volcano phlox

Monarch butterfly on butterfly bush (image by Denise Pierce).

There goes my daughter, Maya, helping her "papa" (grandpa) feed the birds again. It's a very important job for her when she goes over to visit – scooping the bird seed from the big plastic bins in his garage and carefully pouring it into one of the many bird feeders hanging from his front tree like so much ripe fruit.

Now 4 years old, Maya has been doing this as long as she's been able to walk. And her love of Papa's birds has only grown through the years, as we've made peanut butter-and-birdseed pinecone feeders every winter and later on in the season, watched the hummingbirds and other feathered friends visit plants like our Tropicanna cannas, Volcano phlox, Sun Parasol mandevillas and Blue Storm agapanthus.

(Back row, from left): purple-tinged, dark green-leaved plectranthus, Tropicanna Gold cannas, Tropicanna Black cannas, Sun Parasol mandevillas. (Front row, from left): ornamental peppers, thread-leaved croton, lime green heuchera.

Blue Storm agapanthus in a container on my deck

Volcano phlox (Red) near my deck 

Last year, Maya fell in love with butterflies, too, after a visit to the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden at Rochester, NY's National Museum of Play. After that, we always noticed butterflies hovering around our Volcano phlox, black-eyed Susans, bee balm, Blue Storm agapanthus, coreopsis, stonecrop and chocolate eupatorium (Joe Pye weed).

Of course, we've never been able to get a shot of these winged friends in action – hence my borrowed pic of a butterfly (above) from one of Tesselaar's regional garden bloggers, Denise Pierce of Red Bay, Alabama. 

This year, Maya definitely wants more plants that will attract birds and butterflies in the garden, and of course I’m inclined to buy a full-grown plant from the garden center. But she seems to want to start everything from seed (sigh) –even these dying, leggy sunflowers she insisted on sowing in pots in the middle of winter, so the birds would have seeds to eat. (I told her sunflowers should be direct-sown into the ground later in the season, but she was so excited about gardening, I couldn't crush her spirits):

Leggy sunflower seeds sown indoors in pots

Now she wants to try this butterfly bush kit (lower right, $9.99 from Wegmans):

Butterfly bush garden kit for kids (Wegmans, $9.99)

I’ve never started a butterfly bush from seed, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting.

Speaking of butterflies, Maya also went bonkers over an Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden butterfly hatching kit she saw at Lowe's ($13.95 through Amazon). I don't know about this – little kids and fragile, live creatures just don't seem to be a good mix. Plus, I found out that the kit basically just includes a netted cage and a coupon in you send in to get the live caterpillars and food. I guess that makes sense, because you can't keep caterpillars alive in a box, but still – one more step? Ugh).

Maybe when Maya's older, we'll try to grow some milkweed, since that's what the Monarch butterfly caterpillars eat (I understand the milky white sap is poisonous, so I think I'd like to wait a few years on that one).

Regardless, I've learned that gardening is a great way to keep kids active and connected to their environment, and as with everything else, there's a fine line to walk between ensuring success and fostering independence. So I've gotta roll with what my daughter likes – right now, it's birds and butterflies – and let her call some shots and pick out and sow some plants, so she sort of "owns" the experience. I've also learned to let her experiment, even if it means dead plants on the windowsill. I think I'm just not ready for dead butterflies yet!

Maya sowing her sunflower seeds for the birdies

So tell me – what are some of your favorite bird- and butterfly-friendly plants that can encourage kids to get out in the garden? Post a comment and lemme know!

Low-maintenance perennial border offering season-long interest, featuring boxwood (front) and Flower Carpet roses.

Garden beds and borders, so it seems, are very much back in vogue. But unlike the traditional English perennial beds and borders, which were labor intensive and peaked mainly in spring, today’s gardens are more likely to be filled with plants designed to perform better, require less care and offer year-long interest.

So if you're thinking of renovating that bed or border, here are 10 tips and tricks to keep in mind:

1.     Develop your point of view. “Decide where you’re going to look at the garden the most, says garden writer Doug Green in “The Easy Way to Design Perennial Gardens” on Doug Green’s Garden website. “This is the point of view. In other words, you’re looking at the front of the garden.”

2.     Spread the love. “The trick to having a garden that blooms all summer is to pick an equal amount of flowers for each of the three bloom periods,” says Green in his “How to Design a Perennial Flower Bed” article on his website. “And the second trick here is to space them equally through the garden.”

Fairy Magnolia Blush (a michelia hybrid) as a flowering hedge

3.     Create a backdrop. A tall flowering hedge at the back creates a canvas for the rest of your ‘art. Hedges can also help frame spaces or create sections in an outdoor living area. In cold climates like mine, people tend to favor tall, upright, evergreen shrubs like English boxwood, yews, arborvitae and hollies. In warmer areas, however, you can try camellias or even michelias like Fairy Magnolia Blush, with its dark-green, compact foliage and masses of heavenly scented, spring flowers. 

4.  Make it mow-friendly. Add a mowing strip for ease of maintenance around the outside of the bed or border. Straight lines or broad curves look best and are easy to keep neat. In his “Perennial Flower Garden Design” article on his website, Green suggests laying out a garden hose or two to make the curves smooth enough to mow around.

5.     Invest in edging. “The use of landscape edging, if done properly, can reduce the time and effort any gardener takes to maintain the garden,” says Green in his article “Options in Landscape Edging” on his website. Plastic landscape edging can be a real time-saver, he adds, but cheaper isn’t better. “Cheaper edging has several characteristics: the plastic is thinner - degrades in the sun faster - and it’s often not as ‘tall,’ so the amount that actually goes into the ground is shorter, allowing grass roots to go underneath the edging, or it doesn’t come with enough holding stakes and easily bends out of shape, or worse yet – pops out of the ground.”

6.     Choose a range of heights. I've learned to go tall in back, medium in the middle and low in the front. The way to get it looking like something beyond a kindergarten group picture shot, however, is to group plants in overlapping drifts.

Festival Burgundy cordyline (dark-red, strappy foliage at right)

7.     Include evergreen and long-blooming plants for year-round color and texture. Festival Burgundy cordyline, for instance, has become a favorite with its cascading mass of grass-like, bright-burgundy leaves spouting from a short central base. In his perennial gardening blog, Green also suggests these perennials that bloom all summer: corydalis lutea, coreopsis, campanula, chrysanthemum or Shasta daisy, gaillardia (blanketflower) and daylilies.

Snow Storm agapanthus (part of the Storm series of agapanthus, which also include the blue-flowered Blue Storm).

8.     Select plants with strong form and color. I've learned that one or two kinds are often enough, just so long as you repeat them throughout the border. I like to use large, colorful, broad-leaved foliage like Tropicanna cannas, banana plants and cordylines, for instance, because you don't have to use as much of them and you can see them from farther away. Other choices might include agapanthus, phormium (New Zealand flax), colocasia, croton, yucca, succulents like aloe and agave, ornamental grasses, conifers and palms.

Tropicanna cannas (tall, with colorful, broad leaves) in the garden border

9.     Add some shrubs. “I'm incorporating shrubs directly into all my borders now,” says Green. “In fact, one of my front beds is being designed and planted to be mostly shrubs and bulbs, with a few shrub roses and fall-blooming annuals for late season color.” Flower Carpet roses, for instance, can produce more than a thousand blooms per bush and bloom from May through late November.

10.  Don’t underestimate the power of white. Try combining white-variegated or white-bloomed plants with contrasting shapes, like Volcano phlox or Snow Storm agapanthus (the only agapanthus to survive the Dallas Arboretum’s heat).

These 10 steps - believe it or not - are just a start. For more great information on easy-care or low-maintenance gardening, check out these pages at the Sustainable Gardening blog, HGTV.com, and Deb's Garden blog.

Forget all those doomsday predictions about 2012. From the garden world’s perspective, life will continue to be good – with gardeners saving themselves water, hassles and misspent money. At least that’s according to several savvy garden experts and a leading garden trends survey.

Water-wise plants, products

(pictured here: Flower Carpet roses (center) and Festival Burgundy cordyline (either side)

Most on the minds of landscaping professionals right now are issues surrounding gardening and water, "whether it's the use of water or the cleaning of water," says Sharon Coates, co-owner of Zaretsky and Associates, a landscape design-and-build firm in Rochester, N.Y.

In light of recent droughts in places like Georgia, Texas and the Carolinas, people are trying to use the water they dohave more frugally, Coates explains. “People are making sure they’re watering responsibly, choosing plants that aren’t water hogs and putting rain sensors on their irrigation systems. They’re also making sure the irrigation is monitored so it’s not watering the driveway and sidewalk.”

Water-wise plants will also make the Mediterranean garden style (above) hot in 2012, says Genevieve Schmidt, a northern coastal California landscape designer and author of the North Coast Gardening blog. Mediterranean landscape design, she explains, often features open and airy courtyards, light-colored, textured hardscaping such as mosaic walls, gravel beds or unglazed terra cotta pots and low-growing, drought-tolerant plants, hedges, topiary trees and vines (i.e. olive, bay and lemon trees, succulents, lavender, palms, roses and grasses). “Of course, the vivid colors also help make this a winning style.”

Also, when it comes to cleaning the water, especially storm water carrying pollutants like fertilizers and motor oil into local waterways, many people are turning to rain gardens. “These shallow depressions are filled with deep-rooted plants and grasses­ — all of them noninvasive, native or locally adapted — that can handle being inundated with water and also don’t mind being dry,” Zaretsky and Associates’ Coates says.

“Many gardeners are catching their own rainwater in rain barrels and cleaning or recycling grey water (wastewater from domestic activities like laundry, dishwashing and bathing)” adds Anthony Tesselaar, cofounder and president of Tesselaar Plants. “In fact, in many municipalities now, saving water is not only ‘in’, but mandatory”.

Black and amber

Black and amber shades in plants continue to be a “hot” color trend, says North Coast Gardening’s Schmidt. “People have already been bewitched by the dark drama of black plants,” she explains, “and as they learn to design with them more effectively, they’ll only become more popular.”

Notable examples of popular dark plants include Petunia 'Black Velvet', Ipomoea (sweet potato vine) 'Blackie', Tropicanna Black cannas, Aeonium 'Zwartkop', black mondo grass, Colombine 'Black Barlow', Heuchera 'Black Beauty' and Hellebore 'Winter Dream.'

Amber shades, she adds, are also extremely popular – “amber heucheras, the amber Flower Carpet roses, and other plants with amber tones are going to be big in nurseries this year.”

Low-risk, high-value plants

(pictured here: mildew-resistant Volcano phlox)

Just as consumers are being more careful with their water usage, they’re also shopping smarter. In particular, they’re looking for low-risk, high-value plants that not only look good in the garden center, but have a tried-and-true reputation.

“Plants bred to withstand attacks from pests and diseases that are also tolerant of climate and soil extremes provide a better value,” says Tesselaar (developer of the low-maintenance, disease- and drought-resistant Flower Carpet^® roses, Festival^™ Burgundy cordyline, Storm^™ agapanthus and Volcano^®phlox). “Gardeners are more aware than ever that choosing the right plant for the right situation is imperative if you want to help save the planet — let alone your bank balance.”

For as little as $15 to $25, for instance, you can have long-term color without a lot of expense by using continuously flowering shrubs like Flower Carpet roses, hydrangeas, potentilla (shrubby cinquefoil) and spirea. Or, if your garden already has plenty of beautiful structure, use such colorful, flowering machines to dress up these ‘good bones.’”

Smaller water features

More and more people are moving away from large ponds and toward smaller water features, says Coates: “Now people prefer a cut piece of stone, a boulder or a beautiful glazed urn with water bubbling out of the top.”

Coates thinks it’s a maintenance issue: “People either have to be really into ponds and all the maintenance they take, or they have to hire someone to do it for them.”

What’s more, says Schmidt, fountains made with natural stone or metal are hotter sellers than features made of manmade materials. “The ball-shaped fountains made of stone are very big this year,” she says, “and I think that copper and other metals are coming into fashion as accents in fountains and as materials for planting containers.”

Seasonal interest

In colder areas, where the blooms are gone and deciduous leaves have fallen, Coates is seeing more people keep their ornamental grasses instead of cutting them back, so they can provide winter interest. For the same reason, they’re looking for plants with winter berries, evergreens, barks of different colors and textures or deciduous trees and shrubs with dramatic forms. But they’re also adding plants that change with the seasons, offering new interest with each.

“Customers have grown tired of the stark, all-season gardens that were so fashionable a decade ago,” Tesselaar says. “Every garden needs its backbone of plants that look great year round, but that doesn’t have to be at the expense of seasonal interest and color.”

More front yard gardens

The number of front yard gardens is also on a steady rise (29 percent in 2011, compared to 27 percent in 2010 and 25 percent in 2009), according to the Garden Trends Research Report’s Early Spring 2011 survey (conducted for the Garden Writers Association Foundation). Meanwhile, the number of backyard gardens has taken a 3-percent hit, down from 50 percent in 2009 and 2010.

Gardening “up”

Vertical gardening is also on the rise, as documented in the new, popular book Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spacesby California garden designers Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet. The practice of growing plants up from the ground instead of out, or of planting them off the ground to start with—on trellises, arbors, balconies and walls—has become especially popular among those with small spaces, landscape eyesores or an awkward “skinny spot” in their garden.

But Coates also notes the growth of a different kind of “gardening up” – green roofs.

“Green roofs have definitely seen more of a commercial application and have been done in mostly urban areas, but they’re still a huge trend,” she says. “Green roofs help save on heating and cooling costs and actually protect the roof underneath from the degrading effects of the elements, so cities have received tax incentives for green roof installations.” Some cities, like Toronto and Chicago, are even starting to require green roofs on some new buildings, based on the square footage.

Winter 2011-2012 is well on its way, with areas of the Northeast already socked with snow. Whether you have snow on the ground or not, however, late fall to early winter is the time to get garden plants like these ready for the cold:

Flower Carpet^®roses

Transplanting. If you live in a warm climate (Zones 7 and higher), you can transplant your carpet roses any time (with the exception of excessively hot and dry locales, in which you shouldn’t transplant from July through September). If you live in a colder climate (Zones 6 and lower), the end of October was the latest you should have been transplanting carpet roses. Just hold off on transplanting until early next spring, when the plant’s still dormant but the soil is workable and warmer days are coming. (Doing this chore on St. Patrick’s Day is a good way of remembering when to do it in the North!)

Pruning. For those living in steadily warm, but not desert-like, areas, late fall to early winter is the ideal time for pruning That’s when flowering is at its lowest and leaves look their rattiest. Trim the plant back by at least half and as small as a basketball immediately before transplanting (pruning stimulates active growth). Water and wait about two to three weeks to feed. In colder climates, if you didn’t get to it before late October, hold off till St. Patrick’s Day (see above). 

Overwintering containers. In warm climates, you can just keep carpet roses in their pot, provided the container is at least 20 inches in diameter. Then just trim the roses back at the appropriate time (see above).

In cold climates, you can just wait for them to start going dormant (around Thanksgiving). Then, pack them closely together into a cool, dry (but not freezing) place like your garage or basement and get them up off the ground (they should be in pots at least 20 inches across and 20 inches deep and provide drainage). Some people like to cover them with hay or burlap for extra protection. Those without a garage can mound them up over the top with hay. Don’t cut back or prune them at this time.

Tropicanna^® cannas

Overwintering. In Zones 7 and higher, wait for leaves to start dying back, then cut back foliage to the soil. In Zones 3 and lower, wait until frost starts killing leaves, turning them  brown or black. Cut the stalks back to about 6 inches, then dig up the rhizomes, being careful not to injure them. Brush off loose soil and let rhizomes dry. Nestle rhizomes into closed boxes or plastic bags full of peat moss (with holes punched in them for air circulation). Store rhizomes in a cool, dry place (not freezing). Cannas grown in containers can be stored in their pots, too.

Festival™ Burgundy cordyline

Overwintering. In Zones 8b and higher, just leave Festival Burgundy cordyline in its pot or in the ground for the winter.In colder areas, it can be brought inside and overwintered as a houseplant. Put it in a window with good light (south-facing exposures are usually the best). For more on overwintering Festival Burgundy cordyline, see this video by Dave Epstein of GrowingWisdom.com.

Volcano^® phlox

Overwintering. Cut back to 4 or 5 inches and remove all dead leaves. Mulch to remove any lingering powdery mildew (Volcano phlox are mildew tolerant, which means they may get mildew, but they won’t die and it generally doesn’t affect the blooms). In areas with hard freezes, protect with mulch, pine straw or leaves to protect from ground heaves. In spring and again in summer, feed with time-release fertilizer.

The following guest post is from Tim Kane, sales/marketing/inventory manager for Prides Corner Farms, a Lebanon, Connecticut commercial grower of Tesselaar Plants' container-friendly, disease-resistant Volcano^® phlox.

Volcano phlox: The best garden phlox on the market

By Tim Kane

There are lots of great plants you hear people talk about in this industry, but I have little doubt that Volcano phlox is the best garden phlox you can find anywhere.

You can take my word for it, but – of course – one might understand why you might not believe the hype coming from me. After all, we grow thousands of Volcano phlox plants at Prides Corner Farms, and it is in my best interest to say they are fantastic. So maybe you should really listen to our customers who swear they won’t carry another garden phlox except for Volcano. 

What exactly makes our customers so loyal to Volcano? Maybe it’s the tight, dense, pot-filling form that’s perfect for selling in the garden center and growing in the garden.  All six Volcano colors (pink with white eye, pink with red eye, purple, white, red and ruby) top out in the 24- to 30-inch range, making them far less trouble in the garden center and in the landscape.

Also figuring into that loyalty to Volcano is the ability to bloom seemingly forever with such a massive quantity of flowers. Of course, there’s also the added feature of reblooming in late summer and fall when cut back after initial bloom.  Or, maybe it’s the famous Volcano phlox tolerance of powdery mildew (the scourge of all garden phlox) that makes this plant look so good even in hot, humid weather.

Looking for another reason to love Volcano? How ‘bout its versatility in the landscape. They’re the perfect summer blooming perennial for sunny areas, in the ground or in containers where they have an explosive effect on a deck or patio.

Whatever that reason is that makes our customers embrace Volcano phlox so tightly, it's clear here at Prides Corner that they are an absolute must for us to have during the summer to start weekly orders for our customers. Their uniqueness, blooming firepower, color selection and overall great looks have built such great expectations with our customers that they actually are disappointed in us when we run out. Volcano phlox really are our best selling summer blooming perennial, and our customers keep coming back for more!

So here we are this past week, buying – and tasting – fruit from the farm stand down the road:

Maya (our 3-year-old daughter), delighted in feeding Jeff and me blueberries. We also picked up some peaches for a fruit salad I was bringing to my brother-in-law's birthday party.

I'd made a point of going to the farm stand (run by Sunscape Farms, which happens to grow its plants in the field right next to our subdivision) instead of the grocery store. I think sometimes we just run computer programs in our head like "Go to Grocery Store" or "Go to Home Depot" every time we need something. And I realized I needed to stop running on autopilot and start patronizing more fruit and veggy stands, farm markets and independent garden centers. I'm glad I did, since I've found so many sales (like $1 packs of annuals at the farm stand and family-friendly activities like an ice cream stand (and a haywagon to eat it in) at Wambach's garden center):

I'd first heard the rumblings of a growing "buy local" movement a few years back when Rochester, NY food, wine and gardening show host Michael Warren Thomas started a Savor Independents project, encouraging people to patronize local restaurants and eateries instead of the big chains. "Did you realize that we could add millions of dollars to the local economy by patronizing local, independent businesses? he asked. "for every $100 spent at a chain, only $13 stays in our community," he added.

Then, as I started to join and read garden blogs and web forums, I noticed how people kept mentioning "localvores" and how they were going out of their way to patronize independent garden centers and farm markets. It wasn't just that they wanted to boost the local economy – they believed that locally grown and sold plants would thrive better in their landscapes.

Indeed, I saw evidence of this when shopping at one of the local independent garden centers in my area – Bristol's Garden Center in Victor, NY, which I love because I know I'll find the Volcano^® Phlox, Bonfire^® begonias and large selection of Flower Carpet^® roses I know I won't find at Lowe's, Walmart or Home Depot. On the ground near me was a nicely designed plastic plant tag from a white-bloomed peony, "Locally Grown - to thrive in your landscape."

Then, just a few days after that, I got a notice from local legislator David Koon (D), encouraging everyone to "buy local."

I have to admit: It's all too easy to buy garden plants at the big-box stores and produce at the supermarket. But it only takes a few minutes more (not even that, sometimes) to patronize local businesses growing and selling garden plants and produce. Take the challenge, and try to buy local at least once before the summer's over!

Do you make a point of buying local when it comes to your garden and the food on your plate? Post a comment and tell me all  about it!

The cold, rainy weather here has really been a drag. All my plants are in a holding pattern, while inside, my 3-year-old and I stay in the basement for more Evil Art Therapy. Bored, Maya gives her dolls a makeover with craft paint. And I, in a skunky, rainy-day mood, go ahead and let her. Here's her handiwork: scientific proof that gardening and the great outdoors improve wellness, while staying indoors just makes you go crazy:

Rainy periods like this (My 2010 Farmer's Almanac "Gardening By the Moon" article, by the way, said that these specific dates would be barren for gardening) are also a great excuse to go to hit the independent garden centers. After reading a recent garden trends survey that said gardeners (especially Gen X gardeners like myself) are into everything moss – moss-covered rocks, moss-covered containers, moss-lined terrariums – you name it — I indeed found this big, moss-tastic display of SuperMoss bagged reindeer moss at the Garden Factory in Gates, NY.  The moss (which came in colors like lime-green, dark green, white, beige and even purple) was also available in pre-cut moss sheets for use as a liner in wire garden planters, a birdhouse roof and even as a table runner. I also saw rocks covered in faux moss used around the water garden display.

 I also liked the Garden Factory's collection of already-designed container gardens, especially the ones using the rex begonia (read this great article on using rex begonia for colorful, fantastic foliage in the shade). Go check them out in your own independent garden center, or view and order them online at Logee's Greenhouse.

 Another garden trend very popular these days: the use of succulents as drought-tolerant plants for water-wise, low-maintenance, and just plain architecturally interesting landscapes. At left is some sedum next to your typical cactus – and behind that, and orange-and-yellow pencil cactus that looks like coral you'd see in an aquarium! Super cool!  

Always in colorful foliage lust, I've already incorporated an aeonium into one of my containers on the patio (below, with Tropicanna^® Black, Tropicanna^® Gold, white-flowered bacopa, nasturtium and purple flowering ornamental kale). Why not add some succulents to your container garden as well for added shape, color and texture. You might also want to add a small rock to create a desert scene or miniature landscape.) 

Of course, visiting garden centers always leads to spending at garden centers. At least that's what happened when I ventured out to Bristol's Garden Center in Victor, NY and came home with a red Volcano^® phlox and a Bonfire^® begonia. Both are holding up well in the shade and the rain, waiting for the sun to return.

Red Volcano phlox

 Bonfire begonia in a hanging basket in the shade

Speaking of drought-tolerant, my rainy-day boredom and search for more easy-care gardening ideas also inspired me to set up a container garden-watering experiment. Curious to know the easiest, most cost-effective way to water the containers on my deck, I filled four pots each with the same amount of soil, water and drought-sensitive plants (regular ol' petunias) in them. Only in the first pot, I put in Miracle Gro's moisture-retaining potting mix with fertilizer. In the next one, I used regular potting mix (also with fertilizer) but covered it with mulch. In the third, I again used the regular potting mix, but put it in a self-watering container. The fourth I left as a control, with just the regular potting mix. Here's the experiment I set up, and as soon as it warms up and dries out here, I'll let you know how they compare:

What about you? What do you do in times of bad weather during the gardening season? Post a comment and tell me all about it!