by mulch, so try to keep it at least 6 inches away from the base of your plants. Mulch placed too close or piled up against the plant can slow it's growth or even kill it outright. Avoid black mulches that have been dyed. These chemicals have been found to literally poison whole garden beds. Keep your bark mulch "alive" each spring by mechanically roughing it up to break up the smooth surface that develops over the winter. Doing this will allow spring and summer rainfall to enter the soil more readily. Also, you will find you need to buy less mulch to keep it looking good each year.

Try to avoid seeing the bark mulch itself as a garden. Done to an extreme, the effect in your yard is a veritable red sea of mulch punctuated by a perennial here and there. What makes it worse is the obsession to go out annually, needlessly reapplying mulch, eventually building it up to unhealthy depths. This inevitably leads to huge volcano-like mounds piled around all of the trees. This doesn't look very good, and it can actually kill the tree. Several years ago a customer reported that she was here to buy plants first, and was then going to spend a thousand dollars on bark mulch as they had done every year in the past. I suggested she put the bulk of that mulch budget into plants. She could have a much prettier yard using much less bark mulch, with flowers filling all of the empty spaces.

I never expected what happened next. She said she would think about it then she left. Apparently, she talked it over with her husband who liked the idea. She came back and did exactly as I suggested. Now you don't have to spend a thousand dollars on plants to get the moral of this story. The nice lady sent us pictures from her yard that year and the next, she was so pleased with all of her new flowers.

Reclaiming a Lost Garden We've all been there! Everyone has one or several areas of their property that have sorely needed their attention, and after a few years of putting off the bare necessitates of care, they have a Lost Garden. it's not an easy task once you get to this stage, but it can be remedied, and with a little planning and a few hours of renovation, you can have a beautiful perennial border again. Just about the most important thing in planning your project is to tackle it when the air temperatures are cool to mild, and not during any kind of heat wave. It would also be best to proceed when the ground is still moist from the spring, and there is the promise of seasonal showers on the horizon. In other words, don't attempt this during a drought. There are a few obstacles to get over, not the least of which involve some work with an ordinary shovel (not my favorite), and that would be digging out and dividing the few good plants that are already there -that you wish to save- and plopping them out on the lawn. Or a neater way to do it would be to use a tarp or even a cheap plastic drop cloth or some ripped open black trash bags to keep all the loose soil and small rocks from messing up the surrounding lawn.

The next part is my very favorite I have advised many gardeners to do it this way, though I'm not sure they all do. But if you would go to the trouble to borrow or rent an at least 8 HP rototiller, you will find that the onerous parts of the rest of the job will be reduced tremendously! You must remove any remaining perennials from the garden before rototilling because although they will be chopped up finely, they will all have a tendency to start back up and become a 'weed problem' just like the grasses and broadleaf weeds can. this is especially true for daylilies. When rototilling, all of the remaining weeds, and roots will be converted into a rich planting medium that will nourish the new plantings for several years. I love using the rototiller to dig down and churn up and aerate the new garden area. It gives a wonderful sense of renewal, and the new garden patch is now prepared for planting immediately. It is usually so soft and fluffy that some of the new plants can be planted with your bare hands!

In my opinion, you should not add copious amounts of organic matter, ie. peat moss, or manure of any kind to the garden before rorotilling. Doing so will make the ENTIRE garden extremely fertile. Such that, where ever a weed seed lands, it will be encouraged to grow much faster than it would if it were to land on unfertilized soil. Simply follow the planting instructions below, putting your rich composts and manure only under ALL the plants you are starting up, thereby localizing the growing energy of the fertile soils to the roots of the perennials alone.

If you don't feel confident to design your own new garden, perhaps we can help! Using the plants you still want to keep and seamlessly integrating them in with your new selections is our specialty! No matter what time of the year you come to visit us, you'll find a complete compliment of spring, summer and fall flowering perennials available for sale. We are always producing new crops of plants for the current year and for the years to come! Even in midsummer and fall, when all the other nurseries are selling off their last few tired and sickly plants, our nursery is still filled with sparkling fresh selections by the thousands for you to plant.

Planting instructions for all Perennials and Grasses: Rather than to periodically rip out and prepare whole sections of the perennial boarder, save time and energy by doing a simple routine every time you plant or divide. Make a "planting kit", consisting of a small bag of lime, 5-10-5 garden fertilizer, Osmocote, a shovel, and a bucket of real horse or cow manure, not the bagged stuff. Usually, this can be obtained free from local horse owners. Dig a hole, loosen the soil, and mix (right in the hole) 1 or 2 shovels of manure, a large handful of lime for each shovel of manure, a small handful of 5-10-5 granules, and 2 tablespoons of Osmocote per gallon of pot size planted. Plant at the correct height, and firm the soil, standing on it if the plant is 2 gal. or larger. Make a well: A ridge or crater around every new plant, to catch and funnel water to the roots. It is often overlooked as the most important step in any new planting. It brings 10 times as much water to the roots as flat ground. Water in all new plants well, even in the pouring rain. New perennials and Grasses, planted in the hottest part of the summer, must be watered 3 times a week until they are established, usually about 2 weeks. Annual Feeding: Get on a routine of feeding your perennials in mid-summer with 8-9 mo. Osmocote (any Osmocote will do). Two tablespoons at the root area (more for very big plants) will nourish them for the entire year. This practice will end the problem of underfed perennials that seem to be smaller each year until they finally disappear altogether. Now you are a Master Gardener!

A reminder: Feeding perennials in the early spring before they have reached full size, in our opinion, is not really effective. Early in the season, perennials are using only stored food to come back from their winter rest. Please wait until late June or any time in July to feed perennials. They might be full grown by then, or even producing their flowers. Applying fertilizer then helps them to continue to build up carbohydrates in their crown or growth center. This makes them increase their size and flowers for the next season, and helps them stave off late summer diseases, and winter damage as well. Fertilizer applied to perennials in the spring is often washed away by spring rains before the plant has a chance to use it!