shrubs

Westboro Farmers’ Market, Saturday, September 17th.

Beaux Arbres will be a vendor at the Westboro Farmers’ Market in Ottawa on Saturday, September 17th. This will be our last venture in to Ottawa for the season. We will have a selection of wildflowers at the table — bottle gentians (featured photo), perennial sunflowers, asters, and goldenrods, plus some early spring bloomers such as Early Saxifrage, to plant now for spring bloom. You can also pre-order from the Availability List for pick-up at the market. Please email your orders by Thursday, September 15, 6 pm to naturalgarden@xplornet.ca

The Milkweeds are all rapidly going into dormancy, so they are now off the list, plus I have none left of Blue Lobelia and Cardinal Flower. However, most of the species on the August 31st Availability list are still available. (I have reloaded the list, because there was some technical glitch with it last week.)

Plant Availability August 31 2022Download

The nursery will be open until the end of September and you are welcome to come out to select your plants. There are often oddities and one-offs at the farm that do not make it onto the list.

Farm Sale of Shrubby Cinquefoil

I am going to drop Shrubby Cinquefoil from my stock. I am clearing them out at the low, low price of 6 for $100, farm sale only. These are local genotype wild-type plants, several years old, not as floriferous as the nursery varieties but tough and hardy as granite rocks. I have totally neglected them for at least 2 years and haven’t been able to kill them. So I gave them a bit of fertilizer this summer and actually watered them from time to time and they perked up nicely. I honestly think the fancy-coloured nursery varieties are a more colourful choice for most urban gardens but if you have a cottage or country property which has a spot for some smallish tough summer-flowering native shrubs, these are a good deal.

potentille frutescente
Flowers of Shrubby Cinquefoil.
rosier brillant

Shining Rose

Another wild rose we are propagating at Beaux Arbres is Shining Rose (Rosa nitida), also known as Maritime Rose. I collected the seed for this species in Nova Scotia. I understand it occurs in Quebec along the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore but it does not occur naturally in the Ottawa valley.

I particularly like this rose for gardens because of its relatively low stature and its fine foliage texture. Its leaflets are smaller and shinier than those of other North American wild rose species, Shining Rose has fabulous fall foliage colour — flaming reds and oranges — and small red hips. Its suckers in loose sandy soil, as do most wild roses, but it is constrained by tighter clayey soils. Topping out at three feet or less, Shining Rose is the ideal wild rose for smaller gardens.