It looks like we’ve made it through another Mississippi winter without any major weather related devastation. It looks to me like whatever combination of cold and rain we had this winter was great for the flowers on most of our spring bloomers. Azaleas and camellias have had an outstanding bloom season. Redbuds and forsythia really put on a great show, along with snowball viburnums and Japanese magnolias.
Now is a great time to find these plants at local garden centers, because once their blooms have faded and dropped, so does the interest in these awesome plants, and they can become difficult to find available for sale. Unfortunately, these plants’ blooms do not last very long, so we try to help gardeners understand to use them as accent plants rather than foundation plants in the landscape.
I have begun to notice that growers are trying out more plants that offer year round colorful foliage. As you begin to visit our areas’ great garden centers, you will notice more chartreuse, variegated and burgundy colored foliage. Nandinas have come a long way since the days of the old caney varieties. Southern Living patented a Lemon Lime nandina that offers yellow-green colored leaves as well as a burgundy nandina that grows two feet tall and five feet wide, called Flirt.
Lorapetalum has been around awhile, but there are now more sizes to choose from. Sunshine Ligustrum is a gold evergreen full sun shrub that will brighten your garden year round. The redbud world changed when Rising Sun redbud showed up. Rising Sun’s bright gold leaves show up after it’s finished blooming and hold on through fall. Mimi and I try these varieties out for a year or two before I begin singing their praises, and although we do have the traditional spring bloomers, our yard is mostly made up of paired contrasting colors, such as burgundy and chartreuse. Our yard looks like a botanical garden that is full of color year round.
It’s finally safe to plant your tender bedding plants for the season. Garden Works has eighteen greenhouses where we grow our plants on site, right behind Garden Works, where we get to try new varieties each season. Our grower experiments with mixing perennials, annuals and evergreens together in combination plantings that can be dropped into your pots at home, making container gardening even easier. Using a combination of annuals and perennials gives you color longer, as annuals tend to bloom big, bold color early, while perennials tend to bloom a bit later and continue blooming through the hotter months.
If you have not already improved the soil in your flower beds, this is the time to do that. Trees, shrubs and bedding plants will not do well in our Jackson area soil. By adding some good soil, mushroom compost or cow manure to your existing soil, your hard work will pay off. It is very important that the soil is able to dry out between waterings and with our clay soil, that won’t happen.
I like to nursery shop, because every garden center does it a little differently, and the garden centers in our area are among the best in the country. I do have to toot our Garden Works horn a little, though. We have finished building our chicken pen and now have some beautiful, fat hens and unique Saint pigeons that look like they’re wearing hooded cloaks. They are so fun to watch. We don’t sell chickens or chicken supplies. We just have them for entertainment and enjoyment. I initially built them for kids to enjoy when they lose interest in our Koi pond, but I have noticed that adults love watching the chickens as much as the kids do, reminiscing about their own past chicken experiences.
I grew up in Madison during the ’70s when this was considered way out in the country. We had a wonderful life with chickens, peacocks, pheasants and turkeys. We had horses, cows, motorcycles and freedom to roam…every kid’s dream. It’s been amazing to watch this area become what it is today. In those days my mother, Rita Martinson, and my aunt, Gloria Martinson, had an organic garden that covered at least an acre. They grew organic plants and produce that I’ve still never seen the likes of. In my younger years, we helped pick produce, jarred jams and jellies, snapped peas and green beans and shoveled more manure than I care to remember.
One year my mother loaded all four of us kids into the station wagon and headed to the circus. I thought we were going to see the circus like normal people, but I soon found out that we were going to collect all the manure from the circus animals. I swear, that year, all of our produce seemed bigger from the elephant manure…at least, we joke about it. Looking back on it, it should have been harder to trick me because we were regular manure scavengers at the zoo, the fairgrounds during Dixie National, and the area stockyards. The point is that those things which seemed like work at the time, have turned out to be some of my favorite and most vivid memories. Get the family involved with your gardening projects. They love it, and they will thank you one day for the great memories.
