September Plant List

American Spikenard fruit

The September Plant Availability List is here. What’s missing? A whole bunch of shade and woodland plants that either went dormant early (or possibly died) in the heat or that look so bad I won’t offer them for sale. Let’s hope most of them come back for next spring. What’s new? American spikenard (Aralia racemosa)… Continue reading September Plant List

Milkweeds are ready

Butterfly Milkweed

Everybody’s favourite, orange Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), is now ready to go into gardens. I have this year’s seedlings in 2 1/2″ pots and a very few year-old plants in 4″ tall pots. I also have Whorled Milkweed (A. verticilliata), with the thin leaves Monarch favour late in the season, and Dwarf Milkweed (A. ovalifolia).… Continue reading Milkweeds are ready

Special Offer: Mixed Flats – Your Choice

Beaux Arbres has a special summer price on mixed flats of 32 2 1/2″ pots — your choice (from the list below) of flowers and grasses — at $160 per flat. That’s $5 per pot. (Regular price: $6 or more.) If you are looking for native plants for a meadow, community pollinator garden, or other… Continue reading Special Offer: Mixed Flats – Your Choice

Bringing Plants to Ottawa, Wednesday, July 13th

Southern Blue Monkshood

Beaux Arbres will be bringing plant orders to Ottawa on the evening of Wednesday, July 13th to distribute them from our Britannia area condo’s Visitor Parking Lot. I know some folks were not able to make the Saturday morning Farmers’ Market and others did not want to pick up a large order with Westboro’s potentially… Continue reading Bringing Plants to Ottawa, Wednesday, July 13th

Seed Collecting Fall 2021

Pink Turtlehead

I have finished collecting all the seeds I intend to collect this fall and have picked over and done preliminary cleaning on most of them. I will be posting a list of the available species soon. Pink Turtlehead Pink Turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) — pictured above — seeds will be available this year. I almost gave… Continue reading Seed Collecting Fall 2021

Blooms for Early Spring

Hooked-spur or Early Violet (Viola adunca) in the Rock Garden at Beaux Arbres.

The very first flower at Beaux Arbres is almost always a little non-native rock garden Iris, Iris reticulata. Although I discourage the use of many of the little bulbs from the garden centre, because they readily leap from garden to woodlands, I have never seen nor read of any problem with the little Irises. At… Continue reading Blooms for Early Spring

An Urban Pollinator Garden

Berit Erickson dropped by last week to pick up some native plant seeds and talk to me about her demonstration pollinator garden, on a busy corner lot in the west end of Ottawa . Working in her yard, Berit realized how interested passers-by were in her flowers. Berit herself had noticed how much more lively… Continue reading An Urban Pollinator Garden

Giant Swallowtail Caterpillar

Caterpillar of giant Swallowtail on a Hop-tree in the garden atBeaux arbres

First spotted as a tiny hatchling, by Mo Laidlaw, about three weeks ago, this caterpillar of Giant Swallowtail seems a little bit bigger each time we check on it. It had eaten all the leaves on its seedling Hop-tree (Ptelea trifoliata) so I moved caterpillar and denuded seedling into the hoop house underneath a larger… Continue reading Giant Swallowtail Caterpillar

Wild Senna Beats the Heat

Wild Senna, Senna hebecarpa, Cassia hebecarpa

This tall yellow wildflower loves the heat and seems to laugh at drought. Five or six feet tall on sturdy stems, Wild Senna (Senna hebecarpa) has typical pinnate Pea Family foliage but the individual flowers are more open than typical in the family. Wild Senna belongs to an early-evolved branch of the Pea family tree. The… Continue reading Wild Senna Beats the Heat

Sun-loving Violets

Bird's Foot Violet

by Trish Murphy This article was originally published in OHS News, April, 2018, the newsletter of the Ottawa Horticultural Society. One of the things we think we know about violets is that they grow in shade, shyly, among mossy rocks. The other thing we think we know about violets is that they invade lawns. Many… Continue reading Sun-loving Violets