What's Hot at the Nursery

Summer has certainly found us this July, as the temperatures were sweltering for a couple of weeks! The plants in the nursery and in our display beds have been thriving, however, and we'll show off a few of the popular choices in this post.

We keep a vase of cut echinacea flowers on hand every day, to showcase the unusual, wonderful colours that we have available, including some of the 'Big Sky' series (Sunrise, Sunset, Harvest Moon) and doubles Hot Papaya, Marmalade, and Coconut Lime.

For those who love hummingbirds--and who doesn't?--we have the irresistable beebalm in several different shades. We especially like 'Raspberry Wine', which is well named.

Hands down, our favourite echinacea other than the native is 'Hot Papaya'. Photos don't do it absolute justice, as the flowers go through so many colour changes as they mature. Truly a gem among all the new varieties that have emerged in recent years.

Want to cool things down a little in your plantings? How about Russian sage, with its blue-lavender flowers and deer-resistant foliage. This is a plant that likes good drainage over winter, and is drought resistant once established.

We have many different perennial grasses, some for the front of the border, others better suited for back of beds. Grasses are excellent choices for any garden, being easy care and offering fall and winter interest, too.

We carry a few different types of succulents, including sempervivums, also known as houseleeks and hen-and-chicks.

Our roses are grown on their own roots, and are all hardy for our tricky Nova Scotian climate. We are carrying some newer choices this year, including 'Rambling Red', and 'Emily Carr', from the Agriculture Canada Artists series.

In between tending the plants in our nursery, we are establishing more display gardens so that you can visualize what a particular new plant will look like in your garden. It's well worth walking around the nursery, as these beds are located here-and-there...

Pause by the fish pond to admire the waterlilies, and count fish and frogs--there's usually at least one frog basking on those huge leaves.

If you're looking for a dramatic plant, look no further than the Yucca, with its spiky foliage and tall stems of white flowers. Another heat and drought tolerant plant, it's sure to get noticed in your garden.

This is looking to be a fantastic year for hydrangeas, and ours are blooming in their containers at the nursery. Because of our soil mixture, even the blue-flowered ones are pink, but they'll come back around quickly in your garden. This is 'Blue Billows' in a pot...

And here it is, happy in a garden situation. The lacecaps are more reliably hardy for most Nova Scotians as compared to the mopheads, and they're gracefully beautiful.
We hope to see you soon, as high summer continues to shimmer on our gardens!

Mining for gold...foliage!

One of the things we like to remind clients about when they visit is to look at plants with colourful foliage. Of course, green is a colour, and we love green, but we are also fond of other foliage tints in shrubs, trees, and perennials. This time, we're looking at the beauty of gold foliage.

Of course, for the vegetable or indoor plant grower, yellow foliage has always signified something amiss with a plant. But ornamental plant breeders have been working on variegated and all-gold foliage for many years, and so those of us who see gold don't think sickly--we think rich in colour and contrast. Gold or chartreuse foliage really lights up a shady site, and works especially brilliantly when contrasted with a dark foliage, lie with the rows of barberries in the top photo.

We especially are impressed by the huge variety of gold chamaecyparis, or falsecypress, that breeders come out with. Perhaps one of the most common is the golden threadleaf (Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Filifera Aurea'. But one of our favourites, though it requires a little winter protection, is  C. Tetragona Aurea, the golden fernleaf cypress. It's hard to do this shrub justice in a photo, but it's a dandy.

We also really like the sculpted look of C. 'Crippsii' (Cripps Golden Hinoki cypress).  Another lacy cypress with an open look, this plant will eventually reach 25 feet if it's happy. Give it a little protection from harsh winter winds, and it should light up your winterscape as well as delight you all summer.

'Cream Ball' false cypress is one of the dwarf varieties, and needs a good place to showcase its dainty beauty. It can take a decade to reach a foot in height and width, and thrives in full sun and well drained but compost-rich soil. We know of some alpine fanciers who put their dwarf conifers in amongst their alpines to great effect.

The spireas are sometimes looked down as being common plants, but we are very fond of those with colourful foliage. This is 'Gold Mound', a popular choice for mass plantings such as hedges.

And this is 'Gold Flame'. With these brilliant leaf colours, one doesn't even really need a plant to flower!

The golden privet is an interesting shrub, partially evergreen: we find that ours hold their leaves pretty much all winter, developing a purplish tint to the leaf edges. White flowers will sometimes develop into blue-black berries. There is also a gold-and-green leafed variety, but we haven't grown it here.

Taxus, the yew, is a curious plant, which some love and others hate. It should be noted that while the fleshy part of a yew berry is edible, the seeds, branches and needles are not, and are especially toxic to horses and their relatives. We like the variegated and golden yews, perfect for a shady site such as a foundation planting where the house will throw shadows much of the time.

One of the best year-round shrubs for all season interest is the ninebark, Physocarpus. The shrub has arching branches that are covered in clusters of white blossoms in mid-late June. Pollinators love ninebarks, while birds will eat the berries--which aren't palatable for humans. In winter, the bark peels in strips of cinnamon coloured texture. What's not to love about a four-season plant that is also highly adaptable to most growing conditions?

Although thujas, also called cedars, can be a challege because the deer think they're delectable, we do carry a few cultivars. Our favourite would have to be 'Sunkist' (here showing its autumn colour) because songbirds find this plant a great choice for nesting or seeking food (the seed-filled cones). Summer colour is more yellow than this, and very attractive indeed.

Of course, not only shrubs and trees can boast golden foliage. One of our favourite grasses, Japanese Forest Grass, sporting its 'All Gold' form.

We kept a small specimen of the Gold Rush dawn redwood (Metasequioia) to plant in our display garden. This is one of the more choice trees or shrubs we carry; not only is the golden foliage delightful, the needles will turn colour and drop off in autumn, just like the Tamarack or larch (Larix species).

That's all for this time, but we hope we've tempted your appetite to go searching for gold for your garden. The friendly staff at Baldwin's can show you many other options for brightening your garden with golden foliage.

Looking for lateseason colour? We have answers.

Some call it fourseason gardening. Some call it fallscaping. We call it fun.

Now that the heat of August has been washed away by some much-appreciated rain, it's a perfect time to be working in our gardens. We don't know about you, but we're still planting things, dividing perennials, moving shrubs...and enjoying the late season blooms like these wellnamed silvergrasses (Miscanthus).

We talked a lot about grasses in our last post, but now is really the time when they are shining stars. Whether you like the tall, elegant varieties with their showy flowers like the miscanthus, or the more subtle, low-growing clumpers like Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa), there truly is a grass or ten for every garden.

Do you deadhead your coneflowers? If you do, you probably are seeing plenty of blooms in many of your varieties too. Check our display beds when you visit us: they are't perfect, but there's still lots of coneflowers showing their colour.

One of the most beloved of lateseason performers is the tall, or border sedum. There are many varieties, some with different colours of foliage, and many with different colours of flowers. The alltime favourite for many gardeners, of course, is 'Autumn Joy.'

Want to try something a little different in your fall-colour garden? How about Callicarpa, also known as 'beautyberry'. You can see why it's called beautyberry; after flowering a few weeks ago, our shrubs are now festooned with incredible purple berries,

We believe that plants with great foliage colour and texture are as important as flowering plants. This 'Plum Pudding' heuchera doesn't need to have blooms on it to look fabulous all season long.

How about these dwarf golden conifers? They don't 'flower' the way a lilac or a sunflower does, of course, but with gorgeous foliage like this, these dwarf chamaecyparis are allstars all year long.

Once the miscanthus begin to bloom, they genuinely sell themselves. Their graceful heads of silver, purple, red or rose-bronze flowers shimmer in the light.

Deadheading lavender will often prompt a nice later flush of flowers, and of course the grey-green, needle-like foliage is always handsome.

We love hydrangeas, especially the Paniculata grandiflora (PG) types with their longlasting panicles of cream to rose flowers. This one shows up nicely in front of a purple barberry.

We're open Monday-Saturday at this time of year, and are often up on the hill working with the plants. Just beep your horn, and someone will be down to help you as soon as possible. We look forward to helping you with your fallscaping ideas.

Get High on Grasses

It's been really gratifying to see such a growing interest in perennial ornamental grasses in the past few years. If you haven't gotten into them yet, let's try to prove their worth to you!

To begin with, if you purchase the right kinds--those that spread by clumps, rather than runners--you won't have the nightmares of dealing with variegated ribbon grass/gardeners garters. Most grasses, such as blue fescue, Calamagrostis, the miscanthuses, Molinia, the panicums, and the Japanese forest grasses (Hakenechloa, above) are polite clump-forming perennials that stay where you plant them.

Secondly, there's a dizzying array of varieties, flower and foliage colour available today. As with other types of garden and landscaping plants, plant breeders are rolling out new varieties on a regular basis. This is Miscanthus 'Strictus', or porcupine grass, but there are now varieties with even more gold in their foliage.

Grasses are almost magical in the way they catch the light on their flower heads or the bristly spikes, called awns, that protrude from some flowers. This is one of the few hardy pennisetums, or fountain grasses, for our area, 'Hamlyn'.

Grasses aren't just green, either. They can come in a variety of colours, from gold or variegated with cream or yellow and green, to red tipped, to blues like Festuca 'Elijah Blue'.

Some grass heads are more subtle, and need to be examined and admired up closely, as with this switchgrass, Panicum 'Shenandoah'.

Here's a look at some of the varieties we have at Baldwin Nurseries, including Calamagrostis, Hakenechloa, Spartina, Miscanthus, and Panicum. Grasses are easy to care for, with some preferring moist soil, others being quite drought-tolerant. They tend to be untroubled by too much in the way of pests or diseases, too.


Many grasses don't begin flowering until later in the summer, and then hold their seedheads well into winter, providing winter interest for us, and a source of food for many types of birds.

Purple Flame grass, Miscanthus 'Purpurascens' has great autumn colour in its foliage as well as in its flower heads.

Miscanthus 'Huron Sunrise' was bred in Ontario by Martin Quinn, author of the very useful book 'Grass Scapes.' The book is a very useful handbook for anyone who wants to get into using ornamental grasses in their garden landscapes and who isn't sure where to begin.

Come on in to Baldwin Nurseries and see why we think you ought to get high on ornamental grasses too! We're closed on Sundays but open the rest of the week to serve your gardening and landscaping needs.