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Latest Blog Posts
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Some Changes Are on the Way
Over the next week or so we will be updating our web site with slight changes and we would like to aplogize for any confusion that this might cause. We are efforting to make our e-commerce more intuitive and adding options. For the moment WE ARE SHIPPING TREES AND SHRUBS as of today. We are taking orders for forbs and grasses but the shipping for that will start May 15th. So anyone wishing to place orders on-line and have questions please call me at the office and I will help with more information.
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Surviving Winter
It’s cold outside today…like, really cold. And while our solution to keeping safe in these temperatures is simply not to engage, our plants just don’t have that option. From the cozy warmth of my insulated home, I gaze out at my perennial garden and think about the lush green plants that will begin to pop up in the spring. Year after year, they endure freezing temperatures and still manage to emerge in all their glory when the time is right.
Part of the joy of planting native perennials is knowing that they are cold hardy to our climate zone. In Illinois, our cold hardiness zone is 6 for the northern part of the state and 5 for the southern half and the small area surrounding Lake Michigan. Native plants of our region have evolved to survive the harsh winters in these zones, but how exactly do they do that??
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Rate of Growth (Just a quick note)
We recieved a call just the other day from a person looking for for a "fast growing" tree and that a smaller starter plant would be preferred. I offered up a Quercus muehlenbergii (Chinquapin Oak) and ran down the list of superlatives that made it why I'd plant that for his needs other than many others that might work for him. I was stopped half way through; "Woah, woah, woah. Oak trees don't grow fast. They're oaks. They grow slow. I want a sugar maple." After a brief exchange, I was left thinking about why people continue to think oaks grow slowly. So I thought I would post a very quick note.
It has been our experience that many oak species grow as fast or faster than many of the maple species that they are so often replaced by. Our oaks grow at a rate of 30 to 48 inches or more in a given season, where our maples might give us half that number.
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Small Window into using a Native or a Cultivar for Pollinators
Several months ago I was talking to a friend of mine from the east coast, and we were discussing pollinators and the plant lists that seem to be leaping from every corner of the web from all kinds of sources. We both agreed that the whole idea of gardening for pollinators is a good thing and that the use of natives were improving, along with understanding of native plant needs and importance. But many of the sources included or were dominated by non-natives or cultivars.
