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Look for These in Our Perennial Department

	HEUCHERELLA & HEUCHERA If you gave a child a big box of crayons and told her to draw plants using all her favorite colors, the result might resemble our selection of heuchera and heucherella. Foliage in black, purple, pink, yellow, gold, silver, green. Perfect for containers or as garden accents. Grow with a few hours of sun in the morning, in soil that drains well after rainstorms. The evergreen foliage colors are even more intense in the cool weather of spring and fall.
	TIARELLA FOAMFLOWER Foamflower is a delight of the woodland garden. Bearing white, or light pink, starry flowers on spikes in the spring, they gently spread by runners or seed. Some are native to the east coast, some to the west, and horticulturists have intermingled them to create new varieties with interesting patterns on the leaves. Grow Tiarella in bright shade and in good garden soil.
	LAVENDER Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly, lavender's green...... Plant in full sun to intensify the fragrance. Bear in mind, it can be a bit tricky to grow; good drainage is essential. Mulch with pea gravel instead of bark. Lavender in the Perennial Dept. 4½-inch pots and larger.
	STEPABLES Spread the Good News! Stepables Perennial ground covers, perfect for containers and small spaces, between stepping stones, beneath birdbaths or mail boxes, in walls or stone stairways.

Got Shade? Get Native Ferns

The Natives Are Restless

Tiarella (Foamflower) Foamflower is a delight of the woodland garden. Bearing white, or light pink, starry flowers on spikes, in the spring they gently spread by runners or seed. Some are native to the east coast, some to the west, and horticulturists have intermingled them to create new varieties with interesting patterns on the leaves. Grow Tiarella in bright shade in "good gardener" soil (that is, soil that a good gardener has enriched with Leafgro®)

Clethra alnifolia (Summersweet) Fragrant and attractive to pollinators, Summersweet is a great native addition to any garden. The small white or pink flowers bloom in mid to late summer and form spikes 3-5" long, similar to a bottle-brush, and green leaves turn yellow in the fall. Dwarf varieties of Summersweet grow 2' to 3' tall and wide, while regular varieties will need more room, growing 5' to 6' tall and 4' to 5' wide. They tolerate full sun to moderate shade and grow well in wet soils.

Contain Your Enthusiasm? - Never!

Let your imagination run amuck this year! Be bold with your container gardens. First choose a planter that you "love" - a bright ceramic pot, a clawfoot bathtub, or even your old watering can. Then choose plants that compliment and contrast. Look for bright colors, new textures, interesting shapes. Combine annuals with perennials and tropicals or try your hand at succulents. The only real "rule" to keep in mind is to combine plants that like the same conditions - i.e. plants that like sun, plants that like shade, plants that prefer a dryer environment, plants that prefer more moisture. Now, start your imagination and indulge yourself this year!

From The Behnkes Garden Blog Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of May.

Perennials and Flower Borders

• Continue planting perennials and moving your extras to better spots in the garden – just be sure to water them every day for the first week (if it doesn’t rain) and water them weekly for the rest of the season (again, if it doesn’t rain).
• Deadhead spring bulbs as they fade, but don’t remove the foliage – the bulb needs to withdraw energy from the leaves to make new bulbs for next year.
• Give borders a nice new edge (if you didn’t do it last month) for a clean, neat look and easier weeding.   (Here’s how to edge naturally.)
• Apply 1-2 inches of mulch (if you haven’t already), and we recommend shredded hardwood.
• There’s still time to divide perennials IF don’t bloom in spring and IF they’re still relatively short (no taller than 5 inches).
• To prevent flopping of taller perennials, especially the ones receiving too much shade, cut them back by half in May. Prime candidates for this are Asters, tall Sedums, Monarda, Garden Phlox, and Purple Coneflower.
• Start pinching your mums to produce fuller plants and prevent flopping.

From The Behnkes Garden Blog, Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of April.

Perennials and Flower Borders

• If you didn’t clean-up your borders in March, do it now. (Gotta remove weeds now while they’re still small and haven’t flowered yet.)

• Cut back all ornamental grasses to 6-12″ if you haven’t done it already, and don’t wait any more. It may already be difficult to cut off the dead leaves without also harming the new ones.

• Plant, divide or move perennials – it’s now or never! Okay sure, you can still do it in May, especially planting new ones, but it’s best to get all this jostling around of perennials done before it gets hot, and it gets hot in Maryland soon – certainly by May.

Nonwoody Ornamental Plants

• This is a great time to plant cool-season pansies, Dianthus and snapdragons for color, but remember not to set out tender annuals (impatiens, marigolds, petunias, salvia, etc) until after the last frost date – the first week in May for the DC metro area.
• If you still have unplanted bulbs from last fall, they may still be worth planting. Inspect them carefully and only plant the best quality. Many may be in bad condition and not worth planting. If they were stored where it was warm, they likely will not flower this year but once getting established should do well next year.
• Time to clean up your ornamental beds!  Cut back your ornamental grasses and the stems of last year’s perennials.  Remove dead leaves, weed, and you’re ready to apply 1-2 inches of mulch this month, or later in the spring if you choose.  Don’t let garden debris (like dead leaves) stay on top of groundcovers and short perennials, as this can cause foliar diseases in the spring. Trim back English ivy that is invading walkways, turf and garden beds.  You can divide perennials as they poke up from the ground this month.
• If you start ornamental annuals from seeds, you can start them indoors in March -  5-6 weeks before they are planted outdoors.

From The Behnkes Garden Blog, Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of February.

Larry Hurley’s Favorite February Tips

• Remember that it’s best to stay off of soggy, wet soil. Walking on it or “working” it with hand tools or tillers will compress it. Clay soils, which drain poorly to start with, will be made even worse by trying to work with them when they are wet.
• Buy Valentine’s Flowers and plants for your loved ones, and even your liked ones. Nothing compares to the color and fragrance of real flowers.
• Take some trips to the great greenhouses: United States Botanical Garden is always worth the trip downtown, and the Conservatories at Longwood Gardens are beautiful any time of the year.

Studying and Planning

January is THE time for planning, so it’s a good time to browse our Gardening Blog and the articles on our website for ideas for spring planting, especially the articles about about plants – the perennials, trees and shrubs, native plants, and so on. Email us with your questions – or put them in a comment on our Gardening Blog -  and we’ll try to answer them. Attend some of our free lectures or inexpensive workshops, the more you know, the easier and more rewarding it is to garden. If you haven’t ever done so, make a to-scale sketch of your yard, placing the trees and shrubs. Think about where you have room for more. When the bulbs and perennials emerge in spring, add them to the sketch. It’s a great planning tool for deciding what else to plant this spring.

Perennials, Annuals and Border

• Now’s a good time to collect free seeds from your own garden – from plants like cleome, zinnias, cosmos, celosia and butterfly weed.
• If you apply compost now to your borders (and we love Maryland’s own 100% organic Leafgro) – it’ll have plenty of time to enrich the soil before spring.
• Evergreen perennials like hellebores prefer sunlight to being buried under six inches of wet leaves for the winter, so remove leaves from around and on top of them.  Also, remove leaves from near creeping and woodland phlox.
• If you didn’t get around to putting your potted perennials in the ground, don’t panic.  Our perennials manager Larry Hurley has found that most pots of perennials overwinter quite well if placed on the ground and covered with 8 or 10 inches of leaves, preferably oak which doesn’t mat down as badly as maple. Uncover the plants in early March.
• If you have lavender in your garden, it survives the winter better if mulched with gravel rather than bark mulch – because lavender hates soggy soil and moisture around the stem.  White marble chips are a good mulch for lavender because the dust reduces soil acidity, something else that’s good for lavender.

From The Behnkes Garden Blog, Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of November.

Perennials and Borders

• It’s not too late to add pansies to your garden or outdoor pots.
• There’s also still time to plant, divide, or transplant perennials (especially peonies, which should only be divided in the fall).
• Leave the large seed heads of black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, and native grasses for birds to feed on over the winter. They also add interest to the winter garden, as do nonnative ornamental grasses.  They can all be cut down in late winter, or after a snowstorm has flattened them.
• Other dead seedheads you might want to leave standing are perennials, biennials and annuals that you want to self-sow – or just shake their pods around before removing the remains of the plant.
• Cut back and compost other annuals and perennials after hard frost kills the top foliage.   Just don’t compost foliage from plants that suffered from disease problems this season – like leafspot or other fungal diseases, especially around disease-prone plants like peonies, roses and irises.  Fall clean-up will help to make your garden healthier next year by reducing disease spores and insect eggs, which overwinter in plant material.
• This is a good month to prepare new beds the slow way that avoids the use of a rototiller – by applying cardboard or thick layers of newspaper, with mulch on top.  It’s called the Lasagna  Method and there’s more lots about it online.
  
• Don’t begin mulching your perennials until after the first hard freeze, usually around mid-November. The mulch should be 2-3 inches deep and surround the plant crowns. Waiting to mulch will help the ground to cool and remain cold during winter.  It can be either a good layer of compost (LeafGro® is excellent natural compost), shredded hardwood or pine mulch.  Don’t use a moisture-trapping mulch like hardwood or compost around lavender, though; pea gravel would work better at keeping the lavender dry.
• Cover any bare soil with mulch or groundcovers, to prevent erosion over the winter.  Fall is an ideal time to add organic matter to your borders by mixing in 6-8 inch layer of leaf compost or well-rotted manure and then covering with a layer of shredded or mulched leaves.

From The Behnkes Garden Blog, Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of September.

Perennials

• September is also a great time to plant or move perennials.  Just keep them watered if there isn’t regular rain.
• It’s also a great month to divide perennials, and large clumping ones with dead centers are definitely due for a little surgery (a cheap steak knife will usually do the job).  Just be sure to keep them well watered if it doesn’t rain.  Peonies especially should be moved or divided now if they need it, not in the spring or summer.
• Remove ratty leaves on perennials that are done (like hostas) but leave the coneflower seeds heads alone until late winter because the birds (especially goldfinches) love them.  More good candidates for leaving the seedheads in place are coreopsis and black-eye susans.  Ornamental grasses can also provide needed cover for over-wintering birds.  Also if you want to encourage self-seeding, leave the seedheads up through this month (e.g., Nicotiana, alyssum).

From The Behnkes Garden Blog, Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of August.

Perennials

• Starting August 15, it’s the season for mums and Behnkes will carry them in an assortment of colors, sizes and bloom types.
• Miri reminds us of plants that can be planted now for blooms in August and later: “Don’t forget that you can have flowers from now until fall, too, not just great leaf color. Bluebeard shrubs bloom as early as this month, and many perennials do, too -  Aster, Boneset, Goldenrod and Ironweed are late-season butterfly magnets.  Japanese Anemone also blooms late, and their Asian brethren, Camellias, start showing off as early as October. Start planning now so you can grab what you want when fall restocking season hits.”
• Hostas: bloomed-out flower stems should be cut off close to the base of the plant.  Hosta plantaginea and some white-flowered hosta cultivars such as ‘Royal Standard’ are going to flower in August.  They have fragrant flowers and are showier than the ones that have already bloomed, so even people who don’t care for hosta flowers may want to let these bloom.
• Daylilies:  There are late-blooming cultivars of daylilies that haven’t started to bloom yet, so be careful not to cut off new bloom stalks. Old ones will be starting to brown, and may form seed pods.  From August through the fall is a good time to dig and divide your daylies (except for those late-blooming ones, of course).
• Deadhead (remove faded flowers from) perennials unless they have showy seedheads, or seedheads that feed the birds (like that goldfinch magnet, the Purple Coneflower).
• Keep feeding flowering annuals in containers for more  blooms.

From The Behnkes Garden Blog, Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of July.

Perennials, Shrubs, Trees

• Keep on top of weeding, especially the ones that have developed seeds,  while carefully avoiding scattering the evil progeny.   There’s lots more about weeding here.
• Water, but water deeply, rather than frequently.  Frequent, shallow watering will just encourage roots to stay at the surface, where they are vulnerable to heat and drought.   Click here for more info on watering your garden. Walk through your garden daily, if possible, to notice what plants might be needing a drink (and to spot and remove the worst of the weeds – the jungle-making vines).
• Chrysanthemums should be cut back by about half to encourage fall blooming (rather than later this month), and to create taller stems that don’t flop.
• Deadhead reblooming perennials and annuals to encourage rebloom, except for those with attractive or bird-supporting seedheads, which you may want to leave in the garden until winter.
• Many shrubs will rebloom if deadheaded, too – like many roses, spireas, and crapemyrtle.
• Remove dead, damaged or disease branches of shrubs and trees anytime.  Same goes for suckers and water sprouts.
• July 4^th is the traditional “last call” for pruning many shrubs that bloom next year on buds that are set this year (e.g., azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs, early-blooming spireas).  So if you want blooms next spring, do NOT prune these shrubs after the 4^th.
• Except for roses, don’t feed your shrubs or trees now – wait until winter or early spring.  But do give roses their final feeding of the summer this month.
• While fall is everyone’s favorite time to plant, it’s okay to plant in the summer if you keep the soil moist, especially in areas with some relief from afternoon sun and heat.

From The Behnkes Garden Blog Here are some tips and a "to-do" list for the month of June.

Perennials

• Water, water, water, as often as daily for new plants and almost all plants in pots.  The rest of the garden generally needs one inch of water every week – whether from rain or from the gardener.  Remember to water deeply, not superficially, because deep watering encourages deeper roots and more drought-resistant plants.
• Weed regularly, and not just because they’re unsightly, either.  Weeds rob water, light and nutrients from the plants you DO like. Always remove weeds before they have a chance to go to seed – this is the first line of defense to keep weeds in check.
• Feed plants in pots regularly – once or twice a month.
• Deadhead perennials (remove spent flowers) to encourage rebloom.
• Remove daffodil leaves after they’ve gone brown and wilted.
• Snails and slugs are out in force, eating their way through the garden.  If they’re dining on your plants, Sluggo is the answer.

April 28th, 2011 - With close to 30,000 perennials in stock during spring, how do you make a choice? New to perennial gardening? Pick up our brochure on the most reliable perennials. These are the perennials that are easiest for a new gardener succeed with, or for folks that don't want to do a lot of fussing in the garden.  Deer a problem? We have a list of deer-resistant plants as well. Look for deer-resistant perennial Salvia. Or, how about Native Plants? Pick up our list of Baysafe Plants, selections of species native to Maryland. Looking for fragrance? We have fragrant Dianthus (pinks, perennial garden miniature carnations) with a clove-like scent.

For the more adventurous gardener we have a selection of alpine/rock garden plants and planted alpine troughs at both garden centers, although the selection is greater at Beltsville. These are great for the deck or for folks with limited space. A garden in a pot. We have a large number of Itoh hybrid Itoh Peonies Monroviapeonies, which are hybrid peonies which have lots of blooms, strong stems, and some colors not found in "regular" peonies: like yellow. These are large plants. We will have some tree peonies and herbaceous peonies as well.

For dry shade, we have a good supply of Epimedium or "Barrenwort." Usually these are small plants; we have some larger plants in stock at unusually low prices (for epimedium). Another great shade plant with a poor common name, Pulmonaria or "Lungwort" : they look like hostas with speckled or silver leaves, and blue, pink or white flowers in spring. The Pulmonaria will self-seed gently over time, and pop up here and there in the garden. "Wort" by the way, is "Olde English" for flower. We don't carry a huge supply of either of these, so shop early for best selection.

Want to plant a bunch or perennials? We have a good supply of starter plants, in 4 inch/1 quart pots. These are also good for planting in containers. Or, do you want to make an instant impact? We carry a good supply of #2 size (about 1.5 gallon sized) pots of perennials, including hostas. If you need to make a statement for an upcoming wedding, garden party, home sale, or just want a finished look...then these are what you are looking for. Large or small, find it all, at Behnke Nurseries.

Hellebores

Hellebores bloom in winter and very early spring. They are deer resistant, have evergreen foliage, and come in a number of colors. Some are in bloom now (March), some will bloom for the first time next year. Grow in bright shade for best results.

Behnkes perennial buyer has hellebores that he got from Mr. Albert Behnke's garden almost thirty years ago. They require little care once established. They never need to be divided, just a little water in the driest parts of summer. Over the years you will find a few seedlings under the original plant as well.

A Daylily For Every Taste

Daylilies are one of the most popular summer-blooming perennials. Many people are only familiar with the orange “ditch lily” that has naturalized over many parts of the country (to such an extent that many people think it’s a native plant. It’s not native; in fact, it shows up on most lists of invasive species.) The horticultural cultivars are much more refined and less aggressive than Hemerocallis fulva, the Tawny or Orange Daylily, mentioned above.

With something like 50,000 registered cultivars, there is a daylily for every taste. (Literally: daylily buds are often eaten in Asian dishes, such as hot and sour soup.) They come in virtually all colors except true blue, often times with contrasting colors on the same flower. Heights range from about 14 inches in bloom to 6 feet. An individual plant blooms for several weeks, during the period from June to September. Some, like the ubiquitous ‘Stella de Oro,’ will go through a second or third bloom cycle if conditions are favorable.They are best in full sun but tolerate partial shade. Increased shade tends to reduce the number of flowers. If you have a deer problem, then daylilies are not for you.