Exciting additions at Greenhouse Garden Center & Gift Shop,
a full service florist.
Call Joni at 229-7040 and look for her by the door to the Gift Shop.

We have added 20 more parking spaces when you drive in by the American Flag on the North end of the parking lot.

The best thing about a well planned fireworks garden is that you can "choreograph" your garden to bloom in sequence so that explosions of color burst throughout the garden the entire growing season. Done correctly you should be able to see color from all parts of the garden.

Start with the backdrop of your yard. Could you use some taller shrubs that might add some visual interest along the fence line? Some great selections to consider include the butterfly bush, chaste tree, elderberry, lilac, and taller grasses such as feather reed grass and switch grass.

For bursts of color in the middle of your landscape, look for strategic locations to plant shrubs such as goldenrod, red yucca, agastache, Russian sage, summersweet, bluebeard spirea or mid-size grasses such as fountain grass or maiden grass.

Now add some life to your foreground plantings and borders with perennials such as coneflower, daylilies, hardy lily of the Nile, geum, penstemon, sea thrift, statice, yarrow and wispy stipa feather grass. Shaded areas can come alive with plants such as astilbe, coral bells, pee gee hydrangea, weigela or golden Japanese forest grass.

Getting excited? Just click on the link for a gallery of all of these wonderful plant selections we have in stock. Then come on in and let one of nursery experts help you put together a show of plants your neighbors will be talking about each year!

One of the most beautiful plants for any garden is the butterfly bush (buddleia). Blooming from mid-summer through early fall, it is particularly prized for its ability to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and song birds. The most popular species originally hails from China, but buddleias are now grown throughout the United States.

Butterfly bushes are valued for their clusters of beautiful, tubular-shaped flowers. The blossoms come in variety of colors including white, pink, red, blue, purple, or yellow flowers produced by different species and cultivars. Adding to their attraction is the fact that they are rich in nectar and often strongly scented.

The taller varieties add the most value to the garden when they are grown as a background shrub or as part of a mixed border, while the dwarf varieties look great as focal plants or as part of a colorful perennial bed. Butterfly bushes prefer to be planted in full sun locations but can tolerate partial shade if needed. They go completely dormant in the winter.

The butterfly bush is a fairly low maintenance shrub. Once established it can become fairly drought tolerant and needs only to be fed with an all purpose plant food, such as Master Nursery Rose & Flower Food or Dr. Earth Multi-Purpose once in spring and summer. They can be pruned back hard every spring if needed, and this will produce a denser and more rounded-shaped shrub.

Click here for a gallery of varieties we like. Then stop by and take a peek at these beautiful shrubs as they showcase their colors. Every garden can use a few and your birds and butterflies will thank you too!

Daylilies, members of the Liliaceae (lily family), are some of the easiest to grow and most popular of the garden perennials. Because they range in size, color, and design application, there is a daylily for almost everyone and every garden. Like their name Hemerocallis, "beauty for a day," the individual daylily flower lasts only one day. What is so wonderful? They are borne on long arching stems with the flowers in clusters and bloom in succession over a period of two to six months from mid-spring to late, depending upon the variety.

Daylilies are versatile in the garden and landscape. They can be very dramatic in a perennial border or in the foreground of shrubbery plantings. They can be spectacular as foundation plantings, cover an unsightly bank or serve as accents beside a pond. These flowers are more dramatically effective when planted in clusters of three or more to create sweeping drifts or a mass effect. Not only do the flowers sway in the breeze, so does the light, strapping foliage. Motion in the garden!

The flowers of the species come in vibrant shades of yellow, orange, and red, with a much more varied color selection in the hybrids. Plants have been developed with flowers in cream, gold, scarlet, pink, apricot, purple, violet, and plum. There are also hybrids, which repeatedly bloom throughout the summer; they bloom early, then after a short rest, bloom again, constantly repeating the process.

Don't miss out on our new daylily hybrids with ruffles, piecrust ruffles, and picotee borders. Ruffles have soft, lightly wavy edges. Piecrust edging has heavy indentations, much like edges to a pie crust. Picotee has petal margins that are either lighter or darker than the main petal color—a contrasting color. All of these new introductions are gorgeous!

Choose a sunny or lightly shaded location for your daylilies. The best flowers will be produced when they are planted in a sunny location. Daylilies also enjoy a regular feeding of Master Nursery Rose & Flower Food or Dr. Earth Flower & Rose Food every two months during the growing season to maintain their bloom color.

They are tough, adaptable, vigorous-growing plants that will thrive in nearly all kinds of soil; however, the best is soil that is moist, but well drained, fertile and humus-rich. Whether your soil is light and sandy or heavy clay, add Bumper Crop and mulch with bark or cocoa mulch in the spring and in the fall to minimize weeds and retain soil moisture.

Here at Greenhouse Garden Center & Gift Shop, we have numerous daylily hybrids for you to choose from.

Browse through our gallery, and take your pick!

The increased popularity of wines and table grapes has led to a surge of interest in growing grapes in the home garden. Not only do they produce great tasting fruit, but they can also provide an excellent alternative to flowering vines on fences, arbors, and gazebos. If you have the room in your garden and lots of sunlight, you can even plant a mini-vineyard.

The most important factor in growing grapes is understanding the difference between table grapes and wine grapes. They are very distinct. Table grapes should be eaten fresh, while wine grapes are small berried and seedy, which don't make for good eating. You can't make wine from most table grapes because most don't get high enough in sugar content and the acids are too low to balance the wine.

It also helps to understand the growing habits and ripening dates of different varieties. This leads to a better understanding of when to harvest them and how to prune them properly for maximum health and fruit production. Many homeowners harvest too early, pulling grapes off the vine when they begin to color.

This is a mistake because coloring, known as "veraison," occurs weeks before the grapes are actually ripe. Grapes need to attain a good sugar content and acid balance before they can be harvested. Many people harvest their grapes before they have reached this point and are disappointed in the taste or the wine made from these grapes. It pays to sample your grapes before you harvest them. If they aren't ripe, wait for them to develop.

For wine grapes, consider purchasing a refractometer to determine the sugar content of the berries. Wine grapes usually need a sugar content of around 22-24% sugar (or more) to be harvested and subsequently produce the right alcohol content of the wine. Unlike other fruit, grapes don't improve after harvesting, so don't pick them too early.

The highest maintenance part of growing grapes is the amount of pruning required. Although there is no hard and fast rule about how much to prune, cutting away more of the grapevine leads to stronger and more robust growth during the next season. On the other hand, if you are trying to shade a large arbor, you may wish to allow more growth to remain, but you will have less fruit. Here are some general pruning tips:

• First, keep in mind that the current season's growth produces fruit from last season's wood. If you prune too heavily, the result will be an abundance of foliage--but very little fruit. Pruning too lightly results in large yields of poor quality fruit.
• Basic pruning is simple. The coarser bark of old wood is easily recognizable. Follow the growing tip back to the older wood from the year before. Then come forward, leaving four to five buds, and prune the rest of the branch off. Remove all the weak, thin shoots and leave only the strongest shoots to develop. Flowers from these shoots precede the development of fruit.
• Grapes will grow on the new wood that comes from these pruned shoots. Keep your vine tidy throughout the summer. Prune shoots back to the third or fourth leaf after fruiting. Remove any new growth. Also, remove all leaves around growing fruit clusters to give the fruit maximum sun.

Growing grapes in the backyard or garden can be a rewarding experience if done correctly.

We invite you to click here for descriptions of the grape varieties we carry.

The only way sun-loving plants can die from summer heat is if they are not watered regularly. Most plants should be watered once the top two inches of soil have dried out and the root ball below is moist to the touch. The same rule applies to plants in the ground or in containers.

The best time to water is early in the morning, because water evaporates faster during the middle of the day and you want to irrigate your plants before they get stressed from midday heat. Covering around the top of the root ball with a two inch layer of decorative bark or top dressing will also keep the soil cooler and reduce unwanted weeds. Try and keep two inches open around the stem of the plant. Spray the foliage with wilt stop or cloud cover to help reduce the plants water loss. These products are inexpensive and very handy with other uses also.