We will be a vendor at Westboro Farmers’ Market for their opening day, this Saturday, May 21st. I have a new Plant Availability List if you wish to pre-order for pick up at the market.
The response to our plants at the Friends of the Farm Sale last Sunday was stupendous. We were just about completely out of stock by about 11 o’clock. So, I have potted up some more Virginia Waterleaf and Cardinal Flower, and some others, but they will not be ready for this Saturday. I also go behind on my plans to pot up some other species due to the incredibly hot and drying weather we had last week. So there are a few species on the Availability List paradoxically listed as Not Available Yet. I don’t want you to give up on them – they will be back in stock when we are next at the Westboro Market on Saturday, June 4th.
I am really looking forward to the Friends of the Farm Sale tomorrow. It will be the first plant sale Beaux Arbres has participated in in two years. (We did manage one Farmers’ Market last July and two in September of 2020.) We have a wonderful array of plants to bring to the sale – a mixture of spring flowers and some summer-flowering plants that have emerged in the recent heat.
It has been a challenge getting the plants organized in this extreme heat and some of the early species I had hoped to have in full bloom have already passed their peak. Prairie Crocus is long over but we are bringing some plants to the sale anyway. This incredibly early beauty is a great addition to any sunny rock garden.
A species I am very proud to be able to offer is the lovely little Early Buttercup. It has taken two years to get these small plants up to salable size. The seed is originally from the local Ottawa Valley population of this alvar specialist plant. We are not on limestone at Beaux Arbres so I have planted what will be my stock plants for future seeds in a hypertufa trough with limestone mulch to mimic their alvar home.
Early Buttercup in a hypertufa trough.
Everyone gardening with butterflies in mind wants to know when the milkweeds will be available. Milkweeds are real heat-lovers and are always slow to emerge in the spring. I do have some nice pots of Whorled Milkweed to bring to the sale tomorrow. This low-growing species from south-western Ontario is not the showiest in flower but it is very attractive to Monarchs looking for a place to lay their eggs. We expect to be bringing some Dwarf Milkweed (seed from Manitoba) to the Westboro Farmers’ Market next Saturday.
The forecast for this Sunday is rain and possible thunderstorm. The weather gods must know we are bringing prepaid orders in cardboard boxes. Some folks who ordered from us last year will remember the soggy muddle of our first rainy delivery day last May. Honestly, I should start charging a fee to farmers – putting plant orders into cardboard boxes seems to be the most effective rain dance ever devised.
A week of (very) warm weather has pushed all sorts of summer-blooming, heat-loving plants into growth, unfortunately not in time for the pre-orders for the Friends of the Farm Sale on Sunday. I will be bringing a smattering of summer-blooming flowers to the sale, along with many spring flowers. And you have more chances to pre-order for pick-up at the Westboro Farmers’ Market.
The Fletcher Wildlife Garden Annual Sale, it has just been announced will be on a pre-order only basis, as it was last year. With no sale event, we don’t have a chance to be the guest vender at the sale event. We will be at the Westboro Farmers’ Market again that Saturday, June 4th.
I have sold out of a few species: Anise-hyssop, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod, and some others. I overwintered only so many in each species. However, they will be available again later in the summer as this spring’s seedlings get to salable size. I will post a new Availability List this week.
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The vivid red flower in the feature image is called Royal Catchfly and it is one of the summer bloomers that I will be bringing a few pots of to the Friends of the Farm Sale.
The long spell of cold weather in the latter part of April really slowed down plant growth, but I promised a Plant Availability List for the first of May, so here it is. The fine weather forecasted for the next week or so might bring many more species into growth. If there are enough additional species, I will put out an updated list before May 11th.
For pick-up of prepaid orders at the Friends of the Farm Sale on Sunday, May 15th, I ask that you get your orders e-mailed to me by 6 pm on Wednesday, May 11th. For this event, there is a minimum of $50 for pre-paid orders.
After a two year hiatus, the Friends of the Farm Annual Plant Sale will be held this spring. Although colloquially known as the Mothers Day Sale, it is not always held on Mothers’ Day and this year it will be on May 15th, the Sunday after Mothers’ Day. For several years, this was our first big sale event of the year. During a cold, late spring, we never know what will be up and looking good in time for the sale, but we can hope to have Eastern Shooting Star, Prairie Smoke, Early Saxifrage, Showy Jacob’s Ladder, Bird’s Eye Primrose, and other early spring cuties in bloom, or at least in bud, in time for the sale. Prairie Crocus is so darn early, we may have to move our pots into a cool spot to keep them in bloom for May 15!
We will be bringing a selection of spring flowers to the sale table for sales on the day. In addition, you can pre-order from our Availability List for pick up on the day of the sale. Our first Plant Availability list of 2022 should be up on the website by on or around the 1st of May, with details of how to order.
We are also going to be at the Westboro Farmers’ Market on Saturday, May 21. That is the Saturday of the 24th of May weekend, a traditional time to stock up on garden plants. We will be bringing in a good selection of spring and early summer plants for sale at the Market, but just as for the Friends of the Farm Sale, you can pre-order from the Availability List for pick-up that day. (Because we are doing two things on one day – a sale table and prepaid orders – we will have a minimum in effect for prepaid orders for both days.)
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Beaux Arbres has chosen not to be a vendor at this year’s Seedy Saturday but you can pick up pre-ordered seeds at the Seedy Saturday pickup wicket.
If you are heading to the Ron Kolbus Centre for Seedy Saturday on March 5th, you can pick up pre-ordered Beaux Arbres seeds, and other vendors merchandise, at an outside wicket. Please get your seed orders in by Wednesday, March 2nd. We will WAIVE THE SHIPPING CHARGE for orders picked up at Seedy Saturday.
Beaux Arbres will be bringing plants into Ottawa on Saturday, September 11th. We will be distributing prepaid orders of native plants from a Britannia area parking lot on that Saturday, from 9:30 am until noon. This will probably be our last delivery of plants for the season. The nursery will still be open until the end of September.
Ironweed ($12) and the native hibiscus, Swamp Rose Mallow ($18) are now available and looking very good. We still have seedling Butterfly Milkweeds available — now is a good time to get this much-in-demand species. Many other species are still available. Because some species are available only in small quantities, rather than post a new Availability list, I am asking you to use the August Availability List as a wish list, and I will fill your orders to the best of my ability, in the order they come in.
Please email your orders to me by the evening of Thursday, September 9th, and I will get back to you with details about payment etc.: naturalgarden@xplornet.ca
Beaux Arbres Native Plants has a new Plant Availability List out. We will be bringing pre-paid orders to our regular Britannia area parking lot on Thursday, July 8th, and then, on Monday, July 12th, we will be bringing plants to an address in Navan. Both days the plant order distribution will be in the afternoon, from 4 to 7:30 pm. We expect folks have plans on summer weekends, hence the weekday dates, but we don’t expect our east-end customers to fight the rush hour traffic across town, especially with all the road construction, so we are trying out the new address in Navan. (Order Plants)
Customers who come to the farm have often picked up some species which hasn’t made it on to the Availability List because I only have one or two of them in stock. This spring, one lucky customer happened to ask about Hobblebush on the very day I decided that I would never have room for all three of my precious Hobblebushes, so she left with a pot of seed-grown local genotype Hobblebush. Yes, children, that actually happened. So for this issue of the Plant Availability List, I start the list with some of the oddments and singular items that wouldn’t usually make it on. The larger shrubs are things I have grown for our own landscaping and I have been selling off the extras. Once, say, the last Grey Dogwood is gone, it probably won’t be on the list again. The herbaceous items are just things I happen to be low on.
I should point out that the Pearly Everlasting is available with or without resident American Lady Caterpillars, while supplies last. And while we are talking about caterpillars, the Butterfly Milkweed is not yet big enough to include on the list, but it will be on a list coming out soon. They are coming along nicely but not yet ready to plant out.
I have a couple of new things for the Rock Garden: Showy Jacob’s Ladder and Littleflower Penstemon. Not locally native at all, just little cuties from the Rocky Mountains.
Oh, and yes, that Glaucous Honeysuckle vine that I have been promising will be ready any week now — it is ready now and is on the list. Everybody should consider planting a Glaucous Honeysuckle: not too big, two seasons of interest with flowers and fruit, and a host plant for the caterpillars of the charming Hummingbird Clearwing Moths. What’s not to love?
I have a new Availability List to download. The demand for native plants has been so great this spring, that many, many species are temporarily out of stock. For many species, plants seeded this year will soon start to be available. However, some of the slower growing woodland plants are not available until next year.
Newly available are: Tall Sunflower (one of my all-time favourites – pictured above), Tall Meadow-rue, and Golden Ragwort.
We had been hoping to be part of the Fletcher Wildlife Garden Sale. However, this year they are doing the sale entirely on-line, with prepaid orders, and they are spreading the pick-ups out over several weekends, to avoid crowding. Under the circumstances, it doesn’t make sense to add ourselves to the process. We are already doing on-line prepaid orders.
We have decide to pause on deliveries for a couple of weeks. Rather than bringing in partial orders, it seems a better use of my time to stay on the farm and build up stock again.
Please remember that adding native plants to your garden is a process that can go on all season. As long as you can bring a hose to the plants, or get a bucket of water from the lake, planting potted nursery stock can be done all summer. Some great heat-loving, summer-flowering natives are very slow to get going in the spring, and some just hate overwintering in pots, so the only time they are available for sale is in the summer. Keep revisiting the web site for updated Availability.
Our Hypertufa Trough Planting workshop was the last planned event of the season. Some wonderful troughs gardens were created. We are still at the farm until mid-November but we are winding down sales. The soil is getting to be too cool to install warm-season plants, and many herbaceous plants are entering dormancy.
I want to thank all our customers for helping us get through this challenging season. I am especially grateful to the repeat customers. Some folks took a chance on our prepaid order/pick-up scheme early in the summer, and then ordered more. I am also especially grateful to some old friends, and a new friend, who allowed us to use their driveways for pick-up locations across Ottawa, so we could reach customers in diverse neighbourhoods.
Predictions for next spring
I may be wrong, but I do not expect the Ottawa Seedy Saturday and Ottawa Valley Seedy Sunday, indoors and in early March, will happen in 2021. And even if they were to be held, I don’t think I would want to participate as a vendor. The spring plant sales are another matter. I am very much hoping and expecting the Friends of the Farm Sale (Mothers’ Day Sale), the Fletcher Wildlife Garden Annual Sale, and the Westboro Farmers’ Markets will happen next spring, outdoors, and with appropriate protocols. I am sure we will all be very eager for these cheering events after what may become a very grim winter.
So, with this in mind, I am taking a bit of a holiday this year from seed cleaning and packaging. I don’t enjoy cleaning seeds, and our Seedy Saturday seed sales were always meant to be local and to augment our plant sales. In other words, we are not going to be moving towards a big mail-order seed presence. I may have some species available in seed — I’ll post on the website.
We did find the prepaid orders and pick-ups to be a good way of getting our plants to our customers and we will continue with that in 2021, even as we get back into the sale days and farmers’ markets.
We introduced some interesting new species this summer, such as Ditch Stonecrop, Water Plantain, and Downy Wood Mint. I did not find time in the growing season to add their species profiles to the website, so over the winter I shall be adding pics and info on our new species. Please check in from time to time.
Newly-planted Fen/Alvar Trough: Pitcher Plant, Dwarf Canadian Primrose, Early Saxifrage, and Stitchwort.
Beaux Arbres Plantes Indigènes / Native Plants 