Spring Bulbs. Tulips, Daffodils, Crocus, Allium and other spring bulbs need to be planted now within the next month. The bulbs will actually root out a little now and then they’ll go through the winter freeze cycle and in the spring – provide a visual fairyland in your garden!
Plant now for Splendor in the Spring! One picture here shows the tulips we have planted in the hillside here at the nursery – and to the other show the little crocus sticking their heads up out of the mulch.
Bulbs can be planted in the perennial garden as a border – either in front or in the back since they are up and blossoming before most other plants start to emerge. Even if you have a small area – several bulbs planted close together will give you a nice pop of color in the spring. Live in a townhouse or apartment? Plant bulbs in a pot for a spring display.
Each year with the given weather conditions during the season, the weather brings the best out in certain perennial varieties. This year – that perennial is the Rudbeckia Goldsturm – commonly called Black Eyed Susan. Wow! is the only way to describe it. It has been in it’s glory for almost two months now and will continue to bloom and delight until frost!
This hardy perennial will reach a height of only 30″ and the clumps are about 18″ wide. The versatility of this variety of Coneflower makes it a must have for almost any landscape. The clump in this picture is anchoring a row of spruce trees – just a nice clump or two at the end of the landscape bed where it narrows down accents evergreen trees. Rudbeckia also is the star in a cottage garden arrangement – or in mass with ornamental grasses and purple coneflower. Try it with other perennials with different color combinations – purple heuchera - Russian Sage – the list is endless. Mix it in with shrub plantings and you will have color amongst the shrubs during the summer.
Another feature of the Rudbeckia – like its other coneflower relatives – is the winter interest. Leave it stand until spring and during the late fall/early winter, frost will collect on it’s branches and then when the sun hits it, it will glisten. Birds will be attracted to the seeds that are available inside the seed head. By using perennials with winter interest in mind – you can actually “garden” all year long – in Minnesota!
The label shows that it is a full sun perennial – however – we have several clumps at home (in the woods) and one is in only about 3 hours of sun a day and it is incredible. We have it in our boulder garden with a weeping hemlock and it lights up the shade! We have several next to the house where it is shaded at least half the day and we have several clumps out in our hosta garden where these receive only about 4 hours of light each day.
Successful planting projects to improve your landscaping can take place throughout the Fall! Nights are growing longer, and days cooler which means reduced stress and moisture demands on new plantings.
If you are able to get your project area prepared, and the plants installed in September, many of them will be able to send out some new roots, beginning the establishment process, and helping them get a good start for next spring. Good preparation of the soil in the planting area, aggressive root pruning prior to planting, and consistent watering are keys to good results. Be sure to mulch all your fall plantings!
We also see October plantings doing well the following year. Most plants are dormant or becoming dormant at this time. These plants have stored large reserves of energy in their root systems and when fall planted, all this energy is available for new growth when soil temperatures warm up in the spring. Your new landscape plants will already be in place, and ready to take advantage of every single day of the 2010 growing season to grow into a beautiful new landscape.
Another nice thing about Fall is the terrific bargains available. In early Fall, the selection can still be good, so make your plans, get your plants and get started planting!
Our fall sale has begun. We have hundreds of trees, shrubs and perennials on sale. The savings are from 30% to 50% on selected plants. If you have been contemplating a new landscape area, replacing a few plants in an existing shrub bed, or planting a new tree or two – now is the time to really get great bang for your buck!
Not sure if you want to plant? You can hire our crews to do the work for you! Let the Fall Sale savings help you with the installation fees.
Check out our Specials page for extra savings for customers using our website!
We have had customers over the years who drive in with SUV’s, pickups, dump trucks, sedans, even an Austin Healey to pick up plants. Yesterday, a customer came in with his street rod pulling a small trailer and picked up a tree! One time a customer came in on his way home from fishing and we loaded up his boat (which was on the trailer) with shrubs and perennials!
We do deliver plant material, soil mix, rock and mulch – but you can save on the delivery fee by bringing in your own vehicle/trailer to take your new plants home. You will be surprised on how we can load your plants in smaller vehicles to get them home safely. If you have questions on what would work – please give us a call and we’ll give you some advice!
We will be holding our Fall Seminar on September 12th. Our designers, Kristin Lucas and Amy Voight will present a seminar titled ‘Take the Guess Work out of Fall Clean-up and Winter Prep’.
If you’ve wanted to know which perennials to cut down before winter or how to protect your new trees from winter damage this seminar is for you. You’ll learn alot and we encourage you to bring along questions you’ve had – this will be a great time to ask them. Coffee, cider and cookies will be served.
The cost of the seminar is $10 and for the first 24 people who register there’ll be a free garden mum. Check out our “Events” page for all of the details.
