Landscape Ideas

Thanks to Tim Kane and Ray DeFeo with Prides Corner Farms for sharing their ideas on how to use Handpicked for You® plants in the landscape.

A young family walks into your garden center having just settled into their first house.  Without the benefit of having grown up with green-thumb parents, they want to create an inviting, colorful and safe exterior for their new home.  A couple of empty-nesters come in havingdownsized, and are looking to dress up their smaller yard, but still want to have plenty of time to travel with their newfound freedom. They dread the thought of being burdened with plants requiring hours of maintenance every week.  Two very different scenarios, but both can be answered in the same way: Handpicked for You®, tried and true landscape plants.  

The garden proven selection of plants that have received the Handpicked for You® trust mark are the key to making both these homeowners successful. Our new gardeners need plants that can handle any soil or light condition, or fill any problem area.  They are looking for tall plants to screen and seasonal flowers to brighten any corner throughout the season along with shrubs that will soften the foundation and trees that will shade the play area.  

Mixing Handpicked for You® shrubs and perennials along the foundation will create a flow of color as the weeks pass from spring through summer.  Early- blooming Rhododendron ‘PJM Elite’ will announce that spring is in full swing.  Syringa ‘Miss Kim’, Viburnum ‘Summer Snowflake’, Thuja ‘Fire Chief’ and Spiraea ‘Goldmound’ will create a backdrop for the groundswell of color that lower plants like Dianthus ‘Firewitch’, Nepeta ‘Purrsian Blue’, Sedum ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and Echinecea Kismet™ Intense Orange and Raspberry will create. Shady corners will be brightened with Clethra ‘Hummingbird’ and Buxus ‘Winter Gem’, surrounded by Astilbe ‘Hennie Graafland’, Dicentra spectabilis, Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’, Hosta ‘Guacamole’ and Heuchera ‘Obsidian’.

Our second couple doesn’t need to give up the hope of a bright, cheery landscape while trying to avoid becoming a slave to the yardwork.  Handpicked for You® plants like Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’, Berberis Worryfree® Crimson Cutie™, Leucanthemum ‘Becky’, Coreopsis Li’lBang™ ‘Daybreak’ and Monarda SUGAR BUZZ® ‘Cherry Pops’ will provide just tons of sizzle with minimum care.  Ornamental grasses such as Carex EverColor® ‘Everest’, CarexEverColor® ‘Evergold’, Panicum ‘Ruby Ribbons’ and Schizachyrium ‘Standing Ovation’ will create colorful landscape waves as the wind blows and do it on their own once they are established.

Even homeowners with an established landscape may find the need brighten up a spot or to fill a need where previously there was none.  Once again, Handpicked for You® plants can come to the rescue. Need to hide the neighbor’s tool shed or chicken coop? Thuja Green Giant will create a quick screen that even deer won’t find appetizing.  Need a splash of late-season color?  Hibiscus ‘Midnight Marvel’ is just the ticket.  Have a slope that is a nightmare to mow? Juniperus wiltoni will ease your mind and back.  Do you want to enhance an ugly light pole during the day? Clematis Rebecca™ will bloom all summer long.  Trying to brighten up the side of the garage all year long? Chamaecyparis p. filifera ‘Mops’, with brilliant gold, evergreen foliage doesn’t need flowers to catch your eye.

Handpicked for You® plants can also provide anyone with the means to create one of the hottest trends in the home landscape: a pollinator garden.  Garden proven Handpicked for You® plants like Baptisia australis and Rudbeckia ‘American Gold Rush’ will light up a sunny area and createfocal points for spring and summer.  You can surround these plants with Monarda SUGAR BUZZ® ‘Bubblegum Blast’, Lavendula ‘Hidcote’, Phlox ‘Jeana’ and Echinecea magnus creatinga pollinator and butterfly attracting paradise that will not only shine for its bloom but also for itsmagnetic appeal to colorful critters.

The opportunity to provide successful answers that fill your customers’ wants and needs rests in your Handpicked for You® garden center display.  As you can see from the preceding examples, it is just so easy for you and your sales associates to refer your customers to the display that showcases a group of locally tested and proven plants all showing the Handpicked for You® trust mark. That trust mark offers success to your customers and success to your team especially during those busy times when there is never enough sales coverage for your question filled customers.  With beauty and ease, Handpicked for You® plants can make your customers happy while increasing your sales.  Let your Handpicked for You® display work its magic for you this spring!