Photo illustration: Baltimore Sun/John Makely

Garden Design magazine's Lindsey Taylor performs a gardening public service by testing some new -- and not-so-new -- mail order outlets for a plant material.

She rightly notes that Dave's Garden records consumer comments on over 7,000 gardening websites, so if you have questions about a catalog or website that has caught your eye, you should certainly check there.

But she checked seven outlets and found them to be solid performers.

Among them, Moss Acres, which provides mosses for gardens and terrariums; Tiny Treasures for dwarf conifers and other plants for rock gardens and dish gardens; Annie's Annuals and Perennials for California wildflowers and heirlooms; J&L Orchids for fragrant and miniature orchids; Rare Find Nursery for unusual shrubs and trees, and an old favorite, Plant Delights for hostas, succulents and "utterly new" plants for the garden.

Me? I am bookmarking Simply Succulents, which Lindsey checked out.

Succulents are my new favorite container garden plants. They are exotic looking with fascinating blooms, and they can withstand late summer in our Mid-Atlantic heat without batting an eye.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: From the catalogs
        

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun

2011 is not yet here, yet the starter gun has been fired for the new gardening season.

The catalogs are arriving.

First in my mail box this week - in a tie - were Seeds of Change, a certified organic seed catalog, and that old stand-by, Burpee, with a luscious "Kings of Color" tomato collection on the cover.

Close behind were Gardener's Supply, with advice on starting a family vegetable garden this year, and Jackson and Perkins, featuring its 2011 Rose of the Year, "Always and Forever" red.

I also received Gardening How-To this week, a gardening magazine which includes a list of the best new plants for 2011 and a list of the biggest gardening mistakes. (No. 1 is, no surprise, overwatering or underwatering plants.)

Keep reading (what else can you do in winter), because I'll have more on all these topics in the days ahead.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: From the catalogs
        

Williams-Sonoma is known for its fine cookware and kitchen accessories, but around this time of year the catalog also offers lots of Christmas greens for sale, including Christmas trees.

This year, the company is offering a different kind of Christmas tree: seedlings of Japanese black pine, Southern magnolia and Colorado blue spruce.

These young, farm-grown seedlings sell for $49.95 each, plus shipping, and are between a foot and two feet tall.

The catalog says the baby trees can be treated like houseplants this winter and transplanted outdoors in the spring.

The trees come in a jute bag with a red ribbon.

An earth-friendly Christmas present if ever there was one.

Photo courtesy of Williams-Sonoma

Posted by Susan Reimer at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: From the catalogs
        

Tony Avent, proprietor of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, N.C., has just issued the latest in his politically incorrect plant catalogs.

The theme this time, for the renegade plant collector, is a Gardener's Tea Party.

I can spot Nancy Pelosi as the Red Queen, Sarah Palin as the Cheshire Cat and Michelle Obama as Alice, plus Massachusett's new senator, Scott Brown, in Playboy bunny ears.

Can you figure out the rest of the characters?

The cover was again drawn by commercial cartoonist Jack Pittman.

 Some of his previous covers are available, for $20, on a T-shirt. 

Avent's politics can obscure the fact that he is an extraordinary plant collector and offers a tremendous variety of plants.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: From the catalogs
        

We've been talking about planting vegetable gardens in raised beds here on Garden Variety and I guess I thought you would build them of wood.

Maybe not.

Gardener's Supply catalog has, new this year, raised beds made from strips of galvanized sheet metal.

Since farmers use the material for watering troughs and outbuildings, it makes sense to use it to form the sides of raised beds.

Photo courtesy of Gardener's Supply

Continue reading "Raised beds of steel? Call Superman" »

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Categories: From the catalogs
        

In my garden column in The Baltimore Sun, I am helping rookies jump on the vegetable gardening bandwagon in 2010.

Last week, I talked about siting your vegetable garden for maximum sun, access to water and some protection from wind. And I concluded that a raised bed might be the best idea: it limits the size of your garden, so you don't bite off more than you can mulch; and because you will fill it will bagged compost, you don't have to worry about the quality of your soil.

In today's column, I talk about what you might like to plant in the garden. Not the whole produce aisle -- just what you are likely to eat and cook with, including your favorite herbs. And I talk about some of the sources for vegetable seeds.

To make it easy for you, I am including here the links to some of my favorite seed catalogs. Just click and order.

But control yourself. Nobody needs that many tomato plants.

(Note to the vegetable gardeners out there: What are your go-to catalogs for vegetable seeds?)

Continue reading "Seed sources" »

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Categories: From the catalogs
        

Continue reading "Politics and plants: the Plant Delights Nursery catalog" »

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Categories: From the catalogs
        

A collection of heirloom seeds used by African-Americans and brought to this country from Africa and the Carribean is featured in the D. Landreth Seed Company's stunning 2010 catalog.

The collection is the result of food research by culinary historian Michael Twitty, who did much of his work on Maryland's Eastern shore.

It includes brown crowder, a cow pea from West Africa, Louisiana eggplant, grown in the gardens of slaves, peanuts, okra, hot peppers, and lots of greens and squashes.

These vegetables and herbs were culinary staples in the African-American family, but no doubt made it into the meals they prepared for their owners, and later, their employers.

Barbara Melera chose this painting to illustrate the collection in her lustrous catalog. It is from an oil painting commissioned by the seed company in 1909, and it has its own interesting history.

(The catalog is the subject of my garden column in The Baltimore Sun.)

Continue reading "African-American seed collection" »

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Categories: From the catalogs
        

Gardeners love their catalogs.

The splash of color in the mailbox is always an invitation to daydream. And a reminder to place your order.

However, Randy Schultz, a spokesman for the Mailorder Gardening Association, says most of us don't place our order through the catalog's 800 number. And we certainly don't mail them in.

We go to the company's Web site instead.

A survey by the group in 2006 showed that consumers who buy plants, seeds, bulbs, tools and other gardening products from mailorder catalogs were increasingly going on line for information AND to place their orders.

At that time, about 34 percent of customers placed their order by phone, 33 percent by mail or fax. In 2006, 14 percent were "pure" web shoppers and 18 percent looked at a catalog and then placed their orders on line. That was a total of 32 percent of orders placed on line.

"To give you an idea of how fast things are changing," said Shultz. "I did a straw poll of MGA members last spring and found out that 2008 was the first year that a majority of orders (over 50 percent) placed with member companies came in via the Web sites."

Even so, printed catalogs are not going away, Shultz said. "They are still what drives most on line buyers to the Web sites where they place their orders."

The catalogs are just a reminder to do so.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: From the catalogs
        

The garden is no escape from the bad economic news, and everyone in the industry is worried that the first place homeowners will cut back is on plant material and supplies.

My friends at Old House Gardens, a Michigan mail-order company which specializes in heirloom flower bulbs, have found a clever way to address this. Their spring marketing campaign went like this:

"This isn't the first DEPRESSION our bulbs have faced," the ad says, referring to the age of some of their antique flowers.

"They'll make your yard so beautiful you'll say, 'Staying HOME is the most fun of all!'"

I hate to ask the question, because this could be a downer of a conversation, but are you cutting back in the garden this year? How?

Posted by Susan Reimer at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: From the catalogs
        

You can grow ‘em. Or you can get Brent and Becky to do it for you.

Brent and Becky of bulb fame also produce bouquets.

From March 15 to Oct. 15, you can order fresh, farm-raised (sounds like beef) mixed bouquets. (I am guessing that this is Becky with the bouquet. And I am also guessing you don't get that many flowers.)

You never know what will be in bloom when your order, but let them know whether you like pastels, hot colors or patriotic colors. “If there is a color you just can’t abide, we’d like to know that, too,” says the catalog.

These aren’t greenhouse flowers and that means the weather can be a problem, but either Brent or Becky will call you.

In any case, the flowers are shipped overnight, so give an address where someone will be available to bring them inside.

You can order the flowers witha vase or without for $60 and $75, respectively. Check out their Web site and go to item numbers 103-01 and 103-02.

Photo credit: Brent and Becky's Bulbs.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: From the catalogs