Garden trends

Yes, Marilyn! Today we went to another favorite garden center, expecting their plants to be expensive, but the annuals in particular were really inexpensive and very healthy.. I did see some gorgeous mandevillas, but they were really high, so I passed in favor of a really gorgeous hibiscus.. I got three colors of million bells( 2-tone light pink with red centers, and some carmine red ones, as well as some other annuals and some dianthus in a hot pink.. I also got a huge patio tomato with loads of blooms for $10.00. It was worth the trip! Next week my tray of osteospermum come in (white with the dark blue centers), and my green bean and sunflower seeds should be planted. Fun! :)

Louise, it's not fair! Fun for you though :-)

I know, Debi! We both feel guilty, especially with so many out of power and cold. Thankfully, my son got his power back in Conn. We feel so fortunate to be here for the winter.

I still have million bells blooming...brought them in the house. This basket was bought for me on Mother's day!

oh nice!!

Can't believe it's still alive! LOL

can always root cuttings too

Donnniebrook, I have no clear idea what plants are native to Florida. I"m more familiar with the midatlantic, natives. What natives have you had success with? I would imagine you have a whole other look then the zone 6 (maybe 7 with the temp increases) I live in.
Any photos?

granitegniess, evergreens are beautiful. Do you know of any native evergreens that are dwarfs? I would like to add a few.
The only one I can think of is inkberry, iIex glabra.
I do have a few smaller leaved inkberries since "Pretty Boy" was the only male cultivar I could find to insure berries so I have 2 "Pretty Girls" too besides "Compacta". I couldn't find straight species.
This are lovely native alternates to boxwood, easily pruned and shaped.
You just have to be careful not to prune off the very subtle tiny dark blue berries the birds eat.

Sempervirens, since a dwarf evergreen is generally derived from a witch's broom that occurs naturally on a larger tree, I would say any dwarf evergreen that is from a parent tree native to your area would still qualify as native, regardless of where it was discovered and reproduced. Dwarf versions of native pines, hemlocks, firs, spruce, for example, should all qualify.

Personally, I buy what I like and think will do well in my climate. That is partly because I live in the beautiful Maine woods, and am surrounded by native plants, so in my yard, it is nice to see something different ;-)

Camellias are evergreen too, usually about 10-12' tall, fairly high maintenance though. There are some hardy dwarf camellias, too. If you're interested I'll send a link next time I'm surfing. The kind I'm planning on buying have to survive in zone 6a in a very sheltered spot, but there are even more for zone 6b.

Semper, i am in zone 10, which is tropical. I plant annuals and veggies, and the native plants are bougainvilleas, brugmansias, hibiscus, gardenias, caladiums, some roses, plumeria, palms, citrus, etc. Because I grew up in this neighborhood, I already had a sense of what I could grow, but I am still enjoying finding new things to try. One problem here is that so many plants are terribly poisonous for dogs, and our pups tend to be grazers - not as badly now that they are two, but they still love to pullup a juicy plug of grass and feast on the roots. :(. I will try to send some photos once things get going well.

Celeste, I can't believe your basket!! I just bought those very same million bells for my baskets. Yours look so pretty still!

Rosemary, good luck with your camellias. They are very lovely shrubs - and I wish I could grow them here. Mine didn't make it through the hot summer here.

Louise, I hope your son has power.....the valley was hit hard. Love the plants you bought....the osteospermum are my favorites!

How nice of you to think of him, Marilyn! He does have power now and his life is getting back to normal. The challenging situation brought out his super coping skills. I hope things are getting back to normal soon for you too!

Donniebrook, I'm a little confused about the list you gave me of the Florida natives you grow. I am particularly interested in plants that originated in Florida pre-colonization, which is the usual time period to consider plants indigenous. I was interested because I have friends in Florida who asked for help finding some advice on natives for their garden and I find a whole other area of the country's plants most interesting.
I checked online on the USDA plant site, which is a good beginning point to start to check on what is native to Florida, and most of your list:
brugmansias, bougainvilleas, caladiums, plumerias, palms and citrus are not native to Florida.
Did you have a different understanding or criteria for the term native?

Rosemary, thank you for the offer to send me hardy camellia links. That is so thoughtful of you.
They are quite beautiful but I have such limited space for shrubs or small trees every new addition to the garden must be native to my area.
I already have many non-native, or native to a little further south, plants and shrubs, I would no longer consider if I started gardening now.

I am hoping to be able to put together a native garden that is decorative and easy to grow so I can encourage my neighbors to grow more natives to support the native insect, butterflies, birds, etc. since there is less and less open spaces to support them.
The trickiest part is convincing people not to cut back the garden until late spring of the following year and keeping the fallen leaves in the garden not bagged and carted away. It seems by cleaning up too well, as we have all been taught to do, you destroy the next generation of creatures of all kinds we are trying to encourage.
I'm just hoping to restore a little balance between how I want the garden to look and what it needs to do for a healthy source of food for the necessary creatures.
There is a way to make it pretty and healthy for the environment.

To me, lifestyle changes such as Semperverins suggests happen over time. We do rake the open areas of our lawn where the leaves would blow into the neighbors and by the house. Besides, leaf mold is unhealthy for allergy sufferers. Another transition that seems to work for us is to plant natives in the very front of our house where they're visible to all who pass by. If a natural look can be made to look nice, then I think that's setting a good example. But it still has to be fun.

Poison ivy is a native....I'm not planting it.

LOL Robin

:)

No need. Plants itself!

Garret seems to have eradicated it for the time being, but come spring, I know I'll find more......

Semper - all of the plants that I mentioned are not technically "natives" in the way that you are correctly defining them. Often, The "native" nurseries expand the offering to many xera-scaping plants that have been here for many generations and do well here without irrigation other than rain. The bougainvillea, hibiscus, and others that I like are not indigenous, but I don't stick to the true natives, because we are not here in the summer to see the blooms of most true natives. There are not many natives that bloom during the winter months, so we stick to the plants that I am most familiar with from my childhood here that give us color in our gardens. I figure if they are as old as my great grandmother, they are native enough for me! LOL

Many of the early settlers' plants...like dianthus...naturalized, & have become beautiful wild flowers....I'm not sure what 'true' natives to CT might be, but I'm thinking many would be understory plants....

Maybe a plant named 'Blackout'?!!

I'm still very unhappy with CL&P....I'd love to send them the gasoline bill for my generator.....

You should!

I think you're right, Marilyn. I suspect that would also be correct here as well, and down here, you get the wiggly poisonous visitors with the understory plants. No thanks!

Yeah, give it a try! Can't hurt.

Or ask Louise to send you a poisonous visitor to forward to CL&P!

Heehee. Oops, I wonder how THAT got in the envelope?

i know people are sending in those gas receipts just to make a point.

received a letter back from our state AG office confirming my complaint and that there is an investigation to look into the utilities

Hope they do something and don't cave in.

Apparently, CL&P is setting aside 10 mill.....that works out to about $25 per household...one state legislator wants a $50 rebate for every customer who went without power for 48 hours.....that would work for me.

Good luck to you all! You surely deserve some redress!

I think come spring that you folks in CT are going to see all your trees trimmed severly around power lines!

I only have one tree close, & it was trimmed several years ago by the cable company....the president of CL&P resigned today.....I think what bothered a lot of folks was that repairs didn't start until Tues.....the storm had ended by midnight on Sat. in western CT. One group of out of state electricians wouldn't send more than a small crew because they were owed money by CL&P from Irene...CL&P denied it, but the local TV station proved them wrong....the other company was then paid over $6,000...it was just a bungled mess.....

just terrible

I hope the departing president didn't walk away with a mega- package for wrongdoing. It seems that corruption or extreme incompetence is a prerequisite to a plush retirement these days.

Our power company (CMP) sent some crews down to help. Don't know if they were the ones that CL&P owed money to. Maine could spare some crews because we didn't get hit as hard as the rest of NE. I only had a couple of inches of snow and it was pretty well gone the next day. Since that big ice storm back a few years CMP has kept the trees trimmed on a very regular basis (contracted out).

Smart!

Your right Frank, I see alot more tree trimming going on after the ice storm.