Gardening for All Four Seasons

Landscape Design

When we think of our gardens, we think of colorful flowers blooming in the spring, growing at a prolific rate in the summer, gradually fading in the fall, and then in the winter, we nostalgically wait to see some pop of color again. But, with a little planning and perhaps some professional help, you can have a garden that showcases delightful swaths of color all year round.

Planting the Foundation

If flowers are the stars of gardens, trees and shrubs are the best supporting actors; they provide the structure necessary for the stars to shine. Trees and shrubs provide the shade necessary for your garden to thrive.

Trees like maple and red oak will provide beautiful foliage in the fall, and dogwood and the eastern redbud bloom in early spring, bringing your garden necessary color soon after winter. Evergreens do what they say they will do…they stay green all throughout the winter, reminding us that not everything is gray, brown, and white.

Shrubbery such as holly bushes will provide a nice pop of red color throughout the winter and provide perfect clippings for holiday décor. Most holly bushes need both a male and female bush planted near each other to be able to produce berries, so keep that in mind when purchasing this shrubbery; only the female will have berries.

Hellebore is a beautiful flowering shrub that is very cold tolerant and does not need to be deadheaded or pruned back when fall comes, and their flowers are some of the first to arrive in spring. During the winter months, don’t be alarmed if you see the shrubs lying flat! They are not dead; they are just trying to gather warmth from the ground. As the temperatures rise, so will they.

Hydrangeas, azaleas, rhododendrons, and lilacs are popular shrubs in New England, and produce an abundance of blooms throughout the spring and summer. Lilacs are especially popular in New England, as they were traditionally planted near kitchen windows or doors to help with odor control. The oldest living lilacs in North America are here in New Hampshire, at the Governor Wentworth House in Portsmouth; they are thought to have been planted in 1750!

Creating a Colorful Palette

The next thing to think about in your garden plan is adding interest. Planting borders of mixed perennials are a great way to add long-lasting and stress-free color and interest to your landscaping. Plant once and forget about it, mostly, but it’s best to divide perennials every couple of years to stimulate blooming and growth. You’ll want to aim for a good mix of colors, textures, heights, bloom times, and blooming durations.

Irises, daffodils, tulips, and crocuses bloom quickly in the spring, giving us first glimpses of color. These are great for getting your garden started.

Allium will provide color and height along with visual interest in summer, as will poppies. Lavender keeps its purple color for a long time once it blooms. Sunflowers will add height and color in the summer to the fall, and zinnias are perfect for a wondrous splash of color closer to the ground. Perennials like mums and asters will provide color until frost and will come back year-after-year to provide color when the rest of the garden is dying off.

Stephens Landscaping Garden Center - everything you need to know about mulch - landscape with mulch gardenAdding Layers

Ornamental grasses are perfect for filling in between the flower layer and the tree/shrubbery layers. These colorful grasses will add depth to your design, and visual interest to your four-season garden.

Grasses to consider include:

  • White sage: These fragrant, silvery white leaves will go well in any garden and are deer and rabbit resistant.
  • Elijah blue fescue: These stunning dwarf grasses add a delightful visual interest and a great bit of color to any garden.
  • Purple fountain grass: This grass is noted for their calming movements as much as their burgundy plumage.
  • Little Bluestem: This popular border grass is noted for growing straight up, and for its beautiful bronze color in the fall.

Ferns, hostas, and other foliage are a great addition to gardens as well. Hostas come in a variety of patterns, leaf sizes, and leaf shapes. There are many varieties of ferns, and each can bring something special to your garden:

  • Ostrich Fern is big and showy and can grow up to six feet tall.
  • American Royal Fern grows well next to hostas and will grow to about five feet in a shady garden.
  • Himalayan Maidenhair Fern is a great groundcover and is evergreen.

With a little forward planning, and some carefully chosen plants, your garden can be a showcase to be proud of throughout the year.

At Stephens Landscaping, we have the knowledge and the experience to help you make the most out of your four-season garden.  Contact us to discuss your ideas or give us a call at 603.707.0630 to discuss your fall planting project, and be sure to visit our Garden Center for all of your planting and holiday decorating needs. We’ve got new plants coming in weekly, all available for delivery.

Rain is Here to Stay

Landscape Design

Fall and winter in New England produce a lot of rain and snow. All that water will make its way down our roofs, through our gutters and drainpipes, across our lawns and driveways, out to the street, into our municipal water supplies, and out into streams, lakes, and oceans. With that water unfortunately comes pollution, however unintended.

As homeowners, is there anything we can do to mitigate the damage unclean stormwater can do to our local environment? As a matter of fact, there’s an easy and beautiful way to both clean the water and add beauty to your landscaping—install a rain garden!

Rain gardens can be a lovely and cost-effective way of “going with the flow”, pardon the pun. A rain garden can add a focal point while also serving to reduce and clean stormwater runoff from your property and possibly alleviating possible future water problems, like water in your basement, if installed correctly.

What is a Rain Garden?

A rain garden is a dip or indent in the ground that where plants are sown; this garden area is specifically designed to collect, treat, and filter stormwater runoff. Because these gardens are sunk lower than the lawn, the dirty runoff water collects there instead of running directly into the street, and is absorbed slowly into the dirt, and/or filtered by your plants.

Where Should I Put My Garden?

A rain garden should be at least ten feet away from your house, to keep it away from your house’s foundation, and at least fifty feet away from any septic system or well. If you are unsure about the quality of your soil, a good test is to dig a hole about twelve inches deep and pour water into it; if the water disappears within twenty-four hours, the soil is the perfect quality to host a rain garden.

Rain Garden Planting Areas & Plant Suggestions

When considering plants for your rain garden, remember you’ll have three areas to consider:

  • The edge: This is the top of the rain garden, where there is a mound of dirt. This is the highest point. You’ll need to select plants that prefer drier conditions here. Some plant ideas include:
    • White Turtlehead: They prefer dry soil and pollinators love them
    • Hairy Beardtongue: These delicate blooms attract hummingbirds and butterflies
    • Butterfly Milkweed: These tiny and lovely orange flowers are long blooming
  • The slope: As its name implies, this is the part that goes downward from the top of the edge to the bottom, and out from the middle to the edge. Choose plants that can handle both moisture and dry conditions.
    • Wild Bergamot: This striking flower adds color and attracts pollinators
    • Bottlebrush Grass: This wispy tall grass is perfect for providing texture and visual interest
    • Blue False Indigo: This perennial bush will add deep blue flowers to your garden
  • The base: The bottom is the most wet part of the rain garden, and plants here need to be able to survive the wettest conditions.
    • Astilbe: Choose pink, red, purple, or white moisture-loving perennials
    • Swamp Rose Mallow: Large, showy blooms make a great centerpiece for your garden
    • Winterberry: The bright red berries will add welcome color to your garden throughout the winter months

For more helpful information on rain gardens, we recommend clicking here!

 

One Last Consideration

While rain gardens are relatively easy to install, an improperly installed one can cause problems with drainage—the thing they were designed to help alleviate. We’ve helped many homeowners add rain gardens to their properties, and we’d love to help you add this functional beauty spot to your own. Please call us at 603.707.0630 or email us to get started.

Fall into Planting for Spring

Planting

When winter gives way and spring is on the horizon, many of our thoughts turn to our gardens, lawns, and planning what to plant in the coming year. But, from a landscaping perspective, fall is a much better time to plant anything but annuals or plants too delicate to survive our cold winters.

It may seem strange to plant when the usual growing season is winding down, but by planting in the fall, you’re giving your plants a better chance of survival. Then in the spring when your plants start to grow, you’ll be ahead of the game and your landscaping will look great in a shorter period of time.

Why plant in the fall?

When plants grow in the summer, many factors—hot temperatures, varying humidity levels, drought, or occasional periods of heavy rain—tend to add stress to plants. In the fall, the soil is still warm enough to nourish growing plants, and the more moderate temperatures and increased rain will give your plantings a healthy, stress-free start.

The cooler air temperatures in the fall mean that the plants will not waste a lot of their energy growing upward. Instead, they will focus their energy downward, establishing strong root systems before going dormant in cold weather. When spring arrives, your plants will already have a strong foundation from which to grow, making them hardier for the growing season, and giving them a better chance for survival.

As you’ve watched over your lawn and gardens through the summer, you’ve undoubtedly lost some plants or found some trouble spots. Autumn is a great time to work on those problem areas.

It’s also the perfect time to add shrubs and trees specifically for winter interest, and add a bit of color to our usually stark and colorless landscape. Trees like basswood/linden and spruce trees prefer to be planted in the fall and do really well in cold weather. A hawthorn tree will produce beautiful white flowers in the spring, and by planting a maple tree, you’ll get beautiful colors on the leaves next autumn. The Japanese maple, a garden favorite, does best when planted in the fall. Really, most any tree or shrub that will grow in our New England environment can be planted in the fall, and these trees prefer to have the extra time to root themselves deeply before the summer growing season.

As for personal comfort level, planting in the fall is a bit more pleasant as the cooler temperatures make it easier to work outside on your property without the bright sun and high humidity of summer months. An added bonus to working in the garden in the fall is that fewer weeds will grow, and there will be fewer insects and pests to deal with.

Planning for Spring Beauty

There are a great variety of things you can plant now to give you early pops of color in your spring yard. Plants like tulips and hyacinths need cold temperatures before they will bloom; crocuses, winter heath, and snowdrops will bloom through the snow. Lilly of the valley and bleeding hearts will add early color to your garden, as will peonies, pansies, and violets. If deer are a problem, consider planting things that deer do not like to nibble on, like grape hyacinths, daffodils, or anything from the allium family.

If you’d like to add a bit of greenery to your landscape, select a cold-season turf to help the bare or brown spots in your lawn, or add trees and shrubs to your property for added interest.

Plan to get all plantings in the ground about six weeks before the usual date of first frost, and mulch your plants before the nights get too cool, which will protect your plants even further. And all your landscaping needs a good fertilizing this time of year to get it ready for winter, so be sure to add a little extra to your new plants for some TLC.

Extending the Season

If you are not quite ready for the growing season to be over, there are some plants you can plant in the fall that will be ready to harvest until the winter, and even through the cold months. (Just make sure to plant them six weeks before the first frost.) Some cold tolerant plants that can be grown in our zone include:

  • Lettuce (it can grow after a little snow or frost)
  • Broccoli
  • Cauliflower
  • Spinach
  • Carrots
  • Cilantro
  • Turnips
  • Peas
  • Radishes
  • Kale (will grow all through the winter)

Let us help you prepare your landscaping for fall and the growing seasons beyond. Give us a call at 603.707.0630 or email and we’ll work with you to come up with a plan to get ready for spring and beyond.

Getting Into the Holiday Spirit

Garden Center

The holiday season is upon us! While New England can look perfectly picturesque under freshly fallen snow, you can add to the charm of the holidays and winter season by adding a festive touch to your home—both inside and out.

No matter what holidays you celebrate, you can add a cheery charm to your home by bringing a little bit of the outside indoors with thoughtfully designed pieces of décor and a comforting, warm glow through your lighting design. Home exteriors and landscapes can look beautifully luminous decked out with greenery and a mix of ribbon, berries, twinkle lights, with loose boughs or arrangements in varying sizes.

This time of year, when the leaves have fallen from the trees and there may (or may not yet) be snow on the ground, the lack of color can be a bit, well, dull. The easiest way to bring color and a bit of nature into and around your home this holiday season is to decorate with fresh greenery.

Decorating Outside

Wreaths and baskets on a front door are traditional holiday décor, but you there are many ways to customize these items to make it your very own, and better fit with your home’s design and surrounding landscape. Of course, you can match the ribbon to your door color, add a ribbon of your family’s tartan, hang a wreath or basket with your family’s name written on it or on the hanging ribbon, use two or three smaller wreaths or baskets instead of one large one…there are many possibilities!

The outdoor entrance lights installed next to the front door are great places to hang wreaths or garlands that match or complement the wreath on the entrance, as are any lamp posts that flank the walkways around your property. Adding large bows to the greens can add a nice pop of color to your outdoor space.

A beautiful way to illuminate your home for the season is to weave weather-resistant, battery-operated light strings into wreaths or garlands that are hung on the outside of windows. They’ll bring a festive glow to your home and the surrounding landscape for the holidays. Adding window boxes filled with mixed greens, red berries, ribbons, and tiny lights are another way to include your windows to your holiday decorating plan.

Indoor Décor

The holiday season is a social season. It’s the time of year when we spend the most time with family and friends, with many people hosting or attending parties and open houses. It’s the perfect opportunity to decorate your entire home from top to bottom, and the possibilities here are almost endless. Every room can get into the holiday spirit with a little greenery and accent lighting.

The kitchen and dining room are great places to incorporate some greenery-based décor. Garlands strung with lights and intertwined with fruit and berries look great on top of kitchen cabinets and laid out across tables, extending from holiday centerpieces. Sprigs of greens, berries, and pinecones tied to chair backs add a festive touch to a dining room.  And, arrangements of all shapes and sizes can complement your aesthetic.

In other parts of the house, garlands surrounding artwork, mirrors, and fireplaces can add a pleasant focal point to a room. Small arrangements interspersed with statues and/or candles and lights, and thoughtfully placed on bookcases, tables, and bureaus add to the overall charm of your holiday décor.

Candles are an indispensable part of many holiday celebrations, and it’s easy to add a bit of greenery and colored ribbons to candelabras to match with your family’s observances. Candles create such a warm glow adding a holiday ambiance to a dark winter’s evening.

And finally, kissing balls are a traditional holiday favorite, and can be used in both indoor and outdoor designs—they look great hung on a doorway lintel, from a chandelier, above a fireplace mantle, in front of a mirror, and outside near a front door, on a porch, on a driveway light pole, or even on a mailbox.

Getting Creative

At our Garden Center in Moultonborough, we have greenery and arrangements ready for purchase. We’re also happy to work with you in designing something that’s just right for your home. You can also bring in your own planter or container, and we’ll create a stunning piece for you. If you’d prefer something already premade for your home or for gifts as you visit family and friends this season, we carry many beautiful arrangements of varying size and design from which you can choose.

Our new holiday hours at the Garden Center are: Monday through Saturday 9 – 5, Sunday 10 – 3 from November 22 – December 24. Please call the Garden Center at 603.677.9100 or reach out if there’s anything in particular you’re looking for or would like custom designed by one of our creative team members. And, of course if you’re in need of assistance preparing your landscape for the holidays or winter ahead, let us know. We’re here to help!

Our Favorite Native Landscape Additions

Planting

Native plants occur naturally and have meaningful effects and benefits to birds, butterflies, bees, and other wildlife. They are low maintenance, beautiful, require less water and fertilization, and help the climate by storing carbon dioxide, and providing vital habitat for wildlife. Utilizing native plants in your landscape means they are more likely to establish quickly and will be hardy. Some of our favorite natives that we incorporate into almost all of our landscape designs include:

Perennials

  • Joe Pye Weed: These fast-growing flowers are favorites of butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. The tall, vanilla-scented wildflowers grow in leaf clusters several feet high, and in the summer, tiny mauve colored flowers appear on top of the leaf stems. They prefer an area that’s full sun to partial shade, and moist, well-drained soil. It’s best to plant these when there’s no chance of frost.
  • New England Aster: This is a favorite here in New England and can be seen practically everywhere. This easily-recognizable flower grows to about five feet tall, and while the most popular variety has a medium purple flower with a dark yellow center, asters come in different shades of purple and even pink! This aster is drought-tolerant, deer resistant, and does well in all types of soil. It’s a late summer to early fall bloomer, and while it’s blooming, you may see the lower leaves drying up. But, don’t worry…your plants are not dying; this is normal.
  • Blue Flag Iris: These lovely, classic irises are great additions to your garden, and do especially well around any water feature. They prefer soil that is acidic, rich, and moist, and to be located in an area that is full sun to part shade. These are early bloomers, and you can expect to see flowers from May to July. These are known to attract pollinators as well as hummingbirds.
  • Sweetfern: This zero-maintenance plant has a sweet scent when crushed, and the leaves resemble little ferns, as its name implies. This shrub will spread itself out over the years, making clones of itself throughout your garden. It does well in poor, acidic soil, and is known to be a “nitrogen-fixer”.
  • Hayscented Fern: This is a great fern if you have an area that needs some good coverage. These ferns prefer shade to part shade and grow from to eighteen to twenty-four inches in height. The fronds grow into a beautiful green color from the spring into the summer, and in the fall, turn a lovely yellow. When disturbed, the fern gives off an odor similar to fresh-cut hay.

Shrubs

  • Low Bush Blueberry: This low bush is a great idea for an area where you need ground cover, or a nice border edge. The shrubs don’t grow very tall; they only get to a height of about two feet. They are very picky about their soil conditions, preferring sandy, well-drained and rich soil, and they like to be in full sun or partial shade. In the spring, they’ll feature small white flowers, the summer will bring some sweet edible berries (not the big ones you see in the supermarket, but still delicious and enjoyable. For those big commercial sized berries, you’ll need to plant the high bush blueberry, which is described below), and in the fall, the leaves will turn a very vibrant red. This shrub will add color to your garden for many seasons.
  • High Bush Blueberry: If you’ve ever gone blueberry picking at a farm, you probably picked from a high bush blueberry. They are the most commercially-grown variety, and their berries are featured in most stores and farmers’ markets. These shrubs handle our cooler temperatures well, and they actually need some cold days in the winter to form berries in the spring; they’re perfect for New England. These bushes like moist soil but not standing water, so they should be planted on a slope for good drainage. They prefer full sun to partial shade (the more sun, the more blooms, more fruit, and more brightly colored fall leaves.) They do require regular watering.
  • Clethra: Also known as summersweet or sweet pepperbush, this flowering shrub grows from three to eight feet tall, and features fragrant white, bottle-shaped flowers. This plant blooms in stages throughout the summer, and while it prefers wet soil (it’s usually found around the shoreline), it is drought-resistant once it has become established. It’s a favorite of pollinators like bees and butterflies.
  • Winterberry Holly: This classic Christmas favorite is a perfect choice for adding winter color in your garden. While the shrub will drop its leaves in the fall, the red berries will continue to grow up until the spring. While the berries are a favorite feast for a variety of birds, they are toxic to people, dogs, and cats. The shrub can grow in both wet and dry soils, and in full sun, part shade, and full shade conditions. They grow from six to ten feet tall. You must plant a male and a female shrub of the same species in order to have the shrubs bloom at the same time and to have berries grow.
  • Kalmia Latifolia: Commonly known as mountain laurel, you can see this flowering shrub in gardens all over New England. Its delicate pink and white bowl-shaped blooms appear in late spring and early summer, and once the blooms have passed, the dark green leaves will stay on the shrub throughout the winter months, adding a welcome patch of color. This shrub is a favorite of pollinators and does best in moderate to partial shade. It prefers to stay moist, so it’s best to keep your shrub watered well.
  • Serviceberry: This plant can either be grown as a sizable shrub or small tree. In early spring, it blooms in pinkish white flowers, which then turn to delicious berries that look like blueberries but are a bit sweeter; they are ripe when the berry is a dark purple. In the fall, the leaves turn a beautiful shade of deep reddish orange. It prefers to be in full sun to light shade; the more sun, the better the flower and fruit production. It will tolerate many soil types. During the first year after you’ve planted, make sure to keep it well watered; after that, it will be pretty drought tolerant.


Trees

  • Birch: Birch trees are a popular choice in many yards. Most everyone in New England is familiar with these tall, stately white bark trees. But birches come in many different varieties as well as the more known white ones. There are short shrub-type birches with reddish leaves that do well in a rain garden, a dwarf birch is a shrub good for ground cover and tolerates cold weather well. River birch are a tall pinkish-brown tree that “sheds” its bark throughout the season and features dark green leaves that turn a beautiful yellow in the fall, as well as many more! We’d love to discuss what variety would work best for you and your landscape.
  • Sugar Maple: As New Englanders, we love our sugar maples. This tree is the primary source for maple syrup, a long-enjoyed tradition here in northern New England and a popular wood for furniture. This fast-growing tree needs room to grow, and prefers deep, well-drained loam or light clay. Once mature, this tree provides good shade in the summer, and spectacular foliage of bright red and orange in the fall.
  • Red Maple: This is a tall tree. With heights reaching about 100 feet and a spreading root system, this is a tree that needs a lot of space in which to grow. This tree is easy growing, and not fussy—it grows well in both wet and dry soils, is fairly drought-tolerant, and does well in shady or sunny locations.
  • Eastern Hemlock: This tall tree can grow up to 100 feet but can also be used as a hedge with proper, consistent pruning. It needs to have good drainage and be away from strong winds. The foliage of the eastern hemlock is fragrant and attracts both birds and butterflies, and will yield an abundance of pine cones. This tree is a slow grower, and needs direct sunlight and moist, well-drained soil. This tree will grow into a pyramid shape when not trimmed.

There are many options available to you to add year-round interest and color to your garden and landscape. We’d love to help you create a plan to maximize your space and achieve all of your landscape goals. Contact us to discuss your ideas or give us a call at 603.707.0630, and be sure to visit our Garden Center. We’ve got new plants coming in weekly, a wide selection of pottery, landscape aggregates, and annuals—all available for delivery! Come visit us Monday – Saturday: 8:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M. Closed Sunday. Or give us a call at 603.677.9100 if you have any questions or are looking for something special.