Visit any of your favorite garden centers and you will see new introductions of old familiar favorites. For instance the purple coneflower is no longer purple. It comes a range of colors from red, yellow, orange, green, and white. You will even find cultivars where the traditional cone has been modified into flower petals often…
Tag: Pollinator
September Flower Power
September doesn’t have to be about chrysanthemums and asters alone. There is a plethora of other, lesser-known, counterparts that can add flower power to the late season garden. Turtlehead, Chelone lyonii, has light pink to dark pink flowers that resemble, you guessed it, a turtle’s head. Serrate leaves are pointed, shiny and dark green. People…
Rain Garden Plants
Okay so I’ve been lagging behind getting my blogs out this past month. Getting back into the swing of things this week I wanted to talk about choosing plants for rain gardens. When we think of rain gardens we think of plants that will be submerged all the time like aquatic/pond plants. However, this is…
Now You Have a Good Reason For Not Tidying the Garden!
My friend, Master Gardener Cheryl Gresham, wrote last week about pollinators, cautioning gardeners about the importance of not being as tidy when we ready the garden for winter. I’m going to expand on Cheryl’s idea. Of the native bees, about 30% continue their life cycle in the hollow stems of plants. Female bees lay their…
Weed or Flower?
“Is this a weed or a flower?” – one of the most commonly asked questions I get here at the Extension Office. I always answer: is it growing where it supposed to? If not, then it is a weed. A coneflower growing in a bluegrass lawn is a weed and bluegrass growing in a coneflower…
A Turtlehead Tutorial
Turtlehead, Chelone spp., is one of the great flowers of the late summer garden. Flowers are either pink or white and are shaped like, you guessed it, a turtle’s head. Turtlehead is a great pollinator plant, adding a tapestry of color and flight to the garden. The plant must have an impish streak too because…
Stupendous Liatris
You may be aware of the spiked gayfeather that graces florist bouquets, but this is just the beginning of all Liatris has to offer. People unfamiliar with the plant are often surprised to find out it is a native. Nothing beats the intense purple color of flower spikes that manage to hold themselves up without…
Pollinators and the food we eat
It has been well-established and well-discussed that pollinators are responsible for the production (and reproduction) of about 35 percent of the crops that we grow for consumption. While most of the staple crops like corn and wheat are wind pollinated and don’t require a pollinator, our diet is much more varied and interesting thanks to…