fantastic foliage

It's been several months since we moved into a new house mired in heavy clay soil, a damp, rainy environment (fungal disease heaven), steeply sloping side paths and tons of insects (from the mature woods around our house). So when my husband and I considered plants for the deeply sloping path next to the side of the house, we definitely wanted easy-care roses.

Not only did we want low-maintenance roses – they also had to be pest- and disease-resistant. Secondly, we wanted something neat, low-growing and uniform-looking – something that'd look great from a distance. If that wasn't enough, they also had to offer season-long interest, low watering requirements (with a 3-year-old, you know, you just get busy and forget). And finally, they had to fill and spread while holding up against the erosion of a slope (see below).

BEFORE

AFTER

So we decided to plant Flower Carpet roses in masses. You can see why we're extremely happy with the results, even if we did only get half the project done this year (we'll likely take out the hostas and replace them with more Flower Carpet Amber next spring). Since our house is blue, we thought the new Amber color, with its variations of soft pinks, peaches and yellows would provide a dramatic look, being a complementary color to blue.

At first, I wasn't so sure about the color combo, but now that the blooms are out in full force, I'm glad I took a chance and did something different. I'm also happy that my Flower Carpet roses lived up to their claim of staying low and compact, especially when comparing them to the scraggly, now-defoliated, flowerless hybrid teas I see struggling at other homes in the neighborhood. By next year, the Flower Carpet Amber bushes should grow together into a blanket of peachy-pink blooms. 

Plus, I have to admit I held my breath as Japanese beetle season descended upon us last week. But the Flower Carpet roses have held up particularly well. Even though they invaded in full force, chewing their way through other plants (like the canna, below), they've barely touched the Flower Carpet roses' shiny-green, fantastic foliage (which, I have to say, gives them season-long interest, even before they're in bloom). I saw maybe two beetles on the whole bed of Flower Carpet Amber, sprayed them with neem oil and – as you can see in the picture – haven't seen any since:

JAPANESE BEETLE-FREE FLOWER CARPET AMBER ROSES

JAPANESE BEETLE-INFESTED CANNA NEARBY

But don't believe me. Here's another Flower Carpet success story — this one from Australia:

Any gardener going past Kristin and Glenn’s place back in May 2005 would have been struck by a barren site and way too much clay. And if they’d stopped to take a closer look, they’d have spotted more challenges: no topsoil and a driveway slope that would thrill any skateboarder:

 BEFORE

AFTER

Add them all together and you had almost too many obstacles to be overcome by anyone hoping to transform the site into a glorious garden. And as is usually the case, none of this became obvious until Kristin and Glenn had moved in.

“The process of building the house was terrible, but then I’m the most impatient person God put breath into," says Kristin. "And once we’d moved in, we found ourselves surrounded by mud and clay, a significant slope and no thoughts about a garden or any idea of what to do.”

As most people do, they found they’d gone over budget with the house and didn’t have a lot of money to throw at retaining walls or terracing. However, what they did do was not only clever — it has generated a fist full of compliments and given their house a neighbouhood nickname – The Rose House.

Knowing that they were looking for something that would thrive in the clay, cover a lot of ground quickly and not need much in the way of care or water, roses became the obvious choice. Steering clear of anything too fussy, they quickly narrowed the field to the Flower Carpet collection and with luck on their side, picked Flower Carpet Apple Blossom and the classic Flower Carpet Pink (both bloom at the same time).

“Which is great," says Kristin, "but then they flower for so long over spring and summer that I wondered how they could possibly not happen to flower together.”

Glenn kept the costs down by top dressing the site with soil and mulch, then planted the roses literally over a weekend. (He was under some pressure given he was about to announce his engagement to a woman who has already professed to be beyond impatient, and the engagement party as well as the wedding were both being held at their new home.)

Wonderfully, the story ends happily ever after, as all stories with roses in them tend to do. Kristin and Glenn’s home is complete, and the garden is the low maintenance vision they’d hoped for. They were married New Year’s Eve of that same year, and they’re living happily ever after with their own little 3-year-old — another happy family surrounded by roses.

Have you made over your landscape with Flower Carpet roses? Post a comment and tell us 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!

 I just returned home from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Maui! My husband (with me, below, on a sunset cruise we took there) won the trip as part of some work performance award. Nice, huh?

Well, anyway, of course I had to whip out the camera and snap a pic of every tropical garden and plant I came across. And with such a colorful buffet of tropical foliage and fantastic flowers in front of me, it got me to thinking, "Why can't I have some of that in my Zone 6a garden?" OK, maybe I can't line a whole walkway with it, since it'll die over winter. But on the other hand, why not just put a few of these stunners in a container on the patio, or feature them as colorful, exotic specimen plants? After all, my home is my personal retreat … why can't I have some vacation there, too?

The best way to go about using tropicals in your garden or landscape, I've since learned, is to buy them for use as indoor houseplants during the cold season and then move the container to your landscape or patio in the summer (you can even bury the plant in the pot, to fake the look of an established tropical plant in your garden). And while you're at it, heck — bring all your houseplants outside for the summer for a tropical flair in your beds, borders and containers. Just make sure to look up each plant's particular requirements or ask a local garden center that sells tropicals for advice on how to grow these beauties inside and out in your area. Some tropicals, for instance, will survive in lower light levels indoors during the cold season (perhaps without blooms or as vivid colors, but will nonethless survive), but they need misting and higher temperatures to thrive. Conversely, when taken outdoors, tropicals that grow as understory plants in the rainforest might not be able to handle constant, direct sunlight. Still others are so heat-loving that the chill of cold water direct from the garden hose will make their leaves drop.

Also check out this WONDERFUL  St. Louis Dispatch article on using tropicals in your garden.

 So moving right along, here are some of my tropical plant pics from Maui — along with some ideas on how to use them in your landscape. If you live in a warmer climate and can grow these tropicals year round, take note of where, how and with what other plants the landscape designers have used them. If you're like me and live in a colder climate, you might have to resign yourself to using them as colorful, dramatic accents or treat them as annuals and ditch them at the end of the season.

First, here's some spiky, swordlike phormium (New Zealand flax) in purple-brown, complemented by a green spike of dracena and a ti plant's burgundy and pink tropical foliage. Of course, I think this container combo would look even more dramatic with Tesselaar's darker, glossier, burgundy-black Black Adder™ Phormium, with its elegantly nodding, pendulous tips. 

Another beautiful  tropical plant I saw a lot of was bromeliads. The top image here, of the purple-blue bloom atop lemon-lime, waxy foliage, is aechmea. Below that is a giant, yellowish-orange bromeliad nestled in a bed of tropical fern (I believe it's Phymatosorus grossus, or laua'e (maile-scented fern). Third down is a red-centered bromeliad accented by a green, wavy-leaved tropical fern. Below that is what I like to think of as the 'lollypop planter' of red, orange and yellow flowered bromeliads. Fifth down is that orange-yellow bromeliad as a tall, architectural backdrop for an otherwise common bed of impatiens. Below that you'll see the same bromeliad atop a purple-black groundcover (what a stunning contrast, especially with the companion planting of yellow-green bromeliads. Seventh down shows the view of a bromeliad from above, with its tell-tale pool of water in the center. The bottom shot shows how a mass planting of bromeliads, in different colors, makes a strong, tropical statement.

 Bromeliads, by the way, make some of the best houseplants on earth. For more information on growing bromeliads indoors and out, check out this great eHow article on bromeliad care.

Here's a raised bed with more aechmea, rainbow-leaved croton, and what looks to be either a variegated dracena or carex (could be Tesselaar's own Everest™) and one of my favorite new plants ever — tradescantia (the purple-pink spiky plant down in front). And below that is a close-up shot of the same plants backlit by the morning sun. Awesome!

Here are other images of croton … virtually unmatched in its brilliant colors and many leaf forms (this is one of those plants, however, that can't take chilly water. For more information, check out this great article on croton.

Or, of course, if it's rainbow-colored foliage you crave, and you're not sure how well croton will do in your yard, you can also plant Tesselaar's Tropicanna^® Canna (the bottom picture in this set shows it used along with coleus, Mexican sunflower and caladium in the winning design of Garden Gate magazine's 2009 "Container Challenge" design contest.)

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Well, that's all I could stuff in one post for now. But stay tuned for more tropical plant photos — and videos! — from my trip to Maui. In the meantime, if you want to see more pics from my trip (including the set where Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston and Dave Matthews were shooting their next movie!) check out my Flickr site.

Ever dreamed about vacationing in Australia? I know I have. Well here, at least, you can take a trip through its most beautiful site (aside from the 'roos, sand, sun, surf and Sydney Opera House, of course) – the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show. Spend a few minutes down under and enjoy some dramatic flowers and fantastic foliage with this guest post from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for Tesselaar Plants.

With the chocolate coma starting to fade and the Easter Break well and truly over, I thought it time to send a quick update on the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show, which was held just prior to Easter from the 24^th through the 28^th of March. This internationally famous show, held for the past 15 years at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Garden (below), is still an explosion of color and design. It's also the biggest annual flower garden show in the Southern Hemisphere!

Highlighting the creativity and passion of Australia's top floral and landscape designers, the Melbourne show is the horticultural industry’s premier showcase for a stunning array of inspirational displays and environmentally friendly ideas. As always, highlights included the floral spectacular inside the Great Hall of Flowers, the Children's Garden with its animal petting zoo and numerous show gardens created by some of Australia's most lauded landscape designers (all of which left me wondering why I never see the design opportunities the professionals do when working in my own garden).

Particularly inspirational for me was the outdoor exhibition of garden sculptures (below) organized by the Association of Sculptors of Victoria. All sculptures are for sale and range in price from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. I really like the huge metal sculpture of a rose. The next time someone asks me how tough Flower Carpet^® roses are, I'm going to show them this picture!

Of course, we were at the show on business, too. And as always, Tesselaar was actively involved, hosting the media tent and celebrating our wildly popular new plant introduction, Fairy Magnolias (below) with cupcakes and pink bubbly.

One thing that really surprised all of us was the absolute interest in the new Fairy Magnolias. Everyone loved the versatility of the plant (suitable for specimens, hedging or espalier (see second image, below) and how floriferous it was, with a bud at every leaf axil.

In a nutshell, the main points that people liked were the flower, light fragrance, the fact that it was a flowering bush that could be used for hedging, the year-round lush green foliage and rapid growth.

And Tropicanna® Canna (which will soon appear in stores in the Northern Hemisphere) continues to wow garden designers, with its inclusion in many of the show's displays.

 Here I am with Tropicanna Black (its purple-black leaves soon to be topped by a coral bloom with bright-yellow edging) and Tropicanna Gold (its green, yellow and golden leaves soon to showcase a sunny, yellow-gold flower). And below that, you can see the original Tropicanna Canna that started it all in a garden setting, soon to show off its bright tangerine bloom.

Anyway, should you be planning a trip to Australia any time in the future, try to visit during the Melbourne International Flower & Garden show. It is truly a spectacular celebration of the Australian lifestyle and our great outdoors, with some of the world’s leading floral and landscape designers, all in the beautiful Carlton Gardens with great food and lots of family fun!

This year, as always, I visited GardenScape – an annual flower and garden show where I live in Rochester, NY (Upstate New York). This year’s exhibit featured 20 gardens artistically landscaped in an "Eye of the Garden" theme (inspired by trompe l’oeil, an art genre that involves creating two-dimensional images that look 3D). And as always, the show was full of dramatic flowers, fantastic foliage and tons of easy-care gardening ideas.

Here are some of my favorite pics. (Click here to see more on my Flickr account).

Anthurium, Phoenix palm and foxtail lilies – part of an ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) exhibit on the way in:

Some vintage-style seed packets from Rochester, NY’s oldest retail store, Crosman Seeds. With folks returning to veggies, it would be nice to see seed companies like this have their day in the sun again …

Monochromatic gardens can be stunning, as is the case with the red echoes in these tulips, geraniums, holly berries, gladiolus and framed garden "art."

Close-up of a velvety, red orchid - I think it’s a cattleya? - part of an exhibit by the Genesee Region Orchid Society.

Natural stone sculptor D.A. Spencer hand carves glacier rocks into these natural waterfalls for landscapes.

Chinese quince bonsai … That’s so cool when the plant’s been trained and pruned to stay small, but the fruit is large because it’s really a mature shrub or tree …

Chinese wisteria bonsai:

Loved the texture of this Japanese plum yew … I’d never seen one before and it didn’t even occur to me this could be a yew.The green-yellow contrasts nicely with the blue-grey, too …

Wow … loved the phormium (New Zealand flax) sitting in a bed of black Mondo grass! This would be stunning in my garden with the new burgundy-black Black Adder^TM Phormium I’m going to be planting!

This mammoth water feature had a digital image projected onto it … Is this the future of outdoor rooms?

These carnivorous pitcher plants are using their beauty to catch their next meal …

Here are some good companion plants for pink hydrangeas in containers – Wandering Jew and purple heuchera …

Ahhh… my favorite underused garden plant – heather – with white hyacinths, white-and-green coleus, copper-burgundy heuchera, yellow tulips and hot-pink-flowered rhododendron.

What a great idea for a patio – a grouping of the same pot, in a rainbow of colors. (If I had to choose one, though, I’d go with the turquoise one in the middle. Turquoise is, after all, the Pantone Color Institute’s "Color of the Year" for 2010, and it always makes me feel like I’m on vacation next to the blue waters of the Caribbean).

Mixing ornamentals with edibles is a hot trend right now – hence this display of conifers, lavender, tomatoes, daisies and lettuce by the Monroe County Master Gardeners Program.

And awww … who could ever pass up this perfect gerbera daisy?

Hope you enjoyed the pics! See you back here next time for more easy-care gardening!

So as I mentioned in my previous post (on vegetable container gardening), I just moved to a new home with a completely blank slate in the back for gardening.

And seeing how it’s still winter here in western New York (and probably will continue to be for what feels like about six more months), I’m grabbing some of my 2 ½-year-old daughter’s paper and crayons, and remembering the best gardening (and landscaping) advice I ever got:

Start with raised beds, and be sure to use conifers (cone-bearing plants, mostly evergreens). The raised beds give you good “garden bones” and the conifers provide fantastic foliage and year-round texture, color and shape.

Of course, this advice came from conifer enthusiast, master gardener and former neighbor Jerry Kral, who has turned his Rochester, NY property into a terraced conifer dreamland featured in Better Homes & Gardens (see image at right, from the Genesee Valley Rocks! gardening blog at www.gvnargs.blogspot.com).

Building your raised bed

Before you stick any plants in the ground, Jerry taught me, the idea is to create a frame for your “art.” 

First, determine the shape of your bed (a natural, organic form looks best – try something like a kidney bean). You may want to spraypaint the border on the grass and then run a course of bricks or stone (about $200 a pallet) on top of them. For the lovely terraced look you see (above) in Jerry's garden, you can feel free to go a few courses higher.

Next, plan on filling in that border with dirt (sorry, gardeners – “soil”) about 3 to 4 feet high and 4 to 6 feet wide (landscapers can provide the fill dirt for about $30 a cubic yard). If you plan to use dwarf or miniature conifers, (an especially good idea if you want low-maintenance or easy-care gardening), maybe go a bit smaller. Or, if you're putting in plants that are going to expand a lot as they grow, go a bit larger.

Next, just wheelbarrow the dirt from the delivered pile (usually on a tarp in your driveway) to your raised bed, and just shovel it right onto the grass within that border. No need to kill or dig out the turf below.

Designing your raised bed

Try to start with taller trees for a high leaf canopy. Add bushes and shrubs for a midlevel canopy. Then, fill in the bottom part with groundcovers and lower-growing perennials, bulbs, annuals, ornamental grasses, gnomes, flamingos - whatever it is that floats your boat.

Then, consider putting a tall, dark plant (like juniperus scopulorum 'Skyrocket') in the center or back and two weeping conifers (like Golden Cedar) on each outer edge. Fill in the space between with round- or bun-shaped conifers (like chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Green Globe') and a few tall, skinny ones (I'm a big fan of 'Sky Pencil' holly). Arrange smaller plants at the front, from shortest on the outside to tallest in the center.

Then, add a big rock. Or three. Or five. Odd numbers are better. If you're using three, get one small, one medium and one large. For a more natural effect, try to find stones that are native to your area.

For a high-impact look, try contrasting colors. Blue-green and yellow-variegated conifers go great together. So do dark green varieties with those variegated white.

Also contrast textures — stiff, sharp needles of spruce or pine, for instance, with the cup-shaped, ferny Hinoki cypress or the stringlike chamaecyparis pisifera.

Next, mix it up for a more natural look. In nature, notes Jerry, you won’t find straight lines or a mass of just one kind of shape, color, texture or kind of plant. So mix in some deciduous trees and shrubs as well as herbaceous perennials, annuals, bulbs, ground covers and ornamental grasses.

I’ll get more into planting when spring gets here. But now’s my time for dreaming, and I’m checking out mail-order sites such as Arrowhead Alpines and Greer Gardens and garden blogs such as The Amazing World of Conifers, The Garden Years, A Way to Garden and Daniel Mount Gardens. You can also find images of conifers and cultural information at the American Conifer Society Web site.

Are you a conifer lover? Let me know some varieties and plant compositions that have worked for you! And please feel free to post some pics!

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.

As those mailorder gardening catalogs start flooding in over the next few weeks, it’s easy to get caught up in the beauty shots of each new plant, all by itself.

What’s difficult, however, is visualing how to use these new introductions as part of drought-tolerant plant combinations that give you dramatic flowers, fantastic foliage AND a low-maintenance garden.

That’s where this series of posts comes in, on Tesselaar’s new plant introductions for 2010. I’ve hunted down some fantastic companion plants for each of them, along with a few design ideas in general, all with easy-care, as well as design ideas, for each new plant - all of them designed with easy-care gardening in mind.

Today, the focus is Ceanothus Tuxedo^® (far left image and lower right corner in collage, at right).

The first-ever black-leaved ceanothus, or California lilac, Tuxedo’s fall-blooming shrub’s lavender-blue flowers absolutely pop out at you from from their dark, dramatic backdrop of purplish-black foliage. The extremely drought-tolerant selection, which grows 8’ high by 6’ wide, is also able to handle a windy slope and well-behaved when it comes to pruning.

Drought-tolerant design idea

Here’s a drought-tolerant fall combo (left) suggested in an Oct. 13, 2009 post on the “Daily Dirt” blog (at http://ow.ly/uliN) by Pacific Coast Home & Garden, the premier garden, home décor and hardware store on the Central Coast. In the image above, in the top right corner, are the following plants, clockwise from the top right corner: ‘Helena’s Blush’, Flax Lily ‘Little Rev’, Correa ‘Wyn’s Wonder’ and Ceanothus Tuxedo.   

Perfect color companions

Amplify the black-and blue theme with other blue fall bloomers like Tesselaar’s Agapanthus Bluestorm™ or any of the 10 blue fall bloomers suggested by About.com garden guide Marie Iannotti. Or, create a complementary color scheme by pairing the lavender-blue Tuxedo blooms with yellow fall bloomers like helenium, beautifully featured by Monica Milla in her Sept. 19, 2008 post titled "Favorite Fall Bloomers" on her gardening blog, Full Bloom (at http://mlive.com/fullbloom).