Southern Gardening

It’s my pleasure to announce the Mississippi Medallion winners for 2015. The three winners are Delta Jazz crape myrtle, Suburban Nancy Gayle daylily and Top Pot scaevola. Delta Jazz crape myrtle was developed by personnel at Mississippi State University. The foliage emerges rich raspberry maroon and matures to a dark chocolaty burgundy making a good background for the clusters of crinkly edged medium pink flowers blooming in mid to late summer. The unique foliage color makes Delta Jazz a good specimen plant. Massing several plants together would be a way to showcase the pink flowers.

As a plant scientist, some may say even a mad plant scientist, I’m interested in sharing how plants work with home gardeners. Do you know how the water gets from the roots to the top of the plant? Let’s take a look. We all know that watering is important for good plant growth. As a gardener waters plants in the garden and landscape, the movement of water from the roots through the stem occurs via a process called transpiration, where water evaporates to the atmosphere from small openings called stomata on the back of the leaves.

Valentine's Day.......the season of LOVE. Don't limit your affections for that special someone to just a single day. As a gardener, your love can bloom all year long. Planting gomphrena in the landscape symbolizes an unfading love. If you want to set off fireworks of love in your garden, then try Fireworks gomphrena, a 2010 Mississippi Medallion winner. The flowers are produced in prodigious numbers and are a long lasting hot iridescent pink that are sure to create colorful explosions all season long. A perfect love can seem like paradise.

It’s hard to come up with color in the dead of winter, and that is when we come to appreciate berry season in Mississippi. Many trees and shrubs produce loads of bright red berries, and one of my favorites is yaupon holly. Yaupon holly has very distinctive berries. Sure they’re red and I mean bright candy apple red, but they also have a translucent quality that imparts a gem-like appearance. So in other words yaupon hollies are actually garden jewels that will sparkle in your landscape. The bark is a bright gray and accentuates the berry color.

During the cold nights of February I like to look through catalogs featuring the latest and greatest plants for the garden. This nighttime reading often inspires sweet dreams of summer. Wow….will you look at that! Wow….gorgeous geraniums. Luscious loropetalum!Tropical plants are certainly dream-worthy. The versatile canna offers a range of tall and dwarf plants, and green to burgundy foliage. But the vibrant colors are the stars, as they pop out in shades of rose, red, and yellow. Another great tropical plant for all of Mississippi is the hardy hibiscus.

Camellia sasanqua is one of the most popular species of camellia in Mississippi. You’ve really missed a chance for some landscape WOW if you haven’t planted one in your yard. Camellia sasanqua is a member of the tea family and are considered a jewel of the southern garden. They provide nice flower color from fall into winter. Later in the season the fallen petals resemble a colorful mulch. Camellia sasanqua will produce a dazzling flowering show, primarily in shades of pinks to white.

A garden challenge is maintaining a variety of color in the cool season landscape. Dianthus will keep your garden interesting and is an easy choice for that extra splash of color. Dianthus are some of my favorite flowering annuals with their variety of pinks, whites, and purples. For the very best flowering, dianthus should be planted at the same time as you would pansies. The small round flower can be single or arranged in loose clusters. I really enjoy taking a really close look at these flowers.

Have you been bored, restless, or even irritable because you can’t get into the garden this winter? Well my friend you have cabin fever. Cabin fever is also called seasonal affective disorder because of the short and cloudy days of winter, and can impact many gardeners during the winter months. And for the active gardener it only gets worse when all those catalogs start arriving. But there is a simple cure until spring arrives. You need to grow an indoor microgreens garden. Microgreens are colorful, nutritious, and a delicious way to brighten any winter mood.

Many gardeners think that pruning is some kind of dark magic that only the experts can practice successfully. Today I want to share some advice to help take the mystery out of pruning. I receive a lot of calls this time of year with questions about pruning trees and shrubs. It comes down to technique and tools: bypass pruners, loppers and even a pruning saw are essential. Deciduous shrubs like these lantana will tolerate hard pruning, which is also called renewal pruning.

Being a horticulturist means I really enjoy plants. Let's take a close look at the marvelous flowers found in our landscape and garden. In an earlier Southern Gardening segment we enjoyed the delicate blue flowers of the aptly named blue butterfly plant. In this segment, I would like to share some other interesting flowers. One of the most unique flowers I know belongs to the Mississippi Medallion winner yellow shrimp plant and the related red shrimp plant. The plant begins blooming by sending up colorful four to five inch spikes, which are very long lasting.