Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa)
Plants that are good for eating or good for pollinators dominate the list of new plants that nursery professionals in southern Maine are recommending as this gardening season begins. Some of the best plants are good for both.
More to plant
HERE ARE A FEW MORE plants providing food for people or pollinators that local nurseries are recommending this year.
MICHELLE MARTIN, SPRINGVALE NURSERIES 1280 Main St., Sanford, 490-5543
• Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa): Small cherries that taste good, if you can keep the birds from eating them.
• Steeple Jacky daylily (hemerocallis): Yellow blooms not as larger as some, but good for back of a border garden.
Above and Beyond (roses)
SUE MCINTYRE, LONGFELLOW’S GREENHOUSES 81 Puddledock Road, Manchester, 622-5965
• Above and Beyond rose: Orangey buds that open into apricot. Stem hardy to Zone 3.
• Clematis Claire de Lune: Compact and takes more shade than most. Only 5-6 feet tall with big, white blossoms.
• Clematis Silver Moon: Bigger, up to 8 or 9 feet, with light pink flowers.
• Hot Wings Tatarian maple (Acer tataricum): Only 20 feet. Seeds color up in mid-summer to a brilliant cherry red. Leaves also have good fall color.
• “Lion King” Japanese iris: One of the most beautiful. Commonly get huge flowers, 7 to 8 inches across.
• “Lewisia” or bitterroot: Native to the west, with little, star-shaped flowers and foliage that looks like a succulent. Low to the ground. Blooms yellow orange, peach and pink.
• “Sarah’s Choice” cantaloupe: Bred by Brent Loy of the University of New Hampshire, this plant produces 3-pound fruit in 76 days and is resistant to powdery mildew.
JEFF O’DONAL, O’DONAL’S NURSERY 6 County Road, Gorham, 839-4262
• Andropogon Little Bluestem Indian Warrior: This native plant grows up to 5 feet with green foliage and red to smoky purple flowers. The purple of purple mountain majesty.
• Weeping redbud, Cercis Vanilla Twist: With white flowers, this plant can serve as ground cover or, if staked, take an umbrella shape.
• Microbiota “Woodburn variegata”: Typical looking for the dark green species but with streaks of white.
Supertunia “Picasso Blue”
PHIL ROBERTS, BROADWAY GARDENS 1640 Broadway, South Portland, 772-0415
• Supertunia Picasso in Blue: This plant is self-cleaning, so deadheading is not necessary. Good pollinator for butterflies and hummingbirds.
• Holy Moly Calibrichoa: Yellow with a dark pink stripe going down the petals, this plants grows up and out to create a “mounded” look and is attractive to hummingbirds.
JIM MASSE, ESTABROOK’S 337 East Main St., Yarmouth, 846-4398
• Crocosmia “Prince of Orange”: Architectural foliage, orange color with burgundy centers. Good for butterflies, and the seed pods look great in arrangements.
• Crocosmia “Walberton Yellow”: Shorter, with soft orange color.
• Perovskia “Denim and Lace”: A shorter form of Russian sage, with strong stems and a dense froth of lavender blue flowers. Blooms August to September.
• Meconopsis, Himalayan blue poppy (betonicifolia): Sky blue flowers in mid-summer, dark green foliage. Likes morning sun. Beautiful but challenging to grow.
• Heuchera “Silver Blush”: Shiny silver foliage with prominent red veins. Blooms dainty scapes of pink flowers in June.
• Thalictrum “Black stockings”: Foliage like maidenhair fern, with deep purple flowers on almost-ebony stems in mid-June. Butterflies love it.
It makes sense. Edible landscaping has been a growing trend over the past decade. And I read articles online every day urging gardeners to grow plants that help struggling bees or monarch butterflies. Garden centers make money by giving gardeners what they want. So what plants are exciting nursery professionals this year?
• PAW PAW: Michelle Martin of Springvale Nurseries is pleased to be selling the native paw paw trees, which she discovered on a trip she and her husband took to the Carolinas.
“We tried the paw paws cold-hardy to this zone (Zone 5), also absolutely delicious,” she said. The tree (Asimina triloba) usually requires two different varieties to produce fruit. Martin said Springvale Nurseries is importing wild plants that are genetically different from each other, so customers can buy two of the same variety and expect fruit with two or three years.
• MULBERRY: Another fruit Springvale Nurseries is selling is grafted dwarf contorted mulberry, which is native to China. The dwarf version gets only about 10 to 15 feet tall and produces a fruit that is tasty and high in antioxidants.
• HAZELNUT: Jeff O’Donal of O’Donal’s Nursery in Gorham is offering a red-leaved hazelnut tree that is everything gardeners could want: It is native, attractive, provides food for bees and produces fruit.
“It has purple leaves from spring into summer, but loses color later,” O’Donal said.
The tree will grow to about 8 feet tall. Of all the new offerings in this column, it is the one I am most lusting for. While the beaked hazelnuts are small and the local wildlife usually gets to them before humans find them, it just sounds like a fun plant to own. Now, to make room for it.
• HYSSOP: O’Donal – who favors trees and shrubs over perennials – said his perennial supervisor recommends a new hyssop, called Tango.
“It blooms all year and is a great pollinator, which is going to be a big deal this year,” he said. “It’s short and compact with gray-green foliage and produces an array of fiery orange flower spikes.”
• APPLE: Sue McIntyre of Longfellow’s Greenhouses in Manchester is high on two Colonnade apple trees, Flamenco and Polka, that get only 2 feet wide but grow 8 to 10 feet tall and are hardy to Zone 4. They are ideal for people who don’t have much room in their yard and have limited sun.
• MILKWEED: For pollinators, McIntyre likes two different milkweeds – perennial plants that are prime food for butterflies, especially monarchs – depending on the type of soil the gardener has.
“In the Kennebec Valley we have clay, and more clay on top of clay,” McIntyre said. “That can be difficult to work with, but swam milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) loves it. Pink Cinderella is a new variety that we like.”
Asclepias tuberosa prefers dry soil, and it is the only milkweed that female Monarch butterflies feeds on – so Longfellow will be offering many of that variety.
Sometimes customers complain that the butterfly bushes look good for a while, but get eaten to the ground late in the season. “I just tell them, ‘That’s what is supposed to happen. They are food for the butterflies.’ ”
An Asclepias tuberosa that Jim Masse of Estabrook’s Farm and Greenhouse in Yarmouth loves is “Hello Yellow.”
“It’s a yellow form of native orange butterfly weed, an excellent food source for Monarch butterflies and great nectar source for bees.”
• BIDENS: Phil Roberts of Broadway Gardens in South Portland spent some time wandering his greenhouses looking at annual seedlings before returning my call for new plants.
The Beedance biden series from Suntori, including Red Stripe and Painted Red, looked good, he said.
“They grow well with just water – you don’t need fertilizer,” he said. “The original bidens was aggressive and could take over, but these new hybrids stay more in control.”
These are just a few ideas to consider when visiting your local garden center. They are multipurpose plants, feeding you as well as bees and butterflies, and feeding the part of you that likes to look at beautiful things.
Tom Atwell has been writing the Maine Gardener column since 2004. He is a freelance writer gardening in Cape Elizabeth and can be contacted at 767-2297 or at tomatwell@me.com.
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