Geraniums–the Specialty group

The group of Specialty Geraniums are like that drawer in your kitchen.  Everything in there is interesting and useful but you don’t quite know where to put it.

Specialty Geraniums have  colorful foliage, unusual flowers, different growth habits or some other feature that is unique.  Some are very strong growers–I use the variety Contrast as a winter houseplant in a sunny window.  They all do well in mixed containers because they are so interesting.

This geranium variety is Contrast, grown for its tri-colored foliage.

Crystal Palace Gem, with round leaves variegated with different shades of green.

Happy Thought has very unique foliage, green with a creamy/white center.

Geranium Tricolor, another variety with great variegated foliage.

Annuals in the Perennial Bed, Part 1

This is part one of two of the “annuals in the perennial bed” topic.

Most people will agree that best thing about a perennial bed is the bright color that it provides throughout the summer.  But even the longest blooming perennials have times in the season where they do not look like much.  That is why it is always a great idea to add annuals to your perennial bed.  Many annual species will bloom the entire summer, and have bright, vibrant colors.  The best place for them is usually the perennial border, but some taller annuals will be able to fit in the middle of the bed as well.  Try using larger swaths of annuals whenever possible to give the garden a big burst of color.  Another way to use annuals in the perennial bed is by using a large pot full of bright colors on a stand to create an intresting focal point in the middle of the garden. 

I asked our greenhouse grower to come up with a list of annuals that he thinks works best in the perennial bed and he broke the plants down into sunny and shady locations.  This first list is for very sunny locations: 

• You can’t beat petunia–especially Whispers Red, Supertunia Bordeaux (purple), Whispers White, Bubblegum (a really LARGE plant, pink) or Whispers Pink (bright, hot pink).
• Marigold for yellow or orange.
• Ageratum for blue.  Ageratum from packs are good but less vigorous than Ageratum from larger pots.  
• For a ground cover: Lobularia.  It is a very vigorous and heat-tolerant form of Alyssum.
• More subtle would be any of the Coleus that we grow –great foliage color.  They mix very well with perennials.
• Zonal Geraniums, especially if you need something taller than petunias.
• Verbena.  They occupy the same niche as petunias, but not quite as blatant.
• Annual grasses (several heights available) look like perennials and can help fill an area until the permanent plants grow out.
• Lantana is slow to get going, but from July until frost looks like a flowering shrub, and it is virtually indestructible.
  

  In this particular planting bed, a few varieties of annuals mix well with daylilies and roses. The annuals will give the planter great color even when the perennials are not in bloom. This bed was planted by Abrahamson Nurseries.

 

Geraniums–interspecies types

All annual Geraniums are probably a mix of species, from somewhere in their past.  The ‘interspecies’ types we’re talking about here are crosses between Zonal Geraniums and Ivy Geraniums.  These have been around for lots of years, but lately there have been some additions that are really standout varieties.

Calliope Dark Red is a cross between Zonal Geraniums and Ivy Geraniums.

The most notable of these is Calliope Dark Red.  Until you see it in person, you can’t even imagine how red this flower is.  And the bloom heads are huge.  The foliage leans more toward the Zonal type (not so shiny and pointed as an Ivy Geranium).  The habit is halfway between the upright growth of a Zonal and the trailing growth of an Ivy Geranium.   They can be grown in baskets or containers, or in flower beds as well.  The breeders are working on new colors for the Calliope series.

Geranium Caliente Fire

The Caliente series is another cross between a Zonal Geranium and an Ivy Geranium.  They don’t grow as large as Calliope, and are more upright in habit.  They have bright and hot flower colors.  They can almost be considered a true Zonal Geranium, except for this trait:  they are really good in hot weather–maybe the most heat tolerant of all the Geraniums we grow.

The Caliente series already has several colors.  Note that the flowers are single, whereas most Zonal Geranium flowers are doubles.  Single flowers are not quite so fancy as double flowers.  Single flowers do have an advantage.  The spent  flowers seldom need to be pinched off the plant.  The single petals just blow away when they are finished.  This plant always looks good and needs little maintenance from you.  Your part is to keep it watered and fertilized and in the sun.  It’s part is to look good and flower all summer long!

Caliente Hot Coral. Note the single flowers.

Caliente Pink

5 New Ideas for your Garden

Have you wanted to do something new in your yard, but run out of ideas?  Or maybe you just want to try something different.  Here are 5 great ideas that are sure to make your yard more beautiful, functional, and enjoyable!

Sitting patio with fire pit overlooking White Bear Lake. Patio designed and installed by Abrahamson Nurseries.

Small Sitting Patio– A sitting patio could be as small as 30 square feet.  You only need to be able to fit two or three chairs, a small table, and possibly a fire pit.  Pick a spot in the yard that you would want to sit in.  Maybe it’s tucked in a secluded spot, or maybe it’s out front so you can watch the kids get on and off the bus.  Wherever it is, it is always nice to surround the patio with plants, especially ones that give of a good fragrance.  You want to make this a very comfortable and inviting place to sit and read, relax, or chat. 

Blueberries not only taste great, they add great color and interest to the landscape.

Edible Garden – While some people prefer the traditional vegetable garden, why not put edible plants all through your garden.  There are many ways to incorporate edibles into your garden.  Add blueberries next to your evergreens, plant rhubarb in the perennial bed, or install a trellis for beans along the garage.  Use lettuce, carrots, or cabbage as a border plant, and use tomatoes or peppers in planters on the patio.  Planting edibles in your yard not only gives you fresh fruits and vegetables to munch on during the summer, but also teaches the kids where their food comes from.   

A bubbling rock water feature next to a front porch. Designed and installed by Abrahamson Nurseries.

Bubbling Water Feature – While most people would love the look and sound of a large water feature in their yard, they are afraid of the maintenance and upkeep of such a feature.  A pondless bubbling water feature is much smaller, still gives you the sound, look and feel of water, but is very little maintenance.  Because they can fit in small spaces, they are perfect for around the back patio or front porch.   

Children’s Garden – If you have little ones, this could be a big hit in your yard.  While children’s gardens can very a lot, there are some common themes.  The most important thing is getting the kids involved – and outdoors.  Put the garden in a spot that is enclosed enough for the kids to feel like they are in their own space, but make sure you can view the garden from the house.  Give the kids spaces where they can plant their own plants, and encourage them to try lots of different plants.  Use large outcroppings or boulders that they can sit on or climb around on.  Make it a shady area so they are comfortable in the hot summertime.  Try installing a large chalkboard that the kids can play with.  Make a cool entrance into the garden by creating a “tunnel”, made from wooden trellis and grape vines.  There are lots of ideas that can give your kids a great play area where they will want to spend time outside rather than at the TV.        

Native Garden – Obviously, this garden will depend heavily on where you live.  Here in Minnesota, if you have a large, sunny open area, maybe you want to try a native prairie garden.  Make it small enough that you can manage it, but big enough where it still makes a statement.  If you have woods on your property, try a native woodland garden.  There are many native plants that are very beautiful and functional for landscape purposes.  Not only will you be turning the ecosystem back to where it wants to be, you will teach others about the native landscape.    

Remember, we are here to help you at Abrahamson Nurseries, so if you need help with the design or install, give us a call!  Got any other great ideas that you want to share?  Post them below in the comment section!

Geraniums, again

Pelargonium peltatum, the South African ancestor of the annual plant we call Geraniums.

There are an infinite number of ways to organize the Geranium group.  Besides Zonals  (see previous post),  I group them as Zonal, Ivy, Regal, Specialty Geranium, and Inter-species Geranium.  There are some other minor groups that are mostly known just to collectors.

The Ivy Geranium

The Ivies are the trailing geraniums that you see in baskets and containers.  They have a shiny, waxy star pointed leave, and sometimes have a zone of dark mahogany near the out edge of the leaf.  They don’t support themselves because the stems are limber–they cascade over the edge of their container.

Years ago the Ivy Geraniums had long, long trailing stems and it took a lot of pinching to try and keep them bushy.  And they didn’t flower very well, especially in hot weather.  They were considered a northern European flower that did well in cool summers.  Now there are varieties that are bushy and have lots of flowers,  and they are much more tolerant of summer heat.  The best ivy geraniums that I see are growing with morning sun and afternoon shade, or bright shade all day long.  Or, with diligent watering they can take almost full sun and still do be lush and showy.

Regal Geranium

Regal Geraniums get the ‘Most Improved’ award.  Some remember these as Martha Washington geraniums.  The leaves are rough and have an interesting fragrance (black walnut?).  They have large florets, frequently bi-colored flowers, and make a stunning show.  The old Martha Washington varieties flowered once in the spring and that was it, although they were so spectacular that they were still popular.

The new varieties of Regal Geraniums will flower all summer, even in the heat, even in bright sunlight.  The flowers are larger, they last longer, they’re brighter, richer, thicker–everything about Regals has gotten better.    They still have an old-fashioned look about them, but because of the improvements you can enjoy them all summer.

Formal Garden Design

As a landscape designer, I love different types of projects and the new challenges that come with them.  I also love to develop solutions to problems by being creative with spaces, plants, materials, and topography.  Recently, it seems that one form of design, or solution, has been underutilized: the formal garden.  I will admit, the formal garden has a specific place, and does not work in every situation, but when it works, it can create a very elegant and dramatic place for entertaining or relaxing.  Here are some places that formal gardens may work, and then some ideas to make a strong statement with your formal garden. 

Finding a Suitable Space for Your Formal Garden

Finding the perfect space for a formal garden can be a bit tricky.  Often times they are forced into a place that doesn’t fit the design, and then they become an awkward space.  A formal garden needs both a larger open space, and some enclosure.  If you have a large open yard, you can use that space, but you will want to have some sort of enclosure around the usable space of the garden.  An overhead structure, screening plants, or even a half wall can accomplish this.  If you don’t have much room, and are tucking the garden next to the house, extend the lines of the house as far as you can to make the space feel longer.   

Allee of Trees found at the Miller Garden in Columbus, Indiana

Strong Linear Forms

The basis for most formal gardens is strong, bold linear shapes.  If the space is right next to the house, try and bring those lines from the house out into the landscape.  This can be done using patio shapes, half-walls, hedges, an allee oftrees, or garden bed edges.  Try and make these lines longer and bolder by extending them into the yard a ways past the heart of the garden.  Perfect circles and arcs can also be important in the formal garden.  A circle in the middle of a lot of strong lines can be a very bold statement.  Use different materials to create the same lines.  When the patio edge stops, pick that line up with the bed edge, or a row of plants.  Also, using long rows of certain perennials, like daylily, coral bells, hosta, or veronica, along sidewalks or along the bed edge can create a nice formal feeling.   

Symmetry

Symmetry is very important in the formal garden.  It is a good idea to set up axis’s when designing your formal garden, and after you do, set things off of them at the same distance.  Play off each axis to set the rest of your garden spaces up.  A great and easy way to achieve symmetry is by using some formal pots of annuals at entrances/exits to the garden or patio.  Also, half-walls and pillars are great ways to create strong symmetrical lines, especially when they are off-set of an axis.  Groupings of plants in bloom will also create a dramatic feeling, but be sure to use the same number of plants and that they are the same location on different sides of an axis. 

 

This formal garden shows great symmetry, axis, and vertical elements of the skinny evergreens. Notice how the circle becomes very bold with the rest of the linear shapes.

Vertical Elements

A vertical element can be striking in any landscape, but especially in the formal garden.  Tall, skinny evergreens, such as arborvitae or upright junipers fit perfectly into this style of garden.  Try using them on each side of an entrance/exit to the garden or patio, or center them in the bed and use a low hedge around them.  Small ornamental trees, such as serviceberry or hydrangea tree forms, would also work well in the center of beds.     

This is just a very uick rundown of what a formal garden could start to look like in your yard.  There are many more design elements and ideas that work very well with formal garden design.  If you have some ideas, leave them in the comment section!

As always, if you would like help with your design, Abrahamson Nurseries is here to help, just give us a call!

 

 

Geraniums

The Pelargonium that we call Geranium.

Geraniums are a group of plants with name problems.  These annual bright flowering plants aren’t   really ‘Geraniums’ but more correctly called ‘Pelargoniums’.  They are in the Geranium family, though.  Like any large family, nicknames can be confusing to the outsider.

They’ve improperly been called Geraniums since a name change in 1789,  but we and everyone else still call them Geraniums.  Not to be confused with the perennial garden Geranium,  to which they’re related.

They are native to South Africa and they all are drought and heat tolerant.  That ability to survive and flower is why they have been great garden plants since the 1600′s and earlier.

The family genealogy of this group is almost impossible to organize.   Over the last 400 years there have so many crosses between different species of Pelargoniums that true botanical names are impossible.

So we organize them by type and hope the plants aren’t offended!

This is a Zonal geranium.

The Geranium we probably know the best is the Zonal Geranium.  They are called Zonals because the leaves sometimes have a dark ring toward the outer edge.  The red is the most popular color, but they also come in pink, rose, purple, white…any color except yellow.  And they’re working on producing a yellow!

Over the years this group has improved in almost every way.  They have more flowers and larger flowers, tougher foliage, better branching, and are less prone to disease.

When I started as a greenhouse worker in 1967, the most popular red Zonal Geranium variety was Irene.  It was tall and lanky, and would get grey mold if a cloud passed over.  The varieties we have now are so much more fun to grow, because they really do grow well.

There are four more large groups of geraniums–more in the next post.

Yellow Zonal Geranium from Pac-Elsner (in Europe).

We don’t offer this yellow geranium yet, because it is new and untried here.  We’ll watch the trials this summer and learn how to grow it.  From early reports it is weaker growing than other geraniums–but it is almost yellow and should be fun.

This year’s peat shortage

Add this to a natural disaster list:  The Canadian provinces of Manitoba and New Brunswick account for 70% of the peat harvest on this continent.  The two areas had so much rain last summer, when peat is normally harvested, that only a little bit of peat was harvested.

The peat bog areas need sunny weather for the peat to be dry enough to harvest.  (see the previous Blog).  Because of the wet summer, the peat producers in Canada expect a 75% shortage for 2012.  Canada also has peat bog areas on their Pacific coast, but not enough to be a great use here in the Midwest.

There is some peat harvest in the northern U.S. (Minnesota) but on a small scale when compared to Canada’s harvest area.

This low peat harvest not happened to this extent in living memory.  In other years when the harvest was poor some companies were able to import peat from the Baltic area of Europe.  The shortage this year is so severe that importation won’t fill the need.

There has been some movement toward composted bark and other wood products to help stretch the peat supply for soil mixes.   Some mixes even have coir, which is coconut husk fiber, imported from Sri Lanka or Mexico.

At Abrahamson Nurseries we use a mix of peat, composted bark and perlite for our greenhouse soil mix.  We buy that in the fall, months ahead of our need.  And, we buy it from a company that has been able to supply us even during shortage years.  We’re OK!

Peat harvesters using the vacuum method (shown here) need sunny weather to dry the peat before harvest.

Design Inspiration

A while back, a co worker of mine asked me what keeps me inspired in my designs.  It was a good question, and one that I think anyone who is involved in design work should know the answer to.  In order for me to be as creative as possible, I have to be continually inspired.  This can be especially difficult in the very busy spring and summer months when there is not a lot of time to catch your breath.  When I am working on a handful of projects every day, and usually trying to get things done as fast as possible, inspiration and creativity take a back seat to speed.  That is the time when I need to get re-inspired, and quickly, because I want every project I work on to be as good as it can be.  Here are just a few ways that I do that.

Me, hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park last summer

The biggest way for me to be inspired is by getting out and enjoying nature.  Most of my designs have strong natural themes, and I think this stems from my love of the natural environment.  Hiking through the woods can inspire new ideas, spawn creativity, and help me develop better solutions for design problems.  This obviously takes more time than what I have available during my busy season, but when I get really low on inspiration, this is what I need to do. 

The Federal Court Plaza in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Another great way for me to get re-inspired is by visiting other works of landscape design.  I love walking through St. Paul or Minneapolis and checking out the urban parks and plazas.  I like to dissect these places; what makes them good or bad?  How are spaces used?  How did the designer use lines, shapes, elevations, enclosure, and vegetation?  What is pedestrian flow like?  What are the views in and out of the site?  By analyzing these places, I can try and figure out what the designer’s thoughts and motives were.  This does a lot to re-inspire me.  Not only do I learn from these places, I appreciate good design even more. 

Landscape Architecture Magazine is a great source of inspiration

The quickest way to get some inspiration for me is to look at other projects.  I like to keep old copies of Landscape Architecture Magazine in my desk for the moments when I need some new thoughts.  The creative works of others can really help me with my own projects.  This is especially helpful when I can find projects similar to the one I am working on.  I can find things that I like and dislike about the other project, and use it to inspire new and better ideas. 

These are just three of the many ways that I can be inspired to be a better and more creative designer.  Leave your ways of getting inspired in the comment section!

PEAT MOSS

Peat Moss, familiar to gardeners and essential to nurseries and greenhouses, is dried Sphagnum moss.  Sphagnum is a group of small plants that grow in bogs.  As it dies, it doesn’t decay because of the Sphagnum’s acidity.  The result is a gradually building mass of dead moss plants.

Sphagnum bog before draining and harvest begin.

Peat Moss has a lot going for it.

• It is available, and boy is it available.  There are 270 million acres of peat land in Canada, of which about 40,000 acres is being harvested.
• It is renewable.  After harvesting a bog area for a few years, the bog is restored and Sphagnum starts to grow again.
• It has great qualities for horticulture.  Peat can hold both water and air in a ratio that plants really like.  Root systems take off and grow!

To harvest the peat moss, the bog is temporarily drained and allowed to dry.  It is leveled,  sticks and bushes are removed, and the surface is tilled.  Then, when the top layer is dried it is sucked up with giant vacuums and moved to a storage area.  This is repeated every few days all summer long.  If it rains, and the top layer doesn’t dry out, they just have to wait for sunny weather again.

This leveling auger removes the top trashy growth from the bog and piles it to one side.

The vacuum machines that suck up the dry peat moss.