Although this hasn't been the most weather-pleasant of springs so far, we feel pretty safe in saying that all signs point to it being time to kick off the garden season. We are open for business daily, and the staff are busily tending to our thousands of container grown perennials, trees and shrubs. The propagation house is filled with flats of seedlings and cuttings, and there's all kinds of bloom in the yard, like this Acadian daphne (Daphne mezereum).
No, your eyes do not deceive you. These are black pussywillows, (
Salix gracilistyla var
melanostachys) showing off their striking catkins. The twigs are equally attractive, displaying red and black colour over winter and flushing green as spring goes on. Best kept out of the worst of our winter winds, you should keep it well pruned to keep it robust and producing large, healthy catkins.
We love seeing the rich variety of colours in the young evergreens in the nursery. Most of these plants are still displaying some of their winter colour, but are equally striking and unique in their summer foliage hues. From Chamaecyparis to Thuja, from Picea to Juniperus, from Microbiota to Pinus, we have conifers in all shapes, sizes, colours and textures.
'Burning Hearts' bleeding heart (Dicentra) was very popular last year, and we're pleased to have it again this year. It's a beautiful plant in any stage, but especially striking as the new growth appears and unfolds.
The variegated periwinkle (Vinca major 'Variegata') is a good choice for a shady spot where you want a ground cover. It's not as vigourous as the all-green form, and the periwinkle-blue flowers are larger and more numerous.
One of our favourite creeping sedums for containers or rockeries is 'Angelina'. Its winter colour is spectacular and hard to describe, but as these shades fade, the gold and green is still very eyecatching. This sedum grows quickly but is not difficult to control.
The native wintergreen, Gaultheria, makes a fine evergreen groundcover if you have acid soil. The plants produce an edible, fleshy red berry that tastes more strongly of wintergreen than do the leaves, and which often last through the winter and into spring. The foliage changes colour through the fall and winter.
We are really excited about the selection of hellebores we have this year. These handsome plants are like potato chips--you can't possibly have just one. Our biggest dilemma was deciding which ones to order, as there are so many fascinating new colours and forms. This is 'Winter Jewel Double Painted', a fantastically ruffled and speckled variety.
This delicate hued lovely is 'Winter Jewel Apricot Blush'. There is some variation in the flower colours but that's the appeal of hellebores.
For those who fancy green flowers, we have H. argutifolius 'Silver Lace'. This one is best suited for milder parts of the province, and should be protected with a good mulch around the crown in late autumn. But it's definitely worth pampering a little, we think.
These are just a few of the spring jewels you'll see at the nursery. Come and visit us, and check our our blog for more posts as spring continues. We'll have a booth at
Saltscapes Expo again this year, and our free tree seedling giveaway will happen for the month of May, so keep checking back!
