Mass planting is a method of filling in your garden with groupings of one or more kinds of plants. This is often done to reduce maintenance by minimizing weed growth or to create visual drama by drawing the eye to that space. Staggering or grouping plants together as opposed to lining them in rows is much more visually appealing and it helps to add quick color to empty areas.  

How to Plan:  

As with any gardening endeavor, mass planting requires planning.  

1. Vary the structure and texture – Make sure you consider the size, structure, and texture, of each plant type. If you mix things up with blooms, foliage, and texture you’ll create incredible contrast.  

1. Throw in some self sowers – Annuals will add an element of surprise! They can be easily controlled by hand pulling. Let them come up in your mass planting here and there and simply remove them where you don’t want them or when they become unattractive.  

1. Plan for a well placed break – Locating an architectural element like a small tree or a couple of shrubs between the masses or even in the middle of a single mass will act as a break for the eyes. It visually breaks up a mass or acts as a transition between two masses.  

1. Utilize the idea of Mix and Mass – Mixing smaller plants groupings (3-5 plants) within a larger mass (5 or more plants) works against monotony. Choose plants with a staggered bloom time and colors that work well together.  

How to Plant:  

• Figure out the size of your planting area in square feet (multiply its length by its width).  
• Estimate the number of plants you’ll need.  
• Amend your soil (check out our organic soil amendments).  
• Place each plant in their places beforehand to get a sense of how it’ll look.  
• Once you find a pattern that matches your desired effect, plant them in the ground and water well.  

What to Plant: 

Nearly any plant can be used for mass planting schemes. Anything from small shrubs and ornamental grasses to mass planting annuals and perennials will create a show stopping scheme. Here are a few of our favorite plants that will create a dramatic effect in your landscape.  

• Verbena  
• Daylilies  
• Hosta 

• Ferns 
• Ornamental grasses  

Now that we’ve provided the inspiration and how to, go and create the dramatic garden landscape of your dreams. Still have questions? Let our experts help! 

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Well, there is a solution: Wayside’s deer-resistant plants and all-natural deterrents discourage grazing, with unpleasant tastes, smells or textures, leaving your garden intact and thriving despite after-hour visits from unwanted guests. The key is to keep changing your approach so the deer don’t get used to whatever technique you’re using at the time.

Here are some of our best tips for keeping deer out of your garden.

1. Grow Deer-Resistant Plants.

There is no surefire way to keep deer away, they are resilient survivalists. However, using these tips will definitely help keep them out of your beloved garden!

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Dahlias are native to Mexico so they won’t survive the freezing temperatures that many North American gardens experience. Digging up and storing dahlias is simple if you follow a few simple tips.

When to dig up Dahlias:

If you live in an area where the ground freezes, you’ll want to dig up your dahlias tubers before there is a hard frost. A good indication of when to dig your tubers up is when the plant starts to turn brown and die back. 

If you live in an area where your ground doesn’t freeze – such as parts of California and Florida – you’re lucky! Your dahlias can be grown as perennials and you don’t need to worry about digging and storing them for winter.

Digging up Dahlias and preparing them:

1. Cut foliage back so that only a couple of inches remain above the ground.
2. Dig around the tubers, being careful not to sever the roots. Many gardeners use a pitchfork to prevent this from happening.
3. Once you’ve dug the tuber up, shake the dirt off of it and set it aside.
4. Repeat until you’ve tug all your tubers up!
5. After you’ve dug all of your dahlias up gently wash off the dirt in a bucket of water or with a hose. Make sure not to puncture the skin of your tubers as this could cause them to rot over the winter months in storage.
6. Examine your tubers to make sure there are no rotten parts. If there are, cut those parts off.
7. If the tubers have several eyes you can divide them now. Use a sharp knife to divide tubers and make sure each piece has at least one eye.

Drying Tubers:

If possible try to dry your dahlias for several weeks before putting them away in storage. This helps to prevent rot during storage. Choose a location that won’t dip below freezing, has good air circulation, and indirect sunlight. After your tubers have dried cut back the rest of the dahlia stem with pruners.

Storing your Dahlia Tubers:

The key to successfully storing dahlia tubers for the winter is making sure they stay dry, have good air circulation, and are in a cool, dark spot. You can store your dahlias in a variety of containers including milk crates, plastic bins, papers bags, and cardboard boxes all work well. Just make sure there is space left between each tuber and there is some air circulation. 

Place the tubers in a cool, dark space that won’t freeze. This could be an unheated basement, attic, closet, or utility room.

Replanting your Dahlias in Spring:

Once spring arrives and ground temperatures have warmed it’s time to replant your beloved dahlias! Make sure there is no more chance of frost in your area. Then you can bring your tubers out of storage to replant in your garden.

By following these easy tips you can replant your dahlias spring after spring to have a bold, beautiful garden every season!

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Lonicera (Honeysuckle)

Honeysuckle is easy to grow, heat tolerant, and are virtually indestructible! Lonicera vines not only bloom in various bright colors but are also deliciously fragrant and can attract hummingbirds and butterflies all summer long. You can grow honeysuckle along a trellis, arbor, or fence or even choose to grow it without support as groundcover to control erosion. Honeysuckle will fill your garden with delicate flowers and a sweet summer breeze scent.  

Climbing Roses

Climbing Roses are a popular classic and remind us of a traditional cottage garden. These roses are incredibly versatile and vigorous climbers you can use them across your landscape! They can transform bare fences and walls into show stopping focal points. They typically have large blooms and can repeat bloom. Use a climbing rose to turn an ordinary wall into a burst of beautiful classic roses.  

Clematis

No garden is complete without the dazzling blooms and climbing habits of Clematis. Plant them around a sunny boarder, a vertical structure for climbing, or a horizontal expanse for meandering the Clematis makes a gorgeous statement. Pair it with the climbing roses above for unparalleled summer beauty or design a large planting of several different types of Clematis varieties for large display of color. Make sure you are correctly pruning your Clematis vines based on its blooming habit, because improper pruning can set your blooms show back a year or more. Follow our easy guide on our website.

 Wisteria

It is hard to find a more beautiful vine than Wisteria, the fragrant blue violet or lavender blooms hang gently in the breeze all through spring. The long racemes drape down from soft green head of foliage, the effect is graceful and beautiful. Once established, Wisteria grows vigorously and can cover arbors, pergolas, trellises, and walls.  

Vines can add so much visual interest to your home and garden. With proper care they can flourish with stunning beauty.  

Before you plant follow these tips to choose the best placement.  

• Choose a sunny spot, most vines like the sun and won’t bloom in the shade.  
• Are you afraid of (or allergic to) bees? If so, don’t plant a flowering vine over or on a doorway, arbor, mailbox, gazebo, or anyplace you’ll be near. Vines attract all kinds of sweet creatures including bees.  
• If your house made of masonry or wood? Vines growing against wood siding can contribute to rot, be careful.  

Take all these tips into consideration, choose your vine type, and watch as it transforms your landscape.  

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If you’re a gardener with a lot of shade around your home, you may find yourself struggling to find plants that thrive in minimal sunlight, especially when it comes to shrubs. Take a look at the shaded areas of your yard. Just because they are dark, does not mean they have to be drab. Shade shrubs can flourish in low and indirect light while producing colorful, alluring flowers season after season. Beautiful plants like Hydrangea and Laurel typify this category. Use these many-stemmed plants to bring structure to your garden and add vibrant color to those shady spots. Here are a few of our favorites:

Oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia)

A wide-spreading North American native shrub for shade, oakleaf hydrangea deserves a home in every shady landscape. Even in the winter the peeling burgundy bark of the oakleaf hydrangea is deserving of our attention. The merits of this shrub for shade cannot be stressed enough. It’s a favorite for its four-season interest.  The tall bloom wands boast exceptionally large, nodding florets.

Lush oak leaves keep the shrub pretty all season long, taking on tinges of Burgundy when fall rolls around. It is adaptable, working well with most soils, as long as it is well-drained and gets some sun. In the south it prefers some shade, and in the north it likes full sun and some shelter from the chilliest winds. It blooms on old growth, so it is recommended that they be trimmed after they are finished flowering in the late summer. Fertilize in early spring with a Tree and Shrub slow-release fertilizer. This vigorous beauty will reward you with a summer’s worth of huge, plush blooms! Zones 5 to 9.

Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia)

Kalmia (Mountain Laurel) is an ideal landscape accent, informal border or hedge, or anywhere its flowers can be appreciated. Evergreen leaves adorn the reddish-brown, bark.  Kalmia is a low-maintenance, shrub that’s great for naturalizing. It works well with other evergreens and is an excellent choice for partially shaded sites. Make sure the soil is acidic by fertilizing with a granular, acid-specific fertilizer annually. Do this and it will reward you with beautiful blooms.

Azaleas and Rhododendron

Rhododendrons and Azaleas are some of the easiest, most rewarding flowering shrubs you’ll find for the partly shaded garden. The huge clusters of bright, colorful flowers bloom heavily for weeks with virtually no effort from you. Rhododendrons are great for use along foundations, in woodlands, and along garden or lawn borders. And they are available in all colors. Trust our top-quality Rhododendron bushes for years of trouble-free, dependable beauty.

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Planning a pollinator friendly garden is as easy as picking out the best plants to make your bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies happy. Flowers are not only lovely to our eyes but essential to the worlds ecosystem. Bugs and animals of all types depend on flowers for nutrition and survival. Gardeners can do their part by planting varieties that benefit pollinators the most.  

Did you know that bees pollinate flowers, trees, and shrubs but so do other animals and insects! Birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps and small mammals are all also common pollinators. Bees, other animals, as well as the wind, can carry pollen from plant to plant.

Worldwide, approximately 1,000 plants grown for food, beverages, fibers, spices, and medicines need to be pollinated by animals in order to produce the goods on which we depend. Foods and beverages produced with the help of pollinators include blueberries, chocolate, coffee, melons, peaches, pumpkins, vanilla, and almonds. All things that we as humans love to treat ourselves to. I know I couldn’t live without my coffee and chocolate!

The Pollinator Basics:

What attracts pollinators to flowers?

• Scent – bees and butterflies can’t resist fragrant flowers (neither can we!)
• Color – Certain pollinators prefer certain colors of blooms!
• Flower shape – hummingbirds prefer tubular shaped blooms, while bees prefer flat open flowers.
• High pollen/nectar – some plants are pollen-less while others have a type of pollen that isn’t spread by pollinators, but by the wind. Keep these things in mind when choosing flowers for your garden.

Quick Tips:

• Choose native species and wildflowers – wildflowers get bad press for seeming ‘weedy’, but these kinds of plants are what your local pollinators are used to and are the most beneficial to those populations. 
• Plant for food sources. Birds are attracted to seeds, berries, fruits, and nectar. While butterflies need flowers that have nectar, such as those in the Aster family.
• Offer a variety of plants for nesting and protection from predators. Bushy shrubs, canopy trees, and groundcovers will provide the nooks and crannies birds and other wildlife need to nest and find food. Such plants also provide protection from sun, wind, and rain for all your essential garden critters.
• Plant flowers away from high traffic areas – the less disruption from humans, animals, and machines the better. You don’t like being pestered while you’re trying to eat, do you? 
• Provide water and “puddling” stations – pollinating is thirsty work! Bees often get dehydrated during the day, so leaving them some shallow pools of clean water helps them tremendously. Add small stones to the pool so that they have something to stand on while they drink. 
• Avoid using pesticides – try natural remedies to deter the “bad” bugs and invite “good” bugs to even the score (i.e.: don’t kill spiders and other pest predators if you can manage it.) 
• Plant colorful and fragrant flowers for best results. 
• Bees’ favorite colors are violet and blue and hummingbirds’ favorite colors are red, purple, and orange!

By choosing some key plants and following these easy tips your garden will become a balanced and healthy environment that all can enjoy!

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Originally located in Mentor, Ohio, Wayside Gardens grew rapidly until the 60’s, when J. J. Grullemans passed away.

In 1975, Wayside was bought by Park Seed Company and moved to South Carolina. Since then, the company has grown and flourished, becoming an undisputed leader in gardening today by maintaining the founders’ dedication to providing discriminating gardeners.

One hundred years ago our founder, J.J. Grullemans, vowed to grow and sell unique, exceptional, and high-quality living plants to the garden enthusiast and that vision has persisted through the century. After his passing in 1975 and the subsequent changes that followed. We have always stood strong in our mission to bring our customers an unparalleled selection of breakthrough plant cultivars. Wayside Gardens has grown and become a leader in the gardening world. We provide American sourced plants with world renowned genetics. Each plant comes highly recommended by horticultural experts.

We are not only fully committed to our plant selections, but we also have a tireless commitment to customer service.

Wayside Gardens values both the garden and the gardener, and we know that comes with questions which is why we have a horticultural expert that is only a phone call away. For one hundred years we have been the gardening source that America can trust. Whether that is for plants, trees, bulbs, information, and help it is a trust we will not break.  

As we approach 100 years of service we find ourselves looking back at our beginnings and we have found that our values have not changed. We pride ourselves on being a trusted garden source for the serious gardener. As we look forward to our future we know that those values will not change.

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After spring planting and summer blooms you may wonder what more is needed now that fall is here. The answer depends on how much easier you’d like things to be when spring comes around next year. A few careful steps now will save you effort in the long run. If you would like to reduce the amount of work facing you in the spring use these tips! 

All the Tips You Need for Fall and Winter Garden Prep:

• Removing decaying yet already disease-free plants from the soil surface or burying them in garden trenches prevents pests from getting a head start come springtime. Burying old plants in your garden also adds organic matter to your soil, improving soil tilth and overall health! 
• Remove invasive weeds that may have taken hold over the growing season. Removing invasive plants is the only way to prevent those plants from sprouting again and disrupting next year’s garden. 
• Prepare your soil for spring. Fall is a great time to dig in soil amendments like Gypsum (breaks down clay and promotes root growth), blood and bone meal (promotes plant growth), Amazon Soil Conditioner (creates rich soil), and other soil enriching products. Adding nutrients means the additions have time to start breaking down. Also enriching your soil, and becoming biologically active just in time for you to plant.  

• Replenish your mulch. Mulching in winter has many of the same benefits as summer mulching including reducing water loss, protecting the soil from erosion, and discouraging weeds. However, winter mulching has other benefits as well. As the soil transitions to colder weather, the freezing and thawing of the earth can adversely affect garden plants, whose roots suffer. Adding a thick layer of mulch to the soil surface helps regulate soil temperatures, moisture, and ease the transition into winter. 

Follow these tips and your garden will be ready for an easy spring!  

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Here are a few reasons you should be planting in the fall: 

1. Autumns cooler temperatures are easier on both plants and gardeners! 
2. The soil is still warm from the summer sun. This allows roots to grow quickly and become well established before the ground freezes. 
3. Fall showers are often plentiful making it easy to deeply water plants during fall establishment. 
4. Pest and disease problems tend to fade away during the fall. 
5. Giving your garden a fall head start will result in large, healthy, well established flowers that bloom earlier in the season. 

Here are a few of our favorite plants that thrive when planted in the fall: 

Spring Blooming Bulbs  

All spring blooming bulbs need a period of cold dormancy to bloom. In general, try to plant when nightly temperatures are around 40 or 50 degrees, or about six weeks before you expect the ground to freeze. Plant bulbs in the fall to guarantee a beautiful spring display. Some of our favorite bulbs to plant in the fall are:  

• Hemerocallis – Daylilies are incredibly easy to grow and thrive in a variety of different difficult conditions, including heat, humidity, and drought as well as poor soil and cold. 
• Iris – Irises are one of the easiest perennials to grow, colonizing freely to increase their display of colorful, ruffled blooms every year. Easy to grow, deer and rabbit resistant, and quite drought tolerant once established, Irises appear in late spring to early summer, displaying almost every color imaginable. 

Perennials  

Perennials can also be planted in the fall to ensure that the roots grow quickly and establish well before the spring. Any fall planted perennials should be carefully watered until the ground freezes to keep their roots healthy and strong. A few great perennials to plant in the fall include:  

• Echinacea – Coneflowers have a very hardy nature, proving resistant to environmental stresses, from heat and humidity to cold and drought. Echinacea are impervious to most pests and diseases. Sending up blooms in summer in a range of colors — pink, white, yellow, orange, and more! And in fall drawing in songbirds, which come to feast on their seed-filled cones. 

• Paeonia – Peonies are one of the longest-lived perennials, lasting for generations and exhibiting enormous, luxurious blooms with the look, fragrance, and staying power of the finest roses. 

Trees and Shrubs  

Fall is the perfect time to plant trees and shrubs. The weather is cool, but the soil is still warm enough for root growth and development. Keep newly planted trees and shrubs well-watered until the ground freezes so they can get a head start before going into full dormancy during the winter.  

• Buddleia – Butterfly Bushes are large, dense bushes featuring big, majestic flower spikes that bloom in intense hues of pink, orange, red, and purple throughout the summer. They are a great addition to almost any garden attracting butterflies, hummingbirds, and beneficial pollinators in droves. 
• Lagerstroemia – Crapemyrtles have been a mainstay of Southern landscapes for many years, they are highly adaptable and drought tolerant. From summer into fall long panicles appear, the crinkled, crepe-like petals giving Crapemyrtles their name, and in fall, the green leaves turn yellow, red-orange, or red, providing a whole new season of appeal! 

These are just a few of our favorites. The possibilities for fall planting are practically endless! You should be planting in fall so you can have the healthiest and most beautiful garden oasis around. 

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As much as we love taking in the beauty of our gardens during the day the unfortunate reality is that many of us get home from work and only have a few hours of the day left to enjoy our hard work. That is where a moon garden comes in. Adding plants that pop under the light of the moon can take your landscape to the next level. Take full advantage of your garden even when the sun goes down by planting a moon garden. Add plants that not only shine bright during the day but also light up your garden at night to elevate your landscape and help you avoid the daytime heat. There are several keys to a successful and unique moon garden:   

1. Bright foliage – Leaves that reflect the moonlight and whose colors pop in the dark can take your landscape to the next level. Specimens with variegated, gold colored, or silver colored leaves look the best.  Also, foliage is not only generally low maintenance, but the leaves last longer than blossoms do so you can enjoy the bright colors longer. 
2. Light colored flowers – A mass of white flowers has a bigger impact in the moonlight than a few scattered about. You want to focus on blooms that will show up at night so white or lightly colored flowers will work best. Plant in mass so you can get the full effect of the blooms when the sun goes down. 
3. Fragrant Blooms – There’s nothing better than getting a sweet scent on a serene evening breeze so be sure to plant some sweetly scented blooms. Not only will you enjoy the fragrant flowers, but nighttime pollinators will too. We recommend peonies, iris, and roses for a fragrant fix!  
4. Finally, plant perennials with different boom times so you can keep enjoying your moon garden month after month.

We Recommend:  

• Early Bloomers: White daffodils, rhododendron, and magnolias 

• Mid-Season Bloomers: climbing hydrangea, achillea, and deutzia. 

• Late Bloomers: Phlox paniculata, sweet autumn clematis, and white calicarpa.  

Create an outdoor living space you can enjoy all day and night by planting a moon garden. Send us photos of your moon garden on social media and you might be featured on our feeds!  

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