Newsletter for June 2024

Here comes summer! Bay Laurel Garden Center is geared up for the season. Plant a Buddleja or two for yourself and the butterflies. Gorgeous colors – white, blue, lavender, fuschia and purple. Sizes vary as well from 3 to 8 feet. When the flowers are spent prune for a second bloom. Prune the plant heavily once year to prevent it from becoming woody.

Colorful annuals abound at Bay Laurel Garden Center in Atascadero. We have a great variety of Zinnias. They have the capacity to bloom throughout the summer. ‘State Fair’ and ‘Benary’s Giant’ are wonderful cut flowers. Many of the smaller varieties are perfect container plants like the ‘Profusion’ zinnias in the picture.

As you sit in your cabana by the pool imagine a dish with your delectable, juicy tomatoes in an Italian sauce over a bed of your homegrown, low calorie Spaghetti squash. Add to that a bit of Basil and sweet Marjoram. The growing season for vegetables will soon be over, so do not tarry!

Our customers at Bay Laurel Garden Center are often seeking plants to act as screens. The most common candidates are privets, Photinias and oleanders. A plant we don’t see nearly often enough is the Jasmine ‘Revolutum’. This evergreen shrub can grow to 8 or 10 feet. It sports fragrant yellow bells in late spring. Another sturdy hedge is the native shrub Atriplex. It also grows 8 to 10 feet tall with silvery gray leaves. It is considered to be deer resistant.

What better place in which to spend your summer days than in the shade. Lamium is a choice plant for shade. The variegated leaves lead to flowers in an array of pastel colors – lavender, pink and white. Lamium is a perennial and grows only 3″ tall but will spread to over 1 foot wide.

The USDA has recently updated the climate map, generally bumping everyone up a warmer zone.. The actuality will most likely be decided by experimentation. Several plants such as Dodonaea (Purple Hopseed) were previously considered too tender for our area. We’re now hearing they do quite well. The question of chill hours for certain fruit trees is another matter. A chill hour is considered to be 45 degrees or less. We do have a lot of temperatures that low, so only time will tell if certain varieties get enough chill.

Everyone is quite used to calling Pelargoniums Geraniums. The former types are not considered to be frost hardy. The different species include zonal, ivy, regal and scented. A new introduction from Armstrong is the ivy Pelargonium ‘Caldera’. This closely resembles an older type, ‘Balcon’ with smaller flowers. These tend to be more heat resistant and to produce longer flowering stems. The actual Geraniums are very cold hardy; they are generally relatively lower growing. Currently at the nursery we have ‘Rozanne’ and ‘Tiny Monster’.

Some handsome faces to add a distinctive touch to your landscape at Bay Laurel Garden Center in Atascadero. The Hydrangeas are in their full glory. Use them in the garden or in containers. They like water.