It’s raining - no better time to plant! Return of the Native opens today

The Return of the Native plant nursery opens today (10 am to 7 pm) and tomorrow (10 am to 5 pm). Same hours next week, Friday May 20 and Saturday May 21. Then, for the rest of the summer until August, I’ll be open every Friday, from 10 am to 7 pm, and you can come by any other time, just phone ahead to be sure I’m there, I usually am.

Recently, a customer wrote to me about a plant I’d sold her, I’m thinking, in 2008. It’s a nice reminder that some things are worth waiting for!

“Years ago you sold me a tiny Ironwood seedling. I have meant to tell you how it has done. It is now about 12 or 14 feet high and the bark is maturing and this spring it is covered in bloom!

“I'm so grateful to you because the nurseries all had only European Hornbeam, very expensive and much too huge to transplant well. Evidently that had suddenly come into style, a neighbour has several but they are not nearly as attractive as the native in my opinion.

“I'm also grateful to the neighbours who when shown the seedling almost too tiny for its 4-inch pot promised that they and their helpers would not shovel salt-laden driveway snow onto it.

“Anyhow, it is now the attractive small tree we wanted and starting to shade the window uncovered when the big city maple blew down a few years ago."

It’s nice to think of the Hop-hornbeam or Ironwood (Ostrya virginiana), a common understory tree in our forests, doing well as a specimen tree. It has pleasing fall colours and I have it in stock. The small tree seedling is only 30 cm tall but, if you control the weeds, trees planted young grow faster. And as the customer indicates, watching it grow from tiny sprig into maturity is a reward in itself.