Why didn’t my hydrangea bloom? What can I plant that the deer won’t eat? How do I overwinter this shrub in a container? You’ll find answers to these and many more of the most commonly asked questions in this season’s edition of Ask the Expert. Let’s dig in!  Questions About Hydrangeas and Other Shrubs   Why didn’t my hydrangea bloom?  Why does my hydrangea only have a few blooms down near the ground? Let’s group these two common hydrangea questions together since the cause is the same in both instances. Assuming your hydrangea is sited properly and is healthy, the reason yo ..read more

When you stop to think about it, birds are a lot like people in that they need many of the same things to survive and thrive. Food, water, shelter and community are all critical components of the ecosystem in which they live. If your landscape is lacking any of the four, you are less likely to see many birds. But if you can provide all four components year-round, many birds will happily make your garden their home. Let’s look at those four essential pieces a little more closely. Robins enjoying winterberry holly berries. Photo courtesy of Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs. FOOD During the b ..read more

Let’s face it—if you are going to grow a garden, eventually you are going to encounter insects. After all, they are a natural part of a living ecosystem. Birds rely on insects to feed their young, and in fact, many beneficial insects rely on other insects for survival. Most are completely harmless and don’t warrant any human intervention or control. Often, a healthy ecosystem will keep itself in balance and not let any one pest dominate.  We can overlook a moderate number of holes in leaves or missing blooms. However, there are times when our patience is tested to the limit with pests ..read more

Are you tired of replanting all of your patio and porch pots every year? What if some of them contained plants that returned for several years? Though non-hardy annuals are traditionally used in patio and porch containers, the palette of available plant material increases exponentially when you add hardy perennials and shrubs into the mix. There are some that blend perfectly into a collection of containers that house petunias, begonias and other annuals. We’ll show you ten of our favorites below. Advantages of Growing Perennials and Shrubs in Containers There are a number of advantages of g ..read more

As pretty as they are all on their own, you can enhance the beauty of your hydrangeas by pairing them with complementary plants that accentuate their best traits. Companion plants can also bring color and texture to the space when your hydrangeas aren’t in bloom. Let’s take a look at all six types of hydrangea shrubs we offer and find the best planting partners for each. Companions for Smooth Hydrangeas (Hydrangea arborescens) Courtesy of Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs Key Factors to Consider: Smooth hydrangeas (H. arborescens) are one of the first species to bloom, starting in late sp ..read more

Few garden flowers have stood the test of time like roses. For centuries, they have been revered for their bouquet-worthy summertime blooms. There are so many different types of roses, from climbing forms to hybrid tea, floribunda and more, but for our purposes here, we are focusing on how to grow landscape roses.  All of the roses we offer are easy care, shrub form or climbing roses that have been selected for their natural disease resistance and prolific blooms. You’ll see that caring for them is as easy as any other shrub in your garden. Let’s take a look at some in-depth growing ti ..read more

Roses are undeniably beautiful but for a long time, fragrant cultivars fell out of favor. That’s because many of the most amazingly scented roses were also some of the worst offenders when it came to black spot and powdery mildew. They were too much work and required too many chemical treatments to keep them healthy, so many people simply stopped growing them.  Thankfully, fragrant roses are now back but even better — they also exhibit excellent disease resistance. Modern rose cultivars combine beauty with durability, blooming all summer long without the need for spraying to keep their ..read more

Some of the questions we hear most often from our customers at Garden Crossings are centered around fertilizing plants. What kind of fertilizer is best? How much and how often should I feed my plants? We’ll do our best to answer those questions here. First, a little background. What’s the difference between feeding and fertilizing? For our purposes here, the two words mean the same thing. They both refer to providing your plants with the nutrients they need to thrive.  The three main nutrients that general fertilizers provide are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). Nitrogen ..read more

If you enjoyed some blueberries in your cereal this morning or a thick slice of tomato on your BLT sandwich, you have a bee to thank. Native bees, of which there are approximately 4,000 species in North America, are the primary pollinator of many of our agricultural crops. They are generally far more efficient at pollinating food crops than honeybees which are native to Europe, although honeybees are used for pollinating crops like almonds and lemons. It is estimated that native bees are responsible for pollinating 80% of all flowering plants. Sadly, bee populations are dwindling around the ..read more

Some plants are just better together—a concept that has given rise to the idea of companion planting. If you grow vegetables, you may be familiar with this term. There, companion planting is more about one plant attracting or deterring insects from the other or about plants creating physical support for one another. When it comes to pairing perennials and shrubs, companion planting is more about design—the way their physical traits play off of one another to create something more beautiful together. Below, you’ll find eight dynamic perennial-shrub duos, each with a specific theme like “polli ..read more