This is your year to earn your title of Mom’s Favourite Child. Get a Mother’s Day present that will make your siblings’ feeble attempts at gift-giving pale in comparison. There’s no need to splurge a giant wad of cash or overthink anything—we’ve got everything you need right here at Eising Garden Centre, from pretty plants to cute accessories and so many more gifts to make Mom’s day awesome.

Mother’s Day Plants and Other Last-Minute Gifts That Are Actually Cool

Trust us: Mom doesn’t want another charm for her bracelet. It’s too heavy. Her delicate, graceful arms need a break. Give her something she’ll really appreciate, like one of these plants or other cool presents from Eising Garden Centre:

Exotic Potted Palms

Mom deserves a vacation, but if a trip to Fiji isn’t in the budget, bring the tropics to her! We have so many gorgeous potted palm trees that can be grown as exotic indoor plants. Plus, she can bring them outside for summer so she can lounge around outside with a drink underneath a leafy canopy of tropical foliage. Sounds about perfect!

A Monstera Plant

These trendy tropicals are perfect plant presents. How could anyone resist those signature leaves? Pick out an artsy pot to go with it from our pottery collection, and ask one of our staff members for care instructions so you can write them in the card. They start small but grow impressively large, so Mom can nurture it and help it grow, just like she did for you! Awwww.

Make a DIY Succulent Terrarium

A plant gift: amazing. A handmade gift: double amazing. A handmade plant arrangement expertly curated by Mom’s favourite kid: off the charts! All you need is a glass terrarium, some peat moss, decorative pebbles, and an assortment of gorgeous succulents, all of which you can find here at Eising Garden Centre. Look for tiny succulent plants like 2” Echeveria, Crassula, Kalanchoe, Haworthia, and Sempervivum—they’ll get bigger as they grow in the terrarium, and you don’t want them to get too crowded in there!

Philodendron Micans

This gorgeous vining plant has elegant, heart-shaped leaves. If that doesn’t make Mom’s heart melt, we don’t know what will! They start small but eventually grow into a lush plant that Mom can propagate and share with her friends. Tie a cute bow around that plant pot and boom! You’ve got the sweetest, most sentimental gift ever.

Hanging Baskets of Summer Flowers

Patio season is well underway, and beautiful blooming hanging baskets are essential for creating that carefree summer ambience. Opt for trailing flowering plants like Petunias and Superbells in Mom’s favourite colour. They grow so quickly, with incredible volume and long, cascading vines bearing ultra-vibrant blooms.

Gorgeous Garden Decorations 

If Mom’s outdoor patio decor is starting to look a bit weathered, Mother’s Day would be an ideal occasion to buy her a brand new windspinner or gazing ball. Having a nicely-decorated place to relax, decompress, and get in touch with nature is so good for the mind and body! This unique present will definitely hit all the right notes.

A Sassyfras Boutique Gift Card

Buying clothing as a present can be a bit of a gamble—you never quite know how it will fit, and everyone’s personal tastes are different. The solution: buy Mom a gift card to our Sassyfras Boutique and accompany her on a shopping spree. Cue the fashion shopping montage! This way, you know she’ll get something she loves, and she gets to spend some quality time with her number one child, which is the best gift of all, obviously.

Doing your Mother’s Day shopping at Eising Garden Centre is a total gamechanger. There’s no need to panic when you’ve got hundreds of gorgeous plants and plenty of other fantastic items. Discover even more amazing plant gifts for sale here at our garden centre in Simcoe—you’ll want to make it a yearly tradition!

Does your front porch need a little pizzazz? Add a hanging basket—or three! Hanging baskets are an effortless way to add lots of colour to your garden or porch quickly and easily. 

Why We Love Hanging Baskets

Hanging baskets are stunning in the summer and can elevate your backyard or front porch into a blooming oasis! It’s the perfect way to add colour at eye level and vertical elements to your space. They don’t require a lot of effort, provide blooms all season long, and they’ll attract pollinators to your yard! Hanging baskets are also very easy to install; with freestanding hooks you can place in your garden, or you can mount hooks to your fence. You can’t go wrong with hanging baskets, we promise!

There are so many colours available that you’ll have no problem picking something that suits your garden design. The most popular flowers are begonias, petunias, and calibrachoas in colours such as yellow, red, purple, pink, and more! While these blooms are gorgeous, some of them can be a little heavy, so keep your baskets protected from harsh winds, so the stems don’t snap. 

Types of Outdoor Hanging Baskets

Depending on your preferences, there are a few types of hanging baskets out there. Of course, if you prefer one aesthetic over another, you can always transplant the basket you find at Eising Garden Centre to a custom planter that suits your garden. 

• Fibre Baskets – a denser basket also held in a metal basket; this has a cleaner aesthetic than the moss but still has a natural-looking colour. 
• Outdoor Plastic Baskets – for a classic shape that is clean and will complement the other pottery in your yard, select a plastic basket! You can even take off the hook at the end of the season and reuse the pot for future planting.

How to Care for Your Hanging Baskets

Taking care of outdoor hanging baskets is relatively easy as long as you remember to check on them a little more often than your other containers; they are more likely to dry out in the sun and wind and will need more frequent watering. As with most plants, watering thoroughly less often is better than watering infrequently and superficially. With outdoor hanging plants, you’ll want to water them once a day unless it’s rainy. If it’s a scorching day out, your basket may need water twice a day. We recommend watering your basket once the top of the soil is dry, and watering until water pours out the bottom. Be careful to avoid splashes on the foliage.

Hanging baskets benefit from fertilizer through the growing season, so top them up with a water-soluble fertilizer that promotes blooming, such as a 1:2:1 ratio, around the middle of summer. Make sure that your plant looks healthy and is hydrated before you introduce any fertilizer. 

We also recommend rotating your outdoor baskets to spread that sunshine around. By rotating your plants, they’ll get more even sun and wind exposure, which will foster a healthier plant overall. 

Trim your hanging basket to help keep its shape and get rid of any leggy stems, which will keep it looking full and lush through the season. Some flowers will need deadheading, such as geraniums and verbena, though not all; be sure to check the requirements of your specific varieties. If you need to deadhead your flowers, simply pinch off dead flowers after they start to fade to encourage more blooms. 

At Eising Garden Centre, we have plenty of hanging baskets for sale that you can use to decorate your front patio, fences, and more. Come visit us in Norfolk County to see our vast selection of unique and beautiful baskets!

We all love to have some colour in our garden during the spring and summer, but adding colour doesn’t just mean adding hanging planters and colourful containers to your front porch! These flowering perennials have gorgeous blooms, and after a year of establishing, they’ll require minimal care. It’s a win-win situation! 

 

Why Plant Perennials?

Perennials come back each year, meaning that you can invest in your landscape design and reduce the amount of planting you have to do each year. Once your perennials have grown enough, you can separate them to make more plants! To be deemed a perennial, a plant must be able to tolerate the entire year in the ground without dying. To keep it easy, we’ve curated this list of flowering perennials that will survive southern Ontario winters and bring your yard fabulous colour year after year.

Salvia

This perennial is the best way to make the most of your garden: it attracts pollinators, deters pests, is a delicious herb, and has stunning flowers all in one plant! You can cut any of the colours, such as white, blue, purple, and pink, near the base after they bloom to produce a fresh crop of flowers later in the season.

Aster

For late-season blooms, asters are the flowering perennial that will bring a pop of purple, blue or pink into your garden just before fall arrives, contrasting beautifully against the orange and yellow leaves. They are fantastic food sources for pollinators and are very easy to grow in containers. Keep your asters in full sun for the most blooms. 

Black-Eyed Susans

This perennial is a classic, warming the hearts of gardeners with its golden petals. It’s a pollinator-friendly plant with simple, yet stunning flowers. Black-eyed Susans prefer full sun for prolific blooms, and well-draining soil.

Coneflower

Coneflowers, also known as Echinacea, are iconic North American flowering perennials. They come in many vibrant colours, such as yellow, orange, pink, and red shades featured in the “Sombrero” series. Because of their taproot, they are a little hardier than other plants and can handle dividing and transplanting well. They grow best with regular watering in full sun and require deadheading for continuous blooms.

Delphinium

There are over 300 varieties of delphiniums, but we recommend the Summer Series group for perennials since they have better heat and humidity tolerance. This group comes in shades of blue, navy, and dusty pink. This group doesn’t need staking because they are shorter, but don’t worry; they still produce just many flowers!

Wintergreen

This groundcover, Gaultheria procumbens, has mint-scented leaves and edible red berries. It is a tough groundcover plant that grows best in the shade. The leaves turn red to bronze in the winter, making this perennial an absolute delight in your garden year-round.

Garden Phlox 

Garden phlox is the perfect perennial for long-lasting blooms that will dazzle; the flowers grow in clusters on stalks, like little pom-poms of colour. Garden phlox prefers full sun and moist soil with good drainage for the best growth. If you want a groundcover variety, try creeping phlox! 

Coral Bells

Coral bells have impressive, vibrantly-coloured foliage that is stunning on its own, but it doesn’t stop there! Long spikes shoot up, adorned by tiny bell-shaped blooms that range from white to pink to red shades; it’s great for adding texture to your shorter plants.

Astilbe 

While delicate in appearance, astilbe is a hardy perennial that loves moisture and shade! Its foliage has a fern-like texture, and the flowers are fabulous flourishes of pink, purple, red, and white; this is a great perennial for adding character and filling in any shady spots in your yard! 

Peonies

If you’re looking for a perennial that will blow you away with large, stunning flowers, plant peonies! You can choose from varieties that bloom early, midseason, or late, or get a few of each to enjoy them all season. Full sun and shelter from the wind and strong staking are essential for peonies. 

We have plenty of flowering perennials for sale at Eising Garden Centre! Visit us to see our entire collection of high-quality plants and products.

Spring can be busy—but it sure is an exciting time of year! The weather is warm, there are so many fun things to do, and our garden plants are about to burst open. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the season, it’s important to take time to tackle all the necessary chores in our landscape. A garden cleanup and landscape inspection help eliminate potential problems before they get out of control. It’s a little bit of work right now, for a lot less work in the future!

Cross These Garden Chores Off Your List This Spring

Here are five outdoor chores you should do right away so that your garden and landscape plants have a successful, stress-free year.

Dethatch the Lawn

Grass can get tangled and matted after a snowy winter and lots of foot traffic. This can lead to problems such as:

• Poor moisture drainage during the rainy season
• Inhibited grass growth
• Weakened immunity to disease and fungal growth
• Increased risk of pest infestations 

 

How do you dethatch a lawn? It’s easy! Simply drag your rake across the matted grass and tear up those tangles. It also helps to aerate your soil afterwards by driving a spike aerator into the soil, loosening up the ground and encouraging better oxygen and moisture circulation.

Simple Pruning and Rejuvenation Pruning

Spring is an ideal time to prune many of your garden and landscape plants, but not all of them! If you plan on doing a simple pruning—clipping off dead, diseased, or leggy branches that look awkward—then avoid making cuts on plants that bloom on old wood, like Lilacs and Bigleaf Hydrangeas. These plants develop their flower buds in winter and open in spring. If you prune these plants in spring, you’ll remove their flower buds. Wait until summer to prune them instead. Summer-blooming plants like Forsythia and Butterfly Bush usually bloom on new wood that develops in spring, so early spring pruning will work perfectly.  

Hard pruning, also called renewal or rejuvenation pruning, is a bit more of a chore but also serves a different purpose than simple pruning. You should only hard prune about once every three to five years on large plants that lack volume and vigour or have a very awkward shape. It involves dramatically cutting your plants back so that they’re ⅓ their original size; this allows for plenty of fresh, new growth to take its place, so your plant doesn’t waste energy on old, weak branches. Lilacs, Hydrangea, Dogwood, Viburnums, Forsythia, and Spirea are all shrubs that will respond well to hard pruning.

Dividing Perennials

Perennial garden plants reemerge each spring, and they spread out further with each passing year. After a few years, the roots start to get too crowded, and your plant may struggle to thrive. Often, you’ll find a big ring of flowers with a dead patch in the centre—that’s a sure sign you need to divide your perennials!

Gently dig up your plants from the garden and carefully split the root ball into two or three sections. Depending on the plant and its root system, you may need a sterilized exact-o knife to help get the chore done. You can replant each of the divided sections—return one piece to the original hole, and plant the others in an empty spot in the garden—or share them with a neighbour!

 

Thorough Landscape and Garden Analysis

Pests, fungi, and weeds are all kinds of potential threats our gardens may encounter, but if you catch them early, they’re much easier to treat. Inspect all the plants, grass, and trees in your landscape and garden, looking for suspicious signs like discoloration, dead patches, or chewed-up leaves.

Spreading or Replacing Mulch

Mulch is necessary to regulate soil temperature and moisture and prevent weeds from taking root, but it tends to break down over time. While this breakdown process does feed your garden with healthy bacteria, it can look a bit unsightly after a while. Use a rake to gently move the big chunks of old mulch off the soil surface, then replace it with a new layer of fresh mulch. 

If you discover an issue and you’re unsure of what you’re dealing with, feel free to visit Eising Garden Centre and show us a picture of the problem. We’ll help you find the right product to fix it. For any other tools or supplies needed to tackle your garden chores in Norfolk, you know where to find us!