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2012 HOME & GARDEN MAGAZINE. LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com May 25, 2012
21
Blooms in sun or shade
Often gardeners struggle with getting
color into shaded areas. Red, pink, orange
and white impatiens and begonias have been
wonderful additions to landscapes and in
planters. However, yellow pops better than any
other color. Ball Seed introduced new yellow
impatiens. You can now choose from 20-30
different varieties of impatiens.
If you have a porch wall or fence that you
want to accentuate with a mass of bloom,
how about hanging one of the easy-to-care-
for vertical bags? For shade,
choose impatiens; if it’s
a sunny place, how about
petunias?
Sunny ground
If you have a patch
of ground and you want
something
that
creates
drama, how about a mass
planting of Echinacea? Gone
are the days of only purple
coneflowers.
Echinacea’s
all-season performance, new
varieties and new colors have made this plant a
favorite. Connie says people put in whole beds
with different colors mixed. The greenhouse
has 25 different colors.
Perennial foliages, shrubs and trees
According to Connie, people are still
planting more ornamental grasses. And no
wonder -- beautiful, elegant and easy to care
for, grasses offer texture, color and fill a space
nicely at a reasonable price.While some grasses
are annual, many are perennial.
Though the purple fountain grass is an
annual, it is another one of Connie’s favorites.
She likes to combine it with other flowers as
a pot filler. Even if the other flowers die out,
the grass lasts through the summer and is great
with fall mums added, she says.
To satisfy the customer’s preference, the
greenhouse carries over 30 kinds of grasses.
Growers continue to develop new plant
varieties. New shrubs and perennials are more
drought-, pest- and disease-resistant.
Hostas continue to be a top favorite in
central Illinois landscapes. Primarily grown for
their foliage, hostas offer elegant, broad-leaved
low growth suitable for deep shade. Several new
hostas are sun-tolerant.
The stir this year is a new deer-resistant hosta.
While interested, Elliot remains slightly skeptical,
saying he’s “yet to see how it performs.”
He does give his stamp of approval to the new
Korean-like lilac varieties with longer bloom-time
and compact growth, making it quite suitable for
formal landscapes.
Elliot favors the Japanesemaples, both standard
upright and a wonderful
new weeping variety. He
also recommends low-
maintenance boxwood. “I
always suggest putting those
in landscapes,” he said.
Something else exciting
this year, new butterfly
bushes offer a more
compact, bushy appearance,
maturing at 5 feet tall and
up to 4 feet wide.
When summer is all but
done, a new crop of colorful blooms will become
available at the greenhouse as 30,000 field-grown
mums reach maturity.
And then, the Burgett family will slow down
just slightly as they start looking at seed catalogs,
go to trial gardens, talk to sales reps and plan next
year’s garden surprises for you.
Connie’s Country Greenhouse
325 2400th Ave., Latham, IL 62543