Over 35 years of rose breeding has gone into the development of these free-flowering beauties. They look great when planted en masse in the landscape or in a group in the garden.

Flower Carpet Roses grow 2-3 ft. high and equally wide and don’t require any fancy pruning. Simply prune back to 1/3 of their normal size in early spring and watch them grow and bloom!

When you think of fuchsia, what comes to mind? The colors of the flower? Do you see the delicate, yet marvelous hummingbird bobbing in and out of the pendulous bells? In the "Language of Flowers," Victorians claimed that the fuchsia stood for "confiding love, taste." That certainly is true from the hummingbird’s point of view!

Fuchsias are loved for their colorful, bell-shaped multicolored flowers. And the hummingbird simply adores this flower and its nectar! Many are suitable for hanging baskets, while others bear a more upright growth habit and are beautiful as perennial garden shrubs. What is so fabulous about fuchsias? You can find the flower color in almost any combination of white, pink, red, magenta, purple and red-orange! And, these shrubs bloom almost all the time from spring until fall.

Here is a list of the fuchsias that we have available now at Village Nursery:

• June Bride - single flowers with red corolla and purple sepals
• Jingle Bells - semi double; upright; red and white
• Gartenmeister - single; upright; reddish orange
• Tom Thumb - single; upright; crimson and mauve
• Winston Churchill - double; upright; deep pink and blue

Fuchsias want to be planted or hanging in a basket in shade or partial shade away from the hot afternoon sun. During the growing season, water them when the soil feels dry. In winter, the fuchsia needs to "rest," and water should be minimized. Spring is the time for planting fuchsias. Use Gardner & Bloom Acid Planting mix 1:1 with your native soil. During the growing season, feed your fuchsias every two weeks with Dr. Earth Rhododendron, Azalea, Camellia Organic fertilizer. If you already have them in your garden, spring is the time to prune them back about one half to two thirds of the plant size.

Come to see us today and select your favorite!
For more information about fuchsias, go to www.americanfuchsiasociety.org.

Village Nurseries is a proud grower of Wave® Petunias, and they are here waiting in our gardens to go home to your gardens.

Winner of 3 All-America Selections, the Wave® Petunias have transformed gardens with their super fast-growing, luxuriant, easy-care beauty. These spreading petunias bloom like crazy and grow incredibly; and they are simply chock-full of flowers all summer and into fall. Until you've grown a Wave® Petunia, you don't really know what the phrase "flower power" means!

These petunias are excellent for hanging baskets, raised beds, or as a groundcover. You just can’t out-do the Wave® Petunia color effect for summer color! They are here in every color, including blue, lavender, lilac, pink, rose, purple, and red. Hurry on in to our garden center. We are waiting for you in the petunia patch.

It is the Merry Month of May here (and everywhere else in the world, including Camelot). Where has the beginning of the year gone?

This can be a busy time in the garden. There possibly are still chores from the winter; the weather is finally beautiful, so plant, plant, plant; and with all of the new vegetative and bud growth, there are insect pests back in our gardens. Here are some tips for you this month. This is a lot to "chew off," so get ready!

Planting
Annuals and perennials abound in the garden center. Come to pick your favorites but do yourself a favor, if you will. Try a new plant in your garden this year (or several). It’s fun to watch a new plant grow, and you may find one that becomes a new favorite. You just don’t know until you try.

The annual and perennial tables are so full it’s next to impossible to give you a full list of everything. But just to whet your gardening taste buds, here’s a starting list: alyssum, asters, coreopsis, gaillardia, gaura, daisies, heliotrope, marigolds, petunias, penstemons, pentas, phlox, phygelium, rudbeckias, salvias galore, yarrow, verbena, vinca, zinnia. And much more.

Veggie Growers: Summer vegetables are in. Beans, eggplant, many kinds of peppers, tomatoes, and squashes. And of course, herbs such as rosemary, oregano, tarragon, parsley, thyme, stevia, mints and more.

Feed and Fertilize
Use organic fertilizers such as Dr. Earth on your vegetables.

Reward your roses with a good feeding.

If your camellias and azaleas are still blooming, hold off on the feeding. Did you know that if you feed camellias while blooming, you will lose all of the wonderful flowers and buds yet to open? It's true. These acid loving plants will need to be fed, but not until they have completed their bloom cycle.

Pruning
This is the time of year to cut back and shape your shrubs such as brugmansia, abutilon, hibiscus, tibouchina, etc. This spring, cutback and shaping will help increase your flower quantity.

Canna foliage is beautiful right now. After they bloom, some suggest a cut back to the ground. You might leave the foliage for a while, but eventually, canna foliage loses its beauty. At that point, your courage may rise for the stronger cutback!

Deadhead your petunias, pansies, snapdragons, roses, etc. This encourages more flowering. Pinching back new growth on most plants encourages new branching and a fuller look to the plant. If that’s a look you desire, pinch away! And don't forget to cut/pinch back your mums.

Pest and Disease Maintenance
Encourage (or release) beneficial insects into your gardens. You can do this by increasing the plant diversity and giving them habitat in which they'll not only arrive, but stay for a while. We can help you with some plant selections.

Who are the most obvious pests in our gardens right now? Aphids and rose slugs. You have several choices for treatment. A couple of choices are a more natural or organic approach; and then there are the synthetic chemicals. Remember that insecticidal spray controls are not selective and will kill all insects, good and bad.

That rose slug guy is a tiny little green larva that hangs out on the underside of your rose shrub leaves. It eats little circles out of the leaf, sometimes almost skeletonizing the leaf. Just remember, unless you are growing roses for show, we don’t usually grow them for the leaves. We grow them for the flower. So choose your "pest in the garden" battle wisely. Remember, you can scale up, but you can’t reverse the chemical “nuclear bomb” of insecticides. Keep reading.

Aphids can be "squirted off" of your rose buds, etc,, with water. Both aphids and the rose slug can be sprayed. We recommend Bayer 2-in-1 Systemic Rose & Flower Care.

Powdery mildew is popping up. Treat with a fungicide.

If you are in an area that had much rain all winter, with temperatures warming up, it is time to increase the garden and lawn watering.

Mulch, Mulch, Mulch.*

*We will always tell you to mulch. This does not mean mound up the mulch to 5 feet. It means continue to replenish the mulch and maintain a 2-4 inch blanket over your soil. So when you hear us singing the MULCH song, you know just what we mean!