317Grow Blog
Read . Grow . Thrive
With our company under the ownership of two Ohio State grads, it was only a matter of time before I ended up featuring a plant from the buckeye family. While I'm a Purdue grad myself, I have to admit that this is one amazing shrub. If you're looking for something that can take a little shade, fill space pretty quickly, screen unsightly views, and show some nice flowers, bottlebrush buckeye is one of your best options.
April's plant of the month is dwarf fothergilla, one of my all-time favorite shrubs. Its fragrant puff-ball flowers emerge in April before the leaves unfold, and the blossoms remain until May. I could have chosen dwarf fothergilla for many different months. The leaves have a unique scalloped shape and retain a lovely green with a pale underside through the summer. In the fall, the shrub practically bursts into flame with a range of yellows, oranges, and reds that changes with sun exposure.
While we haven’t had a lot of huge snow events this year, almost every week there’s enough of a risk of snow or ice to put down road salt at least once. Over time, this salt can splash onto parking lot and roadside plants enough to damage the foliage, or temporarily shock the soil with too much salt for the plant roots. Salt draws water out of plant cells and leaves them looking burnt and stunted. In cases of soil salt accumulation, sometimes it just looks like a plant is smaller and struggling compared to the same plant a few feet further back from the street.
In mid to late winter a haze of red and yellow spreads across vernal witch hazel. There are other early blooming shrubs with showier flowers, such as the popular forsythia, but nothing brings new color to the landscape earlier than vernal witch hazel. There are three main types of witch hazels available commercially. Common witch hazel is native to the eastern U.S. (including Indiana), but it blooms late in the fall, so we aren't interested in it for February.
Winter is upon us, and the world outside our windows has become a lot more grey and dreary. When we approach a new design, it is not at all unusual for the client to request that we include plants that will look interesting all year round. For most, their mind will automatically turn to evergreens, but there are so many more plants that can light up the winter landscape in other ways.
After the bright lights and colors of the holiday season it can be nice to settle down with a little subtle color left in the landscape after the lights come down. Close cousins coralberry and snowberry are great picks for low-key, hazy winter interest. It's definitely not a plant for a formal garden, but if you have more of a natural style or if you're looking to add a little something special to a wooded edge, this may be just the thing you need.
Evergreens are a staple in the landscape for their ability to give the design form and interest all year long. Arborvitae is a great pick with varieties that are especially good for small spaces and for making natural screens for privacy and for defining spaces. Their foliage is arranged in lush, fern-like shapes that give a wonderful visual texture as well.
Many of us have yards with shaded areas, but I get a lot of questions asking what the plant options are beyond hostas. Don't get me wrong, I love hostas - there are so many unique varieties, and bees and hummingbirds can't get enough of the flowers. But they are prone to slug and deer damage, and it's not crazy to want a little bit of something different. Below I've come up with 40 different plants for shade - some prefer dappled sunlight, and others can take pretty dense shade.
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