Year-Round Beauty with Dwarf Conifers

Dwarf conifers are low maintenance plants that provide year-round color to your landscape

While shrubs that boast vast arrays of enormous blooms get plenty of attention, their beauty can be short-lived. If you want a garden that will remain interesting all season long, you'll need plants that offer beauty and texture when your flowering plants aren't on showcase.

Enter dwarf conifers!

What's a Dwarf Conifer?

Dwarf conifers are small trees that will add bright foliage along with unique form and texture to your garden year-round without the maintenance of other shrubs. They are called "dwarf" plants because they are slower growing versions of the regular species. Exactly how slow-growing will depend on the species, so check the tag or our online catalog to prepare accordingly.

Why Should I Use Dwarf Conifers?

Along with providing year-round color, texture and form to your landscape, dwarf conifers are perfect plants for homes situated on smaller lots. Instead of giant foundation plantings that can quickly become unwieldy, dwarf conifers allow you to plant beautiful shrubs in your landscape that will fit the scale of your home more appropriately. With a wide range of forms, dwarf conifers also allow you to easily accentuate your home's shape. For example, columnar evergreens will showcase a tall, narrow home while low growing, hedge forming selections will accent the horizontal lines of your home.

What Kind of Maintenance Do My Dwarf Conifers Need?

If you're the type of person that wants to enjoy your garden instead of "dealing" with it, dwarf conifers are a great choice. Since they are slow growing, dwarf conifers won't require the constant upkeep and pruning of many of their larger relatives. They also adapt well to a wide range of conditions, but will fare best in a sunny yet somewhat protected location with slightly acidic, well drained soil. A yearly application of fertilizer will help them look their best, but is not required to maintain healthy plants.

We have a great selection of dwarf conifers ready to star in your garden. We invite you to come in and talk with our gardening professionals, who will help you choose the perfect varieties.

To help you get started, here are a few of our favorites:

'Montgomery' Spruce	'Hetz Midget' Arborvitae	'Rainbow's End' Spruce

Growing Culinary Herbs in Containers

Growing herbs in containers allows you to garden anywhere and make harvesting easy

If the cost of groceries is taking the creativity out of your menus, don't despair. Re-energize your meals by growing and using your own culinary herbs!

Fresh herbs can transform ordinary meals into gourmet delights, and can be grown in a variety of ways. One of our favorites is to create your own herb container.

Although many herbs grow well in containers, growing in a pot is not like growing in the garden. Here are some tips to help get you started:

Choosing the Container

You will want the pot you choose to be attractive as well as functional. The two most common types of containers you'll encounter are clay and plastic, and each has its advantages and disadvantages.

Clay pots are beautiful, but they are more porous than plastic and will dry out more quickly, which means more watering. Plastic pots are inexpensive, durable and lightweight. They will also lose water much slower than their clay counterparts. If you want to have an upscale look without the added work of monitoring a clay pot's water supply, you can always slip a plastic pot inside a clay one for the best of both worlds!

Whichever container you choose, good drainage is the number one priority. Herbs do not like sitting in standing water, so holes in the bottom of your pot is a must. If you have the perfect pot and it doesn't have any holes, drill them yourself!

Potting Mix

Looking for herbs to harvest immediately? Sara's Superb Herbs offer only the biggest and best varieties

Once you have chosen your pot, you then need to consider which potting soil to use. Garden soil alone is not a good choice because it packs down, forming a dense mass that roots cannot penetrate. Starting with a bagged soil is a good idea, but for the best results, a mixture of nutrient-packed materials such as perlite, vermiculite, coarse bark mulch, and sand will help immensely. A couple of handfuls of each plus some composted manure or old compost will create a mix that your plants will thrive in.

Location

For best results when gardening in containers, choose plants that suit your climate, give them the right light, and protect them from strong winds and intense heat and cold. Although plants need sun, remember that they are sensitive to the intensity of sunlight. Some like full sun all day, some morning sun, some do best in partial shade and others full shade. Check your tags, our online gardening catalog, or consult one of our garden professionals to make sure you're placing your new plants in the right spot.

Planting

Before removing your herb from its container, water the soil thoroughly. Moist soil will clings to the roots, helping to hold the rootball together. To remove a plant from a pot, invert the pot and tap it gently on the bottom. If it doesn't come out, run a knife around the pot's inside edge and try again. Check the root ball after it comes out. If the plant was pot bound, score the roots lightly with a sharp knife, and loosen the roots by teasing them with your fingers.

Prepare your container by laying a cushion of moist soil mix in the bottom so that the top of the rootball is about 1" below the pot's rim. Position the plant in the middle of the container and fill in more moist soil mix around the plant's sides, pressing it in firmly so as to plug air holes. Do an initial watering from the top, or put the pot in water and let the soil seep up the moisture. Set the pot in a spot protected from the sun and wind for about a week. The plants should be repotted when you see roots coming out of the bottom drainage holes.