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Designing with Native Plants

More and more of our customers are becoming interested in native plants, which we have been promoting since we opened our nursery in 1992. If you would like to know more about why growing native plants is important to our survival, click here. Now there is a design book, Native Plants for Small Yards by Kate Brandeis, that can help you seamlessly incorporate native plants into your landscape.

I am dedicating this post to doctors, nurses, and other health care workers all over the country who are still caring for very ill COVID-19 patients while the rest of us think about reopening. This crisis has taken a terrible toll on them as shown in this excellent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer where three doctors discuss how they cope. We owe it to them to continue to be careful and not spread the virus.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US. For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

.Each design in the book begins with a rendering of what the garden will look like, here a back patio garden

The author begins by explaining why native plants are important and her purpose in writing the book: introducing readers to the beautiful native plants that are suitable for small, residential landscapes. Brandeis wants to dispel the notion that native plants are messy, hard to manage, and do not fit in with suburban neighborhoods. She then gives some general design advice and explains how to use the nine design templates in the book.

Designs are provided for the following areas frequently found in small yards: corner gardens, mailbox plantings, water features, containers, downspout areas, rock walls, front porches, sidewalk strips, and back patios.

A schematic drawing, plant list, and photos are provided for each design.

Each of the nine suggested designs is rendered in a schematic drawing, which is clearly labeled to show plant placement and the number of plants needed per square foot. Next to the design is a list separating the plants by height and color coordinated with the design.

Alternate plant lists for varying cultural conditions are also provided.

The plants used in each schematic drawing are chosen for the conditions listed above the plan. For example, the back patio design is for drier conditions and more shade. However, on a third page for each design, the author provides alternate plant lists for varying conditions, also color coded for height and to show where they go on the plan. For the back patio design, there are plant lists for drier areas with more sun, wetter areas with more shade, and wetter areas with more sun. At the end of the design section, Brandeis explains how to install and maintain the gardens.

There are four pages of full color drawings of invasive plants.

Even if you do not use the designs, the book is worth purchasing just for the resources in the back. Appendix A features drawings of the 17 most common weeds, all of which we seem to have in our garden. Appendix B has renderings of 13 invasive plants to be avoided.

The book includes an extensive table of Native Plants for Small Spaces.

There is a 13-page Native Plant Table, listing native shrubs, vines, perennials, and grasses for various light and soil conditions. The table shows the scientific and common names, height, width, color, bloom time, and use in design for each plant as well as the plant’s light and moisture requirements and tolerance for deer, rabbits, heavy shade, drought, clay soil, black walnuts, etc. Finally, Brandeis profiles ten small trees suitable for residential landscapes.

If you wish to purchase this valuable and informative guide, it is available from the Lehigh Gap Nature Center located in Slatington, Pennsylvania. It is a great time to support this nature center (and all nonprofits) as they have been closed down by COVID-19. The book costs $10 plus postage and is available by emailing mail@lgnc.org. It makes a great gift for all your gardening friends and relatives.

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Our woodland garden, which is filled predominantly with native plants, is in full bloom right now. If you would like to see a video of our woodland in bloom, there is one on our Facebook page here, just scroll down past upcoming events to videos.

Blogs are a lot more fun for everyone, especially the writer, when readers leave comments. Scroll down to the end of the page to the box where it says “Leave a Reply” and start typing—-it’s easy!

Carolyn

.Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Native Plants in Bloom Part 1

Posted in green gardening, groundcover, my garden, native plants, Shade Perennials with tags 'Blue Shadow' fothergilla, 'Mocha' coralbells, 'Royal' White redbud. Cercis canadensis 'Royal White', Asarum canadense, Asarum caudatum, Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Celandine poppy, creeping phlox, dwarf Jacob's ladder, Erigeron Lynnhaven Carpet, Fothergilla x intermedia 'Blue Shadow'', golden groundsel, Heuchera villosa 'Mocha', little sweet Betsy, Mertensia virginica, Packera aurea, Phlox stolonifera, Phlox stolonifera 'Blue Ridge', Phlox stolonifera 'Sherwood Purple', Polemonium reptans, Senecio aureus, Stylophorum diphyllum, trillium cuneatum, trillium grandiflorum, Viola striata, Virginia bluebells, western wild ginger, white trillium, white violet, wild ginger on May 10, 2020 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Our woodland is spectacular right now. Here, ‘Royal White’ redbud, Cercis canadensis, underplanted with golden groundsel, Senecio (Packera) aureus.

More and more of our customers are becoming interested in native plants, which we have been promoting since we opened our nursery in 1992. If you would like to know more about why growing native plants is important to our survival, click here. Every plant in this post is native to Southeastern Pennsylvania unless noted.

I am dedicating this post to the volunteers and career emergency personnel at Narberth Ambulance and all the ambulance workers all over the country who are risking their lives daily to help people with COVID-19. In the face of their dedication, any sacrifice that we are asked to make seems minor. Please stay home to save lives. For an inside look at what ambulance workers face right now, please read this excellent article from the Philadelphia Inquirer by clicking here.

.Celandine poppies, Stylophorum diphyllum, in the front with golden groundsel in the back. Both of these plants should only be grown in a naturalized garden where they can spread. Golden groundsel is a great native substitute for non-native groundcovers like pachysandra, ivy, or vinca. It is evergreen, has beautiful flowers suitable for cutting, grows in even the most difficult site, and covers the ground completely.

‘Blue Ridge’ creeping phlox, P. stolonifera, also makes a great evergreen groundcover. ‘Blue Ridge’ is not as vigorous as some of the other creeping phlox cultivars, which can be an advantage if you have a small space.

Virginia bluebells, Mertensia virginica, are going by right now, but their true blue flowers have been a highlight for the last two months. They go dormant when it gets hot out.

Dwarf Jacob’s ladder, Polemonium reptans, in the front with blue flowers, and wild ginger, Asarum canadense, right center under the native dogwood, have moved around on their own to fill large swaths of our woodland.

A close up of dwarf Jacob’s ladder and wild ginger.

‘Mocha’ coralbells, Heuchera villosa, on the right, western wild ginger, Asarum caudatum (native to the west coast), on the left, surrounded by creeping phlox, P. stolonifera.

.There are pink-flowered cultivars of creeping phlox called ‘Home Fires’ and ‘Pink Ridge’, but this is the straight species. My customers didn’t buy it last year as it is so vigorous it doesn’t look as appealing in the pots as the other creeping phlox cultivars. I planted 12 leftover, quart-sized pots, and they completely filled in this large area in one year.

.Little sweet Betsy or bloody butcher, Trillium cuneatum, is my favorite of the many trilliums in our woodland.

.Great white trillium, T. grandiflorum, has been seeding through out our patch of white violets, Viola striata. White violets make a great groundcover as they fill in completely and are one of the longest blooming plants in out woodland.

‘Sherwood Purple’ creeping phlox surrounds a small grove of ‘Blue Shadow’ fothergilla, F. x intermedia.

This large “river” of ‘Sherwood Purple’ creeping phlox hosts many of the special snowdrops in my collection in late winter and then produces its lovely purple flowers for a long time in early spring. ‘Sherwood Purple’ is another creeping phlox that makes an excellent groundcover.

‘Lynnhaven Carpet’ robin’s plantain, Erigeron pulchellus, has fuzzy, silver-highlighted leaves and daisy-like flowers.

‘Lynnhave Carpet’ spreads quickly to form a weed-choking groundcover.

Our woodland is almost all native plants with a very narrow path through the center covered in white pine needles.

A final view of the woodland.

Carolyn

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Native Plants for June and Beyond

Posted in garden to visit, green gardening, landscape design, my garden, native plants, organic gardening, Shade Gardening, Shade Perennials, sustainable living with tags Actaea racemosa, Ashe magnolia, Asplenium scolopendrium, black cohosh, Bringing Nature Home, Carex muskingumensis Oehme, Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Douglas Tallamy, flowering raspberry, hart's tongue fern, hydrangea quecifolia Snowflake, Hydrangea quercifolia, Indian pink, Magnolia ashei, oakleaf hydrangea, palm sedge, rubus odoratus, Spigelia marilandica, woodland Carolyn's Sbade Gardens on June 19, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Indian pink or spigelia is the most requested plant at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens. None of our suppliers have any luck growing it in pots, so we are trying to grow it ourselves for sale in 2020.

A long time ago, Carolyn’s Shade Gardens made sustainable practices one of its missions. We have fulfilled this in many ways, including making a wide range of native plants available to our customers, showcasing native plants in our display gardens, and getting rid of our lawn. Since we purchased the property in 1983, all our gardens have been maintained organically without herbicides, chemical fertilizers, or supplemental water. We mulch with ground leaves, and never use potentially toxic hardwood mulch.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

The long spires of black cohosh are one of the highlights of our garden in June.

You can read more about our sustainable practices and why they are important in these posts:

Your Native Woodland: If You Build it They Will Come, how to create your own woodland filled with native plants

Your Native Woodland: If You Build it They Will Come, Part 2, more native plants for your woodland

My Thanksgiving Oak Forest, the importance of native plants to our survival

Your Most Precious Garden Resource, step-by-step guide to mulching with ground leaves

Letting Go Part 1: The Lawn, the dangers of lawn chemicals to humans, pets, and the environment

Do You Know Where Your Mulch Comes From?, toxic substances in shredded hardwood mulch

Strike a Blow for the Environment in your own Yard, how to incorporate large quantities of native plants into your garden

Looking back over these posts, I realized that many of them feature native plants that bloom in the spring. As 2/3 of the plants in our display gardens are native, I wanted to highlight some of the summer- and fall-blooming varieties. Every photo is taken in our garden, and every plant is native, most to Pennsylvania. If you want to know the Latin name, click on the photo.

We have two gigantic walnuts in our display gardens and have no trouble growing native plants under them. Shown here is oakleaf hydrangea, my favorite of all the hydrangeas, surrounded by blue wood asters, which bloom in October.

My favorite oakleaf hydrangea is ‘Snowflake’ with gorgeous double flowers. Double flowers are not as good for pollinators, so the majority of our oakleafs have single flowers.

Blue wood asters and foamflowers make a weed-free groundcover under our walnuts.

Coral bells or heucheras add color to the garden all season. However, many of the coral bells marketed to gardeners do not grow well in the mid-Atlantic. At Carolyn’s Shade Gardens we only sell heucheras that thrive in this region, including my favorite ‘Berry Smoothie’.

Our woodland is quiet in summer and fall but blooming along the entrance path is the native shrub, flowering raspberry. I love it for its light green almost tropical leaves and large raspberry-colored flowers.

Maidenhair ferns with their delicate and unusual leaf pattern and wiry black stems are ornamental all season. They spread slowly to make a bigger and bigger patch.

Our Ashe magnolia with its gigantic white flowers just finished blooming. At its feet are sweeping stands of culver’s root, which will bloom in late July and August.

White baneberry is just starting to make its creepy fruit, which looks just like its other common name: doll’s eyes. I like everything about this plant—its delicate shrub-like habit, lovely white flowers, and unique berries.

The yellow and green variegated leaves of ‘Golden Shadows’ pagoda dogwood are beautiful all season, while the spiderwort at its base produces lovely blue flowers now, and the New York ironweed next to it will bloom in August and September.

Giant Solomon’s seal on the right towers over non-native Solomon’s seal to its left. In the foreground is twinleaf, whose elegant and unsual leaves look good all season.

.Evergreen hart’s tongue fern (in front) provides interest all year. In the back, our gigantic stand of bottlebrush buckeye is getting ready to put on its breath-taking show.

We have had no luck with native bleeding-hearts, which we have tried in many different locations in the garden, until it planted itself in the stump of our dead ash tree. Sometimes you have to let the plants decide where they want to grow!

Indian pink on the left with variegated ‘Oehme’ palm sedge on the right and fall-blooming blue stemmed goldenrod at its base. Palm sedge is a great grass for shade—it happily grows in full shade in our garden.

Indian pink enjoys this sunny, dry location, even re-blooming in the fall. Over it is a fringe tree, which blooms in late spring.

We are not native plant purists as our business also specializes in snowdrops, hellebores, and hostas. However, we believe that gardeners should try to incorporate as many native plants in their gardens as possible for the reasons that author Doug Tallamy so eloquently describes in his ground-breaking book Bringing Nature Home. It’s not about saving the planet: it’s about the survival of humans, including our children and grandchildren, on the planet.

Carolyn

Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name, location, and cell number (for back up contact use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information. Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are interested in mail order snowdrops only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and only within the US.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a very active Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

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The Garden Tourist

Posted in bulbs for shade, garden to visit, hosta, landscape design, my garden, native plants, Shade Gardening, Shade Perennials with tags Acer palmatum 'Butterfly', Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku', Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Cercis canadensis 'Alba', coral bark maple, Dicentra spectabilis 'Goldheart', Eranthis hyemalis, Hosta 'Great Expectations', Hosta 'Neptune', Hosta 'Paradigm', Hosta Eye Declare, Indian pink, Jana Milbocker, Japanese woodland primrose, Mertensia virginica, Phlox stolonifera 'Sherwood Purple', Primula sieboldii, pulmonarias, purple creeping phlox, snowdrops for sale US, snowdrops in the green, Spigelia marilandica, The Garden Tourist, Virginia bluebells, white redbud, winter aconite, woodland Carolyn's Sbade Gardens on June 8, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

The cover of The Garden Tourist by Jana Milbocker features the teacup garden at Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania, one of my favorite gardens.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US. For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog..

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has been selected as one of the 120 must visit destination gardens and nurseries in the Northeast United States in the wonderful guidebook The Garden Tourist by Jana Milbocker. This book is a great resource for those of us who love to visit gardens as it covers Maine through Pennsylvania with detailed information on each entry, including photos, suggested daily itineraries, and nearby restaurants. You can purchase The Garden Tourist on Amazon here, or at Valley Forge Flowers in Wayne, Pennsylvania, if you are local.

I have visited, photographed, and written about many of the destinations included in the book, so, from personal experience, I can say that they are well-chosen. As a sample, here are the featured Pennsylvania gardens and nurseries: Ambler Arboretum, Bartram’s Garden, Carolyn’s Shade Gardens, Chanticleer, Highlands Mansion & Garden, Hortulus Farm Garden & Nursery, Longwood Gardens, Meadowbrook Farm, Shofuso Japanese Garden, Scott Arboretum, Terrain, and Wyck Garden.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

The Carolyn’s Shade Gardens page from The Garden Tourist.

We are so honored to be included in this wonderful garden resource. Many of our customers have already purchased it and are looking forward to putting it to use. One longtime customer even brought his copy over so I could autograph the Carolyn’s Shade Gardens page! I thought it would be fun to give my readers, especially my international followers, a more in depth photographic tour of Carolyn’s Shade Gardens. The photographs used in this post were taken from 2010 to 2019. Enjoy!

Stone stairs lead from the nursery area, past the original entrance to the two-room gardener’s cottage that is now our home, to the Main Terrace. All the areas of our garden have names, which I will capitalize. That way my husband Michael and I can communicate about garden maintenance. During our last open house, visitors were overheard referring to “the team of workers who [must] take care of the gardens.” We are still laughing and wondering when our team will arrive! Michael does most of the maintenance, and I help when I can. 5/7/2012

On the way down the stairs, you pass the entrance to the Main Rock Garden. It is mostly a winter garden filled with snowdrops, snowflakes, hardy cyclamen, winter aconite, and other early bulbs. 4/25/2016

The Main Terrace outside the front door in early spring. 4/15/2012

The Main Terrace a month later. 5/15/2015

Michael’s pride and joy and a major feature of the Main Terrace is our gorgeous wisteria. Plein Air painters come to capture it on canvas every year. 4/29/2011

One of my favorite color combinations on the Main Terrace: ‘Magic Carpet’ spiraea, ‘Gold Heart’ bleeding-heart, and Spanish bluebells emerging from a silver-variegated ornamental grass. 4/15/2012

We call the lowest of our three terraces the Orange and Purple Garden. Here ‘Paliban’ lilac blooms over a collection of small hostas with orange geum in the foreground. 5/10/2015

The Orange and Purple Garden features a grass oval surrounded by stepping stones inter-planted with sedums, geums, thyme, moss phlox and other low plants. 5/8/2011

The Orange and Purple Garden in fall when our coral bark maple ‘Sango-kaku’ is the star of the show. 11/2/2013

in front of the terraces in the lawn area is a very old American hornbeam with lots of surface roots and a dense canopy requiring plants that can handle full dry shade. The Hornbeam Garden features Japanese woodland primroses (in flower above), Athyrium-type ferns (Japanese painted, lady, and ‘Ghost’ ferns), hellebores, cardamine, golden groundsel, and pulmonarias, among other plants. 4/15/2012

The Chain Link Strip Garden (don’t ask) along the right boundary of our property is a great place to grow hostas because all the water from the driveway drains through here—hostas love water. Blue-leafed ‘Neptune’ is on the left, and 2007 Hosta of the Year ‘Paradigm’ is on the right behind a native Carolina allspice. ‘Paradigm’ measures 60″ wide. 6/7/2019

Native ‘Golden Shadows’ pagoda dogwood is dwarfed by this ‘Great Expectations’ hosta in the Chain Link Strip Garden. Hosta experts tell me it is the biggest specimen they have ever seen at 52″ wide. 6/7/2019

All the way at the bottom of the yard where it is actually consistently moist are our Production Beds where we grow shade plants to sell at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens. Pictured are ‘Old Brick Reds’ primroses, two types of pulmonaria, and golden groundsel. 5/10/2015

Walking back uphill towards the woodland, you pass our River of Phlox ‘Sherwood Purple’. Native, evergreen creeping phlox makes an excellent groundcover with gorgeous purple, blue, pink or white flowers, depending on which cultivar you plant. In the River, we have planted a large part of our snowdrop collection, which blooms December through March before the phlox flowers extend. 4/24/2019

In late winter, snowdrops and winter aconite begin to emerge along the woodland path. 3/2/2019

The snowdrops have been multiplying here for over 100 years and fill the Woodland with white when they open. 3/26/2015

When the snowdrops and aconite are done, the Woodland bursts into bloom with mostly native wildflowers—the native, white redbud trees play a starring role. 4/15/2019

Plants native to Pennsylvania fill the Woodland, here mayapples, golden groundsel, and Virginia bluebells. 4/25/2017

Epimediums, daffodils, cinnamon ferns, and Celandine poppies replace the February-blooming aconite whose leaves are still visible at their base. 4/26/2015

Natives dwarf Jacob’s ladder, black cohosh, and foamflower line the path. 5/10/2015

The Lower Deck Garden provides early color from hellebores, ‘Mohawk’ viburnum, pink old-fashioned bleeding-hearts, and the rose-colored new leaves of ‘Butterfly’ Japanese maple. 4/26/2015

The Upper Deck Garden comes into its own later in May with Hosta nigrescens, pulmonaria, Spanish bluebells, and variegated Solomon’s seal, all echoing the blue and silver garden under the Kentucky coffee tree across the path. ‘Butterfly’ has assumed its main season color of green and white but will turn pink again in the fall. 5/6/2011

The Kentucky Coffee Tree Garden across from the deck is filled with silver and blue plants, including ‘Ghost’ fern, ‘Bunny Blue’ sedge, ‘El Nino’ hosta, white bigroot geranium, variegated Japanese kerria, and ‘Jack Frost’ and ‘Dawson’s White’ brunnera. 5/27/2012

Sugar maples, behind the Kentucky coffee tree on the left and the two giant black walnuts center and right, light up the woodland in fall. For scale the ‘Butterfly’ Japanese maple is on the far right. 10/27/2010

Moving up the hill, ‘Eye Declare’ hosta steals the show when it emerges in the Sycamore Garden in mid-spring (for orientation, you can see the Blue and Silver Garden in the top right of the photo). The trees are actually London plane trees but the garden’s name stuck. 5/8/2011

In early summer, native Indian pinks (spigelia) fill the Sycamore Garden and hummingbirds vsit from miles around. 6/7/2019

Above the Sycamore Garden, behind the carriage house, is Hosta Hill, filled with hostas of all sizes plus epimediums, ferns, and hellebores. 5/26/2019

I have a special place in my heart for our Mini Hosta Rock Garden, featuring mini hostas in a multitude of colors and sizes plus a wide assortment of dwarf plants, including ferns, irises, epimediums, conifers, lady’s mantles, and sedums, among others. 6/9/2015

The garden is never without flowers unless deep snow covers the snowdrops, which start blooming in mid-October and finish in late March. 12/10/2013

Michael and I rest in deep winter waiting for the cycle to begin again as soon as the snow melts. 2/21/2014

Although it may seem like winter-, spring-, and early summer-blooming plants predominate, our garden is beautiful in late summer and fall too—I just don’t photograph it then. I enjoyed writing this post and seeing our garden develop and change over the 10 years that these photographs were taken. I hope you enjoyed the tour too.

Carolyn.

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What’s Up at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens?

Posted in bulbs for shade, garden to visit, landscape design, my garden, native plants, Shade Gardening with tags 'New York Night' hellebore, Anemone nemorosa, Anemone ranunculoides, Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Celandine poppy, Cercis canadensis 'Alba', cinnamon fern, dogtooth violet, Epimedium 'Bandit', Epimedium 'Cherry Tart', Epimedium 'Domino', Epimedium 'Purple Prince', Epimedium 'Yubae', Epimedium grandiflorum 'Tama No Genpei', Epimedium pinnatum ssp. colchicum, Epimedium x rubrum, Epimedium x warleyense, Eranthis hyemalis, Erythronium 'Pagoda', European wood anemone, Helleborus 'New York Night', Hosta Little Wonder, Mertensia virginica, orange epimedium, Osmunda cinnamomea, pulmonarias, red epimedium, snowdrops for sale US, snowdrops in the green, Stylophorum diphyllum, Viola pubescens, Virginia bluebells, white European wood anemone, white redbud, winter aconite, woodland Carolyn's Sbade Gardens, yellow European wood anemone, yellow violet on April 15, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Just a few days ago our woodland was empty, but now it is filled with flowers.

We think that the winter garden at our nursery is gorgeous. But it is still sparse with lots of empty patches of brown leaves even though it is filled with blooming hellebores, snowdrops, cyclamen, winter aconite, and other late winter bulbs. It’s not until early spring that our woodland explodes with color, mostly from native plants taking advantage of all the sunlight before the trees leaf out. I thought you might like to see what that looks like, especially if you visited more than a week ago. Our many epimediums are also in full bloom!

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

a small field of native Virginia blue bells

Epimediums and European wood anemones play a starring role.

Native cinnamon ferns erupt through the winter aconite.

Even with all the color below, the three native white-flowered redbuds steal the show.

Pine needle paths draw visitors through the woods.

Yellow and blue are my favorite spring colors: here Virginia bluebells with native Celandine poppy and yellow wood anemone.

Yellow and white is pretty stunning too: here Celandine poppy and white wood anemone.

‘New York Night’ hellebore and native yellow violets

And now for the epimediums:

Red epimedium, E. x rubrum, is a great spreader.

Sulphur yellow epimediums, E. pinnatum subsp. colchicum, look great with the blue of pulmonarias.

‘Purple Prince’ epimedium with ‘Pagoda’ dogtooth violets in the background.

‘Cherry Tart’ epimedium

The leaves and flowers of ‘Domino’ epimedium are especially lovely, and it flowers twice.

‘Yubae’ epimedium

I love orange flowers, and Epimedium x warleyense produces a lot. It’s also a great groundcover.

‘Bandit’ epimdium is the perfect size for my miniature hosta rock garden, and its white flowers really stand out against its black-bordered leaves.

I love this combination: ‘Tama No Gempi’ epimedium and ‘Little Wonder’ mini hosta.

I had to leave so much out—maybe there will be a part two.

Carolyn

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and only within the US.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

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Our Woodland is Glorious

Posted in bulbs for shade, landscape design, my garden, native plants with tags 'Leed's Variety' wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa, Anemone x seemanii, Anemonella thalictroides, Brunnera 'Jack Frost', Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Celandine poppy, Cercis canadensis 'Alba', cowslip primrose, Dicentra cucullaria, double bloodroot, Dutchman's breeches, European wood anemone, Japanese woodland primrose, mayapple, perennial-forget-me-not, Podophyllum peltatum, Primula sieboldii, Primula veris, rue-anemone, Sanguinaria canadensis, Sanguinaria canadensis 'Multiplex', Stylophorum diphyllum, Tennessee form bloodroot, white redbud on May 4, 2018 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

A native white redbud underplanted with natives Virginia bluebells, May apples, and golden groundsel.

This is one of my favorites times of the year: our woodland is at its peak and epimediums and emerging hostas fill our side hill. The almost 90 degree weather is moving the plants along quickly, but the native plants in our woodland are glorious right now, and I wanted to capture it on film.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Native Celandine poppies under white redbuds.

Pine needle paths thread through our woods.

Native Virginia bluebells and Celandine poppies under a ‘Waterfall’ Japanese maple.

Native mayapples grow through ‘Alba Plena’ European wood anemone.

European wood anemones, like ‘Leed’s Variety’, fill in among the native plants in our woods.

‘Leed’s Variety’ European wood anemone

Pale yellow European wood anemone, Anemone x seemanii.

Some of my favorite native plants make a cameo appearance right now: Tennessee form bloodroot.

.‘Multiplex’ double bloodroot blooms for a much longer period than the single flowered forms.

I let native Dutchman’s breeches seed around wherever it wants to go from our natural woodland to our formal hellebore beds.

Pulmonarias are another plant that I allow to roam at will in the garden. Their seedlings take many beautiful forms.

‘Jack Frost’ perennial-forget-me-not or brunnera has strikingly beautiful true blue flowers and silver-frosted leaves. Many of its seedings also display silver leaves, and it does very well in the dry shade of our woods.

Another plant that does well in dry shade is Japanese woodland primrose. It goes dormant when it gets hot out so doesn’t care about our dry summers.

Cowslip primroses are also not picky and grow at the edge of our woods in average soil.

‘Old Brick Reds’ primrose with white bleeding-hearts and native Celandine poppy.

Grecian windflower is a startling shade of blue and seeds through our woods.

Delicate rue anemone prefers to grow in the rocks along our woodland paths.

The extreme heat has forced our amazing ‘Black Tulip’ magnolia to the end of its bloom period. However, there are a lot of wonderful plants coming into their own right now.

If you are local, I hope you can stop by tomorrow, Saturday, May 5, by appointment to shop and see our gardens, especially the woodland, in person. Just send an email requesting an appointment with some convenient times.

Carolyn

Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name, location, and phone number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information. Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are mail order only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.

13 Comments »

Your Native Woodland: If You Build It They Will Come, Part 2

Posted in green gardening, landscape design, my garden, native plants, Shade Perennials, sustainable living with tags athyrium Ghost, camassia, Camassia leichtlinii 'Caerulea', Carex Bunny Blue, Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Cercis canadensis 'Alba', creeping phlox, Erigeron Lynnhaven Carpet, foamflower, gardening with native plants, ghost fern, Mertensia virginica, native plants for gardens, native plants for shade, native sedge, native woodland, Phlox stolonifera 'Home Fires', Phlox stolonifera 'Sherwood Purple', robin's plantain, Tiarella cordifolia, Tiarella cordifolia 'Brandywine', Trillium luteum, Virginia bluebells, white-flowered redbud, yellow trillium on May 5, 2017 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

The woodland at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens with mayapples, golden groundsel, Viginia bluebells, dwarf Jacob’s ladder, wild ginger, and white-flowered redbud, all native to Pennsylvania in the mid-Atlantic US.

I am very excited to report that my blog has now gone over 2 million views. To see the numbers, look at the counter on the right sidebar labeled Site Stats Since 11/3/10 (if the sidebar is not visible, click the snowdrop banner at the top). That’s a lot of people! And what have they been reading? Well, my fifth most popular post is Your Native Woodland: If You Build It They Will Come, which I wrote in April 2012. In it, I tell readers how to create their very own woodland filled with native plants. To read it, click here.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Photos of the six of the native plants recommended in the 2012 post, clockwise from the left: Celandine poppies and Virginia bluebells, dwarf Jacob’s ladder and wild ginger, ‘Blue Ridge’ creeping phlox, and northern sea oats.

In 2012, I recommended that readers use nine plants to create their native woodland: Virginia bluebells, Celandine poppy, dwarf Jacob’s ladder, white violets, creeping phlox, wild ginger, golden groundsel, and northern sea oats. All the botanical names are in the original post. I still believe that those nine plants are the best natives to start your woodland because they are beautiful, easy to grow, and spread quickly.

Photos of the remaining three native plants recommended in the 2012 post, clockwise from upper left: white violets, blue wood aster, and golden groundsel.

I am hoping that after five years, gardeners have been successful with the original nine recommendations and are ready to broaden their selection. Below, I profile eight more easy-to-grow native plants. Keep in mind that the more plants of each variety you plant, the more satisfied you will be with the result. If you are on a budget, plant five, seven, or nine of one or two of the recommendations rather than a smaller quantity of each. Use plenty of compost and mulch with ground or whole leaves, and then stand back and watch them spread.

Here are my suggestions for additions:

.Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia, thrives in high shade and well-drained soil. Here it is with blue wood aster right under my massive black walnut trees.

Last time I recommended ‘Blue Ridge’ creeping phlox, but purple and pink creeping phlox are even more vigorous. This is my sweep of the purple variety, Phlox stolonifera ‘Sherwood Purple’. It really likes edges so plant it along your woodland path.

‘Sherwood Purple’

Creeping phlox also comes in pink—the cultivar ‘Home Fires’.

Native sedge, Carex laxiculmus ‘Bunny Blue’, grows right at the base of trees and reproduces itself nicely, spreading its beautiful silver-blue hue around the woods.

This is a western native camassia, C. leitchtlinii ‘Caerulea’. It grows through out my woodland in filtered light but also in my part sun meadow. Each plant increases to a gorgeous clump and blooms in May.

A very unusual native plant called Robin’s plantain, Erigeron pulchellus ‘Lynnhave Carpet’, makes a tight ground cover of fuzzy gray leaves at the edge of my woods. In May, it produces multitudes of daisy like flowers. This patch started from a single plant given to me by Charles Cresson.

There are many ferns that thrive in my woods but none do as well as ghost fern. It is a native hybrid (lady fern x Japanese painted fern) rather than a straight native, but it makes up for its non-native heritage with its beautiful silvery gray leaves and striking upright habit.

Your woods wouldn’t be complete without understory trees, and nothing works better than our Pennsylvania native redbuds. I use white-flowered redbud, Cercis canadensis ‘Alba’, in my woods because I love blue, yellow, and white together. ‘Alba’ is pictured here with yellow trillium, Virginia bluebells, and Celandine poppy.

White redbud with native hardy geranium, ginger, Virginia bluebells, cinnamon fern, mayapples, and golden groundsel.

It is a pleasure to walk this path in the spring.

Carolyn

Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information. Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are mail order only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.

6 Comments »

Bucks County PA Tour

Posted in garden to visit, native plants, Shade Perennials, sustainable living with tags Bowman's Hill tower, Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve, Bucks County PA, Caltha palustris, Canada mayapple, Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Dicentra canadensis, eastern trout-lily, Erythronium americanum, houstonia caerulea, marsh-marigold, Mertensia virginica, New Hope PA, quaker-ladies, red trillium, squirrel-corn, toadshade, Trillium erectum, Trillium luteum, trillium sessile, Virginia bluebells, yellow trillium on April 24, 2017 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

The bluebell meadow at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope, Pennsylvania (PA) USA, is at its peak right now.

My brother, Nick Walker, and his company, Cottage Industries in Wayne, Pennsylvania, did such a wonderful job on our recent home remodeling that Michael and I thought it would be fun to take him and his wife to dinner. He lives in Stockton, New Jersey, near New Hope, Pennsylvania, giving us a great excuse to spend the night in the beautiful Bucks County area and visit local restaurants and garden related venues. I know readers often follow in our footsteps so if you have any questions please email.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Our first stop was the Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, a 134 acre sanctuary for native plants with 3.5 miles of trails through various habitats. This is another view of the breath-taking bluebell meadow, featuring Virginia bluebells, mayapples, twinleaf, and Celandine poppy.

Squirrel-corn and Celandine poppy at Bowman’s Hill.

.yellow trillium

Quaker-ladies

red trillium and squirrel-corn

The real marsh-marigold, Caltha palustris, a PA native plant. Please do not confuse this with lesser celandine, Ranuculus ficaria, which is an extremely destructive, non-native, invasive plant on the PA banned plant list, click here.

Canada mayapple

toadshade

yellow or eastern trout-lily, Erythronium americanum

After a few hours at Bowman’s Hill, including some shopping in their extensive native plant nursery, we walked around the scenic town of New Hope, PA, which is right on the banks of the Delaware River. Many of the buildings date from the 18th century.

We ate lunch in New Hope at Nektar, a small plates restaurant with amazing views of the river and town. We liked it so much we went back for dinner.

The next morning we walked from the inn to Bowman’s Hill Tower, built in 1930 to honor General George Washington and the troops stationed near there during the American Revolution.

The tower has spectacular views of New Hope and the Delaware River. Unfortunately it was not open so we had to look through the woods to the river.

Next we were off to Paxson Hill Farm in New Hope, a 32 acre property with a nursery and very unique and extensive gardens.

Sweeps of ‘Sagae’ hosta, variegated Solomon’s seal, ‘Lilafee’ epimedium, and cimicifuga near the Japanese garden.

The Paxson Hill display gardens include this full scale, underground hobbit house.

After a delicious lunch at the Stockton New Jersey Farmer’s Market, it was back to work at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens.

Carolyn

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.

3 Comments »

Early Spring Beauty at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens

Posted in bulbs for shade, evergreen, groundcover, hellebores, landscape design, my garden, native plants, Shade Perennials with tags 'Goldheart' bleeding-heart, Anemone ranunculoides, Anemone x seemanii, Bearsfoot Hellebore, Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Corydalis solida, Corydalis solida 'Beth Evans', Corydalis solida 'George P. Baker', Corydalis solida 'Purple Bird', Corydalis solida 'White Knight', Dicentra cucullaria, Dicentra spectabilis 'Goldheart', double bloodroot, Dutchman's breeches, Epimedium pinnatum ssp. colchicum, Epimedium x warleyense, Erythronium den-canis, European wood anemone, fumewort, Helleborus foetidus, lamium 'Shell Pink', moss phlox, Phlox subulata 'Emerald Blue', Pulmonaria 'Diana Clare', Sanguinaria canadensis 'Multiplex' on April 6, 2017 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Hellebores are in their prime. Here is a claret colored hybrid at sunrise. We have a wonderful selection of hellebores for sale right now.

Apparently winter is over, although nothing could surprise me in the weather department this year. Last weekend when Kelly Norris, Director of Horticulture at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, visited my gardens, the tour consisted of me pointing and saying “if it were really spring, you would be seeing….” Now the garden is bursting, please come back Kelly :-)!

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Bearsfoot hellebore, H. foetidus, stood up particularly well during the extreme heating and cooling and heavy snow that March threw at it. Lots of customers have been asking for these, and we have more in stock.

‘Goldheart’ old-fashioned bleeding-heart seems to appear overnight. It turns into a majestic plant with gold leaves and pink flowers, a combination I have grown to love.

.‘Diana Clare’ pulmonaria’s large blue flowers look spectacular with its emerging silver leaves.

Once you have a couple of varieties of pulmonarias, they start to cross and every one is beautiful.

The lovely, pale yellow flowers of Anemone x seemanii were produced by a cross between A. ranunculoides and A. nemorosa, European wood anemones. Very rare and available at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens for the first time this year!

Our native double bloodroot, Sanguinaria ‘Mulptiplex’, is my all time favorite flower. It seems to prefer the rocky slope in my woodland, and I often see the single form on road embankments. We take special orders for this plant.

Our display gardens have about forty types of epimediums, and their flowers are popping out of the ground. Here, the orange-flowered E. x warleyense. We will be selling this epimedium along with ‘Roseum’, ‘Niveum’, ‘Lilafee’, E. grandiflorum, and the rarer ‘Yubae’ (Rose Queen) and ‘Pierre’s Purple’.

Epimedium pinnatum subsp. colchicum

One of the first plants I ever planted and still a favorite: Dutchman’s breeches, Dicentra cucullaria. Available this spring.

There are lots of dogtooth violets in our woodland and they have even crossed and produced some stunning new forms. This is the European Erythronium dens-canis. Its flowers are gorgeous but sparse. We sell the US native ‘Pagoda’, a vigorous plant with many yellow flowers just starting to open.

Everything is so late this year! Native moss phlox ‘Emerald Blue’ is just starting to open its flowers. Moss phlox makes a great, evergreen groundcover in sun to part shade in dry areas. Ask us to point out our amazing stand of the white-flowered form ‘Nice n’ White’. We also sell purple, crimson, and a new, more compact cultivar called ‘Emerald Pink’ that looks like a miniature boxwood.

‘Shell Pink’ lamium bursts into bloom now but then continues to flower until December. It is the only lamium that produces flowers for three seasons. Its leaves are also semi-evergreen so the ground is never bare. It is not invasive and should not be confused with the yellow-flowered lamiastrum.

Anemone ranunculoides, a parent of A. x seemanii shown earlier, is a bolder color and faster spreader. We also sell ‘Bractiata’, ‘Vestal’, ‘Alba Plena’, and ‘Wyatt’s Pink’ European wood anemones.

Now we get to one of my favorite plants, Corydalis solida, which you will see all over my garden in a rainbow of colors. Its common name is fumewort, but I never hear anyone call it that. The photo above shows the varieties that I sell: ‘George P. Baker’ in the foreground, ‘Purple Bird’ in the center, followed by ‘Beth Evans’, and ‘White Knight’ at the very back.

‘White Knight’ is new this year and is a stunning form, densely packed with pure white flowers.

If you let Corydalis solida self-sow in your garden, you will get some gorgeous un-named forms like the blue above. Unlike other brightly colored corydalis, fumewort comes back reliably every year. It goes dormant after it flowers but reappears bigger and better the next spring.

A mixture in my woodland

If you are local and want to get a jump on the April 15 open house sale, we are around today, tomorrow, and all weekend. Just email for an appointment. Or come Saturday between 10 am and 3 pm when customers are picking up their edgworthias—let me know an approximate time.

Carolyn

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.

19 Comments »

Native Fall Color at Longwood Gardens

Posted in Fall, Fall Color, garden to visit, green gardening, native plants, Uncategorized with tags 'Hartlage Wine' sweetshrub, Aesculus parviflora, American yellowwood, bald cypress, bottlebrush buckeye, Calycanthus raulstonii 'Hartlage Wine', Carolyn's Shade Gardens, Cladrastis kentukea, Hydrangea quercifolia, Longwood Gardens, oakleaf hydrangea, Peirce's Woods at Longwood, pond cypress, Taxodium ascendens, Taxodium distichum on November 13, 2016 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

A view across the lake of the color in Peirce’s Woods, an area of native plants.

We have been having one of the most beautiful falls that I can remember. Every day is bright and sunny, between 50 and 60 degrees F (10 to 15.6 degrees C) except when we have just the right amount of rain. The fall color on trees, shrubs, vines, and perennials is spectacular. I am blessed to live in an area where I can enjoy one of nature’s most majestic shows just by walking outside my door. So I decided to post photos for gardeners in the US and abroad who don’t experience this amazing prelude to winter.

Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, native to PA.

All but two of these photos were taken during a visit to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, US, on November 2. Every plant is native to the US and most to Pennsylvania (PA), which is part of the mid-Atlantic. A similar color riot is still going on today, November 12, in my own PA garden.

Pitcher plants, Saracenia, native to PA, even the planters near Peirce’s Woods are filled with natives.

One of my top five shrubs: oakleaf hydrangea, H. quercifolia, and fall color is a big part of that along with gorgeous flowers, tropical-looking leaves, peeling cinnamon bark, and its status as a native albeit slightly south of PA.

Hydrangea quercifolia

The words “jewel-like color” were made for oakleaf hydrangea.

Flowering dogwood, Cornus florida, native to PA, one of the best small trees for fall color not to mention spectacular flowers and fruit as well as a unique and elegant habit. This is a young specimen.

Aesculus parviflora

Bottlebrush buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, a PA native with beautiful flowers in the late spring. Great for creating a grove in dense shade and dry soil.

Fothergilla, F. gardenii, native just south of PA, provides a mix of oranges, reds, and yellows that lasts a long time. In the spring it sports lovely fragrant flowers.

Looking across the lake towards Peirce’s Woods, the red tree to the left of center is a red maple, Acer rubrum, and the smaller peachy tree to the right is sourwood, Oxydendrum arboreum.

Red maple is a shade tree native to PA. It colors early so I was surprised to find it still stealing the show. Here is a view from the other side looking down at the lake.

Sourwood, also known as dead man’s fingers due to the unusual habit of its flowers, is a smaller flowering tree native to PA with many ornamental attributes including unbelievable fall color.

‘Prairie Sentinel’ pond cypress, Taxodium ascendens, has a more upright habit than its cousin the bald cypress and is native just south of PA.

For all-round large shade tree, I would nominate the sugar maple, Acer saccharum, native to PA. Photos don’t do its color justice, and large specimens have a habit that is purely regal. This one is a youngster.

I had to throw in this photo from Carolyn’s Shade Gardens of ‘Hartlage Wine’ allspice, Calycanthus raulstonii. Top five shrubs again with absolutely gorgeous, bright yellow fall color; long-lasting, exquisite, large red flowers; and big, shiny, smooth blue-green leaves. It is a native hybrid.

Also from Carolyn’s Shade Gardens, another favorite tree native to PA, yellowwood, Cladrastis kentukea.

Carolyn

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.

24 Comments »

CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS

Archive for the native plants Category

Designing with Native Plants

Native Plants in Bloom Part 1

Native Plants for June and Beyond

The Garden Tourist

What’s Up at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens?

Our Woodland is Glorious

Your Native Woodland: If You Build It They Will Come, Part 2

Bucks County PA Tour

Early Spring Beauty at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens

Native Fall Color at Longwood Gardens

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Welcome

Site Stats Since 11/3/10

Email Subscription to Blog Posts

Pages

Click image for links to all articles on snowdrops

Search My Website

All photos and text on this blog are copyrighted and may not be used without my express permission

Top Posts & Pages

Recent Posts

Click image to see Carolyn’s photos in The New York Times

Reader Locations (click to enlarge)

Plant Information (click for website)

Reference Books (click for website)

Places to Visit (click for website)