These stone owls make a wise addition to any garden.
The standard leaf is a waxy green, though cultivars such as 'Royal Purple' and 'Velvet Cloak' have purple leaves. In the fall, leaves turn shades of red, purple, and orange.
More garden décor
On the section front today, we talk about the current popularity of garden gnomes. But it's a little family of owls that stole my heart.
Cornucopia has stone owls in many sizes that are perfect for the garden -- and they are adorable! They are made in Ohio, and they are priced from $6.50 to $24.
Hanging basket liners
Here's a great product for hanging baskets: AquaSav basket liners. Sandwiched between layers of natural coir fiber is a water-retaining liner made of 100 percent recycled post-consumer plastic. There are four sizes, from 12 inches in diameter to 18, and they run from $19.95 to $24.95 for a set of three. I found them at www.gardeners.com.
If you want a cheap alternative to the coco mat liners, go to your fabric store and buy burlap. It is inexpensive, conforms to any container, and trims easily with scissors.
Dandelions be gone!
I heard a hilarious but possibly effective tip for eradicating dandelions from your yard. Seems a fellow got tired of digging the errant sunny yellow weeds, and he didn't want to use chemicals to get rid of them. So he waited patiently until the little heads were ready to release their seeds, and he walked around the yard sucking them up with a hand-held vacuum. No seeds, no weeds.
He must not have had kids like mine -- they loved to blow those seed heads every spring, and they also loved to pick a bunch of "flowers" for Mama every summer. Weeds to some, flowers to others.
Reach Sara Busse at sara.bu...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1249.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- So many shrubs, so little space.
Readers often ask me to suggest the "perfect" shrub -- and that's such a hard question to answer.
First criterion: It needs to look good year-round. If you have space for lots of shrubs, this doesn't matter as much. You can have your winter-interest red twig dogwood, your late-winter witch hazel, your early-spring forsythia, your summer butterfly bush, your autumn beauty berry ... and so on.
But most people want it all in one, and that's a tall order to fill.
Here are a few that are pretty darned close to perfect:
My husband's favorite shrubs are of the evergreen variety -- he thinks if it's green all the time, it's perfect. In that light, I'll go with the Blue Princess and Blue Prince holly (Ilex x meserveae'Blue Princess' or 'Blue Prince'). These can get quite large, but are easily pruned. The shrub's leaves are glossy, dark green and moderately spiny. Blue Princess holly berries are bright red. They work in full sun to part shade, and will need an acidic soil, easily achieved with Holly-tone or other similar fertilizer. The 'Blue Prince' is the pollinator that ensures the berries on the Princess.Ilex verticillata'Red Sprite' is a dwarf form of red-fruited winterberry. It's a deciduous holly that won't require much space and has larger than normal red berries in the fall and winter. This plant needs a male holly as pollinator, such as 'Jim Dandy,' a short, deciduous male winterberry to tuck in behind 'Red Sprite' so he can do his job. A gardening friend told me that if there's a male holly within a half a mile of your female, it's works! I've never purchased a male holly for pollinating purposes as we have many native hollies in the woods around our home.Ahhhh, hydrangeas. One of my all-time favorites. The oakleaf hydrangea is the best because the large leaves are beautiful. With the 'Snowflake' cultivar, you get white flowers on large panicles, which change to pink as they age. The blooms are double, which means that as the new white petals come out of the middle of the flower, the older petals hold on and fade to pink. In the fall, the leaves turn red and the flowers hang on through the winter to set off the shrub's exfoliating bark.Knock Out roses are a gift to those of us who are overwhelmed by the thought of growing roses. Mine bloomed into December! They don't have to be pruned, they are disease- and insect-resistant, the new stems and leaves are purple, and they just bloom and bloom and bloom and bloom all spring, summer and fall.Purple smoke bushes (Cotinus coggygria) are tall, wide and often used as specimen plants in the landscape. It's highly drought-tolerant. This bush, like the hollies, is dioecious -- they have their male and female parts on separate flowers on separate plants. Both types must be planted for pollination to occur. However, with the smoke bush, you don't want to have a male pollinator around, because the purple-pink plumes are the result of hairs on the infertile flowers.The standard leaf is a waxy green, though cultivars such as 'Royal Purple' and 'Velvet Cloak' have purple leaves. In the fall, leaves turn shades of red, purple, and orange.
More garden décor
On the section front today, we talk about the current popularity of garden gnomes. But it's a little family of owls that stole my heart.
Cornucopia has stone owls in many sizes that are perfect for the garden -- and they are adorable! They are made in Ohio, and they are priced from $6.50 to $24.
Hanging basket liners
Here's a great product for hanging baskets: AquaSav basket liners. Sandwiched between layers of natural coir fiber is a water-retaining liner made of 100 percent recycled post-consumer plastic. There are four sizes, from 12 inches in diameter to 18, and they run from $19.95 to $24.95 for a set of three. I found them at www.gardeners.com.
If you want a cheap alternative to the coco mat liners, go to your fabric store and buy burlap. It is inexpensive, conforms to any container, and trims easily with scissors.
Dandelions be gone!
I heard a hilarious but possibly effective tip for eradicating dandelions from your yard. Seems a fellow got tired of digging the errant sunny yellow weeds, and he didn't want to use chemicals to get rid of them. So he waited patiently until the little heads were ready to release their seeds, and he walked around the yard sucking them up with a hand-held vacuum. No seeds, no weeds.
He must not have had kids like mine -- they loved to blow those seed heads every spring, and they also loved to pick a bunch of "flowers" for Mama every summer. Weeds to some, flowers to others.
Reach Sara Busse at sara.bu...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1249.
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