Featured Plants

Here at The Mixed Border, our goal is to provide healthy, hardy plants that will flourish in your garden. Stop by the Nursery to ask specific questions about your garden conditions, and to check out what new and interesting varieties we have to offer!

Here are some of the incredible plants that will be available at The Mixed Border during the 2010 season.

Fall: The World’s a Stage

“Hardy” mums. I just don’t get them.

Rather, I don’t understand why people continue to plant them, when there are better choices for the fall garden (more about those in a moment.) Sure, they’re colorful: bright beacons of hope that perhaps the frost-free days of early autumn will last a bit longer. But these beacons are often as subtle as airport landing lights – unblinking yellow or white gobs that fairly scream, “Look at me!!!” when the brilliant harmonic tones of the maple, the birch and the sumac – the symphony of the season -- is reaching its colorful crescendo before falling to the ground in a whisper.

The calmer pinks, bronzes and oranges of mums are hardly better, as each plant is pinched and squeezed by the grower into a perfect pompom of flowers with no greenery to dilute the effect; an unnatural natural object in the landscape. And the term “hardy mum” is a bit of a misnomer, as these highly bred beauties are no match for a heavy frost which withers their blooms, or for our cold winters, which usually are fatal.

Consider in their place 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.

Read the full article here...

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.

Such ephemeral beauty doesn’t come without a price, however. To produce the color that inspired its common name, Burning bush requires sun, good soil and plenty of water. Lacking one or more of these, the plant will sulk and disappoint you with pale green leaves all summer, which become a lackluster pink before dropping to the ground. A greater cost is to the local environment, as it has been determined that Burning bush is an invasive species (commonly defined as a plant of exotic origin which has aggressively spread beyond cultivation and displaces native vegetation.) In short, Burning bush is a known thug, and has been prohibited from sale in New Hampshire and several other states.

So, what’s a gardener to do?

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.

Read the full article here...