Newsletter Articles
Preparing Your Yard for Spring
Written by David S.
This fall is the perfect time to start shopping for the flower selection for this upcoming spring. Right now, you have options for:
- Perennials
- Shrubs
- Bare root roses
- Bare root fruit trees
- And more
There are many options available to perk up drab corners of your yard or add new landscaping around patios, gazebos, and outdoor living spaces. Keep reading as we go through the options and throw in some design ideas for fall, winter, and spring projects.
Perennials – High Return on Investments
Perennials are excellent plants because they live for several years or longer. Choosing quality perennials means you do less work and get rewarded every year with beautiful blooms, textures, and greenery for your yard or outdoor living areas.
An excellent example of perennials that get better with time include:
- Climbing roses – Be sure to check out the entire collection of bare root roses that we stock.
- Hydrangea – are available in a few varieties and colors. The oak leaf hydrangea is a lovely way to add texture and color.
- Black-eyed Susan (Gloriosa daisy) Beautifully bold and beautiful, these are easy to propagate by root division. They are also excellent in containers and large pots.
- Clematis – offers gorgeous and dramatic blooms in many colors. These vining plants get better with age and are fantastic around patios, windows, and outdoor living spaces.
- Trumpet vine – An excellent plant for adding bold colors along a fence, on a trellis, or wherever you allow it to climb. A bonus is that hummingbirds love trumpet flowers.
Green thumb nursery also has a gorgeous collection of pots suitable for perennial plants. Containers are an excellent way to add color and texture to your front entryway or break up the static lines along walkways. A good landscaping tip is to use a spilling pot with a trailing plant on linear pathways.
Shrubs – Big, Tall, or Short, and Sweet
Shrubs have several uses in landscaping, and there are so many varieties of shrubs available that they are easy plants to use to create:
- Soft hedgerows – Rock roses are an excellent choice when you want to add a touch of softness to a hedge.
- Splashes of colors – Hydrangea comes in a range of beautiful colors. They range from blue to pink to white. You will need to fertilize them correctly to maintain bright colors, but that is a chore that is worth the reward.
- GreensScapes – When you want a green background, you cannot beat a boxwood hedge or spray.
- Backdrops – are easy to create and a few of the shrubs that help create that beautiful background include boxwoods, hydrangea, ornamental grasses, and others.
- Noise softeners – Taller shrubs with dense foliage help soften noise from traffic.
- Eyesore blockers – Tall shrubs, hydrangea, butterfly bush, and even climbing roses and vines will help create a more pleasing view.
- Etc. Please stop in and shop our collection of shrubs and find the ones that fit your landscape design. Our plant experts are available to help you find plants, products and to answer your questions.
Shrubs come in a variety of sizes, from micro boxwoods to towering butterfly bushes. They are excellent plants when you need to create a barrier or block an eyesore. People also use shrubs to create privacy in their yards and to help block noise from traffic.
Some shrubs, such as rock roses, make a welcoming display, and others can direct foot traffic around your yard. Small hedges along pathways help emphasize the linear structure of walkways or exaggerate the curved lines of the hardscape.
Bare Root Roses
Bare root roses are excellent for adding new roses to your yard. At Green Thumb Nursery, bare root roses come with a soil packing as an added protection for their roots. One of the beautiful things about roses is that they come in so many varieties. You can easily add formality or drama to your yard with roses.
Formal rose gardens and tea roses are magnificent and full of structure. They make lovely additions to outdoor living spaces where you can create sitting areas to enjoy the rose garden.
Climbing roses are an excellent way to highlight a gate, create dappled shade around a window, and add gorgeous color to your landscaping. In addition, they are easy to train into topiary-like hedges or to adore arches around gates or walkways.
There is such a variety of roses and rose types that we encourage you to stop by your local Green Thumb Nursery and browse the fantastic selection. We have five locations throughout Southern California to serve you.
Bare Root Fruit Trees
Never has there been a better time to consider a small orchard in your yard. Right now is an excellent time to consider the variety of fruit trees you would like to grow. So many are dwarf varieties, so they do not take up a lot of room. There are so many options, and they range from:
- Grapes – are easy to grow, and they do not take up much room. They can play a dual role as an accent for a pergola. Choose from an assortment of table grapes such as concord, Thompson seedless, flame, and more.
- Citrus – is an attractive option with varieties of lemons, limes, oranges, tangerines, and hybrids, all making excellent additions to yards. Beyond the fresh fruit, citrus blossoms are an amazing aromatic. Plant them in the ground or containers near a window and allow them to add their beautiful fragrance to your home.
- Stone Fruits – Peaches, nectarines, cherries, and other options are all a delight throughout the year.
- Berries – options are excellent. Choose from thornless varieties of blackberry, lagan berries, raspberries, and other varieties. Berry plants make an excellent hedge, and they produce delicious fruit in late summer.
- Exotics – such as kiwi plants, are another option for your yard. In some warmer spots, you might even coax banana, mango, or guava trees to thrive.
Such beautiful options make it easy to add fruit to your yard. Many of the bare root fruit trees are suitable for containers or in-ground planting. With special pruning techniques, you can keep fruit trees short or espalier them to grow flat along a wall or fence.
If you are unsure how to start, stop by our nurseries and chat with the garden experts. They will show you the types of plants you want and explain their care, soil prep, maintenance, and any tools that you might need. We also carry an incredible array of products that help make your garden and landscaping projects successful.
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