Mums Make Us Happy

This time of year, when we cut back our sad, spent perennials, pull out the last of the weeds, and add a layer of fall mulch, we should feel content, satisfied with a good season. But we want more! More color more blooms! When we plant addicts see a neat and tidy garden after a fall clean-up, all we see is holes, open spaces where there could be color!

Lucky for us, mums, ornamental cabbage and kale, asters, pansies, and ornamental peppers offer us a few more weeks of of what we gardeners love. . . flowers.

Blue in October?

Still blooming blue in October: 'Endless Summer' Hydrangea and Delphinium 'Royal Aspirations'.

People who come into the nursery looking for blue flowering plants are often looking for a particular blue, one that is not too purple. These two are that perfect blue. An annual in the same shade is Salvia patens, which because we haven't had a killing frost yet, is also still blooming this October.

We've been talking about putting together a talk and slide show for 2009 called "Black and Blue," in which we will try to make a compilation of all the black flowering and blue flowering perennials and shrubs we can think of.

Here's a partial list of some of the blues we've already come up with: Baptisia australis, Brunnera macrophylla, Lithodora diffusa, Campanula poscharskyana, and Corydalis flexuosa.

Some blue bulbs: Muscari armeniacum and Muscari 'Blue Spike' (Grape Hyacinth), Scilla siberica, Camassia cusickii, and Camassia quamash. We have all these bulb varieties in stock at the store now, so come on in and get some, so you can be blue next spring.

Fall Fruiting Trees: Attracting Birds

The crab apple (pictured foreground top and bottom left) and the dogwood (background top) are putting on their second show of the year. We love plants that do double (or triple) duty. Mostly known for their spring flowers, crab apples and dogwoods don't get enough credit or attention for their fall contribution. Their bright red fruit offer an additional texture to the autumn foliage. Not only ornamental, both are the favorites of birds, especially the Eastern Bluebird, the Northern Cardinal, and the Yellow Warbler.

At a time when many bird feeders in the Hudson Valley may be attracting bears, you can still draw birds to your back yard with these fall fruiting trees.

Fall Bloomers: The Virtuous Echinacea

We at Victoria Gardens love all varieties of Echinacea. This one pictured to the left is named 'Virgin' (we can only guess because of it's lovely white pedals). Our specimens look fresh and fantastic. Other new varieties that we like are are 'Green Envy' and 'Green Jewel' (the latter being a little more cream colored with just a hint of green). 'Kim's Knee High' is another one of our favorites. It is a stout and sturdy Echinacea that only gets about 15" to 18" high.

There were a couple hybrids that disappointed us two seasons ago, 'Art's Pride' and "Meadow Bright', which promised to be red and orange, but they were scraggly and they lost their color. They were really miserable performers.

However, there are some new varieties, which are proving to live up to their promises. 'Sunrise', 'Sundown', 'Sunset', and 'Summer Skies' are some stellar Echinacea that we have field tested, and we highly recommend.

Fall Color

Many people (mistakenly) believe that once summer is over, their garden is over as well. At Victoria Gardens, we believe that fall in the garden has the potential to knock your socks off with an amazing assortment of autumn blooming perennials, fall-fruiting trees and shrubs, and a rainbow of fall foliage. Ornamental grasses are pluming now, offering great texture and height in perennial beds where you may have cut back many of your summer bloomers.

Rudbeckia fugida, pictured here in the foreground, is a native to us in the northeast, and a graceful and reliable addition to the fall garden. Pictured behind the rudbeckia is a Japanese Maple 'Tamukeyamia Threadleaf' which offers this stunning maroon color throughout the season. The threadleaf is a dwarf variety only reaching 8' tall and 10' wide, so it can easily be a focal point in a perenial bed. But take care in where you plant this ornamental tree, listed as zone 5b, we find that it likes protection from winter winds and prefers almost sandy, well-drained soil.

Forget Pet Rocks, We've got Living Stones!

Aren't these wild? Lithops are a type of ice plant from South Africa. Living stones flower in the fall during October and November, so ours are flowering right now!

Those things that look like toes are the leaves, and the flower pokes up in between the two halves. After flowering, the old leaves shrivel up and completely replaced by two new leaves.

We have a "How to Care for Lithos" pamphlet available at the shop, and the instructions are pretty simple. You mist them with water once every two weeks during the winter months and then in the spring you start misting once a week until it flowers in fall. This is a great gift for kids and grownups alike!

Victoria Gardens Hosts a Quilt and Garden Show for a Good Cause

Master gardener, Cheryl Alloway, helped organize this great event. The Friendly Neighbors Quilting Group brought over one hundred quilts and displayed them inside and outside in the nursery. Addmission is canned food and the donations benefit the Food pantries of Rosaendale and Marbletown.

Read this article in Ulster Publishing for more details.