mailorder gardening catalogs

Happy New Year!

And happy National Mailorder Gardening Month (at least according to the Mailorder Gardening Association, which offers great information on gardening by mail).

Check out the catalogs

That’s right. Those mailorder catalogs – full of the latest dramatic flowers and fantastic foliage — should be filling up your mailbox any day now. So grab your Snuggie and a cup of coffee – it’s time for a trip to Catalog Land.

Getting to these catalogs and ordering from them early is especially important if you want one of those hot, new introductions that’s in limited supply. And since this blog’s about easy-care gardening, you might also want to add to this year’s shopping list plants described as "low-maintenance," "disease resistant," "pest resistant," "easy to grow," "self-cleaning," or "drought tolerant."

Plan, dream…have fun!

While you’re at it, now’s the time to sketch new garden layouts, plan additions or renovations and play with different plant combinations for your beds and container gardens. Just get out that stack of gardening magazines and 1/4-inch graph paper or your laptop (and try the free, online Plan-A-Garden feature at BHG.com).

Keep those houseplants alive

In addition to the houseplant care tips I provided in my Dec. 15, 2009 post on December garden chores, you’re going to want to think about increasing the humidity. “A lot of plants will benefit just from a misting – once a day, or once every other day,” says Dave Epstein, founder of GrowingWisdom, an online video website for homeowner-gardeners and landscape professionals. “It creates a miniature, more humid environment around it – kind of like a microclimate.”

Schedule tree service

“If you have a tree that’s dead, this is a great time of year to have it removed,” says Epstein. “Contact an aborist, since this is a slow time of year for them. Plus, your ground is probably frozen, so they can bring big equipment onto your lawn without doing any damage.”

Another reason to call them now is to set up a spring health maintenance program for your trees.

Regional roundup

If you live in a wamer climate, check out the fantastic, region-specific "Gardening To Do List - January in the Garden" post by About.com gardening guide Marie Iannotti. And wherever you live, she adds, don’t forget to feed the birds and provide them with fresh, unfrozen water.

Pretty soon, the deluge of holiday greeting cards will be replaced with a landslide of mailorder gardening catalogs.

Fine with me. It’s the perfect post-holiday wind-down activity.

So here, at least, is the first of four posts I’ll be contributing on new Tesselaar plants and the perfect plant pairings. And by no means are these recommendations just for Tesselaar introductions. They can, of course, be applied to any plant with a similar color, shape and habit. 

Might as well start with Phormium Black Adder^TM. I’m a sucker for anything dark with an elegant, architectural form. So this glossy, burgundy-black take on the popular New Zealand flax has pretty much everything I need…Its swordlike leaves shoot upward from the base and curve slightly at the tips. It’s also notable for its very dark color, with the added bonus that, unlike its parent, ‘Platt’s Black,’ it’s a strong healthy grower suited to exposed conditions and coastal planting. Extremely wind and drought tolerant, it’s hardy to Zone 8, grows to 3 feet high and can even be overwintered indoors.

Now…what to plant with Tall, Dark and Handsome?

Well, for starters, renowned plant developer Monrovia suggests planting ‘Platt’s Black’ with Canna Tropicanna^® Gold (far left image in the above grouping) with the mirror plant ‘Rainbow Surprise’ (center image in above grouping) I think subbing in Black Adder (far right) would look equally — if not more — stunning. For another yellow-purple combination, Monrovia suggests pairing it with the variegated Australian brush cherry Lemon Swirl® and Cordyline Caruba^® Black. Or, create a dramatic black-and-blue combo with Proven Winners’ English Butterfly^TM Peacock^TM butterfly bush and Monrovia’s Purple Queen^® bougainvillea.

Excellent as a focal point or specimen, Black Adder also makes a striking stand-in for grasses and softens the look of landscape boulders. Underplant with dainty, light-colored, low-growing foliage like perennial geranium, Japanese Forest Grass, Artemisia ‘Silver Mound’ or coreopsis. In containers, it’s great by itself  or as spiky centerpiece among one of the suggested companion plantings.

Did you create any show-stopping plant groupings in your garden this past season? If so, please tell us all about it - and send a picture! I just moved to a new house - and garden - so I’ve got a blank slate and welcome your ideas!