Gardenig in state Delaware. Tips & Guides

Delaware State Flower emerges as a symbol of the state’s agrarian legacy and natural allure. Let us learn more about this plant along with its growing requirements and significance.

EARLY ON IN making my garden decades ago, I bought a nursery pot of bluestar, or Amsonia, at a native plant sale, and planted it in a border here. It has never asked anything of me, never had any pests or diseases, and just keeps delivering sky-blue spring flowers and vivid gold fall color, year in and year out, and looking pretty handsome in between.

IT’S HARD TO THINK of another place so rich with major gardens as the Brandywine Valley in Chester County, Pa., and an adjacent portion of Delaware. Five of those gardens have a historic connection—a family connection—as they were all by members of the du Pont family.

The South Garden at Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessen, Delaware, has been nicknamed the “pizza oven” by those who tend it. It sits in full sun, and its antique brick walls and pathways radiate a lot of heat. Yet this garden looks fresh and appealing throughout the seasons, thanks to a colorful palette of North American natives that are perfectly adapted to flourish in this hot, bright spot. Visitors who are inspired to plant these beautiful, border-worthy selections will also be helping to feed the local wildlife that depends on their gardens for forage and shelter. Here are some of the spring and summer stars that brighten the South Garden.

In Issue 181, we got to know some of the plants that grace Mt. Cuba Center’s hot, sunny South Garden during the spring and summer months (10 Great Natives for a Sunny Border). The garden had been recently redesigned to showcase a collection of borderworthy natives that can take the heat of the Zone 7 summers in Hockessin, Delaware.

Header image: Plants are growing in complete darkness in an acetate medium that replaces biological photosynthesis. Credit: Marcus Harland-Dunaway/UCR

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) (SLF) is the latest non-native species to take hold in the U.S. This planthopper is large (about a half-inch long) and originally from several countries in the Far East. It was first found in Pennsylvania in 2014, and active infestations are now established in Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and as of just last week, North Carolina. SLF has not been detected in South Carolina, but it is an insect for which we need to be on the lookout.

If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it

Brushwood Nursery, aka gardenvines [dot] com, was founded in 1998 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, out of a Lord and Burnham greenhouse Dan rented for $5 a year plus upkeep. (Such a deal!) Dan, a University of Delaware horticulture graduate, used to teach at nearby Longwood Gardens and worked with Conard-Pyle, where he got fluent in the propagation of Clematis, which most nurseries call “a nuisance crop,” he says, with their particular trimming schedules and rambunctious intertwining tendencies.Enter a business opportunity: a high dollar-per-square-foot greenhouse crop, and one that not everyone is good at–enter Brushwood. He started selling vines over eBay, eventually launching his own website, and recently outgrew the climate and space in Pennsylvania and moved to Athens, Georgia.The Brushwood collection now numbers more than 500 climbers, with Clematis as the main event—including ‘Omoshiro,’ top photo, which may be the first large-flowered one I ever buy (it’s more than 7 inches across, and fragrant). There are climbing roses, jasmines, passionflowers and more–but let Dan tell

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

IT’S ALMOST TIME TO GIVE MY WINTER FRIENDS the twig dogwoods and willows some pruning, the only care they ask in return for year-round beauty.  But will I really have the nerve to cut my favorite of all, Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold,’ back hard? Why I love this easiest of shrubs…and how that love may have backfired just a bit.

A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-

In the early 1990s, when I was working on a book called “The Natural Habitat Garden” with my friend Ken Druse, we traveled the country interviewing native-plant enthusiasts and photographing their gardens. One memorable stop was the home of Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, outside Wilmington, which today is the botanic garden called Mt. Cuba Center, with more than 50 acres of display gardens on more than 500 acres of natural land.I’d never seen native terrestrial orchids before, or the vivid red and yellow wildflower called Spigelia marilandica anywhere, and that day I learned that some discerning and forward-thinking experts such as Mt. Cuba’s first horticulture director, the great Dick Lighty, were already busy selecting “better” forms of native plants for garden use–a trend that has accelerated and become one of the hottest areas of contemp

Read along as you listen to the June 26, 2107 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).evaluating monarda with george coombs of mt. cubaQ. We’ve talked before on the show about your past trials of other native plants like Baptisia and Heuchera—and native plants are the mission of Mt. Cuba, which is both a garden for visiting and a research center, right?A. Mt. Cuba Center is actually a former du Pont family estate, the Copeland family estate, and they left their estate to become a public garden. What kind of sets us apart from others in the area is that we focus on native plants. We broadly define our nativity region as the Eastern United States.We do a lot of work promoting plants in a display capacity in the gardens itself, and then we also do research like what I do, trying to help

Jeff is Director of Grounds and Coordinator of Horticulture at Scott and Swarthmore, where among the extensive and diverse plantings is a whole Tree Peony Garden area, one of the first collections established after Scott was founded in 1929 and now including more than 80 varieties of tree peonies. He is also vice-president of the Mid-Atlantic Peony Society.Why consider these plants? Tree peonies are deer-resistant, extremely cold-tolerant, long-lived and really don’t require a lot of complicated pruning. And oh, those flowers (that’s one of Jeff’s favorites, ‘Nike,’ up top.).Read along as you listen to the April 10, 2107 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or St

I KNOW: This week’s reading list is heavy on news of the natural world, because that’s where my mind is: outdoors. Snow is shrinking fast in these first few sunny, above-freezing days–so stories of birds, butterflies, toads and even the planets caught my attention. The links:

George Coombs managed the Trial Gardens at Mt. Cuba Center native plant garden and research facility in Delaware. In past conversations, George–who in 2019 was promoted to Mt. Cuba’s Director of Horticulture–has helped me make our way through the daunting selections of Heuchera, Monarda, and Baptisia. George and the trial garden team spent three years evaluating 94 different sun-loving selections of Phlox for eye and butterfly appeal and mildew resistance, plus 43 shade-garden choices, too.  Read along as you listen to the February 26, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).phlox q&a with george coombsQ. Whenever one of your reports arrives I feel very lucky to

Entomologist Doug Tallamy and his wife have spent 14 years coaxing back to life 10 acres of what had been farmland for nearly four centuries: achieving more diversity by adding layers to its once-flat botanical architecture. Today 54 species of birds nest on their Delaware property, and acorns the couple planted have become 20-foot trees–so many that now editing is required.Tallamy, professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware-Newark, has been called the “guru of the habitat gardening movement.” He is co-author with Rick Darke of a recent book, “The Livin

That means more and more I’m layering native plants into my landscape, but which ones among the ones tagged “native” do the very best job? You’ve probably heard the word “nativar,” as in a cultivar of a native plant, but what does it mean and how effective are these often showier cultivated varieties at supporting wildlife? I asked Doug Tallamy, professor of entomology at University of Delaware and author of “Bringing Nature Home” and “The Living Landscape,” to help me understand more about this important subject.We talked about what a cultivar change–bigger flowers, maybe, or colorful leaves, or smaller overall stature–actually does to a plant from the point of view of insects. And I learned about a beta version of

Plus, various butterflies use the foliage as their host plant, and bumblebees find the flowers particularly delightful.George Coombs of Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware is one gardener who has not overlooked baptisias, the so-called false indigos, at all.In fact, he has planted and evaluated 46 selections with genetics from 11 different species as part of the trials conducted at Mt. Cuba from 2012 to 2015, and when the full-color report on those side-by-side assessments arrived recently in my mailbox fro

It got me thinking formal.The Mt. Cuba press release described the redesign of a formal garden originally created in the 1940s to complement the estate’s impressive Colonial Revival home (one that’s now on the National Register).  And the photos looked inspired by a proper English-style mixed border–except the headline and captions all made it clear: the new plant palette is n

I know, you may still be wondering “is it spring yet?” as I am, if the weather hasn’t settled. For a read on that based on data, not anecdotes, the USA National Phenology Network’s maps are worth a visit. They call the process of tracking the progress of spring “Springcasting,” and here is how it works.As the weather allows, shall we proceed, then, one chore at a time? I’ve got 10 strategic steps for getting started, plus the longer list to get you through the whole month. 10 strategic steps to get the season startedI FEEL FRANTIC EVERY APRIL, but know that being strategic is a smarter attitude in the face of the month’s heroic to-do’s. I try to stick to the 10 ste

We all want groundcovers to do weed-suppressing duty and tie the garden together aesthetically, but the wrong choices can definitely backfire. Native groundcovers are a smarter alternative that will provide those and other benefits and they’re today’s topic.I talked about making the change is Duncan Himmelman of Mt. Cuba Center, the noted native plant garden and research center in Delaware, where he’s the education manager. A course on native groundcovers taught by Duncan—from low perennials like heucheras or tiarella (above) or sedges to shr

In his new book, “The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees” (affiliate link), he makes the case more strongly than ever, with twists and turns and the tales of all the creatures we depend on, who depend on the genus Quercus.Doug Tallamy is well-known to most every gardener as a longtime leading voice speaking in the name of native plants. His 2007 book, “Bringing Nature Home,” was for many of us, an introduction into the entire subject of the unbreakable link between native plants and native wildlife. He followed up wi

But now’s the time, and I’m grateful that Doug returned to the podcast to do just that. Want to plan your most ecologically minded garden cleanup ever, and understand the consequences of each potential action you can take?The subtitle of University of Delaware professor Doug Tallamy’s recent book,“Nature’s Best Hope,” is “A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard.” Meaning: The choices we make all year-round, including the very important one of how we clean up in fall and again in spring, can help counteract an overdeveloped, fragmented landscape that puts the food web to the t

Duncan Himmelman, currently the education manager at Mt. Cuba Center, a renown native plant garden and research site, earned his doctorate in ornamental horticulture at Cornell before teaching college for 24 years. He’s also managed a large private estate and designed gardens for private clients, so he knows from weeds and weeding.We talked about weed ID, and why it matters to know a weed’s name and life cycle (that’s chickweed, Stellaria media, a winter annual, above; photo from Wikimedia). We also discussed removal tactics and why skipping the chemicals makes the best sense, and more.Read along as you listen to the November 2, 2020 edition of my public

But how good are all these new cultivars as garden plants? And maybe more important, how good are they at supporting pollinators? The native plant experts at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware have just released a report on the results of a multi-year trial of Echinacea, and their insights are our topic today.Today’s guest, Sam Hoadley, is manager of horticultural research at Mt. Cuba Center, a longtime native plant garden and research site, where he trialed 75 different Echinacea. Before joining Mt. Cuba, Sam was lead horticulturist for Longwood Garden’s h

Doug Tallamy’s 2007 book,“Bringing Nature Home,” (Amazon affiliate link) has been, for many of us, a wake-up call into the entire subject of the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife, and now with more than a decade of additional research insights, he goes further in “Nature’s Best Hope.”Read along as you listen to the February 10, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new book by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.‘nature’s best hope’ q&a with doug tallamyMargaret:

The native plant experts at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware have just released a report on the results of a five-year trial, that focused mostly on an important native species, Hydrangea arborescens, and what both gardeners and pollinators have to say about its range of cultivars.The last time Sam Hoadley visited the show, we compared the dizzying range of cultivars and species of Echinacea. Today’s topic is hydrangeas. Sam is the manager of horticultural research at Mt. Cuba Center, a longtime native plant garden and research site, where he trialed 29 species in cultivars. Before joining Mt. Cuba, he was lead horticulturist for Longwood Ga

My guest is Amy Highland, the Director of Collections and Conservation Lead at Mt. Cuba Center, a botanic garden and native plant conservation nonprofit in Delaware, one of three organizations behind the findings.Amy, a graduate of Purdue’s Public Horticulture program, has traveled throughout the temperate forest of North America to find rare plants in need of conservation. We talked about trilliums and also how we as gardeners can be more involved in conservation of native plants over all

Sam Hoadley is manager of Horticultural Research at Mt. Cuba, where he and the team trialed 70 differentCarex over a four-year period. Sam’s report on the findings will be published on the Mt. Cuba website January 13.Sam is also teaching a virtual class on February 1st on these important native plants. (That’s Carex haydenii, above.)Before joining Mt. Cuba, Sam was lead horticulturist for Longwood Gardens’ hillside garden, and he received his degree in Sustainable Landscape Horticulture from University of Vermont.Plus: Enter to win one of two tickets to the virtual event on Carex by commenting in the box at the bottom of the page.Read

The courtship of Helen and Jerry Unruh was long-distance. “He had a florist deliver a rose to me every day,” Helen recalls. After two years, a bloom arrived with a card reading, “Will you marry me?” That was in 1975. Today, Jerry still indulges his wife’s love of flowers: They have 1,700 azalea bushes at their home in Odessa, Delaware—all squeezed onto their 1 1∕4-acre property. “They are such gorgeous things in the springtime,” says Helen. “It makes you happy you’re alive.”