Greetings!
Fall is here. It's a great time to plant. Amanda's Garden is open daily 10 a.m. until dusk. If you need to come earlier just call and let us know. We have a great supply of plants waiting to go. The leaves are changing. The colors are gorgeous. Drive on out.
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Designing your Native Garden
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 The best native gardens are the ones that mimic nature. The best place to learn how to design one is in nature. When you hike, walk or enjoy nature make a list of plants you like and what grows together. Look at your site, if it had been left undeveloped what would have grown there? If you don't know or don't know how to identify the plants you like let us help. We offer on-site consultations. If you prefer to learn the plants and design your own, why not stop by Amanda's Garden? We can go through the gardens with you and help you learn to identify native plants. In each of the different seasons you will see different plants in bloom. For example, now there are Asters, Goldenrod and even some Black Eyed Susan. Many berries are making quite a show in the garden now too. Our native witch hazels have begun to flower.
There are lots of great books on native plants that can help you learn too. In coming issues we will highlight some of these.
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Plant Propagation
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Seed Grown Plants  | We get asked a lot where our plants come from. The answer is we propagate most of our plants ourselves from seed, spores, cuttings and divisions. Most of our plants are grown from seed that we collect ourselves from our display beds, our land or from our generous customers' gardens. This has to be done throughout the growing season because some seed ripens at the end of may and each month there after until the late fall.
Many seeds need to be planted right away. Bloodroot, Trillium, Wood Poppy and similar plants' seeds have a fleshy attachment called an elaiosomes. The elaiosomes make the seeds extremely attractive to ants, which will take the seeds, feed the eliasome to their larvae and discard the seed, or plant it if you will. These seeds are best planted right away before they have a chance to dry out. Many of these need at least 2 seasons or a warm moist period, cold moist period, warm moist period to germinate. Some take two full seasons to germinate.
Other seeds are dried and planted in the fall. Some native perennial seeds need to be stratified or subject to a cold moist period before they germinate. So we plant them starting in October through February and leave them outside to naturally stratify. After germination,when they have a set of 2 true leaves, not seed leaves, we transplant them to 2 1/4 inch pots to grow for anywhere from 6 weeks to a year, depending on the species. Then they are potted into the pot they will be sold in. The pots are transferred to our growing frames. There they stay until ready for purchase.
Some plants we have to hold for 3 to 7 years before they are a salable size plant. That is one that is ready to flower. We have a lot of patience.
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