Want to see what native plants look like in an established garden?

We’ve got you covered!  We’ve planted many of the species we offer on our grounds.  We use them as a seed source and as a way to show you what a mature plant will look like.  We invite you to wander around anytime we are open.

Tours

We offer guided tours of our demonstration gardens  from April through the end of September.   If you are interested in seeing something in particular, be sure to mention that to your tour guide when you take one of our tours.  Details and registration HERE.

Gardens at the Nursery

Many mature trees are scattered throughout the property including paw-paws, sweetgum, pin oak, tulip poplar, Kentucky coffee tree, bur oak, swamp white oak, sugar maple, and more.  Ask us for help locating specific trees.

As You Enter the Nursery

You will see these gardens as you drive off the dentist parking lot and enter the nursery

• Entrance gardens – These gardens are on the either side of the driveway as you enter the nursery.
  • Sign garden – Surrounding our sign you will find aromatic aster, fringe tree, switch grass cultivars. wild quinine, beach plum, pycnanthemum muticum, various berries, salvia azurea.
  • Deer resistant planting –  Comptonia, bottlebrush buckeye, pycnanthemum muticum, wild quinine, shale barren buckwheat, rattlesnake master, rubdbeckia subtomentosa, monarda species, and purple love grass,
  • Edible Garden – raspberry, gooseberry, blueberries, beach plum, Lenape vegetable varieties, domestic strawberries
  • Mini-bog – pitcher plants, bog orchids
  • Driveway, right hand side as you enter – Witch hazel, sugar maple.

Near the Parking Lot

• Around parking lot – We keep tucking plants here and there in open spaces, including around the parking lot.  Some of the plants you may find near the parking lot are amorpha fruticosa, ninebark, oakleaf hydrangea, magnolia macrophylla, and wisteria.

Near the Pond

• Around the pond – This planting gets so full and lush, you may not even realize there is a pond in the center!  We have the following planted around the sides of the pond:  Fringetree, black gum, pagoda dogwood, Hypericum prolificum, Monarda bradburiana, little blue stem, common milkweed, and more.
• Pond  –– Our small man-made pond has an assortment of water plants such as Water lily, aquatic rattlesnake master, golden club, pickerel weed, sweet flag, duck potato, and pennywort.
• Tea Garden – Plants that can be used for tea.  This garden contains New Jersey Tea, Echinacea purpurea, Sweet Scented Goldenrod, Anise Hyssop, Mountain Mint, Spicebush, violets, and American dittany.
• Shrub demonstration bed – A sampling of several established shrub specimens.
• Shade garden – Under our pergola, you will find small beds featuring primarily shade plants such as doll’s eye, black cohosh, blue cohosh, maidenhair fern, anemone canadensis, aralia racemosa, phox paniculata, dutchman pipevine, ginger, baptisia, various carex species, bleeding heart, euphorbia corollata,  gillenia trifoliata, geranium, twinleaf, iris cristata, honeysuckle, mertensia, pachysandra, wood poppy, senna, yellow-root, and more!

More or Less ‘in’ the Nursery

• • Garden around shade structure – These garden beds have a variety of plants, let us know if you would like to see one in particular.  Some of the species are: goatsbeard, butterfly milkweed, paper birch, Redtwig dogwood, Halesia caroliniana,  several cultivars of inkberry, grey owl juniper, Spigelia, gooseberry, sweetbay magnolia, hemlock, coral berry, and others.
  • Beds along the lane – along the main ‘lane’ that goes through our nursery we have established a few garden beds.  These feature amsonia, gentian clausa, aromatic aster, coneflower, and others.
  • Plants that love moisture – This garden bed is under the irrigation between rows 12 and 14. Here you will find Baccharis halimifolia (male and female), E. fistulosum, Hamamelis vernalis, and Elderberry, among other plants.
  • Rain garden – Our rain garden catches run-off from big storms as well as irrigation over-flow.  The species planted in the rain garden can tolerate soil moisture that fluctuates from wet to dry.  Some of the plants you will find here are Calycanthus, clethra, buttonbush, Eupatorium maculatum, and golden groundsel.

At the Far end of our Nursery

• Meadow – A lovely, diverse planting of grasses and wildflowers that support thousands of bees, butterflies, predatory insects, birds, small mammals, and other wildlife! An excellent alternative to the expansive monoculture of turf grass lawns.  Big bluestem, pycnanthemum muticum, ratibida pinnata, monarda fistulosa are some of the plants you will see in the meadow.
• Chestnut orchard – Planting of pure American Chestnuts of a nut-bearing age.  You can see the effects of the blight and how trees grow in response to it.  Our orchard was planted in cooperation with the PA Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation and we work with them, reporting on the status of the trees.

The gardens change each week.  Some weeks offer more to see than others, but there’s always something going on.   Depending on the time of year, our gardens may be in need of a little weeding or tidying up.  We hear that the pollinators and beneficial bugs kind of prefer it that way, anyway. So don’t expect perfection when you come visit. You’ll see real native gardens, with lots of real life happening in them. Pollinators, beneficials, blooms, birds — it all happens over the course of the season.

Won’t you join us?  Sign up for one of our nursery tours!