Happy Spring! Finally spring has arrived. However it will still be weeks before you should begin to uncover your plants or work in your garden. In the meantime we will highlight a few plants that are new to our inventory this year or perhaps we added them last year. Hopefully one or two of these plants may be of interest to you and work in that spot where you need something alive and growing.
This week we have chosen Walberton’s® Plumtastic spirea. This compact plant is perfect for low borders or edging pathways. Plant it as a single species or in masses. It works well planted in a small, skinny area that you may have between your sidewalk and house. Plumtastic only gets around 16″ high and wide. Outside of being small, it has flushes of pink-cerise blooms that flower continuosly from summer into fall. The foliage opens to a rich purple and ages to green. It likes full sun. Like most spireas it is very easy to grow. Butterflies and bees love it. Google this plant and you will see some gorgeous pictures. We predict this plant to be a hot seller.
I wanted to see a caterpillar turn into a Monarch and discovered how easy it was. First, into my new garden I planted some bright annuals to attract Monarchs and some Swamp Milkweed (red milkweed) for the Monarchs to lay their eggs on. I also planted some butterfly weed to feed the future Monarch butterflies. About a month later I discovered several Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed. I ordered a net cage from Amazon and put a caterpillar inside the cage with leaves from the milkweed plant. The caterpillar ate voraciously for the first couple days, then stopped eating. The next thing that happened was that he was hanging from the top of the net cage and then formed a “J” shape. A few hours later when I looked he was in the halfway point of spinning himself into a cocoon. On the 11th day when I checked, he had just emerged from the pupa into a butterfly but since he was still wet, I kept him in the cage for another hour and then released the Monarch. Stop at Trees Today Nursery as we have many, many varieties of butterfly plants in stock in spring of the year.
We just wanted to share a picture of this gorgeous lantana tree taken by a customer last summer. The tree was purchased from us in spring of 2021. They are always in bloom, attracting butterflies and hummingbirds. Each year we get a few of these trees in. They are a tropical tree but customers have had luck in carrying them over thru winter. Just google “Lantana trees” for some information if you are interested in trying to carry one over thru winter. Place them on your deck or patio and you will find hummingbirds visiting them within a couple feet of you. We have just a couple of these trees left in stock.
