Mail Order Alert
Beautiful Drought Tolerant Plants
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Summer is coming and with it heat, sun, and dry conditions.
In this instalment of the Mail Order Alert we highlight some waterwise plants that will go easy on irrigation and still add great beauty to your garden.
And for your containers, don't forget about our Succulent Situation with over 200 different succulents.
You'll also find last week's instalment on Hydrangea because we love them so much.
Happy online shopping and gardening!
Cheers, Gary and the Phoenicians
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The Succulent Situation
200+ Amazing Succulents
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We are open February 25th to November 13th, 2022 seven days a week 10am-5pm including all holidays. |
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Now Hiring Summer Students and
Young People Under 30
We've received Canada Summer Jobs funding to support the hiring of four summer employees interested in working from May through to the end of August.
Send us your resume and your cover letter outlining your interest in working with plants.
If you know someone under 30 looking for work, please let them know about our call for applications.
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Upcoming Garden and Botanical Tours
With the end of Covid in sight, we are working on new dates and tours. Here's your up to date information.
Gardens of Ireland
Sold Out! Waiting List Open
Main Tour: June 24th-July 4th, 2022
Optional Northern Ireland Extension: July 4th-7th, 2022
Gardens of the Impressionists and the Loire
Late June/Early July 2023
Tour itinerary is currently being developed. For now, you can email World Wide Quest at travel@worldwidequest.com to get on the list for more information once it is released.
South Africa: The Cape Floristic Province
and the Bulb Capital of the World
New Date! Fall 2024
To receive information on these tours once the itineraries and details are ready, please email Worldwide Quest at travel@worldwidequest.com. Mention the name of the tour and the tour guide, Gary Lewis.
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Pre-Order Your Signed Copy of Gary’s New Encyclopedia
The Complete Book
of Ground Covers
4000 Plants That Reduce Maintenance, Control Erosion, and Beautify the Landscape
In this meticulously researched reference, Phoenix Perennials owner Gary Lewis profiles more than 4000 ground covers for zones 1-8. No matter your conditions —shade, dry soil, heavy clay, excess moisture—there’s a ground cover that will thrive and beautify your garden. Comprehensive, practical, and copiously illustrated, this indispensable volume belongs on the shelf of every designer, landscape architect, and serious gardener.
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Now booking speaking engagements for October onwards
The Complete Talk on Ground Covers
Plants that reduce maintenance, control erosion, improve the environment, and beautify the landscape
Have Gary speak at your garden club meeting or conference in this companion talk to his encyclopedia The Complete Book of Ground Covers to be published by Timber Press in fall 2022. Gary will highlight the functional and aesthetic uses of ground covers in the landscape including tips and tricks for designing with ground covers to take your outdoor space to the next level. He'll also discuss the diverse services ground covers can provide to make gardens more sustainable. His talk will be accompanied by a colourful Power Point presentation filled with images from the book. The talk will be followed by a book signing with an opportunity to buy his book.
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Plants to the People!
Pick-Up, Courier, Freight, and Mail Order Shipping Services
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Workshops 2022 Postponed Until Further Notice |
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Check us out on Social Media! |
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Help Us Spread the Word
Please tell your friends and family about Phoenix Perennials. Share this email with them, tell them about your mail order plants, or bring them with you to visit the nursery.
Thanks so much for your help!
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Update Your E-Newsletter & Alert Subscriptions
You can manage your subscriptions to our E-Newsletter and Alerts at any time by clicking on the "Update Profile" link at the bottom of every E-News or Alert. The E-Newsletter comes out twice a month. The 18 different Alerts come out occasionally only when we have something exciting to tell you. Perhaps you have FOMOOP ("Fear of Missing Out On Plants") and want to get every digital communication. Or perhaps you have a really busy life and your main loves are Edibles and Succulents. No need to totally unsubscribe from everything. In this case, you can just sign up for those two Alerts. Our system is flexible and you can change your preferences any time you want. Here are the different Alerts for you to consider:
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- Bulb Alert
- Christmas Alert
- Clematis and Cool Vines Alert
- Edible Alert
- Fragrance Alert
- Hardy Subtropical Alert
- Hellebore Alert
- Hot Plant Alert
-
NEW! Houseplant Alert
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- Kids Alert
- Made in the Shade Alert
- Mail Order Alert
- Maple and Cool "Woodies" Alert
- Native Plant Alert
- Rare Plant Alert
-
NEW! Rose Alert
- Sales & Special Offers Alert
- Small Space Alert
- Succulent Alert
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In this Issue
- Hydrangea for Canadian Gardens
- The Great Citrus & Rare Fruit Pre-Order
- The Grafted Veggie Pre-Order
- The Succulent Situation
- Main Mail Order Catalogue
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Beautiful Drought Tolerant Plants
Plant a beautiful garden and save water
As our summers get hotter and more unpredictable and as municipal water restrictions become more, well, restrictive, these beautiful waterwise plants can help you create a lovely and intriguing garden, while going easy on the irrigation.
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Hot sunny spots will never be the same with long-blooming Agastache 'Blue Boa'. Butterflies and bees will love you!
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Agastache 'Mango Tango' is a compact, long-blooming hummingbird mint with tubular flowers in shades of dusky rose and peachy orange.
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Agastache 'Morello' is a dramatic hummingbird mint with huge, dense infloresences of deep burgundy rose flowers.
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Agastache 'Tango' is a dwarf cultivar with big flower power in firey orange for containers or the front of the border.
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Allium 'Lavender Bubbles' is an ornamental onion with dark purple, bubble-shaped flowers and blue-green twisty foliage.
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Allium cernuum is a light pink nodding onion native to BC that is extremely hardy, edible, and deer resistant.
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Artemisia abrotanum 'Leprechaun' is a super hardy ancient garden plant with great foliage texture and fragrance like Coca Cola!
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Supports monarch & other butterflies.Western N. American sister species to the eastern common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).
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Buddleia 'Violet Cascade' is a sterile semi-dwarf butterfly bush that blooms from summer to fall with fragrant, purple flowers.
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Callirhoe involucrata is an extremely showy, midwestern US native with luscious, glowing, magenta flowers with white centres.
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Centranthus ruber has long-lasting magenta-pink to reddish pink flowers over bluish foliage.
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Delosperma 'Gold Nugget' is very hardy with shining, yellow flowers in masses in spring.
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Delosperma Ocean Sunset 'Orange Glow' is an ice plant with mats of orange blooms with hot pink tips and bright yellow centres.
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Delosperma 'Granita Raspberry' has stunning mats covered in flowers of raspberry red, magenta-purple, and lavender purple.
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Diascia integerrima 'Coral Canyon' is a twinspur with rose-pink flowers that bloom on terminal racemes all summer long until frost.
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Dicliptera suberecta is commonly known as the firecracker or hummingbird plant with nectar-filled, deep orange flowers.
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Echinacea 'Pretty Parasols' is a delicate and beautiful coneflower with single, reflexed petals of white and pink with rust-coloured cones.
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Echinacea Sombrero 'Tres Amigos' produces incredible tricoloured flowers in peachy-coral, rose, and magenta-burgundy.
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No other coneflower is the colour of ripe cantaloupe! Echinacea 'Supreme Cataloupe' is one unique cultivar!
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Echinacea Sombrero 'Baja Burgundy' produces incredible burgundy-red flowers around burgundy cones.
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Our Drought Tolerant Plants section includes these and many other options. Click the link to explore. |
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Hydrangea
for Canadian Gardens
No garden is complete without these summer-blooming shrubs
Out here on the West Coast, Hydrangea are an integral and beloved part of the summer garden, especially the big leaf Hydrangea macrophylla with its glorious shades of sky blue, royal blue, purple, pink, and near red. These flowers emerge in early summer and provide interest well into fall.
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Hydrangea macrophylla is hardy to about zone 5 or 6 but in these zones a cold winter can cause stem dieback along with a considerable reduction to even a complete absence of flowers. This is because, up until recently, all bigleaf hydrangea cultivars only bloomed on old wood. The loss of the previous season’s wood meant no flowers for the current season and a sad situation for an avid gardener dreaming of the glorious summer blooms.
But fear not, zone 5 gardeners! New breeding work has lead to cultivars that bloom on both old and new wood guaranteeing that, even if a hard winter knocks back your stems (or an overexcited husband gets too ambitious with the pruning shears), you’ll still get flowers.
These cultivars are described as “blooming on both old and new wood” or as “reblooming hydrangea”. That’s because a cultivar that is not knocked back to the ground in the winter will at first produce blooms on the old wood at the start of the summer and then, as the season progresses, produce subsequent flushes of flowers on the new wood. When the old wood is lost in the winter, flowering will be delayed a bit further into summer until the new wood can be produced and come into bloom. But you’ll still get flowers.
This momentous advance has been accompanied by other great improvements to flower forms and colours including double flowers and bicolours, foliage colour including rich burgundy leaves, and dwarf forms great for small spaces or containers that only grow to about 3-4 feet tall and wide.
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Even hardier are the smooth hydrangea, H. arborescens, and the panicle hydrangea, H. paniculata, both of which can withstand a zone 3 winter. These species bloom on new wood. H. arborescens is famous for its cultivar ‘Annabelle’ and the improved form, Incrediball, with huge white mopheads.
The panicle hydrangea has conical flower heads that emerge first in creamy white and age to pink and near red. New breeding work now offers us cultivars that change to glorious, deep, rich tones of pink as the flowers age.
Both of these super hardy species also have new dwarf forms perfect for small spaces and containers.
Two other interesting species are the oakleaf hydrangea, H. quercifolia, and the mountain hydrangea, H. serrata, both of which are hardy to zone 5. The oakleaf also has creamy, conical-shaped flower heads and lovely, textured foliage that turns magnificent shades of red, orange, yellow and purple over a long period in the fall. The mountain hydrangea resembles the bigleaf hydrangea but is often a bit daintier usually with lacecap flower heads. It is also said that the mountain hydrangea is a bit tougher in colder climates like zone 5.
As part of our mail order main catalogue this year we have a bang up selection of 31 different hydrangea cultivars for you to choose from all in great cost effective starter sizes that are easy to ship. Or you can choose to pick-up. Hydrangea grow at a good pace so they’ll soon be putting on their amazing summer show in your garden. Have fun exploring all the possibilities!
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The Great Citrus & Rare Fruit Pre-Order
57 Different Citrus | 36 Other Rare Fruit including 7 Avocados
ORDERING CLOSED
Orders will ship out over the next three weeks.
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The Grafted Veggie Pre-Order
Choose from 33 different veggies including Mighty Matos, Mighty Melons, Mighty Veggies and Ketchup 'n Fries!
Ordering is closed. Extras are available now in the nursery. Pre-order pickups and shipping will begin this week. Watch for an email from us.
Welcome to our Grafted Veggie Pre-Order offering hand-grafted edible plants that will produce at least 2-3 times more fruit and offer more disease resistance and cold tolerance than own-root veggies.
These grafted veggies will be arriving at the nursery in a few short weeks. If you want to grow some, now is the time to book your favourites. Many sell out in advance.
We'd like to draw your attention to two new grafted melons we were supposed to have last year that did not materialize. We are pleased to be able to offer them this year. Not only do they offer unique and interesting flavours, but they also have unique and interesting stories and histories. Read on to learn about these cool melons.
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The Succulent Situation
200+ Amazing Succulents
At Phoenix Perennials we are proud to offer one of the largest and most diverse selections of succulents in Canada. In 2022 we bring you more than 200 different rare, unusual, and intriguing succulents including 38 new succulents we've never offered before! Our succulents are available for advance ordering by both our local and mail order customers for pick-up or shipping once the succulents are ready in May and June. They will also be available in the nursery, again once they are ready, which will be some time in May. They are not available now for in-person shopping as most are still growing. We recommend ordering in advance since many succulents will sell out during the pre-ordering period.
All of our Tender Succulents are provided as potted plants so you will not need to pot them up and root them. Though we sometimes call The Succulent Situation a pre-order, since the plants come ready at the same time as our Main Catalogue items, you can mix succulents with any other plants in the Main Catalogue.
Tender succulents are usually hardy in zones 8 or 9 through 11. Some could be hardy in coastal BC if protected from rain but most require indoor winter protection and temperatures above about 5 degrees Celsius. In winter, keep your succulents cool, dry and in bright light. In summer, give them full to part sun and lots of heat. Also, don't be afraid to give them a good amount of water and some fertilizer at this time. Just let them dry out between waterings and apply fertilizer at half strength.
If you're looking for hardy cacti, we hope to launch our selection in about a week's time. Stay tuned!
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Main Mail Order Catalogue
864 Amazing Garden Plants for the Upcoming Season including 300 New Plants!
We are so excited to launch our Main Mail Order Catalogue for the new season. We have so many amazing plants to share with you this year including more than 300 plants that are new to horticulture or new to our mail order catalogue.
IMPORTANT: This year our Pre-Orders have been migrated into our mail order system to make ordering easier. Please DO NOT mix plants from our Main Catalogue with our Pre-Orders and please don't mix Pre-Orders with each other. Orders must be placed separately for our Main Catalogue and for each Pre-Order. These various groups must ship at different times. If you do place mixed orders, we'll need to charge $5 for each separate invoice that ships to you to cover our extra admin time. Thanks for your help and understanding.
We welcome orders for both shipping and pick-up. If you're a pick-up customer, please follow this link to our Plants to the People page and read the "What type of customer are you?" section to understand how your order will be handled and for advice on how to best use the services connected with our mail order site.
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We are truly crazy for plants at Phoenix Perennials so we love anything new and exciting. That's why we've added 300 new plants to our mail order offerings this year!
Most of these are new to horticulture like Delphinium 'Red Lark' pictured here. A few have been available before this year but are making their debut in our mail order catalogue for the first time. We don't know how you will decide which ones to get. We can't decide, so we just grow them all!
Check out our New Plants section to discover all the new possibilities.
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