Landscaping for Lightning Bugs

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).

Who's Afraid of Hemerocallis?

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.

Heat Tolerant Plants for the Sizzlin' Summer

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.

Magenta Mayhem

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-19^th 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.

Poetic Poaceae

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.