Fall is a beautiful time of year in the CSG gardens, especially right now while the sugar maples are turning.
Blog followers who are also customers received an email in September letting them know that our nursery would not be selling plants this fall. Carolyn’s Shade Gardens (“CSG”) has gotten so busy in the last five years that we have been unable to do anything besides sell plants. By remaining closed this fall, we hoped to better prepare for spring, complete some much needed garden renovations, and make some capital improvements to our potting and shipping areas. This post will show exactly what we have accomplished so far.
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.
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CSG uses a staggering amount of ground leaves to mulch the garden beds, and an equally large amount of pine needles to cover all of our paths. The photo above shows our stock pile for spring once the beds have been mulched and the paths refreshed (so the actual amount required is a lot more). The piles are about five feet high and wider than tall. Our own massive deciduous trees provide the leaves, which we grind in the driveway with a lawnmower. The pine needles are collected from the sides of local roads.
We highly recommend mulching with ground leaves. For step-by-step instructions with photos, click here. If you don’t want to do it yourself, my son and his business Practiced Hands Gardening can supply the ground leaves and do the mulching for you. Just email him at practicedhandsgardening@gmail.com.
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Extensive renovations have been completed to the terrace by our front door. The grass was removed so that we no longer have to haul a lawnmower down the narrow stone steps. We decided to try pine needles as a replacement. They are free and easy to install and refresh plus I like the look with the newly installed stepping stone path. Gravel might have been more suitable from a design standpoint, but the area floods occasionally so we decided to try pine needles first. We also added more of many of the perennials that were working and eliminated some perennials that had self-sown to overwhelm other plants.
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The back of the rock garden on the first terrace is also being renovated. The area had filled in with vinca and self-sown garden phlox. We are adding a lot more stones and hope to create a path through the middle for ease of viewing.
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We have moved a lot of trees and shrubs like this double Magnolia sieboldii, one of my favorites, which was planted at the bottom of the garden where the drainage is poor. Magnolias like to be well-drained so we moved it to a drier area up by the house.
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Six hundred pots of perennials are planted in the fall for spring sales. Here they are stacked next to our carport with an initial covering of ground leaves. Eventually the cover will be six inches thick. Some perennials do not do well in pots so we also plant a lot of stock in the ground in the fall.
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Snowdrops are propagated in the fall and planted in the ground for spring sales.
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The photo above shows 21 crates containing 820 miniature hostas. We usually only winter over 20 to 30 leftover mini hostas. However, this year several of my wholesale hosta suppliers decided to close their businesses. I purchased and divided extra plants in the spring of cultivars that I want to try to keep going myself only to find out in September that my main mini hosta supplier, with whom I had already placed my spring 2015 order, was going out of business. We decided to take as much of our order as was left in stock and potted them up this fall. At least for spring 2015, many of your favorites, including several of the mouse ears, will still be available. Sadly, a lot of great minis like ‘Appletini’ and ‘Crumb Cake’ will no longer be available in the trade.
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There is a lot more to do outside, but we are also hoping to make some significant capital improvements in the carriage house to make potting the plants we grow here and shipping snowdrops and mini hostas more comfortable and efficient. Believe it or not we have spent weeks cleaning out this area in preparation for the renovations, but there is a lot more to do.
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More of the trees that power the CSG gardens with their leaves.
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Enjoy fall,
Carolyn
Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive notifications of catalogues, sales, and events at the nursery by sending your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net.
Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.
If you are within visiting distance and would like to receive catalogues and information about customer events, please send your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.
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CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS 