October Sale: 30% OFF Everything in the Nursery: Watch Your Investment Grow!

It's not too late to plant! Cool nights and the rain we got this afternoon, make it the perfect time to plant. Plus, with 30% off trees, shrubs, and perennials, adding to your garden now will earn big returns on your investment when they bloom next summer(gains measured in happiness and joy of course).

Take for instance this beautiful Hydrangea 'Limelight' is 4' tall now (easy to carry and plant), but will grow to be 8' to 10' tall and wide. Talk about watching your investment grow!

Fall Color: DYCs (Damn Yellow Composites)

"Damn Yellow Composites."

In wildflower identification, the Asteracceae family is so large (1100 genera and 20,000 species), that specific identification in the field can be so difficult as to not be worth it. You can figure out it's an Asteraceae easily enough: most members are composite (they have both ray and disc flowers). You can usually identify the color, yellow, and the family, and that's it. (Unless you're lucky enough to have figured out you've got a sunflower) - Sometimes attributed to Lady Bird Johnson.

And even though gardeners hate trying to identify them, we love the way they offer fall flowers even after last night's heavy frost. This particular variety (we are lucky enough our grower knows the variety) is Helianthus 'Low Down' which has a low bushy growth habit (15" to 18" high) and an abundance of blooms.

Pictured behind the Helianthus is another fall favorite Fothergilla (we'll talk more about this one later) and a variegated holly called 'Honey Maid.'

Fall Color: Pyracantha Orange Glow

Pyracantha (Firethorn) is a fantastic drought resistant evergreen shrub. It flowers in the spring, covering the plant with clusters of white flowers, but as you can see, the real display starts in September. The bright orange berries can persist into winter, depending on how many birds stop by for a nibble.

Firethorn is in fact covered with sharp thorns, so be careful planting or transplanting a large specimen. Pyracantha 'Orange Glow' can reach 10' tall and 12' wide, although there are other varieties that are more compact (and also varieties with red fruit).

A favorite use of pyracantha is as an espalier, and up against a wall can be trained into many different shapes. Firethorn is a fast grower, and can also be used on slopes to help with erosion. It can be pushed in to the shade, but will flower and fruit best in full sun.

Come Get Your Scary Plants!

With Halloween just around the corner, we'll help you decorate inside and out with our Halloween-themed decorations and some spooky plants: the dark, almost black, Alocasia (of the elephant ear family) and the tropical cork-screw Equisetum (of the horsetail family). Both are house plants, and both could easily go from dressing up your Halloween display to adding a modern-Zen touch to your guest room or office.

Another great double-duty houseplant is the playful pincushion (Nertera granadensi), which can decorate your Halloween tabletop, and then don your Thanksgiving table too. These little plants will keep their berry best in bright light and cool temperatures. At the start of summer, they produce small white flowers, followed by long-lasting orange berries.

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.