Plant of the Week: Beyond Midnight® Caryopteris

Hello and Happy Monday!

Spring Meadow Nursery admin building and conference center

This week is a busy one at Spring Meadow Nursery. We are getting ready to have our first guests at the brand new conference center! These are a group of some of our most active customers, and we'll be making presentations and giving tours all day Tuesday, into Wednesday.

So to save a little time, but still get my weekly post out, I'm going to repost Jane's Plant of the Week, which happens to be a variety I wrote about last week in my pollinator post, Caryopteris! I wrote about Sunshine Blue® II and Lil' Miss Sunshine®, and this post is about Beyond Midnight®, but they are all spectacular. 

Enjoy! - Natalie

Light Beyond Midnight

Caryopteris is a very rewarding plant in many ways. It's easy to grow and once established in a landscape is pretty trouble free. Bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds love it, and deer don't. Plus, it has that most unusual of horticultural colors, blue.

Beyond Midnight® is an outstanding selection with very dark, glossy foliage and a compact habit. Older varieties could look kind of ratty after a while, but this plant stays nice and full. The flowers are spectacular, too. They are a rich blue that cools down the steamy late summer garden.

Like all Caryopteris, Beyond Midnight® requires full sun and well-drained soil. It will grow to about 30" tall and wide and is hardy to USDA Zone 5. 

Plant of the Week is written by Jane Beggs-Joles. 

Note from Natalie: Though Caryopteris, a.k.a. bluebeard, is technically a shrub, it will experience dieback and can be treated as a perennial in colder zones...but don't cut it back in the fall. If you wait to cut back this plant when you see new growth in early spring you'll get a more vigorous plant with more late-summer flowers.

Plants of the Week: 5 Fabulous Pollinators

Hello and happy Monday!

In honor of National Pollinator Week, I created a birdbath in my perennial/shrub garden, because pollinators need water too! I just used a plant stand I had in my shed, and topped it off with a large, ceramic platter we had stored away in our basement. My husband added the rock...I like it!

One thing to keep in mind, especially in our neck of the woods, water sources like the one I created should be emptied and refilled every few days so they don't become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Since it's National Pollinator Week, I thought I'd skip in the single plant of the week post in favor of writing about five great, no-fuss shrubs that the pollinators love. I hope you enjoy it!

It's National Pollinator Week! Of course, if you're a gardener, choosing plants that attract pollinators is something we just do naturally - but if you're looking to add some easy-to-grow pollinator friendly shrubs to your mix, there are many varieties that will brighten your landscape and attract butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and more. Here are five of my favorites:

Lil' Miss Sunshine®  Caryopteris

I just love blue in gardens, and this blue flower, mixed with bright chartreuse foliage, is hands down one of my favorites. Sunshine Blue® II, and the more compact Lil’ Miss Sunshine® Caryopteris has bright yellow foliage all summer with abundant blue flowers late summer. They are drought tolerant and deer resistant, making them super easy to grow. Sunshine Blue® II will get to be about 3' tall and wide and Lil’ Miss Sunshine® will reach heights/widths of  2.5 - 3'. Both should be planted in full sun, and are hardy in USDA zones 5 - 9. 

Fun fact, Caryopteris, AKA bluebeard, is also known as blue mist spirea, despite the fact that it is not remotely related to Spiraea.

Sugar Tip® Gold Hibiscus

Hibiscus is another plant that pollinators love. And it's not hard to see why, the big brightly-colored double blooms of the Sugar Tip® series of Hibiscus, set off with bold variegated foliage is indeed, attractive! But what I really love about the Sugar Tip® series of Hibiscus (other than the fact that it's gorgeous) is that they are seedless, so they're non-invasive.  

Sugar Tip®/Sugar Tip® Gold are hardy in USDA Zones 5 - 9 and should be planted in full sun. They will reach heights/width of 4 - 5'.

Scentlandia® Itea

Sweetspire is beloved for so many reasons: it’s native, shade tolerant, deer resistant, has handsome foliage, amazing fall color, very showy flowers, and of course, delicious fragrance for pollinators and humans alike!

Scentlandia® sweetspire will be available at garden centers in 2019 and is an improved version of the popular Little Henry® Itea. This cultivar is hardy down to USDA zone 5 and boasts brighter, more consistent fall color, along with a compact, refined habit - reaching heights/widths of 2-3'.

Double Play® Painted Lady® Spiraea

Long used as an attractive, durable landscape plant Spiraea is also a terrific pollinator-attractant. The Double Play® series of spirea are super-showy from first-bud to fall. With improved foliage and blooms, they are packed with summer flowers in colors ranging from pink to red, and boast a wide range of foliage colors. Making them even more low-maintenance, Proven Winners® ColorChoice® will release a new variety in 2019 called Double Play® Doozie® with gorgeous dark-red sterile flowers, meaning it reblooms all summer. 

I'm a sucker for variegated foliage, so the pictured variety is Double Play® Painted Lady® Spiraea. She has bright yellow and green foliage and hot pink flowers, and like the entire series can be planted in full-to-part sun. Reaching mature heights/widths 2'-3', you can expect these babies to be covered in bees and even the occasional hummingbird, all summer long.

Lo & Behold® 'Blue Chip Jr.'

Finally, you can't talk about pollinators without talking about Buddleia. I love the Lo & Behold® series of butterfly bush from Proven Winners® ColorChoice® because the whole series is non-invasive. We really don't have trouble with Buddleia reseeding here in Michigan, but for states like Oregon and Washington State, this cultivar is a game changer. And I hate to think that these amazing, pollinator-friendly plants aren't available for everyone to enjoy!

Pictured here, Lo & Behold® 'Blue Chip Jr.' butterfly bush has a neat, compact habit with attractive silver-green foliage. But what's really great about it is that it blooms weeks earlier than other Buddleia with flowers that are larger, bluer and more upright - attracting bees, butterflies and hummingbirds aplenty! Hardy in zones 5-9, Buddleia like to be planted in full sun - Lo & Behold® 'Blue Chip Jr.' will reach heights/widths of 18-30" and other plants in the series will get to be about 2.5-3' tall.

And that's it! Five fabulous pollinators for National Pollinator Week! 

Until next week, never stop growing - Natalie 

Plant of the Week: Oso Easy® Urban Legend® Rosa

We're very excited share the news that
Oso Easy® Urban Legend® rose has been awarded an American Rose Society Award of Excellence for 2019!

In 1973 the American Rose Society Board of Directors established the Award of Excellence (AOE) to recognize new miniature and miniflora rose varieties of superior quality and marked distinction. Since the inception of the award, there have been 130 AOE winners.

The competition accepts submissions of miniature and miniflora roses which have been in commerce for less than one year. Those chosen to compete are evaluated for two to three years in eight AOE public test gardens and two private gardens, which are spaced geographically across the United States. Roses may be entered in a “no spray” division, a “preventive spray” division, or both.

Each public garden has an AOE supervisor and five evaluators who score the entries on eleven criteria four times during each growing season. At the end of the trial period, Awards of Excellence are given to deserving entries, with a maximum of five per year.

The official public announcement of the Award of Excellence winners was made at the ARS National Miniature Rose Show and Conference in May, where Oso Easy® Urban Legend®, a cherry red miniature, was declared the top rose in the “no spray” division.

This is a really showy rose, and quite thorny, too. That's how it got its name: planting something this prickly near windows might help to keep burglars from breaking into your house. It's also good for keeping people out of your yard. You know, Father's Day is coming up. If your dad is one of those guys yelling at kids to keep off his lawn, maybe some of these pretty guard dogs would be appreciated.

Portions of this post are taken from the Plant of the Week email, written by Jane Beggs-Joles

Plant of the Week: 'Aphrodite' Calycanthus

Hello and happy Monday!

'Pink Mink' Clematis bloom

I have a huge forsythia that grows in my front yard, kind of snugged in between my house and the neighbor's house to the west and it just finished flowering. This thing is ginormous. Easily 8-10' tall and almost as wide. So this weekend I thought it was time to cut back that sucker. I thought "I'll just prune it enough to plant something underneath it." It takes up a nice spot that gets part-sun, and I had a new cotinus and a Pink Mink clematis to find spots for, plus there's a nice pergola right there for the clematis to crawl up on to, so I started pruning... and, well, I went a little crazy.

There was so much that was dead underneath the forsythia for lack of light, it all had to go. So I trimmed and trimmed until I discovered there's not just one, but two forsythia plants under there - however, the second one is growing out of the retaining wall from my neighbor's yard! Yikes. 

Needless to say, this spot is a work in progress - but the smokebush and clematis are in the ground!

So, that was my gardening adventure for the weekend. If I can get it looking good enough, I'll post a picture next week. But until then, on to Jane's plant of the week, which also happens to be my co-worker Shannon Downey's favorite Proven Winners® ColorChoice® plant! 

Until next week, never stop growing... - Natalie

Love is in the Air

June is a busy time for weddings. It's not the busiest month - that would be October. And it's not the time to be married if one or both of the partners is involved in the green industry. Then you get married in December and hope that no one judges a bride in snow boots.

At any rate, this week we're looking at 'Aphrodite' Calycanthus. It's a sweetly romantic name for a sweetly fragrant plant. 'Aphrodite' Calycanthus combines the red flowers of 'Hartlage Wine' with the fragrance you would expect of a sweetshrub. The flowers have an apple-like scent that is pleasant but not overpowering.

'Aphrodite' Calycanthus is a nice addition to cottage gardens or mixed borders. The flowers appear throughout the summer; rather than sprinting with a lot of blooms all at once, it gives us a steady marathon of flowers.

Hardy to USDA Zone 5b, 'Aphrodite' will grow 5-8' tall and wide, in full sun or partial shade. Don't try to cram it into a smaller space; it's at its best in a more relaxed setting. Check out this video about the plant, which I think shows it off better than a still image ever could.

If you like the scent of 'Aphrodite' sweetshrub, check out Sugartina® 'Crystalina' summersweet or Scentlandia® sweetspire. The best thing about all of these sweets - is they are calorie free!

Plant of the Week is written by Jane Beggs-Joles