Native Plant Events

Winding Down

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.

Saturday at Westboro Market

It is not too late to order plants for pick-up at the Westboro Ottawa Farmers’ Market on Saturday. Please get your order to us by noon on Friday as we load up the trailer Friday afternoon. Order Plants.

We are out of many popular species until next year. No more Butterfly Milkweed, Ironweed, or even Large-leaved Aster. However, we still have lots of plants available – little known species such as Ditch Stonecrop, Whorled Milkweed, and Goat’s Rue. We have some great native vines available: Purple Clematis, Virgin’s Bower, Canada Moonseed, and Hairy Honeysuckle. The latest Plant Availability list is up on the Order Plants page.

The Featured Image is the flower of native Purple Clematis.

We’re back at the Market

Beaux Arbres will be back at the Westboro Market for this Saturday, September 12th and the following Saturday, September 19th. The market is around the corner in McKellar Park this summer and Covid19 protocols are in place. You will be able to buy plants from the selection we bring to the market but we encourage you to pre-order for pick-up on the day. I have just prepared a new Plant Availability List for you to download. And we have a Back to the Market Special – see below.

We have had a wonderful response from our understanding customers who have sent us orders for our summer delivery dates and who have come out to the farm. It has been an interesting summer. We are grateful for all your support.

We have run out of some species for the year, including such garden stalwarts as Spike Blazing Star, Nodding Prairie Onion, Wild Bergamot, and White Turtlehead. But there are some new additions that weren’t there earlier in the summer: totally new species such as Downy Wood Mint, returning species such as Purple Clematis, and never-available-in-the-spring-’cause they-are-so-slow-to-get-going species such as Butterfly Milkweed.

Back to the Market Special

Our Prairie Smoke plants are usually $12 for a 4 1/2″ tall pot. Right now we have an abundance of Prairie Smoke in 4″ pots which we will have available at the market at the special price of 4 for $20. This is a great deal on a plant you want to have lots of!

Prairie Smoke in the garden at Beaux Arbres.

Hypertufa Workshop

The first part of our two-day hypertufa workshop produced some fine small bowls and troughs.

If you didn’t participate in the first half, you can still come to the planting workshop on Sunday, September 27th. Purchase one or more of the troughs I have made up and have on hand, and plant up your troughs with little arctic or alvar cuties. I will have an assortment of planting media, grit, clay, stone mulch and thin rocks for creating crevices. Four plants — easy, hardy stalwarts all — are included for each trough, and I have other plants to chose from.

The cost for the one day workshop is $65. Troughs are priced individually by size – $25 to $50.

Participants limited to 8. The location is at Beaux Arbres, 29 Ragged Chute Bristol , Quebec. (Map) Register by contacting me via the form below:

Seeds through the Mail

With the rescheduled Ottawa Seedy Saturday now cancelled, and diverse Horticultural Society events in question, Canada Post is the most reliable way to get your wildflower seeds. Beaux Arbres has nearly all the species we prepared for Ottawa Seedy Saturday (March 6th) still in stock. We sold out of a couple at a very busy Ottawa Valley Seedy Sunday on March 7th.

Download the species list and then send me a message via the Location and Contact page. You can send us a cheque or we can set up an email transfer. The minimum order is 4 packets (for $15). If you order 8 or more packets, we will add two bonus packets, your choice. (There will be a $5 shipping charge for any order that fits in the small bubble mailer).

New Species for the Fletcher Wildlife Garden Sale, June 2

I am almost too busy getting the plants ready for the sale to blog about them but there are a few new species that are too interesting to ignore.IMG_0942

Seeded earlier this year and already big enough to plant now, the lovely biennial Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum). I know, Swamp and Thistle. Don’t let your experience with weedy non-native thistles, neither the stately but dangerous Bull Thistle nor the absolutely appalling Russian Thistle, put you off this great native for damp spots. It is so unlikely to seed into gardens that I suggest you collect some seeds in the fall to ensure you don’t lose it. I received my seeds as a generous gift from Lis Allison, whose Pine Ridge Studio, near Carp, is a great source for locally grown native ferns. Native thistles are great nectar sources for butterflies and the nutritious seeds feed many birds.

Also new this year: Dwarf Arctic Iris (Iris setosa var. arctica), a miniature wild iris and seriously cute. We have some in bud. Seriously cute. Shop early.

We are bringing a few pots of Rock Whitlow-grass (Draba arabisans). Perhaps not the most exciting of Drabas — the really tiny, exciting ones are all denizens of either the high Arctic or Alpine peaks and dislike hot weather — but we just this past Sunday saw this species used very effectively in the Natives area of the Alpine Garden of the Montreal Botanical Garden (featured image). This Draba species is an easy  plant for rock gardens, small enough for troughs.

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And speaking of rock gardens, yes, we will have lots of Common Bluets, still happily blooming.IMG_0948

We will not be bringing many shrubs to the sale this year — three species of roses, some Shrubby Cinquefoil, a few others. Plan to come out to the nursery for more shrubs.

The Fletcher Sale is the only time we bring the mid to late summer meadow flowers into Ottawa. They won’t be in bloom now, of course, but take the opportunity to add some great heat-loving natives, for flowers throughout the summer. Many of the prairie and meadow flowers are important nectar and pollen food sources for diverse pollinators: Boneset, Great Blue Lobelia, Cardinal Flower, Swamp Milkweed, diverse yellow daisies and many others. New this year: Rattlesnake Master and Tall Coreopsis.

 

Rare and Unusual Plant Sale, 2018

This is a hectic time for me, trying to get the stock ready for our first big sale of the spring, the Rare and Unusual Plant Sale, traditionally on Mothers’ Day, in Ottawa. This will be our fourth year as a vendor at this sale. We now have enough experience to predict that the Weather Gods will provide an especially foul brand of weather for the event. (Hey, prove us wrong!)

We had hoped our new hoop house will help us to bring well-grown plants, showing some colour in their buds, to this sale. Ours is not a heated greenhouse – we were not trying to get too far ahead of the season. The idea was to have the plants only a week or so ahead, without forcing them so much that you have to worry about hardening them off before you can plant them outside. In this exceptionally chilly spring, we seem to be just treading water. However, growth is so rapid this time of year that a few days of sunny warmth, or a few shivery nights, makes a great deal of difference to how the plants display themselves by Mothers Day.

To bring your Spring Wildflower Gardener’s Anticipation Frenzy to a fever pitch, you can download our Spring 2018 Species Availability List: Rare and Unusual Sale 2018.

The cute little thing in the picture is Common Bluets or Quaker Ladies.

Talk on Native Rock Garden Plants

on

Saturday, November 11th, 1pm

for the Ottawa Valley Rock Garden Society

Westboro Masonic Hall, 430 Churchill Avenue, Ottawa

Trish will be showcasing some of the diminutive and charming wild flowers which are native to the local alvars, barrens and rocky slopes, many of which she is propagating at Beaux Arbres. If you do not already know them (and even if you do), come out and meet Early Saxifrage, Hooked-Spur Violet, Long-leaved Bluet, Wood Sorrel, and many others.

early saxifrage

Early Saxifrage (Micranthes virginiensis)

Featured photo of Trish in her rock garden: Deborah Powell

Relentless rain a week before the Ottawa sale

The Rare and Unusual Plant Sale on Sunday, May 14th, at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa is less than a week away and I am past hoping for a spell of warm, sunny weather to bring on some flowers. At this point, I am reduced to hoping fervently that our local ferry service will be resumed so that we can get across the Ottawa River! The 7-day forecast for next Sunday predicts “Rain” — what a surprise! Today it is cold and actually snowing.

We do not have heated greenhouses so what we can bring to the sale is what the season brings and that means this year we will not have any warmth-loving plants. All the summer-flowering prairie species are still below ground. (We will be back in Ottawa for the Fletcher Wildlife Garden Sale, Saturday, June 3rd, so you will have another opportunity to pick up Swamp Milkweed, Compass Plant, Pale Purple Coneflower and many other summer flowers and native grasses.)

Tiarella cordifolia

Foamflower

Some of the native spring flowers, long adapted to the vagaries of Canadian springs, are looking surprisingly good. Diverse pussytoes (Antennaria spp.) and Early Saxifrage (Micranthes virginiensis) are sending up flower buds on schedule, despite the inclement weather. Boreal Jacob’s Ladder, from the far north, doesn’t mind this weather at all. The wanna-be evergreen Foamflower and heucheras are very slowly replacing their battered last year leaves with new growth; the new leaves are visible, if still small and curled.

Lovely Wood Poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum), picture above, are looking good — maybe even a flower or two by Sunday. This is the first year I can offer this charming flower for shade. It is not locally native, being represented in Canada only by two small populations near London, Ontario. However, it is an easy, hardy plant for gardens in our area and will even rebloom in late summer if happy.

Also new this year will be Broad-leaved Sedge (Carex platyphylla), which I have grown from seed collected locally on the Eardly Escarpment. Now, sedges are never wildly flamboyant in flower, and this one is not even showy in flower by sedge standards. Broad-leaved sedge has broad (for a sedge), evergreen leaves that are distinctively blue-grey and banded. Think of it as a miniature evergreen hosta, and you may begin to appreciate its possibilities. Full disclosure: I like native evergreen woodland sedges, I just do.

Antennariapl

We will be bringing in a diversity of native wildflowers to the sale, even though some will be smaller and less developed than I had hoped: Cardinal Flower, Common Bluets, Wild Columbine, Dwarf Hairy Beardtongue, Golden Ragwort, Sweet Grass,Bottlebrush Grass, Purple Chokeberry, and CarolinaLupin, to name just a few.

See you there, umbrellas and all!

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Carolina Lupin (Thermopsis villosa)