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.
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!
Native vines, and where to get them, have been much discussed this summer on some native plant Facebook pages I follow. Beaux Arbres has a fine selection of native vines for the Ottawa region.
One of my favourite vines is the Glaucous Honeysuckle. Unfortunately, I forgot to collect seed from this species last year. To have some Glaucous Honeysuckle available, I layered some stems of the plants in my garden. I have only a couple of these starts left. I do have a good supply of Hairy Honeysuckle, grown from seed. Hairy Honeysuckle is similar to Glaucous, but the flowers are yellow rather than red and it flowers a little later.
Glaucous Honeysuckle
Canada Moonseed (featured image) is not well known but it is a good vine for shade. The flowers are tiny and hidden in the leaves. If the plant is female, and there is a male nearby, the flowers will be followed by dark blue fruit. Leave these for the birds – the seeds should not be eaten by people. Canada Moonseed has attractive lobed leaves.
Virgin’s Bower seeds.
There are two native Clematis in the Ottawa area. Virgin’s Bower is a large vigorous vine, adorned with a froth of small white flowers in late summer. It flowers best in a sunny locations. Much less common and much less known, Purple Clematis has large nodding blue-violet flowers in spring. It is found in the wild in woods, but it flowers more abundantly in gardens if it has at least half-day sun. Both vines have attractive seeds heads after their flowers. Now that I have a few Purple Clematis established in the garden at Beaux Arbres, I have easy access to a supply of seeds of this elusive species, and I now have a good supply of young Purple Clematis available.
Purple Clematis on a trellis at Beaux Arbres.
American Bittersweet is, like Canada Moonseed, dioecious, that is, it has male and female flowers on different plants. Some years ago, I grew some American Bittersweet from locally collected seed, and I still have a few pots left. This plant will not flower when dwarfed by being kept in a pot, and there is no way to tell if it male or female until it flowers. Most folks, quite understandably, want a known female, since it is the bright orange fall fruit which is the decorative feature of this vine. The oldest and largest specimen in the garden at Beaux Arbres is a female and it has produced a couple of suckers. Drop me a line if you are seeking a female American Bittersweet, and I can pot up a sucker off our known female.
We grow two herbaceous vines, the dainty biennial Allegheny Fringe, and new this year, the intriguing American Groundnut. We were generously given some garden divisions of Groundnut by a loyal customer and I am propagating it from the roots. For centuries, American Groundnut has been vegetatively propagated by Indigenous people in eastern Canada for its edible roots, so this is one species where I needn’t worry too much about maintaining genetic diversity through propagating by seeds. The tubers of American Groundnut are delicious roasted.
There is one more native vine which I would very much like to be able to offer: Carrion Flower. I have tried several times to start this handsome herbaceous vine from seed but have never been successful. I would love to hear if anyone has been successful in germinating Carrion Flower.
Beaux Arbres will be bringing a delivery of prepaid orders to Ottawa on Wednesday, August 19th, to our west-end parking lot in Britannia. If you would like to order native plants, please download our current Plant Availability list, in either PDF or Excel format, contact us with your choices, and we will get back to you by email with details about the pick-up location and payment options.
We are now accepting sturdy nursery pots for re-use. If you have purchased plants from us, we welcome the return of our 4 1/2″ tall or 2 1/2″ black pots or black nursery cans. In fact, because of lock-down and the provincial border closing, we were unable to get to our supplier of pots this spring, and are now very short of 2 1/2″ pots for seeding for next year. We do not use cell packs or other flimsy nursery plastic.
We are coming in to Ottawa with prepaid orders on Saturday, June 20th, In the early afternoon, between 1 and 3, we will be at a private driveway in Vanier. Later in the afternoon, between 4 and 6 pm we will be in our usual venue in Britannia. Please send me a message via our contact page if you would like to order.
This year has been … different. One of the things that I have noticed is that when folks order from the web site, they do so very thoughtfully, reading up on the species, selecting carefully for desired qualities, like butterfly host plants or late-season bloom. WHICH IS GREAT!!! The thing is, for the last few years, we have been bringing plants to spring sales and farmers’ markets, where many folks impulse buy whatever is in bloom that moment. So, I had responded by upping the numbers of things like Shooting Stars and Bird’s Eye Primroses, and not growing as many pots of really, really good things like Ironweed, which aren’t doing much during the spring sale rush.
Recently, we have had some customers come to the farm, with thoughtful lists in hand, and buy up great palettes of meadow flowers. And the result is, I am either all out, or very nearly all out, of such stalwart meadow / pollinator plants as Spike Blazing Star, Wild Bergamot, Sneezeweed and Boneset. Which is a silly position for a native plant grower to be in. Many of these will be available again, in smaller sizes, later in the summer.
For this list, Wild Senna and Downy Skullcap, both very late to emerge, are finally in growth. I also have seedlings of both Field and Swamp Thistle, two fine native thistles that are great nectar sources for butterflies.
Still to come are some heat-loving plants such as Whorled Milkweed and Poke. I also have seedling Ozark Sundrops, Downy Woodmint, and Prairie Baby’s Breath coming along.
I have run out of Golden Alexanders and Anise-hyssop but plants from this year’s seeding will be available later in the summer. I am also out of Ohio Goldenrod. Many customers asked have asked me for Stiff Goldenrod so last year I seeded Stiff Goldenrod, which is a reasonable substitute for Ohio Goldenrod. Wild Columbine is not on this week’s list. The really hot weather last week brought on the little green caterpillars which defoliate Wild Columbine. The plants which recover, and many of them do, will be back on the list in the fall. Losing some of the Columbines is just one of the rigours of growing nursery plants without using pesticides.
Not yet in bloom but looking very good: Bowman’s Root (Gillenia trifoliata) and its close relative American Ipecac (G. stipulata). both have starry white flowers and pretty fall foliage colour. American Ipecac ‘s range is further south and west so I expect it to be more drought-tolerant than Bowman’s Root.
A great companion for Bowman’s root is the lovely Wild Geranium.
Mountain Pussytoes are starting in to bloom. This is a very low Pussytoes with grey-pink flowers, very nice for rock gardens.
Mountain Pussytoes in the Rock Garden.
The two smaller wild Irises are budding nicely, little Dwarf Arctic Iris and mid-size Beach-head Iris.
I am a big fan of Spikenard, an imposing plant for shade with a great fruit display in the fall. They were slow to get going this spring, but are now making up for lost time.
We could meet in a parking lot, wearing masks. Not necessarily at dusk, and I don’t know if I could hide the clematis under my overcoat, but the new retail normal is … odd.
I have one pot of the native Purple Clematis (Clematis occidentalis) still available of the plants from my original seed collecting. I now have this species established in my garden, but it will be a few years till I have mature plants available for sale again. This is a woodland clematis with large (for a wild clematis) purple flowers in the spring. Native to the Ottawa Valley but not at all common. It is much more restrained in growth than the abundant white-flowered Virgin’s Bower (C. virginiana). The individual plant I have for sale is 4 years old and has abundant flower buds.
I also have two pots of Fremont’s Leather Flower I am willing to sell. I raised 5 plants from seed from the Ontario Rock Garden Society seed exchange. Now, I do like to keep at least 5 plants of unusual species that I hope to collect seed from, but Fremont’s Leather Flower is one of the limestone-loving Clematis. A realistic assessment of the space I might someday have in my yet-to-be-built limestone garden (realistic assessment is a hard task for plant lovers) suggests I am never going to have the space for 5 Fremont’s Leather Flowers. So I am keeping only three.
Fremont’s Leather Flower is a non-vining Clematis from the south-eastern US. it has dangling white or lavender urn-shaped flowers in June on a clumping herbaceous plant about a foot and a half high. In the wild it is found on dolomitic glades and limestone prairies
I noticed some Marsh Marigolds growing in the ditch of the dirt road that runs down the side of the farm. I also knew that the road, which was in rough shape where it slopes down to the creek, was due for some grading from the municipality. So I dug up the clump that was furthest into the road, divided it into four, and potted it up. I should have taken more. Re-visiting after the road work, I notice some of the clumps in the ditch had been uprooted, dragged, and partially covered with gravel. I rescued the roots and potted them.
In the feature photo you can see the original four, in large pots at the back, blooming beautifully. I plan to keep these to collect seeds. The plants in front are in rough shape. A few may recover in time for this year’s sales. Most won’t be salable till next year, if they recover at all.
As promised, I have a new Plant Availability list. That warm weather I was counting upon to bring on a whole lot of new species – didn’t happen. There are a few.
I will be making a delivery to the pick-up point in the west-end of Ottawa on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 13th, with a stop around noon in Arnprior. If you would like order plants for this delivery, please email your orders to us by 5 pm Monday, May 11th. You will have other opportunities – I plan to be delivering again to Ottawa in about 2 weeks. We still have not heard how the Ottawa Farmers’ Markets will be operating this summer.
I am now out of a few species. Early orders took all I had ready of Skunk Cabbage, Pearly Everlasting, and Virginia Waterleaf. Not to worry, there will be more of those available in a few weeks. However, I am out for the season for Wild Ginger. I have had a hard time building up a good supply of Wild Ginger. Folks blessed with the right sort of soil can get a thriving colony of Wild Ginger going and pot up divisions and volunteers, but our poor sand is not really what Wild Ginger wants. It grows in our area, just a mile or two up the road, in an area of slightly richer soil.
