Made in the Shade Perennials

An abundance of large trees and shady areas in your yard can be a challenge to the creative gardener, rather than an obstacle to good gardening. Shady places that provide cool, refreshing areas of beauty during summer's heat also can contribute color and interest to the landscape throughout the growing season.

When you are purchasing flowering plants for a shady place try buying the varieties with lighter colored flowers because they will show up better in the shade. There are many plants that you can choose from to fill a shady nook in your garden such as:

Hosta
There are multiple selections available in full green, variegated and even bluish green colors with different textures of leaves as well, from thin to huge elephant sized leaves. They will flower in late summer and some even have a wonderful scent!

Fern
A classic cool, moist plant for shade is the Fern. Like the hosta, you can choose the fern based on leaf and size. There are multiple varieties available with an extra benefit of being deer resistant*.

Want a dark red leaf in your shady garden? Try Coral Bells or otherwise known as Heuchera. They are grown for their beautiful leaves, often purplish, metalic silver, lime green, or bronze. They also flower late summer as well with a white flower and are deer resistant*.

Need a ground cover for a shady area? Try Lamium. The leaves are silver with narrow green margins. The unique colors of the foliage makes a perfect backdrop for the lavender-pink flowers that appear from mid-spring until early summer. A tried and true variety of Lamium, Beacon Silver is perhaps the most commonly grown form of this lovely perennial ground cover.

Other shade plants include:

Columbine which blooms from May to July. A variety of colors is available from red, white yellow, blue and other multicolors. Columbine will often seed itself if you allow it to scatter naturally.

Astilbe is a shade loving garden favorite. They are long-blooming plume-like flowers in shades of white, pink and red, peach, & purple (The Visions variety not only has beautiful flowers but has a wonderful scent as well!). Astilbes are one of the easiest perennial flowers to grow, but they give a high return. Virtually pest free, they can light up the shade garden and are deer resistant*.

Bleeding Hearts are traditional favorites in shade gardens. Their foliage tends to die back after the plants are done flowering in May, leaving behind vacant spots in the planting bed. It's a good idea to surround bleeding hearts with hosta plants and other shade-loving perennial flowers that will fill in those vacant spots during the summer. Bleeding hearts are striking enough to warrant their use as specimen plants in spring.

Ligularia

A noble plant with huge leathery leaves, deep green on top, ebony on the reverse side. Give this moisture lover room as it can be 4' across and 5' tall. Yellow flowers in early summer until late fall. There are other varieties that have deep purplish red leaves as well called Britt Marie Crawford which are stunning in the shade garden as well which produces yellow flowers! This is one of this writers personal favorites and as a bonus it's deer resistant* too!

Foxglove

These beautiful flowering plants provide upright and vertical accents in the garden. They can grow up to 5' tall and 1' wide and prefer part shade and humus rich soil. Cutting spent foxglove blooms will encourage repeat blooming. Some gardeners choose to leave the last flower stalks of the season because foxgloves will self-sow in the garden. Yellow foxgloves are more deer resistant* than other varieties.


*Realizing that no plant is deer proof, those that are marked with an "*" are plants that are not often preferred by deer however, the success of any of these plants in the landscape will depend on local deer populations and weather conditions.

There are many other varieties of shade loving perennials available at Rutgers Nursery!

What is your all time favorite shade loving perennial?

Hydrangeas - An Old-Fashioned Shrub Enjoying a New Found Popularity!

Hydrangeas are one of the many old-fashioned shrubs are enjoying a new found popularity in gardens today! Not only is the foliage interesting, but the flower heads are stunning and provide a nice show of graceful flowers from late spring to early summer.

The Flower Style
There are three different types of hydrangea flowers

Mopheads
The most well known flower style which has a large, rounded cluster made up of hundreds of florets.


Lace-Caps
This group of hydrangeas produce flat flower clusters with a ring of larger flowers surrounding the center of smaller florets.

Panicle
This type of hydrangea includes our native varieties such as the oak leafs and the paniculatas which have large white, cone shaped clusters.


A distinctive type of Hydrangea worthy of especially noting is the Oakleaf Hydrangea. It's the only hydrangea which develops significant fall foliage color. The leaves turn a deep mahogany-red and stay on the plant until late fall. Exfoliating bark adds to winter interest. Oakleaf hydrangea is best suited used in a mixed border or as a mass planting.


Flower Color
The flower color of hydrangeas is influenced by the pH of the soil (all except white varieties) If you have acidic soil, your flowers will tend to be shades of blue. Neutral soils generally produce pale flower colors and alkaline rich soils make pink to reddish tone flowers.  These colors can be encouraged or reversed with certain varieties.  It is much easier to change a hydrangea from pink to blue than it is from blue to pink. Changing a hydrangea from pink to blue entails adding aluminum sulfate to the soil. Changing from blue to pink means subtracting aluminum from the soil or taking it out of reach of the hydrangea.

Water and Light

Hydrangeas love to be planted in soil that is moist and well drained and in a location that provides afternoon shade. Most hydrangeas benefit from some shade, especially in hot climates. Bigleaf, oakleaf and smooth hydrangeas will usually perform well on the north side of a house or planted at the edge of a woodland. Growing hydrangeas in deep shade is not necessary and can greatly reduce flowering. The amount of sun that hydrangeas can tolerate depends on species, climate and availability of water. Panicle hydrangea tolerates more sun than do other species.

Fertilizing and Feeding
Hydrangeas are heavy feeders, which means they benefit from additional nutrients. Slow release or organic products are best since they feed slowly over an extended period of time. Nutrients should be applied early in the season when the plants are just leafing out and not in late summer. A fall application can be done only after the leaves have dropped.

Pruning

Be cautious with pruning hydrangeas. Leave old flowers through the winter, as they protect the new growth tips. Spring pruning should be delayed until you can distinquish between live and dead wood. After this has been determined, you can remove some of the oldest canes over (over 4 years old and up to 1/3 of the cane). If you have an overgrown hydrangea, do a major pruning immediately after blooming. If you wait too late in the season to prune your hydrangea you will risk pruning off next year's flower buds.

Why doesn't my hydrangea bloom?

There are three possibilities for lack of flowering among the hydrangeas The first two – too much shade and improper pruning – apply to all hydrangeas, while the other – weather-related damage to flower buds – applies primarily to the bigleaf hydrangea.

While most Hydrangea species benefit from some shade, too much shade can reduce flowering. This is particularly true of panicle hydrangea, which is the one Hydrangea species that grows well in full sun. If you have a hydrangea that used to bloom well but now flowers only sparsely, evaluate whether the growth of nearby trees has reduced the amount of light that reaches the hydrangea. If so, you may want to consider moving the hydrangea to a sunnier location. Improper pruning can also reduce flowering. Since bigleaf and oakleaf hydrangeas flower on previous year’s growth, potential flowers buds would be removed if the plants were pruned in fall, winter or spring. Panicle and smooth hydrangea flower on this year’s growth, so pruning them in early summer would reduce or eliminate flowering for that year.

Drying Hydrangeas for Arrangements

One of the easiest ways to preserve these flowers is to allow them to almost completely dry on the plant. Do not collect them until the flowers have developed a papery feel. On a dry day with low humidity, cut the stems the length you need for making floral arrangements. Strip off all leaves and then find a dry place indoors where the flowers can finish drying. Some people recommend using a warm, dark location, such as an attic. Others prefer a cool, dry location. Flowers can be hung upside down while being dried, or can be placed in a vase without water.

Disease and Pests
Hydrangeas are long-lived plants and are bothered by few pests and diseases, however spider mites can colonize a plant during extended dry periods causing a type of leaf damage that looks like leaf scorch or sunburn. These pests are easy to find on the underside of the leaves. Tap the leaves on a white sheet of paper and look for pinpoint sized crawling dots.  Occasional mildew or leaf spotting occurs late in the season in humid climates. This is rarely more than a cosmetic problem.

Rutgers' Steward of the Earth Program!

Rutgers' "Steward of the Earth" program consists of a number of initiatives that aim to bring awareness of environmental issues and funding for green projects throughout our community.

From June 18 through August 15, 2010 Rutgers Nursery will donate 2% of all sales to the New Jersey Tree Foundation.

The New Jersey Tree Foundation is a state-wide non profit organization dedicated to planting trees in New Jersey's most underserved neighbohoods. As of 2010, the New Jersey Tree Foundation has planted 154,878 trees with thousands of volunteers.

Its successful programs include the community-based Newark Renaissance Trees Program (NRTP), the Urban Airshed Reforestation Program (UARP) in Camden, Green Streets, Celebrate Arbor Day, and the 9/11/2001 memorial -the Grove of Remembrance.

To learn more, click New Jersey Tree Foundation

Top 10 Deer Resistant Annuals!

Are you looking to add bright color in your garden that lasts throughout the growing season?  Than plant annuals! They make an excellent colorful choice for container gardens, borders, beds and hanging baskets!  If you have deer in your area, the choices are more limited unless you want to protect your flowers with netting, fencing or repellants. However, we have listed the top 10 Deer Resistant Annuals for our area! The addition of these annuals would make a color display in your garden as well.

Top 10 Deer Resistant Annuals

1.  Flowering Vinca
2.  Cleome
3.  Dusty Miller
4.  Heliotrope
5.  Marigolds
6.  Snapdragons
7.  Strawflower
8.  Ageratum
9.  Nicotiana
10. Sweet Alyssum

Realizing that no plant is deer 'proof', the plants listed are ones that have proven to be rarely damaged in our area. For additional protection the use of deer fencing and repellents is advised.

May Gardening Tips

Here are some timely tips for your May gardening adventure!
•Weed all beds thoroughly
•All winter mulch/compost/branches should be removed by now
•Beds should be re-mulched
•Keep watering new and transplanted shrubs (2-3x/week)
•Prune back spring-flowering shrubs after they've finished blooming (forsythia, lilac, azalea) and any dead wood
•Continuously prune clematis to cut out dead/weak growth

•In flowering trees, remove dead wood only
•Prune/hedge evergreens
•Plant potted roses, fertilize
•Finish dividing spring and fall blooming perennials
•Stake peonies, delphiniums, and garden phlox early
•Repair lawn patches, seed/sod
•Plant annual seeds
•Start planting annuals outside AFTER last frost