We’re always on the lookout for plants that can solve problems for our customers.  We think spicebush, Lindera spp, might be one of those plants!  This wonderful native plant grows naturally from Maine to Ontario and Kansas and south to Florida and Texas.

This medium to large shrub, flowers in April on bare stems.  The yellow flowers remind me just a little bit of witchhazel, or winterhazel, but are smaller and held close to the twigs.  They are a good nectar source for insects waking up from their winter nap.  The mid-green, ovate, fragrant leaves turn yellow in the fall.  This plant is the sole food source for the spicebush swallowtail butterfly, and worthy of planting just to feed their caterpillars!  Similar to hollies, spicebush are dioecious, meaning they have separate male and female plants.  The males have somewhat showier flowers, but the females will produce red, elongated berries in the fall that feed migrating birds.

Spicebush is easy enough to grow in a wide range of soils and conditions.  Although they will have a denser habit in more sun, they perform well in part shade and do well in areas with moist soils.  Try planting it with arrowwood viburnum and Clethra in dappled sun.  Tall native perennials like Joe Pye weed and rose mallow would also make good companions.

Hydrangeas are funny ducks.  Sometimes their flowers are blue.  Sometimes they are pink.  Sometimes they are purple.  Sometimes they are red, sometimes they are fuchsia.  Sometimes they are white.  Sometimes they are a combination of all these colors.  We love the great variety of colors that these quintessentially Nantucket plants can bring to the garden, but many gardeners prefer one over another.  Traditionally, pastel blue has been the most sought after.  It seems simple enough.  Buy a blue hydrangea, plant it – done!  But with Hydrangeas it’s just not that simple.  So often, a gardener will buy a blue-flowered Hydrangea, plant it and find it bloom some other color the following year.  They puzzle over it.  They come in to the nursery saying, “I’m sure I planted ‘Nikko Blue’ it was perfect last year, now it’s pink!”  So what’s going on?

There are several factors that affect Hydrangea flower color.  The species of Hydrangea, the availability of aluminum in the soil, the time of year, and the amount of pigment in the flowers.

Not all Hydrangeas are able to change their flower color in the same way.  Mop head Hydrangeas, Hydrangea macrophylla (the ones with big, round, squishy flower heads), are very susceptible to aluminum. If mop head Hydrangeas absorb aluminum from the soil, the flowers will be blue or purple.  If there is no aluminum in the soil, or it is chemically unavailable to the plant, the flowers will be pink.  In addition, the soil must be acidic or the plant cannot absorb aluminum.  In soils 5.5 and higher on the ph scale the aluminum is “locked up” and cannot be absorbed.  Planted in soil that has a ph lower than 5.5, the aluminum is easily taken up by the plants causing blue flowers, even in plants that are meant to be pink.  So, you can easily have a blue ‘Forever Pink’ Hydrangea.  The reverse is also true.  A ‘Nikko Blue’ Hydrangea will be pink in alkaline soils.

Generally, Nantucket’s soils are lean and acidic, but not always!  If your blue Hydrangeas come out pink, aluminum sulfate can be added to the soil, changing them to blue.  It may take several applications, a few weeks apart, or even a whole growing season to get the color you are looking for.  Simply dilute the product in water and drench the soil around each plant, making sure to avoid the leaves.  Take care to follow the application rate on the package, as too much can burn the roots.  If your pink Hydrangea blooms blue, add lime to bring the ph closer to neutral.  Phosphorous also affects the availability of aluminum.  In order to keep the aluminum available, (and flowers blue) make sure to use a low-phosphorous fertilizer.  Choose a fertilizer with higher phosphorous to inhibit the aluminum, if you prefer pink.

The age of the flower and the time of year will also affect color.  Early in summer, most varieties will appear paler, almost bi-color, with most of the color showing at the edges of each floret.  As the flowers mature, the color generally becomes more even.  Later, as cooler nights arrive, the flowers enter their antique phase, and often appear reddish or deep purple.

The quality of the color is affected by the amount of pigment in the flower.  Each cultivar is different, but there are basically two groups as far as color saturation is concerned; Pastel and deeply saturated. In cultivars like ‘Glowing Embers’ there is a lot of pigment present in the flowers, allowing for very intense purples and/or pinky-reds. These plants will never be baby blue like ‘Endless Summer’.  No matter how much the soil chemistry is changed, there will always be a lot of pigment in these flowers, so they will always have deeply saturated color.  Conversely, cultivars similar to Endless Summer® can only produce pastel hues of blue, lilac and soft pink, there just isn’t enough pigment present in the flowers to allow for intense shades.

And then there is the whole question of white.  ‘Madame Emile Mouliere’, ‘Sister Theresa’ and Endless Summer® Blushing Bride, all purport to have white flowers.  Unfortunately, none of these stay clear white all season.  With afternoon shade, ‘Madame Emile Mouliere’ and ‘Sister Theresa’ will remain white for several weeks, but eventually take on a tinge of pink, or less often, blue.  ‘Blushing Bride’ usually takes on a pale pink hue, as well.  We are not aware of any way to keep the flowers white on these plants all season.

The take away:  If you want a blue Hydrangea, choose one that is bred to be blue, and plant it in acidic soil, using an acidifying fertilizer low in phosphorous.  If you’re shooting for pink, choose a variety bred to be pink, plant it in soil closer to neutral and use a balanced fertilizer, with higher amounts of phosphorous.  For white blooms, choose ‘Madame Emile Mouliere’, ‘Sister Theresa’ or ‘Blushing Bride’ be sure to give them afternoon shade.

This time of year the island is popping with excitement.  It’s almost Figawi, and town is starting to fill up with the summer crowd.  Although it feels like we have only been graced with two days of sun all spring, our garden on Somerset Road is coming along nicely.  The border of lady’s mantle is all budded up and the ferns, Astilbe and Hosta have begun to fill in the shady areas.  Deutzia gracilis, one of our favorite shrubs, is just about to reach full bloom in the border.

If your garden could use a big splash of white for Memorial Day, Deutzia gracilis (Slender Deutzia) might be just the right plant for you.  This medium to small sized shrub does very well in sunny locations with average soil and even moisture.  But slender Deutzia also does just fine in part shade with sporadic water.  We notice that our Deutzia that gets more shade tends to arch wider than it is tall, while the one that gets more sun is somewhat rounder.

The species is a shrub of medium size, reaching 4 to 5′ tall and wide with arching branches that are covered their full length in white bell-shaped flowers in late May.  After the flowers fade, it’s medium green, ovate leaves provide a calm space in the garden that provides a great backdrop for summer-flowering perennials like Nepeta, Calamintha,  or Geranium ‘Rozanne’.  For smaller gardens, ‘Nikko’ is a tried and true compact cultivar that stays under three feet.  In the past few years we have sold the Proven Winners selection, Yuki Snowflake® which seems to be just as strong as ‘Nikko’ with the same compact habit.  “But I need more color!”  No problem!  Chardonnay Pearls®, another Proven Winners plant, has chartreuse leaves all season.  A google search for “Pink Deutzia gracilis” pulls up Yuki Cherry Blossom® a selection with pink bicolor flowers.  There is even a variegated selection, ‘Nikko Dawn’.

So, there you go!  A beautiful shrub that won’t take over your garden, is deer resistant and never seems to get any bugs.  That’s Deutzia gracilis.  Try it, I think you’ll really like it.

There are very few trees that can put on a show quite as spectacular as a Crape Myrtle.  They range in size from miniature shrubs, suited to container gardening, to medium-sized trees.  They have lustrous, dark green leaves and huge flowers that can be seen from quite a distance when they cover the whole canopy in late summer and early fall.

My first experience with Crape Myrtles was in Florida many years ago.  I remember thinking that the trees in most of suburbs looked like they had been plucked out of a Dr. Seuss book!  In that part of the country, these trees are often drastically pruned into wacky shapes.  That’s not my favorite look, but it’s definitely an option.

I’ve gained a wider appreciation for Crape Myrtles after noticing several of them around Nantucket town.  When left to grow in their natural shape, they are quite elegant.  As these trees size up, their bark begins to exfoliate, sloughing off like cinnamon sticks and leaving behind a beautiful mottled pattern.  They are often grown with multiple trunks to best display this attribute.  Their canopy is most often vase-shaped or rounded, sometimes reaching as wide as they are tall.  If careful pruning is done, the branch structure itself can be a lovely feature.

And then there are the flowers.  Botanists refer to their shape as paniculate; meaning there are many individual flowers all connected to a main stem in the middle by individual little stalks, very much like a PeeGee Hydrangea flower.   They come in an array of colors mostly in shades of red, pink, purple, and fuchsia.  There are also white cultivars for those who prefer a quieter statement in the garden.  Flowers are borne on new wood and appear in late summer and early fall, just as many high summer perennials are getting tired.  By the end of September, the flowers fade but are still of interest as their tiny fruit cling to the bare panicles.  Later on, they wake up the garden all over again as their leaves change to hues of red and orange before falling to the ground as winter sets in.

Crape Myrtles perform well on Nantucket with some shelter from harsh winds.  They are considered marginally hardy here, but I’ve seen many in town that are a great many years old and doing well.  During prolonged cold winters, they may experience some die-back in the canopy, but they rebound very quickly once summer arrives.  If you have a sunny spot with reasonably good soil, a Crape Myrtle is a great way to add some spunk to your garden.

Check out our Crape Myrtle Pinterest Board for photos and more information on cultivars we’ve carried in the past.

Rosa rugosa is one of Nantucket’s quintessential plants, right up there with blue Hydrangeas.   These Asian roses have been grown on Nantucket since the beginning of the last century, and possibly earlier.  They do very well in our inhospitable maritime environment.  They tolerate salty winds freezing winters and drought, all the while producing loads of flowers and disease-free foliage.  They can be found planted all over the island and have naturalized in many of our dunes.

The botanical Latin term, “rugosa” means wrinkled.  It refers to the quilted look of the shiny green leaves.  Rosa rugosa has a beautiful pink single, or sometimes white flower.  The white-flowered plants are often labeled as the cultivar, ‘Alba.’  The fragrant, single flowers are very beautiful, but there are many cultivars available with different flowering characteristics.

We currently have a large group of ‘Hansa’ in stock.  This stunning rose was introduced in 1904, making it more than a century old!   ‘Hansa’ sports huge, fully double flowers in a deep pink color.  They flower throughout the summer perfuming the air with a clove-like fragrance.  After the flowers fade, their hips enlarge and turn shades of orange and red, making them even more interesting to look at.

For more information check out our Blog post Rosa rugosa 101