Grow Your Own Wedding Bouquet

by P. Allen Smith

from P. Allen Smith Home Garden 

Growing your own flowers is a charming way to personalize your wedding and it saves money, too. For a spring wedding it's hard to beat tulips. The color choices are almost endless and they are very easy to grow.

Tulip bulbs are planted in the fall so you'll need to plan in advance. You can grow them in the ground or in containers. Plant plenty for both a lush bouquet and to cover unexpected loss to weather or wildlife. Read more about growing tulips.

If you are growing flowers for your bouquet the most important thing to know is bloom time to ensure the tulips are at their peak on the right day. Depending on where you live and the type of tulip you select you can expect blooms from late March to early may.

Types of Tulips Good for Bouquets

• Single Early – These tulips bloom just after the daffodils in mid-April. The stems are short. Two of my favorites are the orange 'Princess Irene' and violet purple 'Purple Prince'. If you are a dare devil of a bride the two together in a bouquet would be a showstopper.
• Double Early – Double Early tulips have peony-like flowers and short stems. Early blooming. 'Montreux' is a lovely creamy white with just a blush of pink.
• Triumph – Triumph tulips produce a single petaled bloom available in a wide range of colors. Stem length varies by variety. The soft salmon color of 'Apricot Beauty' says wedding to me. Triumph tulips will bloom in the April to May time period.
• Giant Darwin Hybrid – These tulips are probably the best choice for a bouquet. The stems are strong and flowers large. 'Pink Impression' would be gorgeous for a wedding. These bloom mid-April to early May.
• Single Late – This type of tulip offers a broad range of colors and stem lengths - some as tall as 30 inches. Blooms peak in May. The dark purple 'Queen of the Night' would make for a dramatic bouquet.
• Double Late (Peony Flowering) – Also referred to as Peony Flowering these tulips are lightly scented with fully double blooms. Look for them to flower in late April. Consider the light pink and rose colored 'Angelique'.
• Lily Flowering – Gracefully curved petals give Lily Flowering tulips a regale appearance perfect for a wedding. Blooms in May. 'Elegant Lady' produces bi-colored flowers. Pale yellow at the base fades into rose pink along the edges.

With Mother Nature as your florist it's important to have a backup plan, which may include a run to the florist, the farmer's market or to the grocery store for last minute flowers to either add to your homegrown blooms or act as a stand in.

So that you're not too overwhelmed with last minute wedding activities, pick your flowers a day before the wedding. Flowers will hold up in vases or containers in fresh water for two or three days. Assemble the flowers cutting off the blooms at a uniform length of your choice then tie the bundle with a satin ribbon, make a pretty bow and refrigerate the bouquet until it's time to take your march down the aisle!

See you at the wedding!

Good to Know:

Reluctant blooms can be coaxed open with warm water. Place the cut stems in warm water in a warm spot overnight and they should be open the next morning.

5 Tips for Landscaping Your New Home

by David Search

If you've just purchased a new home, your home's landscape is a blank slate for you to shape as you see fit. Completely overhauling the landscaping may feel overwhelming at the beginning, but with a few helpful tips, anyone can make it a manageable task.

1. Plan Your Landscaping

If you've decided to start from nothing with your new landscaping, make a detailed plan before you begin. You can look at other landscapes around your area to get inspiration for your own design. When you start to get an idea of how you want your landscape to look, sketch it out carefully. In your sketch, makes notes of which areas of your garden receive the most sunlight. This is a great time to start thinking about what you plants you intend to use.

A good landscaping plan can take you a lot of time, but it will help your garden succeed and flourish.

2. Investigate Your Irrigation Options

If you plan an ambitious landscaping project, you will need to explore your irrigation options. Your new home may already come equipped with a thorough network of sprinklers, or you may need to install more. Your watering options will significantly impact how well your new plants will thrive.

3. Examine the Soil

The soil surrounding your new home may require some extra help and nurturing before you can begin to plant. If you are buying a newly constructed home, the dirt around the house may be low quality and have suffered the ill effects of nearby construction. You may need to replace this soil with more suitable and fertile soil to give your new plants a chance to grow.

4. Buy the Right Plants

If you haven't already carefully researched the plants you want to use, do so now. If you're new to landscaping and gardening, avoiding buying difficult plants that need frequent care and attention. Native plants are ideal because they require little special care from you. You should also look for the healthiest plants you can find. Avoid purchasing any plants that look sick or tired. You are likely not yet familiar with how well plants will grow around your new house, so choose hardy plants that can survive most conditions.

5. Develop Over Time

After your plants have began to take root and your landscape has started to form, don't hesitate to edit. Over time, as your experience grows, you may find that some plants and flowers just aren't working in your design. Landscaping presents a unique living canvas that you can continually modify. Don't be afraid to try new things and make mistakes. You can always try again with a different plant.
Some individuals quickly discover they undertook more gardening than they could handle. An ambitious project has the potential to go awry and turn into a mess of weeds. If your garden is becoming too much for you to handle, consider hiring help or removing some of the more difficult plants. Your landscape should be a joy and not a chore that consumes all of your free time.

How and Why to Deadhead Plants

~ excerpts from an article by Marcia Leeper

If your goal is to get the most flowers possible, deadheading is a familiar task. But there are other reasons to remove faded flowers besides increasing blooms. 

Why Deadhead? 

Plants survive by flowering and then forming seeds. When you remove faded flowers, not only do you tidy the plant, you interrupt that cycle and prevent seed formation. When you deadhead re-blooming perennials and most annuals, they respond by sending up more flowers, trying to produce seeds. Perennials with a single bloom period redirect the energy they would've used for seed production into their foliage and roots instead, which makes the plants bigger and stronger for the next season. 

Leave These Seeds...

On the other hand, a case can be made not to deadhead certain plants. You may want seedlings from a short-lived perennial, such as columbine, to ensure you'll have more of the plants down the road. And sometimes the seed heads themselves (like those of coneflower) add fall or winter interest and attract birds to your garden.  Finally, the spent flowers of some plants like impatiens usually fall off cleanly on their own and don’t need deadheading.  I'll share nine more of these self-cleaning flowers below in "No need to deadhead."

To help you decide if or how you should deadhead, check out some popular annuals and perennials. You'll learn why and when you should remove the blooms and the fastest way to do it. Each profile also includes some test garden tips to keep your own garden as flowery, and as tidy, as possible all season long.  ~ by Marcia Leeper

Coleus Solenostemon hybrids

WHY DEADHEAD? Grown for their colorful leaves, the flowers aren’t interesting and just distract from the gorgeous foliage display.

WHAT TO DO: Deadheading is a snap – or rather, a pinch. With your finger and thumb grasp the stem below the flowers and pinch it off. Just above a set of leaves is best, but if you pinch lower or leave a stub behind, don’t worry – the plant will be fine. You won’t need to pinch all coleus. Some newer cultivars are bred to flower very little. And others bloom so late that they won’t require pinching. 

Black-eyed Susan

WHY DEADHEAD? Prolong the bloom time of this perennial by snipping off the faded flowers or cutting fresh one for bouquets.

WHAT TO DO: Because the flower stems can be tough, use prunes to cut them. Tidy the plant by snipping just above the nearest leaf. To stimulate a late crop of blooms, cut lower and remove clusters of spent flowers. The resulting blooms will be smaller. Since the seedheads provide food for birds leave some on the plant – especially later in the summer. 

Geranium Pelargonium hybrids

WHY DEADHEAD?  The big bright blooms are stunning, but once they fade, they're an eyesore.

WHAT TO DO:  It may take several weeks for all of the blossoms in a cluster to finish, so until they all fade use your fingers to comb out spent flowers. As the whole head finishes, snap the entire flower stem off at its base. Or if you prefer, use sharp scissors or pruners to cut the tough stem. Cut low so the stub won't show above the foliage.  Eventually it'll turn brown and drop off.

Snapdragon Antirrhinum spp. and hybrids

WHY DEADHEAD? Cutting back the spent flower stems stimulates buds on side stems to open, giving you lots more color.

WHAT TO DO:  In a container or border you want constant flowers, so cut the spent stem down to any side branches that are showing buds. The flower buds on these side stems will open within a week on a shorter, fuller plant. But if you want long stems for bouquets, cut the stem down within a few inches of the ground.   It'll take the plant longer to recover but you'll have taller floral spires.

DON'T WANT TO DEADHEAD?  

Looking to simplify your garden maintenance or just don't want to bother with deadheading? Here are five annuals and four perennials that look fine without having their spent flowers removed.

   Annuals                                                    Perennials

•

• Bidens Bidens ferulifolia                         • Old-fashioned bleeding heart

• Calibrachoa Cafibrachoa hybrids                Lamprocapnosspectabifis

• Fanflower Scaevofa hybrids                    • Peruvian lily Afstroerhea hybrids

• Nemesia Nemesia hybrids                       • Russian sage Perovskia atitplis;jfofia

• Vinca Catharanthus roseus                    • Woodland phlox Phlox divaricata laphamii

Crape Myrtles in Tennessee - It's Time to Show Off!

YES...It's great to be alive and be in Tennessee.  One of the benefits of experiencing a Nashville summer is the brilliant display of color.  Every year as the summer heats up, our Crape Myrtles show up in full regalia.

Crape Myrtles are a southern phenomenon with a plan to capture your heart and a place in your landscape.  They come in so many colors, sizes and varieties; it would be difficult to say that you don't have a the perfect spot for one of these beauties. Our house is third from the entrance to our community.  As I left for my appointment this morning, I counted 15 different colors and types of Crapes Myrtles in that short distance.  And they are so effusive in their display, it made me chuckle.

Link to our Crape Myrtle Angel

This picture was taken with my phone from my car window this morning.  I was on my way out at 9:30 and it was already HOT!  But one of heaven's blessings is that the hotter the weather gets, the happier the Crape Myrtles are.  Lucky us...Nashville is the perfect climate for these beautiful trees that burst with color during the dog days of summer.  So just when the heat starts to get us down, the Crape Myrtles come alive with their spectacular show and cheer us on!

By the way, do you like to win things?  We have a drawing each month for a Color Burst product or service.  Our July drawing is for one of our a gorgeous Container Gardens.  Click here to enter.  And then each month you will be enrolled in our drawing.  Good Luck!  

Our Beautiful Downtown Nashville

There is just something about our beautiful downtown Nashville that make it feel like home. My job has taken me all over the country.  I've lived in several cities - Houston, Philadelphia and Atlanta to name a few.  Every city has its own culture, architecture and skyline that it can point to with pride.  So what is it about Nashville that makes our visitors and residents so comfortable?  

Recently, I took a walk through downtown and it came to me.  We have dressed our city up like a front porch!  It's no wonder everyone feels so welcome.  

So I called a friend, David Wright, and said, "Go for a walk with me and bring your camera." David insisted on having the best light (for his artist's eye).  So we met around 4:00.  We planned to be there a couple of hours, but the hunt was on and we ended the day after 8:00. Of course we stayed for dinner.  Our conversation was very enthusiastic about the best way to display the photos and tell the story.  On the drive home, I decided that getting the point across would be done best through a video.  Finally, during a few quiet moments over the weekend, this video of Our Beautiful Downtown Nashville was produced,

or click on the following link to watch 

Our Beautiful Downtown Nashville (in HD)

The personality of a city is not something that can be created or staged.  It is expressed naturally, even spontaneously through its customs, traditions, art, music and architecture. Nashville's casual nature is at ease as a setting for its bigger than life blessings.  That it naturally landscapes its streets the way we decorate our front porches says volumes about our city.  We are a vibrant city that feels comfortable, like a town.  Our beautiful downtown Nashville beckons visitors and residents alike to "just come and sit for a while".

A Garden Full of Memories

I will never forget walking into the kitchen early one morning when I was about seven.  My mother was standing on a chair with a box pressed up against the ceiling and calling for my father to hurry.  He entered the kitchen with a plastic bag and a piece of cardboard that he quickly handed to her.   She carefully moved the cardboard between the ceiling and the box and handed it down to my father who was waiting to cover it with plastic.  Even to a seven year old, it was obvious that there was a treasure in that box.

As he pulled away the cardboard, my father said, “Come see our visitor.”  I peered in the box to see the tiniest little bird flying about.  It was my first glimpse of a humming bird.  I learned later that my mother and grandfather planned our garden to attract butterflies.  As it turns out, many of the plants attract both and made our backyard an enchanted place.  It was that moment when I began to learn about the magic of flowers.

It's wonderful that those memories are as fresh today as they were when they happened all those years ago.  You can build memories like these for your family too.  Give color, fragrance and life to the setting of your home.

Rose Mint

To bring hummingbirds into your yard this year, add the annuals and perennials that are known as their favorites.  Many of these are plants are sun lovers.   Agastache ‘Rose Mint’ has a Lavender-Rose bloom and fragrant foliage and does best in full sun.  So does the beautiful Tropical Mandevilla Crimson Hybrid which will entwine its way on a trellis to beautiful proportions.  Of course there are plants that favor a little shade such as the Nicotinia Alata.  This lovely plant is sturdy and holds up in weather and various soil conditions.  It has a delightful fragrance in both its blooms and leaves.  Placed near a door or window, it will make you as happy as it makes your hummingbirds.

There are things to know about your landscape, hummingbirds and other delightful creatures.

Once hummingbirds are aware that your yard is a home for them, they will return year after year.  So design your garden to welcome them.  Shrubs like the Strawberry Bush and Flowering Quince are options to add to your landscape and native to the southeast.  The Mimosa or Silk Tree is a favorite of the hummingbird as are the Redbud, Crab Apple and our own state tree, the Tulip Poplar.

Another thing you must know about our whirling little friends is that they also need protein.  Hummingbirds will do you the favor of eating spiders and other pests that can be found in your garden.  So do not use chemical pesticides.   The chemicals used to kill those pests, may also sicken or even kill the hummingbirds that eat them.

Now, are you wondering where to begin?  We can help.  Call us at Color Burst and we will bring your landscape alive this spring and help you to design a paradise for the hummingbirds, butterflies and you.  

Hey Baby It's Cold Out There...

Winter's Chill

Brrr...Winter is truly here!  And sometimes it seems that there is not much going on out in our gardens. The leaves are gone; the grass is brown and we are huddled inside where it’s warm. However, looks can be deceiving. 

Under the sleepy brown cover of our lawns are roots that still need care. The dry winds of winter can be as withering as a hot summer day. A little attention to the health of your lawn in the winter can help strengthen it for a lovely spring and the test of summer. As a rule, one inch of water per week is a healthy watering regime. Just keep track of the rainfall and then supplement it with watering only when necessary. One sure way to know if your lawn needs watering is to test the softness of the soil. Use a stake or screwdriver to push into the ground. If the ground is getting dry, then it will be a little difficult to press through and you will know that it definitely time to water! 

Just as in the summer months, water your lawn and gardens in the early morning. This gives the sun time to do its job of drying the grass and plants so that you can avoid the growth of fungus. Remember that winter days are short. So early morning watering is most important during this time. 

Don’t forget your container plants. Unprotected container and garden plants are vulnerable to those drying winds as well. You can cover them with fabric on days that are particularly brutal. Never use plastic. The condensation at night can cause the vegetation to freeze and during the day, the radiant heat of the sun can burn them. 

Watch for more winter lawn and garden tips. If you need any help, just give us a call!

Celebrate With Us!

We are Color Burst Landscapes, one of Middle Tennessee's most respected and long standing landscaping companies.  It is our  25^th anniversary and we are celebrating it with the release of "Everything Is Coming Up Color", our new communication platform that will include information on landscape architecture, seasonal color, community projects and events.

We believe that an anniversary is a perfect time to celebrate.  Throughout the year, our subscribers will receive special offers, opportunities and gifts.  We are looking forward to growing our readership and our reach to the Middle Tennessee community.

Our company was founded in 1987 by Joe Burns and provided seasonal color only. Mr. Burns expanded the operation to over 13 cities across the southeast.  In 2003, Frank Chalfont purchased the Tennessee operation and quickly grew Color Burst into a professional landscaping company providing full landscape services year round.  

Our  customers include both commercial and residential properties.  We are very active in the community, and our work has even been featured in the television show, Extreme Makeover.  You can view our burst of color throughout Middle Tennessee.  A display of over 400 hanging baskets will adorn downtown Nashville during the summer months.  Watch for them and enjoy!

Subscribe here to “Everything Is Coming Up Color” through the website at www.colorburstlandscapes.com and follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ColorBurstLandscapes and Twitter @ColorBurstTenn.

Just a few of the services that we oFFER are:

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• Full service lawn care
• Landscape design and installation
• Seeding, sod and mulching
• Fall and spring cleanups
• Outdoor living areas
• Landscapes Screens
• Courtyards
• Garden walls and structures
• Water features
• Drainage and grading work