Tag: ornamental

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Support pollinators!

Pollinator friendly plants

Do your part to help pollinators and grow more native perennials!

According to scientists’ estimates, global insect populations are down by 50-75% in the past 50 years. One way to take action is to plant perennials on a hyper-local level and support the insects, specifically pollinators, in your area. That can be a city lot, a farm, or a house in the suburbs.

We have the plants to build your pollinator support toolkit here in WNC, USDA zone 7. Redbud is a beautiful landscape tree, with excellent early season pollinator support. Witch hazel is a beautiful, medicinal plant with winter interest which supports pollinators after everything else is dormant and has stopped blooming. In the middle of the season, we love to have a variety of species like button bush, carolina sweet shrub, spice bush, dogwood, sourwood, and black gum. These species are beautiful, useful, and native!

Start planning your pollinator support landscape now! To find these plants on our website, search for “pollinator friendly” or follow the link below:

https://plantsforeveryone.com/produc…/pollinator-friendly/

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Feed and house your local wildlife with plants!

Mulberry

Do you want to support local wildlife? We have some excellent plant offerings to help! Mast is a term referring to the fruit of trees and shrubs. Hard mast is more typically nuts and acorns, while soft mast includes raspberries, blueberries, and MULBERRY! (as pictured here)

The wide diversity of hard and soft mast bearing perennials allows you to pick species to fit any gardening or landscape application. We carry multi stem shrubs like hazelnuts, tall stately trees like oaks or American persimmon, smaller shrubs like blueberries, and smaller understory trees like the pawpaw! Any of these can help you beautify your environment and support your local ecosystem and help to increase biodiversity! Head over to our online store to browse our extensive selection of mast bearing perennials!

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Plant Profiles – Pawpaw!

Paw Paw tree
Paw Paw, Standard
Paw Paw

One of our favorite plants we sell is the pawpaw tree, Asimina triloba. Known by many names including the West Virginia banana, and the American custard apple. This is the largest native North American fruit, with the pawpaws reaching about 2 inches wide by 10 inches long. The fruit’s flavor is something like a blend of mango, pineapple and banana, and has traditionally been used to make ice cream, pie filling, custard, and even wine. 

This plant is native all through Appalachia, and is a gorgeous, sometimes multistemmed understory tree growing to 10-40 feet with large leaves that are somewhat tropical in appearance.  Pawpaws will grow in deep shade to full sunlight, although we’ve found they enjoy a bit more shade when very young. Because they attract and host butterflies, songbirds and insects, the pawpaw tree is an excellent addition to any pollinators, rain, or butterfly garden. The fruit is an important food source for the pawpaw Sphinx moth!

This beloved plant is the inspiration for the names of several towns and seasonal festivals, and the subject of venerable songs like “way down yonder in the pawpaw patch” https://youtu.be/SidjBL6tQF4

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New Plant Profiles 2023 – Serviceberries!

serviceberry

Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis) is one of our favorite edible landscape plants, and we are proud to offer the Autumn Brilliance cultivar this year! Native to NC and playing host to many birds and pollinators, this gorgeous small tree adds character to any landscape. Even better, it produces large crops of berries similar in size, shape and texture to the beloved blueberry.

Serviceberry is known by many names. In the 19th century eastern US, serviceberry was known to bloom around the time that roads would become passable again for preachers to resume their rounds of services, including weddings, baptisms and funerals. This time often occurred in June, so you may also hear it referred to as Juneberry.

Another name for this plant is shadbush. This is because the blooms coincide with shad fish returning to the rivers from the ocean.

Whatever you call them, these serviceberries enjoy full sun to part shade, are pest and disease-resistant, and are an incredible ally for birds and pollinators!

Check out our website to get your own serviceberry to add something extra special to your summer berry harvest!

https://plantsforeveryone.com/…/serviceberry-autumn…/