Landscapes + Professional Articles
Many of you are familiar with the work of Dr. Bridget Behe of Michigan State University. We had the chance to catch up with Dr. Behe to ask her for some ideas that IGCs can implement over the coming weeks.
Colorful plants that offer sweeping swathes of color are wonderful additions to landscapes. As I well know, filling those large spaces - I have a 60 foot by 8-foot bed where I fill in lots of space with annuals - can get expensive. I love how annuals provide constant, all-summer color and flexibility to change my color scheme. I also enjoy a good deal which is why I often choose fast-growing, wide-spreading annuals that I can depend on to fill the border with color. Here are some of my favorites for adding lots of color with not that many plants.
Let’s think beyond the obvious and liven up our gardens and public spaces with bountiful containers filled with cool weather loving plants for fall. From calendulas to coral bells, these ten striking plants offer seasonal color, rich texture and an unexpected twist on traditional autumn displays.
Including ornamental grasses in complex container designs and large-scale landscape beds is a simple way to jazz them up without increasing your costs dramatically. Find inspiration for designing with Proven Winners ornamental grasses here.
Shrubs are a key element for building good garden bones so it's important to get their placement right.
It’s time to plant! Trials show that fall planted perennials typically have larger crowns, stronger stems, and more flowers compared to those planted in spring. Here are five top recommended Proven Winners® Perennials for fall planting.
No-fuss landscaping is in high demand and Proven Winners is meeting it by introducing low maintenance shrubs that require no pruning to achieve a naturally refined, compact habit. When you grow these varieties, there’s no need to worry about pruning at the wrong time or the wrong way. See how we’re making landscaping easier for everyone with these six no-prune shrubs for landscapes.
For many home gardeners, it’s not the lack of desire to work in the garden, but the lack of time to do the work. Wouldn’t it be nice to relax on your patio, look out into your lush landscape, and know that the shrubs you’ve planted are growing beautifully all on their own? By choosing low maintenance varieties, it’s easy to realize that dream. Here are five top-rated shrubs you’ll love to grow.
Finishing plants outdoors when temperatures are just above freezing can help production in many ways. By increasing your production space and moving more mature crops outside, you can increase the spacing on the remaining plants or order in new plants to get more out of every season. Finishing outdoors under cool temperatures also helps acclimate plants to the outdoor environment, making them tougher, more compact, and increases the plants’ survival rates for your customers when they transplant them. The cool temperatures will slow the crops, so plan for that, but the benefits usually outweigh the longer crop times.
At Proven Winners, we offer a vast array of annuals, perennials and shrubs and many of them are stars in both landscapes and containers. Here are a few annual plants we want to introduce you to that will wow almost anywhere you put them. You will be absolutely amazed by the beautiful garden performance they deliver from spring into fall.