Oliver Nurseries

An Eye Opening Morning 

By Scott Jamison

Display GardenHow many of you have awakened to find your house eerily quiet with only the sound of a cat or dog, once the kids have grown up and moved away? You might then pour yourself a nice cup of coffee and head out into the yard to enjoy a beautiful spring morning only to realize that the planting you put in while the kids were young, have also grown up. Even with proper maintenance, trees and shrubs have a useful life and after ten or fifteen years of pruning, they can lose much of their aesthetic beauty.

A similar scenario occurred with me last fall as I walked around the gardens at the nursery.  I thought to myself, "Everything has gotten so big." As many of you may know, my life at Oliver's began some thirty years ago and I have been a part of much of the growth of both the business and the gardens. It seems that without fail every ten years, give or take, I have one of those eye opening mornings with my coffee and I realize it's time for yet another garden renovation. Even with careful plant selection the garden is an ever changing picture, not only from season to season, but from year to year. This requires us to change and adjust in order to maintain the vision we started with. I guess it is this evolution that makes gardening such a humbling endeavor.

So the next time you wander your property enjoying the beauty nature has to offer, be critical and honest with yourself. Perhaps those pines or hemlocks that were planted twenty years ago to provide screening and have no lower branches left, have out lived their usefulness. Maybe the Japanese Holly on either side of your front door, that you have been pruning for years, should also be replaced with something new.

I welcome you all to stop by the nursery this spring and experience the "new gardens." They have never looked better.

Plant of the Season


By Jed Duguid

Sorbaria sorbifoliaSorbaria sorbifolia 'Sem'
Sorbaria is one of those all too often overlooked genera. The cultivar 'Sem' is going to have people reconsidering it for sure. The bronze colored leaves, with the reddish new growth stand out in any garden setting and can be used in a number of garden situations from shrub borders to perennial borders or even in a mass. You almost feel as though you are looking at a really big fern. Sorbaria gets white flowers in the summer that will attract butterflies. It will reach 6' x 6' in maturity, plant it in sun to part shade. Zone 2.


Early Spring Flowers


Rhodo Connoisseur

Oliver Nurseries
Spring Hours: March-June; Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

For more information visit our Web site at www.olivernurseries.com, or call us at 203-259-5609.

Image in header: Detail from Spring, engraving by Bruegel. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dick Fund, 1926.