We are moving

As the flowers are starting to change with the seasons, so too is the blog. Head on over to http://blog.americanmeadows.com/ for the latest posts and expanded articles on all of the gardening topics covered here and more. Also, if you subscribe to this RSS feed, you will want to update it to our new feed at http://blog.americanmeadows.com/feed/rss/ to get the latest articles automatically. See you there!

Grow it, don’t mow it.

A great combination of perennials and ornamental grasses.

by Guest Columnist, garden writer Suzanne DeJohn

Many Americans spend at least a few hours every weekend maintaining their lawns. Wouldn’t you rather be lounging in a hammock sipping lemonade and surrounded by beautiful (and low-maintenance) flower gardens?

Over the last 50 years, as supermarket foods became more affordable,  suburban American landscapes went from places filled with vegetable plants, berries, and fruit trees to vast expanses of   lawn.  A perfect carpet of green became a symbol of status and the envy of the neighborhood.   But that perfection came at a price, requiring constant mowing and repeated applications of fertilizers and pesticides.

Now, more and more people are replacing some or all of their lawns with plants that require minimal maintenance and provide year-round beauty. A landscape filled with easy-care trees, shrubs, perennials, and ornamental grasses creates a backyard oasis for you, as well as for butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.  It’s easy to set aside areas to plant with low-maintenance Wildflower Seeds. And more popular every year is the wide array of Ornamental Grasses now available. (They’re also on sale at 50% Off right now at AmericanMeadows.com and best of all, ornamental grasses  don’t need mowing!)  Many are as beautiful as the flowers, require almost no care, and and add garden interest year-round.

You needn’t transform your entire yard overnight. For example, you might start by creating a border garden, using a few ornamental grasses with tall perennials like hollyhocks and garden phlox at the back to create a visual and sound barrier between you and your neighbors or the street. Add medium height, shrubby flowers like rudbeckia and coneflowers among the taller perennials for color, and ground-hugging plants in front to form a natural transition to your existing lawn. Choose plants with different bloom times for season-long color.

Now set up a hammock near your new garden, then sit back an relax as you watch your neighbors toil over their lawns. Invite them over for a glass of lemonade so that can see the benefits and beauty of transforming their landscape into a flower-filled oasis, too!

Order your Tree Peonies early.

We’ve got them coming in this spring, and the earlier you order, the better.  Our Tree Peonies, the fabled garden treasures, come direct form China, and you’ll want yours as soon as they arrive.  They’re excellent plants, fully branched, and shipped from the Orient bare-root, packed somewhat like bare-root roses.  If you’ve never grown them, you’re in for one of the biggest thrills in flower gardening.

If you live anywhere in Zones 3 to 7, you know all about Garden Peonies, but Tree Peonies are totally different.  They are larger-flowered, and don’t die down in the winter.  That’s right.  They lose their leaves, but not their stems.  Of course, they don’t really grow into “trees,”  but instead, they’re shrub-like, getting larger every spring, and giving you more and more flowers.  And what flowers they are! Imagine a regular garden peony, and then imagine the flowers at least twice, maybe three times as large.  Tree peony blooms often measure a full foot across!

These rare plants are never cheap, but ours are great values, especially if you order early.  In that case, you’ll be receiving yours as soon as they arrive from China..and you’ll have a choice of  purple, white, red, and even the rarest ones, in yellow and orange.  For more photos and a brand new “How-To” page on these legendary beauties, take a look at “The Tree Peony, Worldwide Garden Centerpiece.” And make this the year you add one or more to your garden.  To see them all click here, and scroll to the bottom.

New! New! New! Hundreds of new things for spring.

We’re putting all kinds of new things on the site at AmericanMeadows.com to make sure you have a really wide choice for this spring and summer.  New flower seeds, vegetable seeds, new spring bulbs, (all now on sale at 35% Off) and lots and lots of new perennials. (Also now on sale at 35% off.) You can visit our page “What’s New?” and see a bunch of them, but here are some of my favorites:

That photo above is a new Double Columbine with a silly name, “Double Winky Red.”  But just imagine that beauty in your garden! (We have a new blue one like it, too….and yes, that one’s called “Double Winky Blue.”

Over in the Spring Bulb Department, take a look at one of the new Dahlias, Callas and Glads. The incredible dahlia at the right is named “Fire Pot,” and that name makes perfect sense.  Imagine these fiery beauties, blooming for you from midsummer to fall…each flower, at least 6 inches across!

In the Perennials and Lilies Dept, we have several new Clematis entries to join our already long list.  My fave is an antique, called “Belle of Woking.“  It’s a double, and it’s fascinating that it was introduced by the famous Jackman and Son nursery in England in 1876 and is still one everybody wants.  Does the nursery name sound familiar?  Well, if you’re a clematis fancier, it ought to, since the far-and-away No. 1 Clematis in the world is called Clematis Jackmanii, the popular purple one introduced by the same nursery, the same family business.  The Jackmans, fathers and sons, operated that nursery for four generations, finally closing in 1967.  Imagine the pleasure just this one family brought to gardeners!  And where was the nursery established?  In the town of Woking, near London.  I’m wondering who the “Belle” was…can’t find that anywhere.  But she must have been really beautiful!  Pay us a visit soon at American Meadows, and browse these and hundreds more…it’s going to be a really beautiful spring!

The Current Perennial Craze: The Heucheras, aka “Coral Bells”

Is your perennial garden up to date? Now nobody is more interested in the old-fashioned flowers than I am, but over the last few years, there has been a quiet revolution going on in perennial circles concerning one of our native plants, and how they’ve been “improved” for home gardens.

Imagine a neat, small plant with extraordinary foliage that does well in shade. The foliage can be green, caramel-colored, reddish, purple, or even bi-colored. Then there are flowers, either coral-colored or cream. Then imagine that these plants are evergreen. Or ever-purple. Or ever-caramel.  And you have the “heucheras,” a new group of perennials bred form one one of our native woodland plants which until now has been patiently waiting for the experts to bring it out of the woods, dress it up, and present it into our gardens.

Imagine the possibilities. Now your shady areas can remain colorful all year long. No more withering hostas and ferns when winter comes! The oldest heucheras were commonly called “Coral Bells” since they had and have red/pink/coral flowers. Most of the newer ones, bred from separate native species, have cream-colored blooms. They all bloom in late spring on tall stems that rise from the center of the plant.  The blooms are somewhat like hosta bloom stalks.  But the news is the foliage.   It all adds up to a whole new way to landscape in shady areas with year-round color.  Plant them!

We now have no less than 15 Heucheras in our perennial selections for spring. Take a look at them all. Below are names and links to the ones shown.

The ones shown here all have cream-colored flowers:

Left top: “H. Encore” Right top: “H. Obsidian” with almost black foliage.     Lower left: “H. Caramel” Lower right:  “H. Venus”

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They’re not your grandmother’s Cosmos.

At American Meadows, we’ve been adding new products fast and furiously for spring–hundreds of new perennials, bulbs, and flower seeds. One group that’s already getting a lot of attention is our new, expanded selection of varieties of Cosmos seeds.  Everybody loves cosmos, of course, and if your grandmother grew them (and surely she did), she knew they were really beautiful, super-easy to grow from seed, and great for cutting.  Today’s gardeners love them too, and they’re still great for the back of the border or in wildflower meadows, where they keep a field of annuals in full color right up until frost. But now, lots of gardeners think the old cosmos mixtures in pink, white and wine red grew a bit too tall for most flower gardens–sometimes up to 6 or 7 ft.

Well, all that’s changed.  The hybridizers have been at work, and there are all kinds of cosmos out there today.  Not only are the new beauties shorter than the old, they’re all dressed up with new bi-colored blooms, real reds, pure white and more.  (The small photos above show a few, l. to r., “Picotee” (also shown in large photo at top), the stunning new red “Dazzler,” “Daydream,” “Candystripe,” the famous old “Orange Cosmos“ and the new, shorter pristine white “Purity.” )  Best of all, even though the plants may be shorter, most of the flowers are still big and beautiful–up to 4 or even 5 inches in diameter.  To see them all, just  click here.  And yes, they’re all just as easy to grow as the older varieties.  You’ll love them in the garden and in your vase–all summer long.

Welcome to your 2010 Garden, at Half Price!

Here comes your best garden ever.  It’s every gardener’s nice warm hope during the cold winter months.  Just wait’ll next year!

Well, in 2010, we’ll do all we can to make it happen for you.  For starters, right now all our Spring Bulbs and Perennials are on the site at a whopping 50% Off.  So make your dreams of the new dahlias (that’s “Crazy Love” above), old glads and spectacular lilies come true right now…and save big.

As for perennials,  if you need some really high-powered fill-ins this year, try our new Five Foolproof Favorites Collection. You get 10 plants, all at a saving.  It’s two each of five of the world’s most popular flowers:

1.  Rudbeckia Goldsturm, the best-ever perennial Black-eyed Susan, 2. The McKana Giant Columbines in mixed colors, 3. Sedum “Autumn Joy,” always great for fall color, 4. Geranium sangunieum, or “Bloody Cranesbill,” the perennial geranium that never stops blooming, and last but not least, 5. Bleeding Heart, the all-time favorite for shady spots. These are all can’t-miss must-haves.  And remember, today everything for spring is half price.  Now’s the time. Happy New Year and Happy Gardening!

Heigh Ho! The Holly!

About this time two years ago, I was looking for a great photo of holly to use on our homepage for Christmas. I Googled Images, and found a really beautiful one from an herb site. I emailed and asked for permission to use the photo, as I always do, and within an hour, I had my answer. A really nice guy from New Zealand wrote and said he had had a look at AmericanMeadows.com, and yes, he’d be happy to let us use his photo. Imagine….New Zealand. The magic of the internet. 

Later, I took a few minutes to visit his website.  It’s called “HerbData New Zealand.”  Take a look; it’s a fascinating and very thorough herbal info site. (As you probably know, holly has all kinds of medicinal history and uses.)  And of course, there are almost endless species.  The classic holly of Christmas, based on Old English usage, must have prickly glossy green leaves and bright red berries.  American holly, native over much of the east, fits the bill perfectly–a tough, tall shrub that’s quite common, mostly in mountain areas, especially in the south.  Historically, most “Christmas Holly” for the US floral trade has been grown commerically in New Jersey.  Today, garden centers everywhere have various large and small hybrids of Amrican, Japanese and other hollies–some that look like our Christmas holly, some that don’t. 

By the way, if you still need more Christmas spirit at this point, “Heigh Ho! The Holly!” is from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” The full quote is “Then heigh ho! The holly! This life is most jolly.” Our most jolly photo may be from a New Zealand site, but my new internet friend told me the holly in the picture was gathered in the wild in our own Pacific northwest.  Merry Christmas from everyone at AmericanMeadows.com!

We heard you! Introducing the best Vegetable Seeds for 2010, now at American Meadows.com

We’ve been planning it for years, and now it’s a reality.  Having handled flower seeds and plants for almost three decades, we’ve had hundreds of requests for a great selection of vegetable seeds too.

So click in and take a look; they’re all live now for spring planting 2010.  We’ve scoured the market for the best heirloom varieties, the latest hybrids, and even Organics.  Every variety was chosen for quality, nutrition and value.

With all the interest in vegetable gardening for the environment and saving money in a tough economy, now American Meadows can be your one stop shop with expertly-chosen vegetables. 

Imagine how great they’ll taste from your own garden!  Enjoy.

Where do all the plants, bulbs and seeds come from?

People ask all the time.  And we love to answer.  The selections offered by AmericanMeadows.com today are the result of over 25 years of searching, testing, and learning all about the flower gardening markets.  And finding what we believe are the best products for your garden.

 As you know, most of our bulbs come from Holland, but that’s not the whole story.  There are scores of exporters of Dutch bulbs, and we constantly make sure our suppliers are the best.  As for perennials, their source depends on the plant.  For those with “bulbous” roots, like daylilies, peonies, and others, we source them in Holland, since the Dutch are the masters at producing those plants.  Most of the others are from climate-controlled greenhouses of various well-experienced perennial producers, mostly in Pennsylvania.  Our woodland wildflower plants come from a very small, certified wholesale expert grower in North Carolina. 

And the seeds?  They come from several growers, located mostly in California, Oregon, and Texas.  We choose the suppliers for our seed mixtures based on the reputation of each grower, and demand strict standards of quality.  Of course, we’ve been doing this for over two decades, and require excellent seed testing results for each shipment. Our standards are always higher than the regulations require, so you can be sure of absolute purity and high germination rates from our seed, whether you plant a mixture or several specific species. 

And even that’s not the end of it.  Certain species of wildflower seed are best grown in certain regions.  For example, our perennial Forget-me-Not seed always comes from Europe, usually England.  Most of our Cosmos seed is now grown in Africa.  And some special perennials originate in exotic places.  A few years ago, we were delighted to offer Tree Peonies direct from China.  

So now you know.  And you can appreciate the advance planning, testing, checking, and sheer hard work it takes to keep all our products at top quality and available when you want them.  We love our work, and we love plants and flowers.  I hope you enjoy every plant, bulb or seed we send. 

Remember, our full guarantee covers everything, and we love hearing from our gardening friends.  If you ever have a question about any item, simply call our Customer Service experts tollfree at (877) 309-7333.  They know all about every product.