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Happy 2025, friends! We’re back and ready for a brand new year of growin’, nursin’, and slingin’ plants.
It’s a jam-packed January starting as soon as next week. We are proud sponsors of the New Directions in the American Landscape’s (NDAL) Annual Symposium, split across two fantastic event spaces over the course of two weeks.
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With 2024 coming to an end and 2025 on its heels, when better to prepare you for the next annual color palette than now? Pantone has officially released its Color of the Year for 2025: now introducing Mocha Mousse. |
As we wrap things up for 2024 and begin to reflect on the months behind us, we want to thank you for your continued support and friendship throughout the year. Despite unprecedented weather-related challenges, some production hurdles, and an entire reconstruction of our website, this has still managed to be our most successful year to date.
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With Thanksgiving upon us, what better time is there than now to explore some flowering friends that have been used to symbolize gratitude since the Victorian era? The language of flowers has long been utilized as a communication tool, helping lovers, friends, and enemies alike to politely let their feelings be known by way of floral and foliar arrangements. Gratitude, alongside love and grief, is a universal emotion often interpreted through the gifting of floral arrangements. While some of the meanings have evolved through time, some historically significant selections of flowers such as small white bellflowers have maintained their original connotations. In Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers, the white bellflower simply represents gratitude. You can read through all of the other Victorian-age flower meanings in a PDF version of an original print by clicking HERE. |
You’ve been told to “leave the leaves”, but this is your sign to Save The Seeds! Spent seedheads of native (and even non-native) flowering perennials are vital to the success of many overwintering insect and bird populations. Not only do birds ravage the remaining nutritious seeds, but some bees and wasps have been found to burrow into spent stems and plant cavities for protection from winter conditions. Sure, perennial genera like Echinacea and Rudbeckia are known beneficials as seedy, textural components in the winter landscape, but what about plants with some real pizazz? After all, if we’re gonna leave the seeds, we may as well enjoy what we’re looking at.
Typically, autumn is all about the stunning array of color abound in our landscapes, chalked up primarily to the deciduous shrubs and trees that dot or woodlands. Vines tend to always get a bit obscured by these rose-colored (or red, orange, or purple-colored, so to speak) glasses that we wear this time of year, despite offering as many ornamental and ecological benefits as their more grounded kin. This week, let’s chat native vines that sparkle in the landscape with bold yellows during spring, summer, and fall.
Speaking of Halloween, by this time next week, the trick-or-treaters will have long been sugared up, Jack-o-Lantern candles will have been long extinguished, and the mad rush to get ready for the holidays will have begun. Before we get too ahead of ourselves on the calendar, let’s take a moment to really revel in the final days of early autumn – crisp, fallen leaves, pleasantly chilly mornings, and the final buds and blooms of the season.
October is a month immersed in color throughout the horticultural world. Typically, pink is not one of the colors that comes to mind during the spooky season, with the exception of hot pink ribbons representing the global call for action against breast cancer and championing the brave individuals who’ve fought brazenly against the disease.
For those of you waiting with baited breath for the annual celebration of Fat Bear Week, wait no longer. Starting this past Wednesday, October 2nd, and continuing until 9pm Tuesday, October 8th, the elimination tournament between four large, furry contenders rages on – only the fattest will survive.
In celebration of National Public Lands Day, we encourage you to get out and explore your closest designated National Park, Historic Site, Recreational Area, Monument, Military Park, Seashore, Scenic Trail, or Reserve, and take in the natural beauty that has been preserved within our local seven-state region.
The wait is over! The irrefutable favorite season of Northeasterners and Midwesterners everywhere, the Autumn Equinox is ready for its annual debut this Sunday, September 22nd. In celebration of cool mornings, dark early evenings, bonfires, hayrides, and an abundance of pumpkins and apples in our futures, this week we’re introducing some of our favorite fall selections meant to bring color, texture, and variety to the landscape or container planting.
Last week, we celebrated the arrival of our native aster blooms as they begin to unfurl around the nursery. As promised, this week we’ll be exploring their phylogenic cousins, the goldenrods. It’s almost like September is designed exclusively for the parade of yellows, purples and blues that categorically make up the perennial palette of autumn, all belonging to the second largest flowering family worldwide: Asteraceae. The golden plumes of our native goldenrods, which are considered critical keystone species, are identifiable beacons of the end of summer, recognizable to even the most novice plant lovers.
Now that September has officially arrived (also known as the unofficial start of autumn, if you’ve been eagerly counting down the days to spooky season like I have), both us lowly humans as well as our plant companions are ready for well-deserved break from the summer heat. As the nighttime emerges more quickly and the sun seems wont to rise in the brisk early mornings, the purples, blues, and yellows that signal the arrival of autumn slowly begin to unravel. Asters and goldenrods are the champion perennials of late summer to early autumn, their complimentary hues playing against one another in the landscape. At a time when many other native perennials are at a standstill, these two provide critical nectar sources for pollinators late in the season.
Please note that we will be closed in observance of Labor Day on Monday, September 2nd.
We will return on Tuesday, September 3rd at 7am to assist you with all of your plant needs and help you get ready for all of your fall projects - please be patient as we try to catch up on pulling orders that morning. Prepare to pick up any plant material that day in the late morning to early afternoon hours.
With its oldie-but-goodie status long established since the early 1700s upon classification, Echinacea purpurea really needs no introduction. Instead, we’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
It’s been a while since we’ve taken a meander through our grassy knolls... or, at the very least, the masses of grasses we have patiently waiting in their production houses for their forever homes. With the demand for native species increasing, we wanted to take the time to highlight some wonderful graminoid options for the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. Move over, Miscanthus!
This week has been an inventory extravaganza, with new items going onto our availability left, right, and center. Amongst the slew of new and returning plants are some lesser known and even lesser utilized species that deserve their chance in the spotlight. While we frantically attempt to broaden our materials list before the busy fall season hits, let us implore you to dive deeper into some plants that demand your attention. These plants are chosen specifically for their ability to thrive in a variety of site conditions, including recently disturbed areas, and represent textures and colors that are unmatched in the landscape.
As with anything in the botanical world, there’s a term for hearty plants that can thrive in primordial landscapes: ruderal, derived from the Latin root, rudera or ruderalis, meaning “rubble”. We want to introduce you to three selections specified for landscape areas of concern, specifically those requiring soil stabilization and pioneering by tough, gritty plants.
If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly trying to figure out ways to get the most out of your leafy landscape companions. Whether it be eating the literal fruits of their labor, cutting fresh flowers for indoor arrangements, or learning how to make natural dyes from various plant materials, the ethnobotanical uses of our beloved garden buddies are seemingly boundless. Unfortunately, many of our traditional practices have gotten lost with time and the evolution of technology and synthetic materials – our fruits harvested thousands of miles away in different countries, last-minute bouquets of cut flowers purchased for loved ones at grocery stores, pre-made fabrics and man-made dyes that adorn our bodies day in and day out. Sometimes, the disconnect gets so overwhelming that there’s only one thing to do: return to nature. This is the season of berry-picking, frolicking through wildflower fields, and experimenting with the natural world around us, should we allow ourselves the whimsy with which to explore. The most curious of inquisitive horticultural minds may find themselves mashing and boiling plant materials to discover a heavily pigmented end result. But, where to start?
Summertime is in full swing all around the perimeters of Pleasant Run. Bees are buzzing, butterflies are flitting about, goldfinches are happily lapping up coneflower seeds on spent flowerheads. We’re adding new inventory left and right, getting ready for a fall season that is anticipated to be just as hair-pullingly busy as spring, and rediscovering some of our favorite selections that have proven themselves to be timeless garden workhorses.
Amongst these, our crops of Vitex agnus-castus, which I am perhaps a bit partial to, are magnificent in all of their glory. Standing proud and regal, seemingly unbothered by neither pest nor disease, with a pleasingly quick growth rate and the ability to withstand heat, salt spray, and drought, Vitex agnus-castus is as beautiful and intriguing as it is multi-functional in a variety of landscapes.
Maybe you’ve noticed the extreme heat we’ve been dealing with lately. We previously talked about heat-tolerant selections that are capable of thriving even in the hottest of Mid-Atlantic conditions. Still, us lowly humans need to beat the heat somehow, especially if most of our time is spent outdoors whether professionally or recreationally. Where better to find reprieve than under the shelter of a large, shady tree that also has the capacity to house and sustain wildlife? This week, we’re going beneath the cool, shadowy canopies belonging to two members of the Carpinus genus and uncovering some of the lesser-known attributes and interesting facts that make these trees so fascinating.
Pushing the boundaries of garden design with interesting and unique ornamental plants is a foolproof way to not only keep your clients thrilled, but to also keep your own brain from spilling over with images of the same plants time and time again. Surely, there is a place for the Endless Summer® bigleaf hydrangeas and dwarf fountain grasses of the world, but they are certainly not the end-all-be-all of landscape plants. This week, let us take you on a journey of new plant selections that are designed to become the next generation of garden classics.
Fireflies, lightning bugs, whatever you call them, you may have noticed an influx of the glowing evening insects this year. States throughout the Mid-Atlantic are reporting higher quantities of lightning bugs than years past. I, personally, can attest to the silent rave that happens in my yard every evening now, tiny yellow strobes composing a tapestry of starry light throughout the darkness. My childhood, as I’m sure many of yours are, is filled with memories of chasing lightning bugs around the yard, collecting them in my yellow plastic bucket with a red plastic screen top, and shaking them to encourage them to glow (my parents still chuckle about my ignorant brutality to this day).
Let’s face it, daylilies have gotten a pretty bad rap in recent years. Hemerocallis fulva is a notorious landscape bully, disregarding smaller, more delicate plants and bulldozing its way from its original location to… well, everywhere else. After all, it’s called ditch lily because of its lack of fussiness regarding where it settles itself, often taking over low-lying roadsides, moist woodland edges, and dry, disturbed soils with ease. Naturally, this known invasion of space has led many to stray away from utilizing daylilies in the landscape, especially native plant enthusiasts who fear complete Hemerocallis havoc amongst endemic species, such as our tender native spring ephemerals.
As we brace for the heatwave that’s about to ring in the summer season and hope that it’s not a dark omen for weather to come, we wanted to take the lighter approach to embracing the oppressive warmth by celebrating some of our favorite heat tolerant selections available here at the nursery.
Mingling amongst the chartreuses, blue-greens, emeralds and olives, pops of bright magenta tones seem to be the predominant contrasting color throughout the gardens and production houses. Perennials and woody plants alike have begun to appear as reddish-purple beacons, fluorescent in the balmy morning fog and sparkling in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Although “magenta” is actually a term coined from colorists in the mid-19th century, originally called by its chemical name triaminotriphenyl carbonium chloride (try say that 5 times fast), it is very certainly a color that not only exists in the natural world, but is one of the primary floral hues worldwide, especially in tropical and subtropical species. Interestingly, the magnificent red-purple we’ve come to know as magenta received its name from the famously gory 1859 Battle of Magenta fought in Italy between French and Austrian battalions. The pigment, derived from coal-tar, was discovered almost simultaneously, with scientists choosing to name it after the bloody battle in an act of reverence. One’s perception of this special hue may range widely, at once appearing more purple than red, at other times redder than purple, sometimes bright, sometimes dark, but always magenta.
Now that the magic of May has faded, with much of the springtime color we’ve come to enjoy around the nursery ending while we linger on the cusp of summer blooms, the time to celebrate the variances of green textures, tones, and shapes is upon us. We’ve talked before about the important ecological role that our Midwestern-American grasslands play in maintaining the balance of so many critically endangered mammalian and avian species. This week, we’re getting a little closer to home, talking more about the geographical, ecological, and, of course, ornamental properties of three strappy garden sidekicks (that hopefully after today will become more than just sidekicks in your installations).
For all intents and purposes, when we say “grasses”, this week we really do mean good ole true grasses – those belonging to the family Poaceae. We’ll get to the sedges and rushes of the world at a later date, but today we’re getting into the nodes and culms of it all.
Maybe I’m biased as a late-May baby (the 23rd, if you’re wondering), but the middle to end of the month of May is quite possibly one of the most magic-filled moments in the natural world. At this point, irises of all colors have made themselves known, trees are pretty much completely leafed out and full of color, and tentative summer flower buds are beginning to emerge above lush, green basal foliage. The birdsong is plentiful, bees are back to buzzing about, and tiny discoveries await hidden amongst the foliage and flowers of Pleasant Run and beyond.
Recently, my best friend and her husband moved into a charming suburban townhome that had previously been owned by an elderly woman with a penchant for perennials, having adorned her garden beds with black and brown-eyed Susans, various mints, a healthy Amsonia hubrichtii specimen in the middle of the yard that I (somewhat obnoxiously) begged and pleaded my friend’s husband not to remove (with the help of Mt. Cuba’s recent trials, they’re now both fully on board with its presence), and even poke weed as a fruiting ornamental for the birds.
For all you Star Wars fanatics and sci-fi nerds, May 4th is a great day to make one of the oldest calendar-appropriate dad jokes as relentlessly as you can while annoying friends, colleagues, and loved ones all at once. Perhaps you’d like to take it one step further and cultivate a space-themed garden or outdoor space that subtly encompasses the otherworldliness and ethereal qualities of the great unknown beyond our atmosphere. Here are some out-of-this-world plant selections that not only shoot for the stars, but go to infinity and beyond with their landscape performance and beauty.
Happy Belated Arbor Day! Really, who says you can’t celebrate all weekend long? We hope you’re getting up to some serious tree planting and gardening this weekend, with some time set aside to admire your local sun-dappled canopies that are coming alive with greenery. Arbor Day is celebrated across multiple continents after being conceived in the 1870’s by a hopeful journalist named Julius Sterling Morton, who managed to successfully inspire the citizens of Nebraska City enough that they planted approximately one million trees around the city. It wasn’t until nearly 100 years later that President Nixon would proclaim Arbor Day a National Holiday, after which it would claim its place on the calendar, falling on the last Friday of April. In honor of the traditions and legacy of Arbor Day, we’re highlighting some of our favorite tree selections that we have breaking dormancy around the nursery.
