Well…there are lawn options and planning is a must or you will be the neighborhood poster yard for weeds. Ground cover plants, ornamental grasses and perennials are popular, but we have more ideas.

Here are a few ideas for lawn substitutes:

Groundcover #3 (Photo credit: jacki-dee)

Here are more ideas with pictures should you decide to go lawnless in the future. Lawn Substitutes.

Check out Ground Cover Plants at Greenwood Nursery.

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Perennial Garden in bloom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Autumn Brilliance Ferns
2. Heliopsis Summer Sun
3. Snowcap Shasta Daisy
4. Heuchera Autumn Leaves
5. Russian Sage Little Spire
6. Achillea Strawberry Seduction
7. Pineapple Sage
8. Salvia May Night

Greenwood’s best 8 perennial plants are great basic perennials for starting a garden. Check out our other perennial plants.

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Pink Rose Bush (Photo credit: Kaz Andrew)

1. Achillea Strawberry Seduction
2. Heuchera Southern Comfort
3. Liriope Big Blue
4. The Fairy Rose
5. Veronica Royal Candles
6. Apricot Drift Rose
7. Provence Lavender
8. Petiolaris Creeping Hydrangea

This selection of sun garden plants is our choices for beginning a colorful long blooming sun garden in most zones. Check out more plant selections for sun garden plants.

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Hydrangea macrophylla - Hortensia hydrangea, picture from Longwood Gardens (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Greenwood’s Best 8 Flowering Plants

1. The Fairy Rose
2. Pink Velour Crape Myrtle
3. Bloomerang Reblooming Lilac
4. Knockout Double Pink Rose
5. Nishiki Dappled Willow
6. Nikko Blue Hydrangea
7. Spilled Wine Weigela
8. Pinky Winky Hydrangea

These flowering shrub plants were chosen for their blooming length as well as the other special qualities that they bring to the garden. Check out our other flowering plants.

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Sedums (Photo credit: Eric Hunt.)

1. Potentilla Gold Drop
2. Evening Primrose Sundrops
3. Yucca Color Guard
4. Dragon’s Blood Red Sedum
5. Sedum Autumn Fire
6. Blackeyed Susan
7. Kew Red Lavender
8. Barbecue Rosemary

Plants that are drought tolerant still require regular supplemental watering to fully establish a strong root system. Once established, they can grow and flourish with little additional water. Mulching is always recommended around the base of these plants to keep them cool in the heat of summer and to build the nutritional value of the soil. Check out other pages for more plants that are drought tolerant or good for xeriscapes.

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picture of deer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Arctic Fire Dogwood
• Yucca Color Guard
• Juniper Sky Rocket
• Nellie Stevens Holly
• Rosa Rugosa Red
• Euonymus Burning Bush
• Red Barberry
• Old Fashioned Lilac

Please note: Deer resistant plants is a relative term. If deer or other wild animals are not getting food from their usual sources, they will eat anything for survival. However, selecting deer resistant plants is the first step in controlling deer damage in your landscape.

Learn more about our other deer resistant plant varieties and ways to keep deer away.

Image via Wikipedia

This year we will see how new gardening trends are directly related to the economy and weather factors. The United States is seeing one of the largest shifts in how people garden and how homeowners are landscaping their yards. With smaller yards, American gardeners are becoming more creative in the limited space that they call their own. While the rest of the world has gardened in small spaces for centuries, we are just learning some of their secrets to making small work. 

Our best 7 gardening trends to use in your garden this

year are:

• Incorporating small fruiting plants into regular landscaping
• Homes will have less lawn areas
• Planting drought tolerant plant varieties
• Using small scale plants for the smaller sized yards
• More fragrant plants
• Plants with year round foliage and interest
• Efficient gardening

Incorporating small fruiting plants into regular landscaping: I have written about and encouraged our customers and garden club members to incorporate small fruiting plants, such asblackberry, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry and grape, into their landscapes for the last 5 years. Europeans have grown small fruiting plants along side their flowering shrubs and cut flowers for centuries. With new homes in the U.S. now having limited garden spaces and landscape areas, the normal evolution of gardening would be to incorporate vegetable and fruit plants with regular gardening shrubs and flowers. With the world’s chaotic economy, this year we will find more and more people having a hand in their food selection by growing their own.

Homes will have less lawn areas: Recent years weather changes have caused many municipalities to place water restrictions on use during the summer months. Where green lawns once existed, we now see mostly brown straw like blades of grass. Out of frustration, homeowners are turning to lawn substitutes such as ground covers, ornamental grasses, wildflowers and other low growing flowering perennials.

Planting drought tolerant plant varieties: While planting drought tolerant plants often goes hand in hand with less lawn space, we continue to see more homeowners adding drought tolerant shrub andperennial garden plants into their regular landscape. Even homeowners, who are not in restricted water areas, will want to reduce their landscape’s need for water.

Using small-scale plants: Regular sized trees and shrubs can easily overwhelm small yards. Never before have so many smaller sized plant versions of many of the long time favorite landscaping plant varieties been available. We will see more homeowners and apartment dwellers alike will seek out these smaller sized shrubs and trees for their limited growing areas.

More fragrant plants: Whether it’s nostalgia or just the sincere desire to stimulate the olfactory, old fashioned flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs are becoming quite popular. Homeowners are searching for old-fashioned fragrant shrubs such as hydrangeas, shrub roses, mockorange, lilacand viburnums.

Plants with year round foliage and interest: Smaller wallets have forced consumers to weigh out their purchases. Buying plants is no longer an impulse situation. Thought and planning now goes into this purchase. Gardeners are looking for plants that will add life to their garden throughout the year. Brilliantly colored plants are popular, especially when they vary throughout the year. This spring we will be adding new gem colored plants such as the newest heuchera varieties that will create a parade of colors in any setting.

Efficient gardening: Efficient gardening will become stronger this year as more and more gardeners begin practicing techniques such as composting, mulching, filling in open spaces with additional plants, and recycling things from their gardens. These efforts will help to limit the need for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and supplemental watering.

As with fashion and home building trends, they primarily begin in Europe, crossing the pond to the west coast to the east coast, gradually creeping into the rest of the country. Many of these trends began this way, but because of the sour economy and devastating weather, will be catching on much quicker out of necessity.

- Cheryl Jones, Greenwood Nursery owner

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Foundation plants are shrubs and bushes used for planting along homes and building to soften their look, enhance curb appeal and tie it to the surrounding landscape.

Some considerations to keep in mind when choosing these shrubs are:

- Style/Color

- Size

- Scale

- Seasons

The style of your house should be one of the biggest factors in selection foundation shrubs. For example, a colonial house should have different plants compared to a house that is of southwest style or modern style. The colonial would have more traditional, tight growing greenery such as boxwood whereas the southwest style home would have spiky type plants to give a desert feeling and the modern house having open, more free growing plants. Choose shrubs with colors that compliment the color of the house and don’t blend into it. A red brick house would absorb shrubs such as the Cistena Plum Shrubs with deep red leaves, yet those same plants would appear striking along side a white frame house. The gorgeous blooms of the Nikko Blue Hydrangea would be wasted planted in front of a blue vinyl sided house.

Typical anchoring bushes are generally smaller growing (under 6 feet tall) and planted on the corners with somewhat larger growing plants. The length of the windows will usually dictate their height. If the windows on the house start at 3 feet above the ground, then select low growing shrubs that grow no taller than 3 1/2 feet. Placing taller greenery in front of windows is not good for security.

Scale is a consideration most forgotten. Small houses with small yards should have smaller growing plants to keep in its scale and not overwhelm the house as these plants mature. Large scale houses can comfortably accommodate larger growing shrubs and trees without the house seeming to disappear.

Anchor plants should offer color and texture for at least 3 seasons if not all 4. This is the reason that evergreens, both conifers and broadleafs, are often used for this purpose. Try to plant at least 50% of the foundation plants in evergreens to keep greenery around the house year around. Planting all deciduous anchor plants creates a bare house over the winter months. Select a few choice flowering shrubs or small trees, perennialsand ornamental grasses to further extent color and texture in the other seasons.

View our selection of foundation plantings.

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Image via Wikipedia

Here is a listing of plants from evergreen ground covers, to perennials, flowering shrubs and trees that will grow in shade areas. Most will bloom with spring colors while a few others will just add something special to the blend. Strategically placing plants with color can give a whole new look to your wooded or shaded areas. It’s especially easy if you have a digital camera. You can take pictures of the areas you want to enhance with color or texture, print them out or just study them on the screen and you can visualize how you would like to see the woodlands as the seasons unfold.

Ground cover plants for shade:

Ajuga

Pachysandra

Vinca

Cotoneaster

(creeping) Moss

Perennials for shade:

Ferns

Tiarella

Anemone

Aster

Astilbe

Dicentra

Helleborus

Heucheras

Hypericum

Hosta

Solomon’s seal

Carex

Liriope

Shrubs for shade:

Mountain laurels

Sambucus

Reblooming azaleas

Rhododendrons

Bamboo

Carolina allspice

Shrub dogwoods

Hydrangeas

Nandina

Holly

Trees for shade:

White flowering dogwood

Red bud

Serviceberry

Sourwood

Cedar

Hemlock

White pine

Sycamore

Green ash

Poplars

Don’t try to do your entire project at one time. Working on this project over several years allows you to see that you are on the right track for what you want as the outcome.

Visit Greenwood Nursery for shade loving plants.

And don’t forget about ways to move through your woodlands area. Bark mulch walkways and stepping stones make great paths. Benches, whether wood, stone or metal, give excellent reasons to sit and enjoy from the inside out. Rocks of all sizes and even boulders look stately with moss growing over them and are right at home in wooded and shaded spaces.

I hope this has given you some ideas to build on to make your own wooded area as beautiful as a Monet painting.

By Cheryl D. Jones

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Small gardens use small scale shrubs and perennials. Anchor shrubs should mature around 3 to 4 feet tall and are typically placed in the back 1/3 of the area. Planting one or two evergreen shrubs makes a good base. Colorful small shrubs and shrub-like perennials are other good choices.

Small garden anchor plants:

• Boxwood Winter Gem
• Boxwood Wintergreen
• Nandina Firepower
• Sungold Cypress
• Sunjoy Gold Pillar Barberry
• Bloomerang (reblooming lilac)
• Barberry Royal Burgundy
• Arctic Fire Dogwood
• Clethra Sugartina Crystalina

Karley Rose, Prairie Dropseed, Karl Foerster and Adagio are some of the more striking ornamental grasses  that are attractive as single specimens and can be used in lieu shrubs as anchor plants.

Plant perennials of varied heights keeping within 12 to 40 inches tall for added interest. Some of the friendliest and brightest varieties are:

• Lo & Behold Purple Haze Buddleia
• Lavender Plants (Munstead, Hidcote & Kew Red)
• Pineapple Sage
• Walker’s Low Catmint
• Echinacea 
• Purple Dome Aster
• Heuchera
• Gaillardia
• Monarda
• Veronica
• Little Spire Russian Sage
• Hostas
• Ferns

Small scale ground covers are the last touch for small gardens.

Select from:

• Creeping rosemary
• Corsican Mint
• Elfin Thyme
• Red Creeping Thyme
• Blue Star Creeper (Laurentia)
• Big Blue Liriope
• Highland Cream Thyme

Use spreading plants that have a spreading habit to fill in over several years such as:

• Drift Rose
• Beauty Bush Dreamcatcher
• Rudbeckia Autumn Colors
• Yarrows
• Shasta Daisies
• Dianthus Firewitch

How to plan a small sized garden for your enjoyment:

• Select at least one small scale shrub to anchor the garden
• Choose 3 or more perennials in varied heights
• Use one variety of groundcover for the front most part
• For even more interest add a butterfly house, bird house or whirligig just off the center point

For more ideas on small sized gardens, visit Greenwood Nursery.

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