Gardens to Love will be showing our work and products at the Inspiration House Showhouse on the campus of St. Phillip Cathedral where we are renovating the front gardens to update the foundation plantings and entrance terrace for a fresh approach.  It is just the kind of thing we do all the time for our clients—update, redesign, and refresh.  This time of year we all feel the need for it!  Come see us at the showhouse or drop us a note any time; our very own design mavens will be happy to bring something new and refreshing to your gardens and terraces

After a long searing and stressful summer we’re looking for something fresh, flowering, and affordable.  In my opinion, nothing offers more value than pansies.  Planted October thru November they are in flower from the day they are planted until the heat of May closes them down.

If you are overwhelmed with the color choices and face patterns or stuck at trying to decide whether to add violas, poppies, snapdragons, kales, euphorbias, and the like to the pansy beds and pots send us an email or give us a call.  Hugh Brownlee, our lead horticulturist has been making these choices for clients for almost 20 years.  Sarah Price, our associate landscape designer, is also a painter and looks forward to deciding the color and texture options for clients’ winter color borders planted with pansies and more.

Although I have been planting pansies professionally for over 35 years I still get excited when I see and smell thousands of flats in bloom in growers’ greenhouses.  Yes, thousands of flats!  Everyone loves a pocketful of pansies.

Marcia Weber

An evolving and maturing landscape with trees that offer more shade or newly planted shrubbery and flower beds can impact irrigation systems.  Some situations call for moving heads completely to avoid sprays being blocked by new plantings.  Or areas may no longer need irrigation at all because the plants have rooted in deeply and are now well established in place.  Low volume drip lines may be best for the new shrubbery bed.  These changes in your irrigation system save not only water but also money.  The new technology in efficient and water saving irrigation parts and systems is exciting to me and I am happy to talk about it with you.  Creating a healthy beautiful garden, while conserving water, is the right thing to do.

This pruning is done to remove excessive spring growth, that’s the floppy stuff that gets in the way of other less aggressive plants.  It is done to give the right amount of separation among plant groups.  And structural pruning reveals good plant form.  All of this work should be done with a well trained hand and an eye that sees three dimensionally.  Not everyone has these abilities; our team of professional pruners here at Marcia Weber Gardens to Love was born with them.

It is time for a June Prune and Kevin and Alex are ready to come to your garden, pruners in hand.

Atlanta gardens seem to be busting out into every square inch with flowering trees, azaleas, more azaleas, and early summer annuals.  Atlanta and it’s gardens are in full bower as I write this note.

The first flush of roses has begun also, and if you don’t have at least one rose you need to get one.  Here at the office garden, Hugh Brownlee, our resident rosarian has tucked in a Climbing Don Juan that somewhat camouflages the chain link fence but certainly fills the front office with vases of heavily scented flowers. The flowers and the plant are tough as the chain link fence they are planted upon.  At the HVAC unit he stuck in a rootless twig of the old tea rose, Maman Cochet.  A year later we have a large yet very dainty bush covered with elegant sweet flowers in a beautiful salmon color.  This plant is growing in a difficult spot with plenty of shade yet it is thriving.  Belinda’s Dream and Escapade have begun to bloom in the planter outside my office window.  I will have the joy of looking at the unending parade of clear pink double and single blossom roses from now until hard frost on both of those plants. Belinda’s Dream makes great cut flowers for our desks.  Hugh seldom has time to do more than smell the scent and admire the form of these roses yet they grow, bloom, and offer delight for months and months.

If you have room for one more plant, let us know.  Hugh will pick the right rose for the right spot and he will work with it to produce the romance of a rose.

Marcia Weber

We’re pleased to announce that we are featured in the April issue of Southern Living. Southern Living is my favorite magazine to flip through by the pool, read snuggled up on the sofa, and pull out recipes to try. It is such an honor to have an article in this month’s edition. The article is attached below and it demonstrates the advantages of a well designed retaining wall and added backyard space. We are very excited about this issue of Southern Living—more so than usual! Make sure you pick up a copy today!

It is really never to late too early or too late to start planting vegetables.  It all depends on the kind and variety.  Just bend at the waist and put the seeds in the ground.  You can’t have vegetables until you do that.

Marcia Weber