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Enter your keywords:Wild Flowers's Articles Archives
Calliopsis
Plant Type: Annual
Uses: Wildflower/Meadow, Cutting Bed, Edging, Border
Propagation: Seeds
Habit: Upright, Bushy
Light: Full Sun
Flower Color: Yellow, Red
Blooms: Summer, Autumn
Width: .75 – 1 ft.; Height: 1 – 2 ft.
Fertility: Moderately Rich, Average, Poor
Soil: Neutral, Well-drained
Home Landscaping Practices to Protect Water Quality
By The Virginia Cooperative Extension
In Virginia, we rely on reservoir systems, wells, and other sources for our freshwater. In recent years, our previously plentiful clean water supplies have been threatened not only by overuse, but also by contamination. Pollutants are carried down with water soaking through the soil to the water table. Runoff (water that does not soak into the ground) flows over the surface, often taking soil and polluting chemicals with it into lakes and streams.
VIRGINIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY
Look for a new annual black eyed Susan in nurseries and garden centers. Rudbeckia hirta `Indian Summer’, an All-American Selection, has single and semi-double 6-9 inch golden flowers with dark centers. Plants are three to four feet tall and will bloom all summer.
An introduction from Mt. Cuba Center in Grenville, Delaware, is Aster laevis `Bluebird.’ Director Richard Lightly found the original plant in Connecticut several years ago. It grows 4 to 5 feet tall with several arching stems producing numerous 1-inch blue-violet flowers in September and October.
A bright yellow butterfly weed, Asclepia tuberosa `Hello Yellow,’ grows 24 to 30 inches tall and blooms in mid-summer. It is available from Wayside Gardens.
WILDFLOWER GARDEN OR WEED PATCH?
Summer is definitely over and all the gardens are pretty well put to bed, the leaves are raked and even the grass is taking a break. There’s a nice sense of closure you get at the end of another gardening season. Too bad it doesn’t last very long. I’ve yet to met a gardener who isn’t planning next year’s space while raking up this year’s debris.
For several years now I have wanted a wildflower garden. I suppose this is no accident, since it’s been several years now that seed companies have been promoting their instant wildflower gardens in a can, sack or roll. My efforts to date have not met with much success. I’m not naive enough to think I could simply scatter some seeds and I would have a self-sowing meadow of bluebells and lacecaps, but I am dismayed to hear that starting a wildflower garden is often more work than putting in a perennial border and it is not necessarily self-perpetuating. If these plants are truly wild, (weeds, to most highway maintenance crews), why must I coddle and coax them out of the ground?
I’ve been looking into what is technically considered a wildflower garden and how can I get one established that will continue to self-sow, without becoming too invasive. Not too much to ask, I think. According to my local Extension office, wildflowers are species of flowers that have shown themselves to be hardy and self-reproducing with little attention form the gardener.
Bringing Your Plants Indoors
As the risk of frost nears, it’s time to bring in some of the non-hardy plants so that they can overwinter indoors. But before you start digging up your plants and plunking them in pots in front of your window, follow a few easy steps to ensure that your plants make it through the winter.
Choose vigorously growing, healthy plants to bring inside. No need to try to save the ones that look sickly. Dig them up carefully so that you get as much of the root mass as possible. Place the plant in a good size pot – 1 gallon if you can – with regular potting soil.
Do a moderate pruning as you bring your plants indoors. The older leaves of most garden plants begin to yellow as they’re moved inside and pruning back will help encourage new growth that is better adapted to the lower light conditions indoors. Plants like basil also benefit from pinching back to encourage bushy growth.
The Wild Garden: Woodland Gardens and Fall Planting
I’ve been fascinated with wildlife gardening since childhood. Rather than family shopping trips or excursions to baseball games, my father would take my brother and I out to the woods in search of wildflowers while my mother led the search for fossils at Ten-Mile Creek. So today, most of my gardening adventures are connected one way or another with the wild garden.
And if you like wildlife, there are even more reasons for establishing such a garden, not only on country homes or suburban lots, but even in the middle of a city. No matter where you live, animals, birds, and insects abound. Just come over to my place early in the morning.
NATIVE PLANTS
Native plants have recently become the answer for those gardeners who are tired of pampering fancy exotic imports with toxic chemicals. Because they grow here naturally, many natives are less labor intensive than their finicky cousins from across the sea. For those of you new to the gardening game, here’s the news: The native plant “movement” is in full swing and many terrific natives are readily available at nurseries throughout the area.
What Is A Native Plant?
Biologists have always been intrigued by questions of origin and dispersal. How and why do species arise? How do they spread from their points of origin? Are there hotpots or centers of evolution and dispersal? Thus, through the years bio-geography has been a fertile field of scientific research and discourse, and the question of means of dispersal has long fueled vigorous debate and disagreement. Given present-day understanding of plate tectonics, consideration of plate movements over geologic time must now be added to the traditional arguments about long-distance dispersal versus incremental migration.
Sandras All- organic Rose Recipe
In 1990, when the Mendelow rose collection was first conceived, Sandra spent a full year laying the groundwork for her garden. Soil heavy with clay received generous amounts of calcium-rich gypsum, as well as sand to improve drainage, and compost to boost fertility. Raised beds outlined in brick further improved drainage, helped concentrate nutrients, and brought plants up to eye level. With guidance from rose consultant and hybridizer Mike Lowe, Sandra began a pruning program (every Valentine’s Day the clippers come out) that keeps the bushes in top form.
