Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Oh boy! it’s plant catalog season
I love getting my new year plant catalogs and browsing on a snowy, or right now, rainy, Sunday morning!
There are so many cool new choices from Jung Seed Company and Burpee. Right on the front page of Jung is a tease of a berry called “Boreal Beast Honeyberry”. How could I NOT check this out. This is a lonicera but it’s not like my honeysuckle vine. It’s a shrub. I looked up this delightful oblong blue berry on a site called honeybearusa.com
Is the picture below not the greatest?!?! I love that man’s smile!
They’re located in Bagley, Minnesota so you know these berries are good to zone 3, with some good to zone 2! By the way, they offer lots of different berries including Goji. While I discovered this berry from a national catalog, it’s really cool to find a local source!
If you love the look of clematis but really don’t have a place for the vine, then there’s another option! A Proven Winners cultivar, “Stand By Me” is a bush style plant that grows from 34 to 38 inches tall and needs minimal support from stakes or other plants.
In late May to early June, they bear an abundance of blue, bell-shaped flowers followed by attractive, thread-like seed heads. Expect some rebloom later in the summer. clematis hardy to zone 3. This one is delightful.
Okay, one more… it’s a ‘Tater Tot’. So appropriate for the Upper Midwest! This is an adorable little thuja occidentalis. With a mounded growth of just 12 to 24 inches tall and wide, adding wonderful structure to borders and foundation plantings. The plants need very little pruning and hold their shape well.
