Viburnum Summer Snowflake

A Repeat Blooming Doublefile Viburnum

Viburnum Summer Snowflake

Viburnum Summer Snowflake

Repeat blooming plants are the hottest plants for gardening today - and for good reason. Either it is hydrangeas, daylilies or iris, with today's smaller gardens, the desire is for more flowers from a microscopic space. An ideal way to perform this is with plants that bloom more than once per year. This week we are featuring one of the few repeat blooming deciduous shrubs and virtually the only repeat blooming viburnum - plicatum tomentosum 'Summer Snowflake.'

Two attributes set 'Summer Snowflake' apart from other plicatum Viburnums - repeat blooms and ageement growth habit. In the spring, 'Summer Snowflake' will bloom with clusters of white flowers that corollary along the horizontal stems, creating a duplicate row of blooms on each side. This bloom pattern gives 'Summer Snowflake' its coarse name - doublefile viburnum. The spring blooms are followed by cycles of blooms throughout the summer. Because it uses so much of its energy repeatedly flowering, 'Summer Snowflake' grows more compactly than is typical for Viburnum plicatum. It matures at about six feet tall and five feet wide. Like so may repeat blooming plants, maximum bloom will be achieved if 'Summer Snowflake' is kept actively growing with ample water and fertilization.

'Summer Snowflake' has dark green oval leaves that can reach up to five inches long. The foliage turns a rusty red to bronze in the early fall and the flowers give way to challenging red berries that are relished by the birds. 'Summer Snowflake' is easy to grow and it is rarely troubled by pests and diseases. It can be planted as a specimen, used for screening or in a spot in the foundation planting where a moderately tall deciduous shrub is called for.

To view Viburnum Summer Snowflake visit the Carroll Gardens website

Twin Size Daybed

Growing Tulips Together With Summer Bloomers - rigorous Planning is the Key

If you love tulips, but hate that they fade so quickly, you'd probably like to find a way to merge your spring organery with a later blooming one, to keep the color alive in your yard.

Growing Tulips Together With Summer Bloomers - rigorous Planning is the Key

Growing Tulips Together With Summer Bloomers - rigorous Planning is the Key

Sounds simple, doesn't it? plainly plant complimentary plants alongside your tulip beds. But how do you know which plants are compatible? If you're not faithful in your choices, you might just end up killing one plant to save another.

You need to know a bit about the life cycle of a tulip to make a good decision.

First, the theorize you can't cut back or otherwise restrain those yellowing tulip leaves is because the tulip is conference energy straight through photosynthesis and storing it all up inside the bulb. The very same bulb you are hoping will bloom again and again. Without those leaves, the bulb won't have sufficient stored energy to produce a bloom next year.

During this time, your tulips need water and sun and food just like any other growing plant. Once the leaves have yellowed and withered, though, they require a dormancy period, preferably a dry one. This is why tulips tend to fare good in areas with hot, dry summers. You won't find tulips in the rain forest!

Here's where the problems come up. Say for example you've planted some annuals along side your tulips so that you can have some summer color in your organery as well. Those annuals are not going to take well to the hot dry conditions your tulip bulbs need, and unless you water them well, you're likely to end up with withered and dying annuals. But, if you do water them, you'll be drowning your tulip bulbs.

There are a merge of inherent solutions to this dilemma. One, you might want to lift your bulbs after the leaves have yellowed and been removed. Store them away someplace dark and dry until fall, when you can replant them. This plan works, but it's labor intensive.

You might also just decide to buy and plant tulip bulbs again in the fall. This is how a lot of habitancy do it, and it does work, but again it's labor intensive. The advantage to this formula over the last is that you don't have to let the leaves die off on their own. You can cut them down as soon as the flower is gone, since you're not worried about the bulb storing up energy for next season.

If you truly want to naturalize your tulips, though, you need to find plants that are compatible with the conditions required by dormant tulip bulbs. Look for plants which are known to be "drought tolerant" or "drought resistant." Many varieties, such as coneflower and Caryopteris will flower mid-summer straight through autumn, making them the perfect companions to a spring tulip bed.

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