Summer Wine Ninebark

(Ninebark) Summer Wine® has a stunning wine color foliage, that in mid summer is dressed up with a pinkish-white button size flower. The purplish foliage of Ninebark is paired nicely with the bright yellow colors of Coreopsis. Summer Wine® is a low maintenance Ninebark, that grows neat and upward. With it’s neat and tidy character, summer wine works well for making a neat border, or planting in masses. Also, a perfect shrub for a patio container.

Hydrangea – Limelight Hardy

This hardy hydrangea has a bountiful harvest of the best blooms ever! Limelight is by far a beauty in the garden, with its gigantic blooms and array of color. Limelight, in mid summer starts out as an “eye catching” lime green, and turns into a pure white color and ending in the fall with a magnificent color of pink. Limelight, makes great dried or cut flower arrangements. Limelight’s height can reach as high as 6 to 8 feet high. So, this beauty can set the stage in anyone’s garden with it’s great structure. Pruning limelight is best done in the late fall or early spring. Hardy Limelight is also very true to the name and is hardy all the way down to zone 3.

Looking into my backyard, I enjoy seeing the occasion of a few deer browsing through. But, then when I am browsing through my gardens, I am NOT overjoyed to see the damage that these pesky animals have done. Shrubs can be a perfect height for the deer to munch on, but, overall deer tend to stray away from shrubs. But, in the dead of winter food supply can become  scare for the deer, and they prey on our beloved shrubs! There is truly nothing that will stop a deer from munching when they are starving, but, a few shrubs we have found that they don’t prefer are: barberry, butterfly bushes, boxwood, false cypress, forsythia, and elderberry. These shrubs either have thorns or produce a smell that deer do not prefer, and tend to stay away from.