As gardeners we tend to plan our landscapes for the spring and summer disregarding the fall season.  Still, a good design incorporates all seasons of the year.  This can be accomplished by choosing plants that have multi-seasonal interest, for example, Oakleaf Hydrangea, Hydrangea quercifolia.  The white flower blossoms of this deciduous shrub show in early summer then fade gracefully to mauve.  The large leaves and coarse appearance of the foliage add textural interest to any landscape during the mid-late summer months.

In this September episode of Virginia Home Grown, we go to Charlottesville to learn about some of the pests that may be a danger to trees in your landscape. Then we learn about the proper ways to apply mulch around your garden.

Daylilies are not your grandmother’s yellow and orange summer flowers growing out by the mailbox anymore. The genus Hemerocallis, “beauty for a day” (Daylilies), has gone through tremendous hybridization in the past ten years. Many of the daylily species produced for today’s gardeners have been manipulated to produce a full array of colors, larger bloom size and a more vigorous plant. Most of these new hybrids are also repeat bloomers or re-bloomers – meaning they will continually shoot up scapes (flower stalks) with multiple buds over several months during the summer.

Amy talks with Dr. Jim McGlone of the Virginia Department of Forestry about the importance and function of a rain garden. A rain garden is a man-made depression in the ground that is used as a landscape tool to improve water quality. The rain garden forms a “bioretention area” by collecting water runoff and storing it, permitting it be filtered and slowly absorbed by the soil.