So far this has been a wild spring in so many ways. We’ve had temperatures in the upper 80s, and we’ve had temperatures in the upper 20s all in a two-week period. These warm days with relatively low amounts of rain have allowed for a lot of progress in our yards. The big question so far has been whether to start adding plants that are tender to the cold. Those plants that were cut back early enough like roses, and most of our perennials, have a lot of tender growth on them. These little cold snaps will set them back a little bit, but I believe they will recover nicely.
We are starting to plant our bedding plants around the yard now so they will be looking great for the crowd we have coming for Easter and especially for the MRA tour of gardens on May 1. We want everything to look nice and flushed out for that date.
We have some big projects going on in the yard right now that we were going to get done eventually, but this tour prompted us to do it a little sooner than later. Right in the center of our yard, we extended one of our big beds out to make it even bigger and edged it with Corten steel that zigged and zagged like the existing patio and beds we had done previously. We filled that bed with plants that give year-round color with foliage and left some spots for planting bigger color for flowers. Once we got the eight-inch wide edging in we located our sprinkler heads and lighting wires and speaker wires and then began to fill the beds with some excellent soil.
This was our chance to get that soil right so the plants we chose to go in there would do well. As you’re looking at the bed, the first layer is lamb’s ear for their silver foliage that doesn’t go down in the wintertime. The next level up is a new and improved juniper called guardian juniper. They are blue just like a gray owl and get five feet wide and three feet tall. Behind those are a golden barberry that gets a little bit taller than that so those two should show up really well. Behind that row is a fire red barberry. It should really set the gold barberry sparkling. In parts of that bed, we also have tractor seat plants that are coming back now and some Chinese rice paper for a dark green glossy look.
We have one fountain Japanese maple with a boulder at the very top of the hill where the dry riverbed starts and runs all the way down to the pond. We left two of the corners for red yuccas, which are already starting to bloom. That has become the plant we use for those areas that nothing else just does well in the hot and dry areas. Down by the pond’s edge we made a line of gold sword yuccas just to make it bang even louder.
I brought in 12 truckloads of soil for this project and some of the others going around the yard. We believe the soil that the plants go into is everything and you only get one chance to get it right, so we spent some time and money on that.
On the other side of the yard, we built a spillway for our pond that just didn’t look finished. We brought in boulders and rocks and made the river that comes off the spillway look more natural. In between some of the rocks, we planted iris, sedge grass and canna lilies. It really is beginning to look natural with ornamental grass along the edges and a nice curve to take your eye down to the bamboo forest.
A lot of the soil went to an area down near the yurt that has just washed away since we cut a tree down there. I filled in some voids and made a peninsula that goes into the woods that lead to the bamboo forest and put four pallets of Zoysia sod on that. It has turned out really beautiful. We brought in eight different types of redbuds and spotted them around the yard. The redbud world has gone far with their golden leaves or burgundy, weeping growth habit. We even have a white redbud; I had never seen that before.
We had a makeshift walkway down to the bamboo forest just from our tramping down to the bottom to plant bog, friendly plants along the path. We made that into an official path using rock stone steps to make the walk down the curved hill even more beautiful. I covered that with limestone to make it feel a little more solid.
In our side yard we have been working on a courtyard for a few years. We planted Japanese yews there about seven years ago and they are now a solid wall that is eight feet tall that is just about closed in. Inside of that we planted limelight hydrangea trees that are 10 feet tall and six feet wide now. When they start blooming up against that dark green Japanese yew’s foliage it’s really a sight to see. Now we have extended that area into something really special. We had a square area inside the courtyard that we had added another square to with the Corten steel edging. We filled that edging in with pea gravel and put a giant pot in the center of it with a light. In that pot there is another of our new favorite plants called Yucca Rostrata.
It took us a while to get around to that project because we had electric wires hanging from a pole in our yard that swag over to that side of the house. It was pretty unsightly and we just couldn’t get inspired to work over there with that line hanging from the pole to the house. We had all the electrical lines removed from the air and put them underground and that really changed the view over there.
We don’t do a lot in our front yard because of the deer. Our entire backyard, five acres, is fenced in and deer proof so we do whatever we want back there. The front yard we didn’t want to see a fence around, so we just have a lot of pretty grass some huge live oak trees and some pots with interesting plants in them. When you have a lot of trees, there’s a lot of places where grass won’t grow.
Over the years these big rains have been washing my topsoil away, and I was finally able to bring in some fresh topsoil and plant some seeds to make that look better. I know my grass won’t last all summer when the trees start getting thirsty, but at least it can be nice for these two big events we have coming up. With the help of our landscape crew and Justin in charge we used ChopBloc to edge our walkways and beds where it was applicable. Using the ChopBloc really defines our edges and walkways and looks beautiful and totally new. We are so excited to show off some of these projects and hope that we might cause some inspiration for someone.
That is what we’ve been doing in our spare time when we’re not at the nursery. Back at the nursery, we have filled the bedding plant area up and have had lots of customers coming by to start planting on the early side. We have also taken all the plants and put them back in the greenhouses when that little cold snap came through last week. It is a pain in the you know what, but we are in Mississippi. Ben has brought in some of the most interesting plant material that I think we’ve ever had. We have yellow Japanese magnolias, along with the regular kind, all eight of those red buds that we used in our yard, pussy willows that are fully budded right now, weeping cherries are in bloom, and I’ve seen six or seven colors of canna lilies that are blooming.
This week a big truck from Southern Louisiana is coming in with some big trees and plant material that we’re very excited about. Ben has done a perfect job of stocking our nursery area with plants that should get some people pretty excited. He’s thinking outside the box and going away from the regular ho hum plants that we normally fill our place up with every year. We still have the bread-and-butter plants that we have to have, but he has added so much to our palett that it is mind-boggling. Andrew has his aquatic section set up and ready to go after propagating more aquatic plants this past winter in his greenhouse than we’ve ever had before. The aquatics area looks really great and makes you want to go home with a little water garden to prepare for the hot summer months that are next.
Andrew is also our plant manager and he and his crew have done a great job of doing the early spring dance, bringing in the plants that could take a little topsy-turvy weather. Our famous giant hanging baskets that John and Luke are growing back at the greenhouses are out for sale and our bougainvillea baskets should be coming in this week. This year we will have pink, purple and variegated pink leaf bloom bougainvillea. Bougainvillea are great plants for hanging baskets because they prefer to be on the thirsty side. Everybody loves a plant that doesn’t need too much attention. We have upped our game in the agave and succulent world.
We have three areas at our garden center where you can find different types of succulents. Some are in the atrium where we carry house plants, some are in a new area that we built in the parking lot area, and some are in the bedding plant area. We are crazy about these plants because they do so well here in our blazing hot summers. We are trying to stick with those that are winter hardy here, but some will win and some will lose. Inside the store Mimi’s crew has done an amazing job with terrariums and everything that goes along with growing terrariums and plants from cuttings. It’s a very cool look and fun gifts to give or a great hobby.
Mimi’s crew is also helping her with our new event space. We have had so many events that our heads are spinning. We’ve had seminars so far, some craft days and two baby showers and the most special one was Mimi’s mother’s birthday party when people came in from all over the place to celebrate with her. That event space has been something really special for the nursery and has allowed a lot of people that wouldn’t have normally come to visit our place. She rented out to anyone looking for a place to do their thing. That crew is also in charge of our pottery section, which as most people know is probably the biggest pottery selection in Mississippi. Mimi’s dream is about to come true this week when she gets to add plant material to the pottery section to help inspire people as they make their choices.
We have a few more containers of pottery on the way, so it’s always good to come back and look because we probably will have more and different pots throughout the spring. Mimi plans to create walkways through the pottery area with different vignettes set up along the way to help people envision ideas that could be in their yard. I think it’s going to be beautiful, most things that she dreams of in her head turn out that way. This week I’m going to have to get serious about the long bed in front of the nursery that has become famous for its loud color.
I’m still living off the fumes of the pansies and snapdragons I planted there this past fall. I don’t know exactly which direction I’m going to go with that but it will probably include some giant pink petunias. My seeding project has been chugging on successfully so far. It always surprises me how fast these seeds germinate, and they immediately need to come out of my dark seed chamber and go straight to a greenhouse where I finish them off and plant them into four-inch pots.
I have five different kinds of amaranth, all the normal herbs plus some odd ones. I’m growing our tomatoes and peppers, and I have nasturtiums and sweet peas that are ready to come up front. I have 12 different kinds of zinnias that are ready to be bumped up to the next size and I’m growing caladiums this year in a heat chamber that are about to start unrolling this week. John and Luke have an extremely nice crop of his famous giant geraniums that are already up front and selling, and the greenhouses are filling up pretty quickly, which will work out perfectly because we are rolling the bedding plants out every day.
Luke stocks on a daily basis so it always looks fresh when people come to shop. He goes down to the bedding plant area, does an inventory and makes a list and then comes with racks upon racks of fresh plants straight from the greenhouses. It’s hard work, but he takes it seriously and does a fantastic job. I hope you’re having a great early spring and that you will come by to see all the activity going on at our place. We have a color pot department so that once you pick your pot out, you could have it delivered to your house and planted with the appropriate material.
We have a landscape company that can do anything in your yard that you need done, including irrigation and lighting. I love to do most of the stuff myself with Mimi in our spare time but sometimes it just takes getting a little help to get the big stuff done and then you can come in and do the fun stuff afterwards. Hopefully these intermittent rains are keeping the pollen down as it looks like the pine trees and the oak trees have clashed on their pollen drop and made an extra heavy layer of yellow on everything. Hopefully this will end soon.
Enjoy your spring and get out a little bit and walk around and see what’s going on in nature and in people’s yards. The north side is looking good.
