Clematis montana var. rubens 'Freda' combines stunning cherry-pink blossoms with smokey-bronze spring foliage, and a carefree habit. A win, win, win!

The tree and shrub department is producing more from cuttings, seed, and liner and bare root production than has been done in many, many years. Also, we have several acres of specimen nursery stock lined out in the fields. The perennial department continues to grow many unusual items from plugs, corms, tubers, and rhizomes - most recently rare peonies, Epimedium and Clematis varieties. And the alpine department continues to produce from cuttings and seed a huge portion of what's available to interested trough and rock gardeners. To go along with such production, we are now doing our best to mark our Oliver's grown material to signify what's been grown here, especially with today's average consumer wanting to know where their purchase has come from or where it's been grown. Look for tags that read "Grown with pride at Oliver Nurseries" on woodies and perennials. Alpine plants, as always, are marked by small white Oliver stakes with the plant names handwritten in pencil.  

Left: Mahonia repens. Center: xGordlinia grandiflora, a rare intergeneric hybrid between Franklinia and Gordonia. Right: Gordlinia (foreground at left) and Viburnum plicatum 'Leaches Compact' lined out behind it.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new website  Oliver Nurseries & Design Associates. The new site, developed by DYAD Communications, features a fresh new look and easy navigation to access information about our nursery and our landscape design department, Oliver Design Associates. The home page will direct you to either the Design Associates or Nursery pages, where we have placed the focus on who we are and the services we provide. The site also provides access to our latest newsletter (with information about upcoming events, sales and articles), our Newsletter Archive, and the Oliver Nurseries catalog. There are many photographs by local photographer Amy Vischio featuring the Nursery, its gardens and a selection of landscape design projects.

By Lori Chips

The first time a gardener sets out to plant a trough there is often a sense of hesitancy. Naturally everyone wants to follow good horticulture in respect to growing the plants, but then there is the ticklish issue of making it all attractive, too. I want to urge you to just relax and enjoy the process, because when embarking on your trough planting project, a couple of things are already determined before you dump your soil in. By now you have decided it this will be a planting for sun or for shade. But in this case by "already determined" I mean strictly artistic choices. You have already built or selected your trough shape, and you have hiked around and found a few good rocks. Perhaps you have bought a conifer or other anchor plant. Through these choices the aesthetics of your plant-up have already begun to acquire a life (and a soul) of their own.  

If you have begun with a rectangle, found some angular grey rocks, and have an evergreen shrub in your hand, you are well on your way to producing a classic "alpine landscape." (Photo A) But even under this umbrella there is a lot of room for variation. Will you play with levels? Create a mesa, mountaintop, or gorge? You will decide if the shrub will crown the high point, cozy up to a cluster of rocks or be tucked into a low corner. I have lectured on the varied nuances of trough gardening for many years and I often say there are no rules; this planting should make you happy. And then I say "But now, let me tell you all the rules..." I am only half kidding, because even when it comes to personal taste it can be helpful to know if something just doesn't work. An example of this is: don't plant your anchor plant smack in the middle of the container. It never looks good, gets worse as the plant gets bigger and always has that element of reminding one of a cupcake with a birthday candle stuck in the center. Another notable "rule" when attempting to produce a miniature landscape is that things really need to be in scale to be believable. (Photo B) An Iris taller than your shrub is not in scale. A Lilliputian scene is really asking the viewer to suspend disbelief. Thus a groundcover, no matter how low, that bears oversized leaves will hurt the believability. In fact, this is the reason we bother to track down a tiny gravel to use as mulch; it advances the suspension of disbelief just that much farther.

Another way to work toward having your landscape "ring true" is to be true to nature. Consider placing plants where they would be found in nature. Grey and silver plants will always inhabit the dryer hotter tops of mesas. You will always find chartreuse or apple-green in a riverbed or swale. (Photo C) 

An entirely different look and discipline would be the Sempervivum bowl, or any shallower rounded shape planted up with succulents. This is a deservedly popular kind of trough given the ease of culture. These plants can tolerate drought, less planting depth and some neglect. Here we have a wide variety of plants displaying similar height but many interesting colors and textures. A winning combination is to select one or a few of the extra large rosettes of hens and chicks, and contrast them with a sizable patch of the tiniest rosettes you can find. If the large ones are satiny, or even displaying watermarks, and the tiny ones are the webbed and fuzzy arachnoideums, so much the better. It is aesthetically restful for the eye to include a non-rosette forming sedum as it can pull the whole design together. In this type of plant-up there is very little gravel showing when you are done. The plants are shoulder-to-shoulder looking like an embroidered carpet. (Photo D) 

Then there is the coveted "Long Window Box" trough shape. We have one on the succulent bench planted up for inspiration. Well, this one, it seems to me, can be approached in either of the two previous ways. A landscape with a tree arching over one end will be dramatic, a succulent collection will be rich and luxurious. But there is a third option for this shape and I like this best of all. Try borrowing a trick from the perennial border when filling up the real estate in a long window box. I like to rhythmically repeat plants (and stones) down the length of the trough. Usually, a handful plants in combination will at first inspire me. Funny, being told never to combine certain colors almost always piques my interest and makes me want to try it, to make it work. At one point I used the forbidden combo of gold and silver together, and guess what? It rocked the Casbah (or at least the Kiosk area) that year. If you set out to plant rhythmically down the length, decide on one kind of rock and only one or two trailing plants to repeat. Pay attention to whether your container will be viewed from all sides or just one, as this changes your challenge. Of course, there is no reason to be slavish about the repetition, by all means throw in a surprise here or there. Remember, this is a long vessel, so five to seven main varieties of plants is about right. Toss in an occasional odd plant to mix it up, but remember the technique of choosing either a similarly colored or textured plant to "rhyme" with one of your main players. Things will look interesting, yet integrated. A wonderful benefit with this kind of design is that it is fascinating up close and bears examination, yet "reads" beautifully from afar.   

So what about all those tempting free-forms? They all speak to gardeners differently. Does the triangle cry out for the upright exclamation-point of a slender conifer? Does that pocket trough want trailers? The very small troughs lend themselves to monoculture. Interestingly the kidney bean shapes and the ovals work well with landscapes, too -- something about the dynamic of the shapes. Last year I planted up an asymmetrical urn as if it was a hat from the 1920s: a plume and a big button. I used Ophiopogon nigrescens (black mondo grass) and a large Sempervivum. It sold at once!