Posts for 'Landscape Plants' Category

 Wildlife gardeners will have to wait another year before the city changes its bylaw to allow tall grasses and wildflowers to flourish in people's yards.

"Based on our resources and current workloads, we won't get to it this year," said Christine Hartig, a policy officer in the city's bylaw and regulatory services branch.

But Capital Councillor Clive Doucet said the decision to delay the bylaw changes was made without councillors' input, and he wants the gardening matter dealt with this year, as planned.

"We were told by senior staff it would be ready to go this spring," Doucet said. "Why wouldn't you want to straighten it out this year? It's not rocket science. ... It's so simple."

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Those pretty plants you see blooming now in your neighbor’s yard are sasanquas. Sasanquas are one of the most useful and versatile plants that anyone can ever have in their home landscape. Sasanquas have rich, dark green foliage and will grow about 8- to 10-feet tall.

They are excellent to use at the corners and offsets of houses for foundation plantings, and they are great to use along property lines for hedges. One real advantage that sasanquas have is that they will do equally well in sun or shade.

Sasanquas can be planted en masse for screening or they can be planted individually to serve as specimens. They easily lend themselves to being pruned into tree forms, or they can be trained for espaliers for a brick wall or wood fence.

Sasanquas are readily accepted by the most high falutin’ gardeners (people who use terms like en masse). They hold their own in the most elegant of settings, yet they have great appeal for the common man. If you have a Volkswagen garden but want a Cadillac plant, use a sasanqua.

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Barberries are attractive landscape plants. Their thorns can repel deer and other animals, they spread quickly to create a protective hedge, they are widely adapted to poor soils, and they grow in part shade to full sun. The red berries are ornamental and also provide food for wildlife. But it's those berries that have caused problems. Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) has gotten a bad reputation because of its prolific seed dispersal. It quickly can become an exotic invasive, crowding out native shrubs. Birds eat and spread the seeds throughout its range.
However, not all barberries need to be shunned. Researchers at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, trialed 41 selections of barberry to determine which were the most invasive. Their results showed some Japanese barberry varieties, such as ‘Concorde’, ‘Bonanza Gold’, ‘Kobold’, and ‘Golden Nugget’ (pictured above), produce few or no fruits and seeds, so they can be safely planted in the landscape.
Another species of barberry to try is B. verruculosa with its dense, 4-foot-tall growth. It makes an excellent low hedge and doesn’t produce flowers and fruits.

This is Part I of a three- part series - Many homes add green, luscious plants to their decor for a natural, decorative look that helps compliment any room. Besides looking great and adding a vibrant pop of color, plants can also purify the indoor air inside your home by filtering out toxins and replacing them with oxygen.

Thanks to a two year study by NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA), we are now aware of the top indoor air pollutants and the plants that will help improve them. There are three main toxic pollutants that invade the inside of our homes.

The most common one is formaldehyde and it is primarily used in many common household cleaning agents, along with glues in furniture and carpets. Formaldehyde can also be found in certain dyes in fabrics to prevent bleeding and is integrated into some cosmetics.

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Popular Minneapolis landscaping services firm, Lee's Landscaping and Design, Inc., recently announced five useful tips to help homeowners maintain pristine lawns throughout the Spring months.

By following the firm's practical lawn maintenance tips, it is expected that homeowners will enjoy vibrant and healthy looking lawns with minimal investment in time or money.

Lee's Landscaping and Design is a full-service landscaping firm specializing in landscape design and installation. With a commitment to offering beautiful landscaping designs at competitive prices, Lee's Landscaping and Design has grown to become one of the premier landscaping firms in the surrounding Minneapolis area.

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Many of the most familiar plants in our gardens, fields, and even our forests are not native to New Hampshire . Over the last 400 years or so, immigrants have brought plants from their countries of origin, importing such specimens as Japanese barberry for hedges, purple loosestrife for color in the garden, and Norway maple trees for shade.

Conservation organizations have encouraged the planting of autumn olive for erosion control and wildlife food. The nursery trade continues to import exotic species, promoting new varieties and colors for gardening and landscaping.

The vast majority of plant imports that are common in our landscape do not cause problems, but a small percentage of them (such as the examples above) have proven to be such good competitors in their new environments that they have become recognized as invasive plants.

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This time of the year, "mum" is the word at Mississippi State University's Truck Crops Experiment Station in Crystal Springs, and it certainly should be at your home, too. We have hundreds of species of flowers from salvias to roses to tropicals, but what would fall be without the garden mum?

We are planting hundreds of them to evaluate and to add that extra pizzazz to the Fall Flower and Garden Fest that brings in thousands of visitors to see the latest in fall flowers, vegetables and herbs.

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Once you start looking for landscaping "don'ts," you'll find them everywhere: a huge oak tree planted close to a house; a holly bush planted beneath a window and covering the view; a solitary island flower bed, floating by itself, disconnected from all the other elements of the landscape. All were decisions made by well-meaning people that just turned out poorly.

I didn't want to end up making such mistakes, so before I started reworking my own yard, I set out to learn a little about landscape design.

 Here are three approaches I road-tested and some thoughts about how to make them more useful to you. None of these instructors knew in advance that I would write about the experience.

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While they may be pleasant to look at and easy to find, invasive plant species can be detrimental to both wildlife and the environment.

David Faecke, a member of the Native Plant Society of Texas, said there’s a better way to garden and landscape one’s property than bringing plants in from another area.

He explains that one of his primary concerns is that many new residents to the Hill Country buy a home and property and then begin to landscape without concern for the plants native to the region.“You have to get out there and figure out what you have before you start cutting stuff down,” Faecke said.

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Harold Pellett is perhaps the northern gardener's best friend, having dedicated his nearly 40-year career to breeding landscape plants capable of surviving harsh winters, sandy soils and a number of other challenging growing conditions common north of the 45th parallel.

Since retiring from the University of Minnesota horticulture department in 2002, Pellett has continued his work as executive director of the non-profit Landscape Plant Development Center. Three years ago, an unassuming 6.75-acre plot on the eastern edge of Lake Elmo became the LPDC's first and only Minnesota research station.

There, near the intersection of Highway 5 and Little Blue Stem Trail, dozens of new hybrids that were developed at the center's Oregon research station receive their annual trial by ice. Those that survive and thrive will be further developed in the hopes their progeny will one day make their way to yards and gardens throughout the northern United States.

"We're developing new landscape plants to give people a broader selection of plants that are well adapted, so they can choose plants with different qualities to develop a better landscape using plants that have a decent chance of survival without needing a lot of input," Pellett said.

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