People want more from their gardens. They want more color. They want more useful plantings. And, they want more value for their gardening investments.
“People are conscious of their dollar, and they’re wanting to get the most for their money,” said Teena Allen of P.C.’s Nursery and Landscaping on Napier Field Road near Dothan. “We’re seeing an increase in blooming shrubs for that reason.”
Annuals, which bloom only one year but typically provide more color, still have a place in the home garden, Allen said. But it’s a smaller space these days compared to blooming shrubs and perennial flowering plants that bloom year after year.
Some of the reason is the work and cost involved with replacing large sections of annuals each year. Perennials, which typically bloom and then rest, are becoming more and more popular as a result, Allen said.
“People are beefing up beds with perennials,” she said.
Required maintenance factors into many of the decisions home gardeners make when they’re choosing what to plant. And more are opting to do more potting than ground planting.
“Every year, we do more and more containers,” Allen said. “It’s easy. It lends itself to so many applications. You can use it at entrances, throughout the garden. And older people, it makes for easier gardening.”
But getting more for your gardening dollar drives most home gardeners.
That’s why, Allen said, many people are turning to new varieties of blooming shrubs, like the Endless Summer hydrangea that blooms all summer long or azaleas that bloom five to six times a year. It’s the same reason knock-out roses are so popular – they bloom nine months out of the year, Allen said.
“You’re getting a lot for your money, and people think that’s value,” she said.
Along with watching their dollars, homeowners also are looking for options beyond traditional chemicals to care for their lawns.
Bobby Cameron of Safe Lawn Organics in New Brockton said people are searching for organic options to keep their lawns free of weeds. The company uses an organic fertilizer called Safe Tea that’s safe for people and animals to walk on immediately after treatment and does a free soil analysis to determine what nutrients are lacking.
“The soil is the key to it,” Cameron said. “You have the soil amended properly, and you’ll have the prettiest lawn you’ve ever had.”
It’s an approach, Cameron said, that is comparable to the cost of having a lawn professionally treated with chemicals, although the price does vary with the size of a lawn. Safe Lawn Organics also makes an organic compost using waste from cotton gins.
Safe Lawn customer Linda Westphal, a master gardener herself, hired the company to treat her front lawn that was full of weeds. She noticed a difference after the second treatment.
“I should be able to indentify the weeds, but I couldn’t,” she said. “It was just all kinds.”
To get even more out of their gardening landscape, people are introducing edibles into container gardens or in flower beds. Edibles like Swiss chard have brightly-colored stems of red, orange and yellow, adding more color while providing a tasty green leaf for the kitchen. Herbs and lettuces also make nice additions to containers, Allen said.
Citrus plantings are a lot of value for the cost. You get an evergreen tree and food.
Satsumas are by far the biggest citrus seller for P.C.’s Nursery, said owner P.C. Brown. The nursery also sells lemons, limes, grapefruit, navel oranges and kumquats.
Harvested in late fall and early winter, most citrus plants can tolerate cold temperatures with just a little protection work needed should temperatures get into the mid to low 20s, Brown said. Lemons and limes, however, don’t tolerate temperatures even in the 30s and are best planted in containers so they can be brought indoors, he said.
Planting citrus on a southern exposure against a building will protect it even more from the cold north-northwest wind.
“We have seen over the past five years a tremendous increase in citrus sales just in regard to the residential homeowner planting two or three trees and also in addition to people putting in smaller orchards,” Brown said.
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