When Summer Expectations Fall Short

Spring is easy. Let’s face it. Garden centers are bursting with azaleas, dogwood, forsythia and pansies. The long winter has got you hungry for some color.
So like many, you rush out in April and fill all the holes in your garden with wonderful color. Now you are done, right?
Well, all plants have a reproduction cycle and flowers are just one part of it. Seeds are also part of it, and that means the flowers are gone. There is nothing like the sadness and yearning that comes over a planter when July rolls around and the landscape has the color diversity of a head of lettuce.
Boring. How did this happen you ask, the tags said “Blooms All Summer!”
Plant growers are marketers and they are shipping to many different climates, so they generalize. Most plants bloom for two-six weeks. That is it. Of course there are some that go longer, roses, catmint, hydrangeas and daisies, but their number is few and their uniqueness becoming common.
Here is where good designers step in.
We often tell our customers, spring is easy; we do summer and fall too. The wise homeowner/gardener should stop by their favorite garden center at least once a month to see what is new. Hardly any garden center stocks summer and fall items in the spring, there is not enough room and frankly, people won’t buy it without a flower.
Landscapes designed by Cape Shore Gardens are sure to be scheduled with an assortment of plantings that will bring weekly and monthly interest. We even have trees that bloom in the fall.
When you see our jobs, there will be textures that complement each other, flowers that appear in different parts of the garden (not all at once as in a row of impatiens plopped in front of shrubs) and make your home look comfortable on its site.
Here are a few to tease you, sedums in all their varieties, solidago, asters, phlox, boltonia, franklinia, hibiscus.
Stop by and take advantage of our summer sales.
—Stan Sperlak, Cape Shore Gardens