Christmas Warm-Up

 
‘Autumn Leaves’ from Dümmen Orange

Here’s a different spin on the typical poinsettia—‘Autumn Leaves’, a unique variety from Dümmen Orange in a warm blend of autumn-inspired shades. Deep apricot-yellow bracts are flecked with pink, bringing to mind a sunny fall nature walk or some freshly baked pumpkin spice cookies gently dusted with cinnamon.

Verbena like this ‘EnduraScape Blue’ need attention from the onset

When life gives you lemons…you must have done a stellar job growing your lemon tree. Good for you! Unfortunately that’s not always the case. Even we, as professional growers, have our share of underperforming beds but we prefer to think of these as learning gardens and pay close attention to what caused them to go awry. From time to time we’ll be discussing these beds so that you, too, can learn from our missteps.

Notice the sunken area where lack of watering destroyed good plants

This year we planted a bed with bidens, lobularia, and verbena. Sadly, the bidens died out, the verbena remained green, and the lobularia survived at best. You can see the effect by the sunken spot in this section of Garden 04—and it was our own fault.

Our theory is that we let it get too dry. We planted these beds this year and then got busy taking care of greenhouse stuff so we weren’t thorough with watering right out of the gate. Verbena, lobularia, and bidens all need attention right at the onset—they need to be well watered to root in to do well later. We didn’t do that. 

So going forward, keep in mind that those are plants that give you great color if you give them what they want. They’re not able to be abused like a salvia or a rudbeckia can be abused and still perform for you.

10-inch poinsettias in pots—a great value at $21.00

There’s been a rare sighting—a mistake in our 2017 Holiday Idea Book. Poinsettias in the 10-inch pot are listed with the wrong price: they are $21, not $15.

We apologize for the error and believe you’ll find that the 10-inch size is a great value even at the slightly higher correct amount.