How to grow sunflowers
Looking to grow sunflowers this season? Here is a guide to growing them in your landscape as well as in containers, including growing tips on the massive, single-flowered variety as well as the smaller, multi-flowered varieties.
Canada Anemone: A native ground cover for woodland garden
Canada Anemone is native ground cover that is ideal for the woodland garden that enjoys a little sun and would benefit from a fast-spreading ground cover with a lovely flower.
Flowering Dogwood: The queen of the Woodland garden
The flowering dogwood is an icon of the American landscape with its spectacular spring flowers followed by red berries that birds cannot get enough of as they ripen.
Pagoda Dogwood: Shade-loving native tree for woodland, wildlife
The Pagoda Dogwood or Cornus Alternifolia is a small native tree or shrub that is perfect for a woodland garden and vital to native wildlife, including birds, caterpillars, insects and mammals. It’s also an elegant, multi-layered tree with a beautiful horizontal habit that works as well in a woodland garden as it does in a Japanese inspired garden.
Wild Bergamot: Easy-to-grow native wildflower and pollinator magnate
Wild Bergamot is a valuable native wildflower that should be in every garden, both for its beauty and its importance to wildlfe from native bees to moths and butterflies.
Bunchberry is the ideal woodland ground cover
Bunchberry or Cornus Canadensis is the perfect ground cover for the woodland garden. It is happy in a moist, acidic soil growing in a coniferous or mixed forest. The small, ground-hugging dogwood looks great in spring summer and fall complete with perfect little flowers and bunches of bright red berries.
Little Bluestem is BIG winner in 2022
The native perennial Little Bluestem is an outstanding, little-used prairie tallgrass that has its place in naturalized gardens as well as more formal beds. It’s an important grass for native wildlife including butterflies and insects and provides a food source for our native songbirds.
Native Moss and Moss-like ground covers for a Woodland, wildlife garden
Moss is quickly becoming a favourite ground cover for Woodland gardeners and those looking to create a Japanese-inspired garden. These top three ground covers are great alternatives to moss when native moss is not an option.
Serviceberry: Ideal choice for attracting birds
More native plant gardeners are discovering the incredible value of the Serviceberry tree or shrub. A flush of delicate white flowers that cover the native trees and shrubs in early spring, followed by a profusion of deep red/purple berries creates a magnet for birds, bees and other wildlife. It’s the perfect understory tree for any woodland wildlife garden.
The Mayapple: Carolinian zone woodland native wildflower
Early spring is the time for Mayapples to spread out across the forest floor and our woodland gardens. The spring ephemerals are native to southern Ontario and northeastern United States but stretch as far north as Quebec and as far south as Florida.
Native Plants find a home on Vancouver Island
Satinflower Nurseries Native Plants owners Kristen and James Miskelly are reshaping and rewilding the gardens and natural areas around Canada’s beautiful city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. The couple is bringing their expertise of native plants to gardeners, and large commericial clients and restoring the natural habitat of the Saanich area.
Ontario Native Plants: Taking back nature one garden at a time
Reyna Matties and Ontario Native Plants is saving our natural environment one garden at a time. The Hamilton-based native plant on-line store offers more than 100 plants, shrubs and trees native to Ontario and the Carolinian Canada forest zone to shoppers on their informative on-line catalogue.
Native Eastern columbine: Growing tips for a woodland, wildlife garden
The Native Eastern Columbine is an early blooming red and yellow wildflower that is an important food source for returning hummingbirds and other pollinators. Grow them in your woodland wildlife gardens in average to poor soils in rock gardens, woodland edges or garden borders.
Three of the best Carolinian under story trees (perfect for small yards)
If you are lucky enough to live in the Carolinian forest zone in Ontario or the United States you are able to grow some of the finest understory trees. Here are three of the best understory trees, Redbud, dogwood and Pawpaw. They are small trees perfect for today’s smaller backyards.
White pine: Native evergreen that helps birds and wildlife
Our native Eastern White Pine is an elegant, open evergreen that deserves a place in more gardens. The tree’s beauty is evident in its early stages. The fast-growing tree eventually becomes a stately, flat-topped tree that has captured artists for years. It is also an important tree to attract wildlife to our backyards.
Seven Viburnums: Top shrubs to attract birds to your garden
Building up the number of viburnums in your garden design is a great way to not only beautify your backyard but create a garden that is attractive to a wide variety of birds. Viburnums provide an abundance of flowers in spring, attract pollinators, insects and caterpillars throughout the summer, outstanding leaf colour in fall and an abundance of berries in fall lasting well into the winter.
Plant the perfect Redbud (a Carolinian zone favourite)
I consider the Eastern Redbud equal to Dogwoods when it comes to understory trees in the Woodland Garden. It’s incredible spring bloom turns into a green architecturally elegant tree in the summer that comes to life again in autumn with its spectacular canary-yellow fall foliage. What’s not to love about this native understory tree that lights up the spring landscape with its pink blooms and the fall landscape with its golden leaf colour.
Carolinian Canada is a diamond in the heart of Southern Ontario
Carolinian Canada is a sweep of land that extends from Toronto to Lake Erie and down through Windsor to Lake Huron. Its diversity of flora and fauna is unmatched anywhere else in Canada. The Carolinian forest also stretches through much of Eastern United States.
Going Native: Saving nature one backyard at a time
Bringing Nature Home is a book every gardener needs to read. The book is a rich resource for woodland gardeners looking to better understand the importance of native plants in our environment and the dangers of using exotics. It is a comprehensive blueprint for how gardeners can use native plants to sustain wildlife