The peonies are exploding with color, the iris are strutting their stuff, and it’s time to get into the garden!
Mark your calendar for two very important summer dates!
Sunday, July 11th is the 23rd Annual CDA Garden Tour, sponsored by the CDA Garden Club, welcoming all of us back to visit six of the loveliest gardens in our area. Stifled by 2020, the garden tour was sadly cancelled, leaving us all to create amazing gardens of our own. The second special date in July is Thursday, July 8, which is our first annual Summer Festival as a kick off to Garden Tour Weekend!
New Leaf Nursery has been an industry leader for many years in our neighborhoods, and this year the Summer Festival promises a great evening of fun with your friends and neighbors in our beautiful garden nursery! Hot air balloon rides (weather permitting) and live rockin’ music from the 70s, 80s & 90s by LakeTown Sound will move and groove you! Come enjoy summer culinary treats from The Clementine Food Trailer (all plant based, perfect in a nursery, eh?), Unlawful Waffle, and some all time faves from O’Houlis Kettle Corn and Hello Sugar! Enjoy our beer garden hosted by Lone Mountain Farms and make s’mores around a fire pit!
And be sure to make time to take a private tour in the nursery early in the evening, hosted by our amazing landscape design team! Learn the insider’s tricks to everything gardening in the inland Northwest and lots more!
So what’s new at the nursery? Smoke Bush!
As most of us feel about kale as a food source, deer seem to feel this way about smoke bush! The most popular of all the varieties of “cotinus” is Royal Purple and most deer turn their noses up. We have lots of them waiting for you at the nursery too! Smoke bush is a magnificent color producer year round and floral designers love using cut smoke bush foliage in their floral creations. If you’re not quite a floral designer, try cutting a few branches and put them into a tall vintage vase and set it in your window to experience the light passing thru the leaves. This plant is a garden staple, and because the deer don’t like it, you can make quite a statement. These can grow between 10-12 ft tall and wide.
Blushing Bride Hydrangea
As the summer goes along, more and more hydrangea come into the nursery, looking for a home at your home! In our previous post, we discussed the paniculata varieties of hydrangea. Now. it’s time for the macrophylla hydrangea! Our three favorites in the Endless Summer varieties are Blushing Bride, BloomStruck and Summer Crush, and they will be in mid week so plan to come early for the best selection!
Blushing Bride, and other macrophylla, has been known to bloom on old wood in the Spring, and later in the summer, bloom on new branches! A faint hint of blush in the white blooms makes this variety easy to find in the nursery!
BloomStruck Hydrangea
BloomStruck is that classic lavender and purple and blue palette of color that grandma always had in her garden! And yes, hydrangea macrophylla, have a unique ability to change flower colors from pink to blue, or vice versa. This change is a response to the amount of aluminum in the soil that the plant can use. In acidic soils, aluminum is readily available and a hydrangea's roots can absorb this mineral. And yes, we have what you need inside the garden center to help you have the most enviable hydrangea on the block!
Summer Crush Endless Summer® Hydrangea
Summer Crush is the most vibrant of the trilogy! How can you live without it! These varieties of hydrangea are nearly fool proof. Endless Summer® hydrangeas grow in Zones 4-8, able to thrive in more parts of the country than other hydrangea varieties. They are cold-hardy enough to withstand frost and can tolerate some heat. However, keep the afternoon sun to a minimum when the days are hot!
The greatest thing about Endless Summer® hydrangeas is that you don't need to prune them back to the base like other hydrangeas. Since they bloom on previous year’s growth AND the new season's growth, you can leave them all winter long to achieve double the blooms next spring. Do NOT prune the hydrangea back in fall. Instead, prune them only in May. This will ensure the flower buds that have made it through the winter have emerged. Prune out only dead wood and leave any green buds or leaves. They grow to between 3-5 ft tall.
See why we are excited when the trucks show up loaded with Endless Summer® Hydrangeas?
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
