Southern Gardening

Every spring, I look forward to seeing wisterias bloom. It’s incredible how high these vines can climb into trees. They are a familiar sight along roadsides, and I really enjoy the 55-mile-per-hour flower show I get as I drive along the highways in Mississippi.

In this setting, these vigorous and aggressive vines seem to be out of reach for the ordinary home landscape. But wisteria vines can actually be used in a more confined space, assuming you are committed to keeping the vine in place through training and pruning.

If there’s a single shrub that could be called a staple in the Southern landscape, it has to be the azalea. Its spectacular flowering has made the azalea one of the all-time most popular landscape shrubs.

Here on the coast, azaleas have been putting on a show since they began blooming in early March. The progression of blooms will continue to north Mississippi by early April. One of the earliest-blooming varieties is the Southern Indica azalea. Whether used as specimen plants, hedges or backgrounds, the Southern Indica has to be my favorite azalea.

As gardeners look forward to the spring planting season, many go in droves to the various garden shows and displays to see some of the newest and flashiest flowers on the market. This weekend at the Gulf Coast Garden & Patio Show was no exception.

Mississippi gardeners got the chance to see the new Mississippi Medallion-winning plants for 2012. This year’s flowering plant winner is Vista Bubblegum supertunia. The flowers are a clear, bright pink and have performed well in Mississippi gardens the past few years.

As springtime arrives across Mississippi, azaleas are starting to put on their colorful show. While these walls of pink and clusters of red and spots of white are well-known and anticipated, a spring-blooming shrub that does not get as much attention is the Indian hawthorn.

Like every gardener in Mississippi, I get spring fever this time of year. Seed catalogs are piling up higher every day. When visiting garden centers, I’m tempted by the racks of vegetable transplants available. I’ve even seen tomatoes on a warmer weekend. What’s a gardener to do?

To help hold us over until spring really arrives, African daisies and Senetti pericallis are perfect additions for landscape color. Both like the cooler early spring temperatures and can be used exactly like the mums we used last fall.

If you’re like me and constantly looking for true blue flowers, you will want to be sure to make a place in your garden for the blue butterfly plant.

I enjoy spring, when greenhouses and garden centers start offering all sorts of new and exciting plants for our Mississippi landscapes and gardens. I’m always on the lookout for blue flowers to include in the landscape.

Purple coneflowers are a flowering Mississippi native perennial that can really make a statement in your home garden and landscape.

The plant’s name comes from the beautiful purple flowers that seem to attract an endless number of butterflies and bees, especially all sorts of bumblebees. Traditionally, flower colors range from pastel purplish-pinks to deep, dark, vibrant burgundies.

Gardeners seeking color for the winter landscape should look beyond traditional pansies and violas and embrace the wide range of ornamental vegetables that can be grown in Mississippi. I’ve written about the colorful varieties of ornamental kale and cabbage, but a plant that doesn’t get much press is Swiss chard. Swiss chard is a winter annual available in a variety of bright and eye-catching colors, and it will certainly attract attention if you grow it.

If you’re still looking for a fantastic indoor plant for the winter season, try cyclamen. It has a long blooming period and produces loads of colorful flowers to enjoy on dreary days.

Flowers can be found in a variety of shades of red, pink and white, but I think some of the most attractive are the soft pastels of pink and lavender.

The nodding flowers have swept-back petals that are held on straight stems above the foliage. Another highly attractive feature of cyclamen is that they have varying patterns of silver and gray on the cordate, or heart-shaped, leaves.

These are classic symptoms of gardening cabin fever. For the active gardener, it only gets worse when all those catalogs start arriving.

Of all of our activities, wedding ceremonies may be the most symbolic. Symbolism is found in everything from the rings, representing the couple’s commitment of everlasting love, to who sits on which side of the church. Even the flowers used in ceremonies can be symbolic.

When choosing wedding flowers, the most important consideration may be the colors of the bride’s and bridesmaids’ dresses, but you should also consider the symbolic meaning of the flower. You certainly don’t want to convey the wrong message on your wedding day.

In my job with Mississippi State University, I am asked a lot of questions about problems people have with plants and ideas they have for their landscapes and gardens.

As we begin the new year, here is my list of four resolutions to help make your landscape and garden more enjoyable and productive in 2012.

1- Get those pesky landscape and lawn weeds under control.

The poinsettia may be the quintessential holiday plant because of its bright and colorful bracts, but there are some non-traditional plants that can be just as festive and spread as much cheer.

One of the most unusual I’ve seen is a miniature cherry tomato in full fruit, displayed for holiday sales.

I have admired Rex begonia for many years, and I think this group of plants has the potential to be more than a beautiful indoor plant. It could take its place as a cornerstone of holiday decorations.

I saw one of the most beautiful sights the other morning just as the sun came up. Ornamental grasses, backlit by the sun, seemed to glow in the rich morning light.

I realized at that moment that landscape grasses can have a significant impact in winter gardens.

Most gardeners already know that ornamental grasses are fantastic garden plants, but we tend to take them for granted because they perform so consistently. We just expect them to do their job and be beautiful, and we don’t give them much thought. That ought to change.

When the weather outside is frightful and nothing is blooming, gardeners must rely on plant features other than flowers for color.

Plants that produce colorful berries can enhance the winter landscape. Mississippi gardeners are lucky because we have some real beauties to help shake up the winter landscape.

Besides the Christmas tree, the poinsettia is the plant most often associated with the Christmas season. You can hardly go wrong with their colorful bracts brightening your decorations.

The color spectrum of poinsettia is truly remarkable. Colors range from red to white to even maroon, making it hard to choose favorites. There are bicolored, speckled and marbled poinsettias. And if that’s not enough, growers are even painting leaves and adding glitter.

I think my garden plants have enjoyed the cooler temps of autumn as much as I have enjoyed them. As the weather becomes colder, we need to think about protecting our garden plants.

Gardeners pay close attention to weather predictions of cold temperatures. We often use the terms “frost” and “freeze” interchangeably because both refer to cold temperature events. In reality, a frost and a freeze are completely different things.

The weather outside may be frightful, but gardeners who want early spring color get out in it to plant spring-flowering bulbs.

Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and crocus are among the first plants to give us colorful signs that winter is almost over. Many gardeners refer to all of these as bulbs, even though some grow from underground structures that include corms, rhizomes and tubers.

These spring-flowering plants do not provide the instant color generally associated with flowering bedding plants. Bulb crops make us plan ahead.

Pansies and viola bring vivid hues to many gardens during the winter months, but adding the engaging colors and textures of ornamental kale takes a landscape from safe to sensational.

We’ve all seen garden gnomes in other people’s yards -- the creatures of woodland legend that represent the spirit of the earth. Maybe it’s time you put one in your own garden.

Gnome is a derivation of the Greek word for “earth dweller.” Garden gnomes were first used in German gardens in the mid-1800s. Made out of terra cotta, they were painted and clothed like miners of the day, with outfits that included the cute little pointed hats.