Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Roses need water and fertilizer to keep blooming well throughout the summer. Watch for pests and treat immediately to prevent infestations.

• Budworms eat the petals of geraniums and petunias, leaving you with no flowers. Spray plants weekly with BT for complete control.

• Birdbaths will attract our feathered friends to your backyard so you can enjoy them close-up. Place them a few feet from a bushy shrub to give the birds protection.

• Garlic should be harvested when the leafy tops turn yellow and fall over; air-dry bulbs, remove tops and store bulbs in a cool place.

• Shade-loving begonias and impatiens will add color and beauty in both planters and hanging baskets.

Landscaping with Herbs

Although many people think that herbs belong on the windowsill or in the vegetable garden, herbs also make fine landscaping plants. Many attractive shrubs and ground covers are herbal plants that can add beauty to the landscape while providing foliage and flowers for herbal uses.

Herbs are generally easy to grow and require less watering and attention than most other plants. Their aromatic oils make them relatively immune to insect attack, and for this same reason, deer usually leave them alone. Their fragrance in the garden is another reason to make use of them.

Some low-growing herbs make good lawn substitutes in small areas and around stepping stones. Chamomile and woolly thyme are very good in sunny areas. They can be mowed occasionally if they get taller than you want. Corsican mint, which forms a moss-like mat, in sun or partial shade emits a very strong, pleasant odor of mint when lightly brushed. It is the mint used to flavor liqueurs.

Creeping thyme, lemon thyme and silver thyme are very drought tolerant and make a mounding mat for full sun. Prostrate rosemary grows about 18 inches tall and is excellent for planting on hillsides and for draping over walls. All types of rosemary can be used for culinary purposes and are very deer resistant.

Lavenders, upright rosemary and sage are all lovely shrubs for dry sunny areas. There are many types of lavenders to choose from that grow between 18 inches and 4 feet tall. Lavender can be used as a foundation plant or to create a hedge and will still provide you with delightfully flavored flowers and leaves.

Upright rosemary can grow to 4 to 6 feet tall and makes a nice clipped hedge. Culinary sage has gray-green leaves. There are also varieties with variegated yellow and green leaves, or silver and purple leaves. They make a small mound, about 2 feet tall.

Santolina, or lavender cotton, is a gray, mounding plant that is useful for borders. Catmint has soft, gray-green foliage and lavender-blue flowers that make a showy display.

Foliage is one of the most interesting aspects of herbs for landscaping. Several members of the artemesia family are particularly striking with their silver or gray leaves. Artemesia ‘Powis Castle’ has finely cut, silver-gray foliage that is fragrant and it makes a fine background plant at 3 feet tall. Germander makes a low mound with small rosy-purple flowers in dense heads.

One of the largest herb plants is the Mediterranean bay laurel, Laurus nobilis. It is an evergreen shrub growing 12 feet tall in a dense, tapering cone. This shrub has the bay leaves used in cooking, and it makes a good screening plant.

Two of the most interesting flowering herbs are bee balm (also called monarda and bergamot) and purple coneflower. Bee balm leaves make a fine tea, and purple coneflower, the familiar echinacea of many herbal remedies, is a long-blooming perennial that can be a great addition to any garden. It is great favorite of monarch butterflies and should be in every butterfly garden.

While most herbs prefer a sunny location, some will do well in part sun or shade. Sweet woodruff — used in potpourris and as a moth deterrent — is an excellent shady area ground cover that cares little about soil conditions.

Whether you want a formal herb garden or a hillside of fragrant herbs, you’ll find herbs to be useful and attractive plants for landscaping.

• Plant pansies, snapdragons, stock, calendulas and primroses now to replace summer annuals.

• Divide artichoke plants which have been in the ground for three or four years. Mulch established plants with steer manure.

• Protect the pond from the worst of the leaf fall with a fine-mesh net over the surface of the pond.

• Garlic sets can be planted now for an easy crop that you can harvest next spring.

• Plant cover crops in the garden where summer plants have finished. Fava beans and crimson clover will grow through the winter and improve your soil for spring planting.

Landscaping with Bulbs

Landscaping with bulbs is a great way to make your home beautiful year after year. With just a little effort, you can create dazzling carpet of spring color.

Bulbs are much more impressive when planted en masse. Uniform color and texture creates an impressive visual effect. To make this happen requires a little planning.

The novice gardener often makes the mistake of planting tulips or daffodils in a straight line along a walkway like ducks in a row. It is much better to plant them in groups of at least a dozen. In fact the best way to make an impact with a small grouping of bulbs is to plant them in a triangle formation with the point of the triangle toward the viewer. This will fool the eye into seeing more flowers than you have actually planted!

Of course, if you have the room to plant 50 bulbs of a kind, you can have a really spectacular show. In Holland at Keukenhof Gardens, they plant 70 acres of bulbs to bloom each spring, in huge drifts of solid colors. Their fabulous display gardens are world famous. An interesting technique that they use is planting in layers.

Bulbs are planted on top of each other, in different layers.  The late-blooming tulips are placed deepest in the ground; above them early-blooming tulips; and above them crocus. This way flowers will bloom at the same spot in the park, from early in the season until late in the season, giving a continuous display of color.

Plant bulbs of one color in small spaces in the landscape. One color will have greater impact and make the planting space look larger. In large spaces, a planting of two or three colors will have the best effect. Select colors that blend together and don’t mix them: group each color together in interlocking shapes.

Another way to use bulbs for landscaping is called “naturalizing”. Naturalizing is the process of imitating nature by planting in irregular clumps scattered over the landscape. A grassy hillside dotted with yellow daffodils is a glorious sight.

Most bulbs like to be planted in full sun, though some will tolerate partial shade. It works well to plant under deciduous trees because the bulbs will bloom before the trees leaf out, so they will get the sun they need.

You can also interplant bulbs and pansies for a long-lasting spring flower show. Plant the pansies between the bulbs so the bulbs can easily come up between them. You can choose pansies with faces, or the solid colored ones. Little violas also make a lovely ground cover over bulbs.

Bulbs are one of the easiest ways to add beauty and color to the landscape. And this is the time to plant spring-flowering bulbs so they will be ready to flower next spring.