See You at Saltscapes Expo!

Some days it sure feels like spring of late, other days...not so much. But this is the season of colour and fragrance, and plants seem to be mostly on schedule with other years. This photo of Rob with 'Ramapo' rhododendrons is from last year, and a little later in the spring, so don't panic--we're just trying to get you excited about this spring!

Things are hopping around the nursery as we get ready for the 7th annual Saltscapes Expo. Baldwin's Nursery has been attending since the second year, and we're happy to be at this uniquely Atlantic Canadian show again this year. We can't say for sure what we'll be bringing along for plants, but there could be a fragrant viburnum...

A Japanese maple or two...maybe some seedlings?

Perhaps a magnolia that's just ready to burst into flower...

Or one of the amazing tree peonies we're carrying...

Some of the hellebores, like 'Winter Jewel Apricot Shades'

Though we probably won't be bringing any along, we're carrying a variety of spring ephemerals this year, including the delicately lovely bloodroot (Sanguinaria).

Or this unusual dapple-leafed red trillium.

The Saltscapes Expo runs from Friday, April 29, 12 noon-9 pm; Saturday, 30 April, 9am-6 pm, and Sunday, 1 May, 10 am-5 pm. Please come and say hello to us, and have a look at some of the great plants we have for sale this year! We hope to see you this weekend. Now, back to working with the nursery.

Springing into the Season

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!

Spring arrives at Baldwin Nurseries

After the spectacular moon of last night, spring has been ushered in today with cool temperatures and winds but sparkling blue skies and brilliant sunshine. We're all feeling pretty happy that the snow has mostly disappeared and while we're a ways from planting yet, we just had to tell you about some of the new and new-to-us plants we're carrying this year at Baldwin's Nurseries.

The daphne that grows around here is budded up and will be blooming soon, and don't we love its fragrance. This year, we're also carrying the variegated-foliage 'Carol Mackie' daphne, hardy to zone 5 and beautiful whether in bloom or simply in leaf.

Winter-weary gardeners always welcome the sight of spring blossoms, including those of Chaenomeles, or flowering quince. This year along with the red and salmon-coloured varieties we've carried, we're offering the cheery 'Pink Lady' for those who are more fond of rosy colours.

Hamamelis or witch hazels bloom even earlier when they're in containers than when they're planted out, but it's about time for 'Arnold Promise' to be blooming in much of Nova Scotia. The hamamelis is very important for early-waking pollinators to visit for nutrients, and they're pretty important for those of us who want flowers in March, too.

There are many different types of flowering viburnums, and we at Baldwin Nurseries carry a great selection of native and introduced species. Some are spring-flowering and very fragrant; others are later blooming and cherished more for their prodigious amounts of sparkling white flowers, like 'Summer Snowflake'.

We've talked about hellebores before, and for many of you, the flowers are stirring and beginning to open. We are carrying a wide selection of hellebores, which are deer resistant and easy care perennials once they are situated where they like to grow. Look for the double or waterlily-type hellebores as well as new introductions in striking new colours,

...Such as 'Metallic Blue Lady', from Fraser's Thimble Farms in British Columbia. We're looking forward to seeing this and other unusual-coloured varieties bloom this spring.

We've carried 'Tricolor' beech (Fagus sylvatica) for several years, and while it's a pricy tree, it's perfect for those looking for a unique, marvelous specimen tree.

Cratageus or hawthorn is a terrific small tree, with a number of species native to Nova Scotia. Birds love the fruit of these thorny shrubs or trees. We are carrying 'Paul's Scarlet' this year, a popular hybrid with good disease resistance.

The dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is sometimes called the dinosaur tree because for years its existence was only known through fossil records. In the 1940s living specimens were found and propagated, and today this marvelous tree is widely available. The dawn redwood is similar to larches (Larix) in that it drops its needles in the autumn, and produces a new crop in spring. We have carried the standard species for several years, and this year have added the brilliant yellow-foliaged 'Gold Rush' (also known as 'Ogon' ) to our inventory.

While not for the colder parts of Nova Scotia, the redbud (Cercis canadensis) is a terrific tree for early spring flowers. It covers itself with pink or white flowers in May, and has beautiful heart-shaped foliage to boot.

These are just a few of the new plants you'll find at Baldwin's this spring. Others include a number of new Japanese maples; 'Satomi' flowering dogwood as well as the beautiful native Pagoda dogwood; a hardy apricot for the fruit tree fanciers, the bald cypress (Taxodium), and more. Stay tuned for more new arrivals very soon.

Images of Winter, whispers of Spring

Sorry we haven't posted for a while...although winter is a time of slowdown for many gardeners, for nursery operators, it can be a very busy time. We're planning for the spring and summer, choosing new plants, tending our overwintering plants, and enjoying the joys of winter.

With all the snow we have this winter, it's a great idea to look around your garden and see what you have for 'winter interest.' Do you have shrubs with interesting shapes that look like living sculptures when snow or ice cover them?

Or shrubs and trees with bright bark, like this red-osier dogwood, which looks its best when surrounded by a blanket of pristine snow?

Perhaps you have some terrific evergreens, as we've talked about before, that will turn brilliant shades during fall and winter. The purple-bronze microbiota or Russian cypress is one of our favourites.

But we also like Thuja 'Sunkist', here just getting started in turning its winter gold colour when it was nearly buried in snow.

Take heart, fellow plant fans and gardeners. Before we know it, we'll all be busy in our gardens again, and enjoying the glorious blooms of such perennials as this Japanese Tree Peony...

Or this exquisite magnolia. It's too bad we can't put fragrances somehow into a blog post, because scented magnolias are wonderful.

And before we even know it, we'll be enjoying the tasks of the garden, dividing hostas, daylilies and echinaceas, pruning shrubs, planting our vegetable gardens. We're over the worst of winter now, and counting down til spring.

Stay tuned...we'll have news about new plants here at Baldwin's Nurseries in the not too distant future!

For the love of hellebores

(photo of 'Golden Sunrise' )

A few years ago, the hellebore or Christmas/Lenten rose was not common in Nova Scotian gardens. They were something for the collector, because they were expensive and hard to find locally.

Photo of 'Onyx Odyssey' courtesy Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.But plant breeders have been busy developing gorgeous new hybrids over the past 5-6 years and the plants are much easier for nurseries to source. We brought a selection of hellebores in this past spring and were very pleased at the response, so we're happy to say we have a great many new varieties coming in for spring 2011.

photo of 'Jade Tiger' courtesy Terra Nova Nurseries.

While we can't reveal all the hellebore varieties that we'll have next spring, we're showing a a number of hybrid photos just to demonstrate the huge range of colours and forms available from breeders in North America and beyond.

Photo of 'Ivory Prince'

Hellebores are relatively easy to grow provided you give them what they want. They're quite shade tolerant, but aren't what you'd call shade lovers like ferns or some hostas. They certainly appreciate winter sunlight, so you may wish to plant them under deciduous shrubs where they'll get protection from hot summer sun, but have plenty of light from fall to spring.

Pristine white hellebore, species unknown.
Hellebores want a well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter. Once established, they can be quite drought-tolerant, but they appreciate a consistent amount of moisture without becoming water-logged. Too much winter wet will kill them more often than not.
Photo of 'Goldfinch'

In Nova Scotia, hellebore buds can begin to emerge in late winter or early spring, and can sometimes be destroyed by snowfalls, sudden cold snaps, or harsh winds. It's a good idea to put a protective mulch of evergreen boughs or other loose type mulch over your hellebore crowns once the ground has frozen hard, usually around Christmas. Beginning in mid-March, check carefully under the mulch to see if there are buds emerging, but don't remove the mulch until weather has stabilized in April. Even then, it's a good idea to leave the mulch nearby in case we're forecast to get a hard frost or a sudden snowstorm. It certainly can happen!

Photo of 'Ivory Prince'

Hellebores are technically evergreen, but the old foliage can get very ratty looking after one of our winters. Trim the old foliage from your plants in the spring as the flower buds and stems begin to emerge from the ground. This will allow the flowers to be displayed more easily as well as reduce the risk of disease such as black spot.

A green hellebore.
Because so many varieties of hellebores have drooping, downward-facing blooms, you may wish to plant them in a raised bed so that their intricate and lovely flowers are displayed. Did you know that the brightly coloured structures we think of as petals are actually modified leaves, called sepals? They hold their colour for many weeks after the inner structures of true flower parts have disappeared following fertilization.

Photo of 'Amber Gem' courtesy Terra Nova Nurseries.

Among the more popular and striking varieties of hellebores now available are the doubles, many of which can be compared to lotus flowers in appearance. The doubles are often more expensive than single-formed flowers, but all are beautiful and irresistible.

'Kingston Cardinal'

Usually hellebores aren't troubled by too many pests or diseases. Aphids can sometimes be a problem, and are thought to be the transmitters of diseases such as black spot and black death. Normally aphids can be controlled with a strong stream of water from a hose (you may have to do this every few days to disrupt populations) or with insecticidal soap. We haven't heard of any reports of disease around here, but will be writing about hellebores again in the spring, so we'll let you know if we find any more information.

'Apricot Winter Jewel Blush.' Photo courtesy Fraser's Thimble Farm.

Two more things to be aware of with hellebores: they are deer and rabbit resistant, which is always nice when you're dealing with the challenges of these animals in your garden.

'White Elegance.' Photo courtesy Fraser's Thimble Farm.

More importantly, all parts of the hellebore are highly toxic to humans, pets, and livestock, so it's best to handle them with gloves when dividing, transplanting or pruning them, and keep them out of spots where pets or children might get at them.

Stay tuned for future posts about growing hellebores, and for hints about the varieties we'll be carrying in the spring.