Featured Plants
See some of our favorite plants and new arrivals for 2011.
Hazels and Hellebores – the Flowers of Early Spring
 Winter can seem interminable to the New England gardener, with the possibility of snow from October to April. By March, we are desperate to see the inky brushstrokes of branches against the white sheet of snow become transformed into the verdant watercolor that is spring. We long for green. We long for flowers.
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Fall: The World’s a Stage
 Consider in the place of hardy mums plants which reliably return each year to offer colorful drama without the harsh stage light effects. One that I feature often is an Aster called ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ (Aster oblongifolius ‘Raydon’s Favorite’), with its cheerful bright blue daisies in September and October. Unlike many, perhaps more familiar asters, ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ remains dense and bushy without losing its foliage to disease. It likes full sun, and tolerates drought once established.
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Burning Bushes and Fall Garden Color
 Ah, September in New England, my favorite month. Cool, dewy nights melt into morning under the warming sun, its rays splashed against an azure sky. Along roadsides and in unmown meadows the brassy yellow of Goldenrod is untarnished, still gaudy yet not out of place among the clumps of restless grasses swaying in the breeze. And in the distance can be seen the early scarlets and oranges of fall, flaming heralds promising the natural, transcendent glory that is October in New England.
And it’s to October we look ahead in our gardens and landscapes, as Burning bushes (Euonymus alatus and varieties) begin to display their sole reason to grow them: brilliant carmine foliage. Two weeks of Technicolor, and fifty weeks of humdrum.
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Selecting and Caring for Clematis
 Clematis are lovely and useful plants for the garden. We offer 3 different types: the familiar twining vines, and the lesser-known shrubby,
and trailing forms.
• The vines are available as the popular large-flowered hybrids as well as small-flowered hybrids and species. They are typically planted
to grow up a lamppost or trellis, but are also attractive when allowed to clamber up a tree or shrub.
 • Shrubby clematis are commonly used
in the perennial garden, where they offer late-season color. Some have a rather lazy habit, and can be supported using neighboring plants
or stakes and twine.
• Trailing clematis are the least known, and are typically either tied to a support such as a mailbox or a lamppost,
or given the chance to trail freely through a garden.
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