Earthy Autumn Tones and Textures
By Ava Green
Taking our cues from Mother Nature, this season's fall clothing leans into all the colours and textures we love to celebrate each autumn.
Brown Is Back!
Dare we say that brown is the new black?! Take a look at our newest shades, including gorgeous maroon undertones. Rich, deep and bold, brown is a colour that feels as cozy as the season itself.
If you’ve already built a capsule wardrobe, brown is one of the easiest colours to fold in for an instant, seasonally chic refresh.
The Autumn Palette
Our staff favourites this season are tops in a full palette of autumn shades. They’re the kind of pieces that make mixing and matching with what’s already in your closet effortless.
Sweater Weather
One of the best things about fall? Wearing a nice cozy sweater. As temperatures drop, a chunky knit wraps you up and keeps you warm, while looking fabulous, of course!
Fall Wardrobe Styling Tip
Do you love autumn shades but aren’t sure they suit your complexion? Wear them on the bottom instead of the top. You’ll still get the payoff of autumn colours while complementing your skin tone.
Not sure how to bring fall colours to your wardrobe? Come on in! Sassyfras is just inside the Eising Garden Centre entrance, on your right, and we’re always happy to help you find pieces that flatter and bring you joy.
Planting, Pruning, Pairing
By Ava Green
From its graceful, arching branches to the fragrant, lilac-shaped flower clusters that draw in a kaleidoscope of butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii), also known as Summer Lilac, is a shrub worth including in your garden.
Landscape Value
Butterfly bushes bloom throughout the summer, with some varieties flowering into the fall, and offer a wide range of colours and intensities.
They look best planted en masse or as part of a tiered garden, paired with smaller perennials or shrubs in front of them. Evergreens make a great backdrop for perennials, and this is a plant that would be perfect punctuation in front of a cedar or yew. Since butterfly bushes are slow to get going in spring, tucking shorter, early-blooming plants in front of them helps hide that lag while everything else fills in.
As a bonus, Buddleia are deer and rabbit-resistant, making them a solid choice if critters are an ongoing issue in your garden.
Caring for Your Butterfly Bushes
Plant your Buddleia in full sun and well-drained soil. These shrubs want 8 hours of sun a day and don’t tolerate “wet feet”.
Here in Southern Ontario (hardiness Zone 6), the butterfly bush is a deciduous shrub that’s best treated like an herbaceous perennial: cut it back each spring, never in the fall, to keep it happy and blooming well.
Be patient in the spring, and wait for buds to start forming before you prune, then cut each stem back just above a big, healthy leaf bud. Since butterfly bushes flower on new growth, this yearly cutback is what drives a full season of blooms. In fall, deadhead spent blooms to remove seed heads (on varieties that produce them) and help keep the plant from spreading.
Plant in the spring or summer rather than fall, so your butterfly bush has as much time as possible to get established before cold weather arrives.
Great Variety!
Butterfly Bushes come in a range of heights and colours, so there’s likely a fit for almost any spot in your garden. A few examples:
Dwarf: "Pugster" Series
A shorter, stalkier variety that still produces full-sized flowers in rich, saturated tones on new wood. Long-blooming plants; summer into fall.
Best for: Grouping behind spring-blooming ground covers and shorter perennials | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 24 in. tall × 24 in. wide
Medium Height: “Miss” Series
The “Miss” series offers medium-height varieties with a graceful habit and intensely coloured, fragrant, heat-tolerant blooms on new wood.
Best for: The middle of beds and borders, planted in groupings | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 48-60 in. tall × 48-60 in. wide
Tall Varieties
Vase-shaped and vigorous, with large, fragrant blooms, taller varieties of Buddleja davidii, such as ‘Black Knight’ or ‘Grand Cascade’, are absolute showstoppers in any garden.
Best for: Foundation plantings or the back of borders and beds | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 6- 8 ft. tall × 4-8 ft. wide, depending on the variety
Hosts With The Most
Butterfly bushes will draw in bees, butterflies and hummingbirds; but every pollinator ultimately needs more than nectar. They also need places to lay eggs and support their young.
That's where host plants come in. Pairing your butterfly bush with plants like cherries, spicebush, Coneflower, Joe Pye Weed, Black-Eyed Susan, and New Jersey Tea provides pollinators with nectar diversity and places to reproduce. Some butterflies and moths will lay their eggs on a wide range of plants while others are far more particular. The Monarch butterfly is the best example: milkweed is the only plant that supports a Monarch caterpillar’s life cycle, so planting milkweed near your butterfly bush is essential if you want to support Monarchs specifically.
Figuring out which host plants suit which butterflies and moths takes a bit of research, but as with most things in the garden, diversity wins.
Come on in to Eising Garden Centre and look at the butterfly bushes in person; we’re here to help you find the right ones for your garden!
Other resources:
How to Keep Your Butterfly Bush Blooming: https://eising.ca/how-to-keep-your-butterfly-bush-blooming
5 Ontario native host plants for butterflies and moths:
Plants that support a butterfly lifecycle:
Host plants for butterflies:
Looking for something that blooms in the garden when everything else is fading? Bluebeard (aka Caryopteris or Blue Mist) blooms from late summer until frost sets in!
This shrub-like perennial thrives in full sun and sandy soil with good drainage. In exchange for these conditions, it provides an abundance of blooms in vivid, genuine blue (a colour that’s very difficult to find in the garden) or it can have pink or blueish-purple flowers depending on the hybrid variety. Foliage can range from soft grey to golden yellow to dark and glossy green, depending on the variety. Intrigued?
Bluebeard is a great perennial shrub for almost any size of garden and does well here in Norfolk County. Plants grow in a range from two to four feet in height and width and in a well-behaved, compact mound.
Beautiful Blooms
Such a unique flower! Bluebeards form fluffy clusters of flowers, like clouds or mist and can bloom from July until there’s a frost. Like most flowering plants, deadheading spent flowers will promote continued blooming.
Bluebeard flowers have a mildly sweet scent and are full of nectar for pollinator friends like bees, hummingbirds and butterflies. The features don’t stop there! Birds love the seeds that form in the Fall too.
Planting & Care
Find a nice, sunny spot with ample space for the plant to grow. Bluebeard aren’t heavy feeders and don’t need fertilizer. Some compost in the planting hole is all that’s needed. After that, top dress with some compost each Spring.
Water in new plants thoroughly after planting them. Once established, they don’t need watering unless it’s an extremely dry season.
Crown rot from consistently over-watering, or from being planted in wet, heavy soil is the only disease to be concerned about. Branches will begin to die, one by one, if this plant has crown rot.
While Bluebeard will tolerate drought and shade, the amount of flowers will be greatly reduced.
Pruning
Bluebeard’s foliage and flowers form on new branches or new growth. So, early each Spring, cut the stems down by at least half. Cutting them down to 12-18” does not harm the plant. It will send up new shoots, and it’s those new shoots that produce leaves and blooms!
You may find that established plants have some dead wood in the centre. If this happens, prune out any dead wood, and that will ensure that your shrub stays looking full and happy.
Sunshine Blue Bluebeard
Grows 2-3’ tall.
An extremely hardy variety with gold foliage and blue blooms.
One final note. Sometimes Bluebeard is called “blue mist spirea”. However, Bluebeard or Caryopteris is not related to spirea.
Tropical Hibiscus evokes all of the best descriptions imaginable when you see one. Showy, stunning, exotic, vibrant, impressive, large, lush, colourful and flamboyant flowers grace branches of dark, glossy, green leaves. It just seems unreal! This plant conjures up images of the tropics, but it will grow in a pot on your sunny patio or inside your home!
Tropical Paradise
If you’re looking to create your own tropical paradise, this surprisingly low-maintenance plant is a great addition. Its showy trumpet-shaped blooms make it a great focal plant and the wide variety of shapes and colours available is astounding!
Tropical Hibiscus flowers are rich in nectar, attracting hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and other beneficial pollinators to your garden.
Planting tropical Hibiscus in a pot makes it easier to move the plant to a sunny, warm location, which provides the conditions for it to thrive. Be sure to ease your plant outside by hardening it off though. If it’s been indoors or in a greenhouse, give it time to acclimate, or it will become scorched or worse, die. Hardening off is a simple process of slowly easing your plants into life outdoors.
Blooming Good
Tropical Hibiscus will bloom all summer long here in southern Ontario when provided with sun, warmth, ample water and nutrients. During the growing season, water the soil regularly to keep it evenly moist. While it loves full sun, the sun’s rays can be dehydrating. Hibiscus is a thirsty plant when it’s in bloom so don’t let the soil completely dry out. Of course, there’s a limit to how much water you use. Too much water will cause the roots to rot. The key word is “moist” - not monsoon wet! Using mulch will help to retain moisture in the pot.
To provide your plant with proper nutrition, use a time-release fertilizer in May or a balanced, diluted water-soluble fertilizer like fish emulsion about once a week over the summer months.
Each blossom lasts one day. They are short-lived, but don’t worry - Tropical Hibiscus will produce a succession of flowers during the growing season with ample light, water, and fertilizer. Once a faded bloom wilts, remove it from the plant to make way for the next one.
Looking Ahead
If you’re planning to keep your Hibiscus over the winter, here are a few tips to help.
Before the first frost, inspect the plant thoroughly for any bug hitchhikers or pests like aphids or spider mites. Give the entire plant a thorough shower and then bring it indoors. If you’ve found that your plant needs constant watering and has outgrown its pot, this is a great time for repotting before it comes indoors. Find a pot that is only 1-2” bigger than the pot it’s currently in and transplant it with some fresh, tropical potting mix.
This is another big transition for your plant, and you may find it loses some leaves unless you slowly migrate it from outdoor to indoor conditions. Place your Tropical Hibiscus in a warm, sunny window. Don’t move it to a cold basement right away, even if that will ultimately be its winter home. Just as you hardened it off in the Spring, slowly move it to a cooler location for winter storage if you don’t have a sunny, warm location. Be sure though that it ends up in an area where it’s getting at least 3 hours of direct sun each day.
At this point, stop fertilizing your tropical Hibiscus and reduce the amount of water used. Allowing the soil to dry out between waterings while the plant is dormant and not blooming is okay.
Enough talk of winter! While the weather is warm, pop an umbrella into a fruity summer drink and enjoy your beautiful tropical Hibiscus oasis!
Whether you’re just starting to explore the world of unusual plants, or you’re already an avid collector, there are a wide array of weird and wonderful houseplants to satisfy your quest for something a little different.
Tropical plants and houseplants come in every shape, size, texture, and colour imaginable, plus some you would never have imagined!
Exotic houseplants often have striking appearances which make them valuable as eye-catching focal points in your decor. The range of distinctive features can also make them a natural choice to express your personality and style.
Like your more common houseplants, unusual varieties can also contribute to indoor air quality, as well as the overall benefits to your well-being that come with having living plants in the home.
The unique characteristics of rare or unusual houseplants often have interesting backgrounds. Learning about their natural habitats and origins only makes them more intriguing!
Here are some wild and wonderful houseplants that will add interesting foliage, blooms, or both to your home right now!
Pitcher Plant
A rare and exotic group of tropical plants with pitcher-shaped leaves that are carnivorous. That’s right, they eat insects to obtain the nutrients they need! This means that with most varieties you do not have to fertilize them. Most are happy catching a bug or two for food.
Keep this plant from drying out completely between waterings by temporarily placing it in a water-filled tray to absorb moisture through the roots. Remove the pot from the tray once it’s saturated, and allow the excess water to drain away. Pitcher plants prefer pure, mineral-free water like rainwater. No tap water for these precious prima donnas!
One Pitcher Plant variety that we love is Miranda (aka Nepenthes x Miranda). From tropical Malaysia, it is a very large pitcher plant with attractive spotted pitchers that can be over 18” wide when fully mature. Because of its size, it is quite effective at catching larger insects like wasps. It’s easy to grow, either in a sunny window or outdoors (only in the summer) and is heat tolerant but not drought tolerant.
ZZ Plants
Native to East Africa, Zamioculcas zamiifolia is also known as the houseplant ZZ, or Zanzibar Gem. While the name is complicated, this plant is not fussy at all, making it great for beginners! ZZ will thrive in almost any lighting conditions except direct sunlight, plus it is drought tolerant so you can allow it to dry out between waterings.
The biggest attraction to the Zanzibar Gem though is its thick, dark green and glossy leaves that almost look fake! If that sounds intriguing, hang on. There’s more!
Black Raven ZZ is a new variation with stunningly dramatic black-toned leaves. Unique to be sure, but luckily with the same low care requirements!
Cactus
There are so many weird and wonderful varieties of cacti that come in all shapes and sizes! These sun-loving plants require little care, but here are a couple of tips that will keep them looking sharp. (Ouch!).
- Give their pot a little turn each day so that your plant is eventually exposed to light on all sides. This saves you from having a lopsided cactus.
- Water is essential but monitor how often your cacti need it. In the winter, when they’re dormant, they will need less water. Let the soil dry out completely between waterings. Using room-temperature rainwater is ideal. Tap water contains minerals which can disrupt the flow of nutrients to the cactus. Water it well, then allow the excess moisture to drain away rather than pool under the plant. Cacti don’t necessarily need fertilizer, but they do welcome a feeding during their summer growing season. We can help you choose a fertilizer that’s been specially formulated for cactus to ensure the proper nutrient ratio.
A few varieties of cacti that we love are:
- Monkey Tail (Hildewintera colademonosis)
- Boobie (Myrtillocactus Geometrizans Fukurokuryuzinboku)
- Spiral (Cereus forbesii Spiralis)
With their evocative names and exotic shapes, cacti are so much fun to grow! And don’t be surprised if the kids want to have a few to call their own.
Stop by Eising Greenhouses and see what we have in store. While you’re here, say hello to Courtney who is always happy to talk about unusual houseplants!