Gardening Tips
Helleborus (Hellebores)
There are 17 Hellebore species. Most are native to the mountainous regions of Europe, especially the Balkan region of the former Yugoslavia, south along the eastern Adriatic to Greece and Turkey. Many of the species have been interbred, producing countless hybrid Hellebores in a rich array of colors and forms.
Create a Garden with Great Winter Interest
Winters may be long and cold, but your garden can allay that dreariness and be transformed into a place of natural beauty with visually arresting textures, colors, fragrance and flowers. To create such a beautiful winter scene, you need to make sure you select the right plants.
Which Birch to Choose for my Garden?
Impervious to cold and wet, low maintenance and deer resistant, birches are terrific additions to the landscape. Often grown as specimen trees, they look spectacular when planted in groups of three or more.
Underplanting Roses - Companion Plants for Roses
Roses need friends or companion plants around them for various reasons including pest and disease control, longer season of interest and aesthetics. Below are some basic rules to follow when pairing your favorite roses with other plants.
Pretty Roses and Clematis Combination Ideas (Part 1)
When pairing roses and clematis, you need to consider size, color, fragrance, and timing of their respective blooms. The diverse clematis family provides you with a wide choice in terms of flower size (large, small, single, double) and shapes (cross-shaped, bell-shaped, star-shaped), color (purple, blue, pink, red, white or bicolor), fragrance, disease-resistance.
Acer palmatum (Japanese Maple)
Native to Japan, Korea and China, Acer palmatum is a species to which most Japanese Maples belong. It includes a rich variety of deciduous shrubs or small trees with graceful habits, elegantly cut leaves and extraordinarily colorful foliage, particularly in the fall when the leaves warm up to dazzling shades of golden-yellow, red-purple and bronze, before shedding to the ground.
Combining Japanese Maples for long-lasting color impact
Combine Japanese Maples with multiple seasons of interest, forms, leaf shapes or colors will extend their colorful impact in the garden and provide double the pleasure.
Companion Plants for your Japanese Maples
A single Japanese Maple placed in a prominent place attracts attention from every part of the garden. While extraordinarily good-looking on their own, Japanese Maples however, look more charming when planted with companion plants. Well-behaved, they make perfect partners with other plants and help create strikingly beautiful combinations in the garden.
Plant Combination Ideas with Japanese Maples
Japanese Maples can adapt to a wide range of cultural situations. Easy to plant, they are shallow rooted and not serious competitors with companion shrubs.
Underplanting Roses with Low-Growing Spring Bulbs
Underplanting your shrub roses with a succession of flowers will reinforce the beauty of their romantic blooms and extend the flowering season of your mixed border.
Great Rose Companion Plants: Alliums
Roses need friends or companion plants around them for various reasons, including pest and disease control, longer season of interest and aesthetics. Below are some basic rules to follow when pairing your favorite roses with other plants.
Great Rose Companion Plants: Geraniums
Hardy geraniums are classic rose companions. They are great at insinuating themselves among the bare legs of roses, and help reinforce the beauty of their romantic blooms and prevent diseases.
Great Rose Companion Plants: Nepeta, Salvia and Lavandula
Highly placed among the favorite rose companion plants are Nepeta (Catmint), hardy Salvia (Sage) and Lavandula angustifolia (English Lavender), whose exquisite flower heads contrast beautifully with the billowing pink, red, yellow or white roses.
Great Colorful Rose Companion Plants
There is a wide range of companion plants that will bring out the best qualities of your roses and share their space with a serene balance. Find those most frequently admired in mixed rose borders.
Great Foliage Plants as Rose Companions
There is a wide range of foliage plants that will bring out the best qualities of your roses and share their space with a serene balance. Find those most frequently admired in mixed rose borders.
Great Ornamental Grasses to Grow with Your Favorite Dahlias
Fabulous planting partners for dahlias, ornamental grasses help create incredibly beautiful planting combinations. In contrast with dahlias which boldly inject bright colors and broad-petalled flowers in the garden, grasses contribute their beauty in a more subtle fashion through their transparency, luminosity, texture and seasonal changes.
Pretty Roses and Clematis Combination Ideas (Part 2)
Climbing roses and clematis are perfect companions. They also complement one another. The clematis foliage can hide the rose's bare legs. The roses add their lovely fragrance. And when combining their blooms, they often look many times more beautiful, making a much more dramatic impact, than on a standalone basis.
Pretty Roses and Clematis Combination Ideas (Part 3)
Climbing roses and clematis are perfect companions. They happily share the same arch, trellis, pergola, doorway or garden wall, both reaching for the sun and providing a lush vertical floral display. They also have the same natural needs, require the same growing conditions (rich soil, moist, well-drained soils) and benefit from the same fertilizers. Create terrific combinations or get inspired by those presented here!
Combine Late-Flowering Clematis with your Climbing Roses
Combining late flowering Clematis with your roses would have the benefit of extending the season of interest of your roses. Blooming after the roses, the Clematis would use the roses as a support and their elegant blooms would stand out against the foliage of the roses.
Great Clematis for the Midwest
The Chicago Botanic Garden undertook an evaluation project to determine which clematis were suitable for cultivation in midwest gardens. Initiated in the spring of 1990 and continued through the fall of 1995, 64 species and cultivars were included in the project. Here is a list of Clematis varieties which performed extremely well and obtained good to excellent ratings.
Great Clematis for the Pacific Northwest
Here is a list of clematis cultivars and varieties that will reward Pacific Northwest gardeners with exceptional floral displays, provided you respect their cultural conditions and site placement
Combining Roses and Clematis
Before starting combining roses and clematis, you need to learn a few things as not all clematis and roses work well together.
Great Clematis for New England
Here is a list of clematis cultivars and varieties that will reward New England gardeners with exceptional floral displays, provided you respect their cultural conditions and site placement
Combine Early-Flowering Clematis with your Climbing Roses
Combining early flowering Clematis with your roses would have the benefit of advancing the season of interest of your roses. Blooming before the roses, the Clematis would use the roses as a support and their elegant blooms would stand out against the foliage of the roses.
