A Classical Garden Marker Will Help You Anticipate Next Spring

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TulipsWho says that gardening starts to wind down in the fall? Probably not a gardener. Fall is a great time to start getting your yard ready for spring again. Yes, Halloween isn’t even here and plans are being laid for spring. But planting in the fall will help roots become established, keep your plants from being shocked by a cold weather snap and help your plants get a healthy head start in the spring.

With all the new plans being laid in the fall, it is helpful to have a classical garden marker for each of your new plants or new arrangements. Some of your new plantings or transplants may surprise you in the spring because you may have forgotten what you did in the fall. A classical garden marker placed with the new arrangement will help you anticipate all those lovely new changes. All winter you can imagine how your new organization will have transformed your yard for the better.

There are many perks to planting in the fall rather than waiting for spring. At the end of summer, the soil is still warm from the weeks of sunny warmth. No roots will suffer from being too cold during the move. And if you plant early enough in the fall you don’t have to worry about one of those bizarre late April ice storms that will freeze the tips of fragile plants or shock them with frigid weather.

In the fall you don’t need to add fertilizer to your plants as most gardeners suggest you do in the spring. In fact, it’s recommended that you don’t use fertilizer in the fall. Fertilizer is used to help assist young plants in getting a quick head start in the spring growing season. Fertilizer will speed up the budding of young plants so that they send out tender new shoots. In fall, those tender shoots will be heading into late fall frosts that will burn those tips away.

Fall is the perfect time to plant everything from bulbs, perennials, trees, grass and vegetables. Fall is bulb-planting season. Bulbs are often the first signs of spring. Crocus, daffodils and others will fill yards with shades of purple, yellow and white. Bulbs need the cold weather in order to properly bloom in the spring. A good cold winter will get them ready for their glory in warmer months.

Don’t be hesitant to buy a new perennial for your yard at a nursery’s plant clearance sale in September. Most perennials can move around the yard at any time of year, but putting them in the ground in the fall means that their roots can become established and they can be bigger and stronger in the spring during their first bloom.

A classical garden marker like the ones we produce at Kincaid Plant Markers will help you remember this spring where to look for your new garden additions and help you find the new address of those that just moved around a bush or down the garden path.

Your Plant Markers For Shrubs Will Help You Anticipate a Colorful Autumn

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The heat of summer is starting to cool. Not only do we take notice but plants do too. The sunny days and cool evenings will trigger that beautiful metamorphosis from green summer leaves to the fiery colors of fall. Gorgeous trees like maples and sweet gum and others aren’t the only plants of which we should take notice in the fall. Shrubs can also put on their own spectacular display of fall color.

When placing shrubs in your yard, know which kind of shrubs will be at their most beautiful in the fall and in the spring or summer. It would seem that most shrubs would put their blossoms on in the spring as most trees are budding, but there are some late summer and early fall bloomers, too. A few different varieties of hydrangeas produce late summer blooms. Blooms start off with a soft lime color and move through multiple phases of colors as the days get colder and we move towards winter. Your plant markers for shrubs will help you keep the names of your shrubs straight and help you recognize which shrubs bloom at which season.

While some shrubs sport flowers in the fall, others portray their beauty in deep rich-colored berries or fiery leaves. The leaves of shrubs such as Aromatic Sumac are green throughout the summer and start to change hue in early fall. The colors resemble the blend of colors that are in sugar maples. Yellow, orange and red turns the bush into a blaze of color.

Throughout the growing season the leaves of Aromatic Sumac are fragrant, hence their “aromatic” name. These shrubs can be pruned to a small size or can really spread out into a small tree-like shrub. Their crushed leaves make a beautiful perfume and were actually used by pioneers back in the day to help freshen the skin with fragrance. Your plant markers for shrubs can even add a little bit of history to this historical plant.

Other shrubs produce beautiful fall berries—pretty to see and nutritious for birds in the neighborhood. One plant called Beautyberry (Callicarpa) has purple berries that appear in the fall. They decorate the shrub and they also provide nutrition for birds who are feverishly fattening up with some energy before the cold days of winter.

Some gardeners suggest the plant called Brandywine (Viburnum nudum) to cover all your season’s bases. Brandywine has attributes for all seasons. Pretty white flowers in the spring and pink and blue berries and deep maroon leaves in the fall. It’s an all-season showy shrub.

There are many varieties of shrubs to choose from that will provide fall color in the form of blossoms, berries or foliage. With plant markers for shrubs you can keep track of what shrubs will bloom or burst with color at which time. Let Kincaid Plant Markers help you label your shrubs and help you look forward to a year of beautiful color in your yard.

Metal Plant Markers are an Integral Part of Your Garden Design

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Garden 4Each gardener has his own tastes. You might like to mix your tomatoes and your marigolds or you may prefer to keep your neat rows of vegetables far from your manicured beds of perennials. Gardens are your landscapes and your choice of plants are the colors on your palette. If you have a garden that tends to be too much of a mixture of color, texture and variety, you might want to follow some tips to create a pleasing, but more simple garden that delights but that doesn’t overwhelm.

Some gardeners decide to focus on detail in their gardens that become the repeating focal point to relax the eyes and create a nice blend throughout the yard. Whether it is foliage, flowers, texture or the height and width of various plants, some repetition can be soothing. A shady backyard can become a pleasing diversity of foliage. From deep purple to lime green and forest green leaves, the one detail of leaf variety can make your garden peaceful. Metal plant markers can be tucked indiscreetly among the large leaves of hostas and other greenery so that you can enjoy your lush green oasis, but still remember throughout the seasons where things are planted.

If a backyard of various shades of green is a little too simple for you, add a few splashes of color in different spots, but don’t overdo it. Let the foliage still be the focal point. The trick to adding a bit of color is to find vibrant, colorful flowers that are small or that are large, but spaced farther apart. Flowers with long erect stems that only contain single blooms at the top are good choices for adding dots of color but not too many clustered in one place.

If you are more of a flower fanatic and love to show off your blooms with metal plant markers, than you can find ways to let color thrive in your yard in a bold yet controlled flow. In backyards you can go crazy experimenting with height, color, texture, fragrance or all facets of plants. But the front yard is a different matter.

Planning your front yard garden is different than planning your backyard garden. Small, low-to-the-ground plants glow when they have miniature blooms to brighten them up. Clusters of these different blossoms can keep your eyes skimming the ground seeing the plants like stepping stones that invite visitors up to the house. Too many mixtures of tall and short flowers in repetition might make your front walkway less inviting. Your visitors’ eyes will be rolling up and down between the ground and the sky in a sensory overload. Rather, a nice simple mix of low and medium-high plants should pull the visitor’s eyes up the walkway to your front door in an inviting way.

Metal plant markers, like the ones designed by Kincaid Plant Markers, aren’t just for backyards. They can be tucked in among the flowers in the front yard so that passers-by can admire your garden and learn a few names of ones they might want to add to their own yard.

Plant Labels Are For Gardens Both Big and Small: Using Succulents in Small Containers

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Planters 1When you have interesting plants you want to show them off with plant labels. Succulents have such graceful shapes and such rosy colors on their edges, they add unique texture to your landscape. While some plants only look good growing straight out of your yard’s soil, succulents look great in many little places. Plant labels can identify them in either big gardens or little containers.

People have used many interesting containers in which to grow succulents. Items that others may throw out with the trash have made some pretty ingenious containers.

With miniature little flower heads, succulents look enchanting in a little fairy garden. Fairy gardens of large and small succulents can be tucked in a little spot in the garden where plant labels can identify different varieties. Or a small grouping of little succulents can be contained in a mixing bowl-sized world. Add some fairies, little benches and other miniatures and the succulents become bushes, trees and a lush field of flowers.

Why throw out that old rusty tackle box when it can become a masculine flower box? The hobby of gardening is shared by both men and women. While men may not be as interested in planting fairy gardens, there are options for planting succulents on the more masculine side. Succulents arranged in shelves that used to hold hooks and sinkers can cascade down in multi-level boxes.

Old boots with enclosed toes can sprout the fleshy leaves of succulents. Either women’s or men’s boots will work, but they look best in shoes that have shoe lace holes. Then your plants can stretch through the soil and spread out the shoe leather in a hefty clump of fleshy leaves. Some succulent types can even cascade over the side.

Birds aren’t the only species that can be found in a bird cage. Many varieties of succulents clustered together in a bird cage look beautiful from all sides. Even in a bird cage, stainless steel markers can blend with the silver walls and look crisp and clean. These cages can resemble hanging baskets as clusters of leaves trail down through the bars like cords of braided hair.

Items like watering cans, chair planters and garden benches are all items that have been used to house a miniature garden of succulents. With some imagination and creativity you can create a world of miniatures, too.

Kincaid Plant Markers can be customized for your garden. Different plates and the heights of different stakes will blend in with your plants without being too bulky or large and the 100 percent stainless steel posts and plates will withstand tough weather and rust. Whether you have a miniature garden of succulents or a huge field of wildflowers, Kincaid Plant Markers will help highlight all the varieties of plants that are yours.

Don’t You Remember Me? — Identify Your Plants With Kincaid Plant Markers

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Are you terrible with names. Maybe you can remember a face, but not a name. For some people, the same goes with plants. “Wait…is that catmint or catnip? I know that one there—it loves the sun and blooms in early June and makes a great cut flower….but I don’t remember its name.” Thank heavens that plants don’t have ears. How sad to be forgotten. Sturdy durable plant markers can help you always identify your plants no matter how poor your memory becomes.

What does it matter if you remember a plant’s name? If you ever share some of your plant withIdentifying Plants 1 a friend (which if it is a perennial you will most likely have to divide it at some point) your friend will probably want to know its name. If you want to buy more of it from a nursery someday or want to find it in a catalog you’ll want to know its name. If you want to know if it will attract certain caterpillars or hummingbirds or butterflies and other insects to your yard you may want to know. You may also need to know your plant names if your pet eats it and gets ill or if you want to find out if deer and other garden intruders will or will not eat it. Best of all, it’s easier to introduce your garden to friends who visit when you can introduce your plant by name rather than by, “Here’s a pretty one…”

So, now you have to choose the best labels for your garden. You can keep the ones that are stuck in the plant pots when you buy them, but they are flimsy plastic that don’t last too long. They get raked up, scratched up, bent or blown away fairly easily. White plastic markers can fade, get snapped off by a weed-whacker, get trampled by children or merely snap as you’re trying to press them further into the ground. You can buy ornate ones that may chip or become faded in the sun, or you may buy ones that have durable plates but have painted etched writing that fades all too soon. In order to always identify your plants you will need a marker that lasts as long as your plant.

Plant markers that are 100 percent stainless steel won’t rust or become weathered by the season’s harsh moods. They also are good for the environment. They don’t need to be painted or repainted and they won’t end up in landfills like the many other markers that will only last temporarily. Stainless steel gives a classic clean look to your garden that won’t ever go out of style.

Kincaid Plant Markers offers you long-lasting stainless steel plant tags and stakes to make sure that you can always identify your plants. Your memory may fail, but Kincaid Plant Markers won’t fail you.

Planting a Picture Window With Garden Markers as Guides

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Garden 1There are long lists of factors to consider when designing a garden. You must often consider the natural outdoor elements including sunlight, moisture and soil type, but consider your indoor elements, too.

How nice to have a room with a beautiful view outside. Consider where you most often sit on those excessively hot and humid days that keep you inside the house and away from your garden. You can still enjoy your garden’s beauty by planting flowers outside of your windows. Waking up in the morning to the cheery bright faces of black-eyed Susan’s underneath your sill or to the scent of roses drifting in through your window starts your day off positively. Imagine your window as a canvas. As you stand looking out through it into the yard, what picture would you like to see on that window wall?

Design your garden to have color or interesting texture all throughout the seasons. Let your live wall garden picture add beauty to your home’s interior. You can use garden markers to help you remember what plants will bloom in what seasons. Those garden markers can also help you figure out your placement of plants when you decide to divide them and move them around the yard or pass them to a friend.

Consider, also, the view from your outdoor spaces. When you sit on your deck or patio, which plants would you like to glance up and see blooming back at you? Which ones will shelter you in privacy or invite you to get out of your chair and walk the landscaped path further into the yard?

Finally, consider the view from outside of your yard. Walk across the street and down the street and give your own house a good look-over from different angles. Is your house on a corner or a curve where you could add some plants to soften and beautify it for the traffic that passes down the road? When pedestrians pass by, do they first see a weedy dry slope in your yard or do they smile because of the colorful blossoms that sway with the breeze and energize them to keep their stride or to stop and smell the roses?

Another consideration as you plan your garden design is to incorporate background structures into your garden picture. Fences can double as decorative trellises and open boundaries where plants from other beds can peek through and mingle stems and petals. Garden markers can let plants mingle as much as they want and still keep their identity known.

When planting in front of solid walls, house foundations and solid privacy fences take care to not pack the plants too tightly or too close to the wall. Moisture can build up and cause fungus and root rot.

As you paint pictures through your windows, let Kincaid Plant Markers help you organize your colors and textures. Throughout the seasons our 100 percent stainless steel garden markers will remain steadfast and herald the changing hues of your garden as it grows as pretty as a picture.

Create Nameplates for Plants in Your Diversified Garden

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Gratz garden 4Creating unity in your garden with clusters of the same plants spread throughout the yard is a common way to design garden spaces. While groupings of the same species can create a nice relaxing repetition, rhythm and simplicity in your garden, mixed plants in groupings can add more visual energy to your garden. The combinations of colors and textures stimulate your eyes and lift your plants off the garden floor. With all the multiplying varieties, it helps to create nameplates for plants in your garden.

Diverse plantings allow a small space to retain constant blooms or color. Some people choose to cluster plants because of their varied colors, shapes or sizes. But those plants can also have varied blooming times which allow your clusters to always look fresh and active. Even hostas send up tall stems of purple or white blooms and don’t have to rely on their beautiful leaves alone. By adding in a mix of early and late spring, summer and fall bloomers, your plant clusters will always be colorful.

Nameplates among these clusters can help you anticipate which plants will bloom next as the year progresses. When you create nameplates for plants you not only inform your visitors, but you set the stage for what action is to come.

Combining plants in clusters allows you to easily replace a plant that dies or that just doesn’t suit your interest anymore. If a large planting of the same plant were to succumb to disease or insects, it may leave a noticeable open area or hole in your garden until you could figure out what to plant there next. You may hastily choose a plant just to fill the ugly space or may be anxious while you wait to figure out something new. If one plant dies within a cluster of plants, there is no hurry to replace it as the surrounding plants fill in the spaces that were left behind.

Creating clusters of diverse plants doesn’t have to mean disorder in your yard. If you like a little order and a little chaos in your garden—if you’re one of those diversified people—then you can arrange clusters of diversified plants in repetitive flowerbeds throughout your garden. Ferns, coral bells and lime-green hostas can create a lovely ground bouquet in your yard. That same combination can be spread throughout your garden to set a repetition of diversity.

When you create nameplates for plants you are also creating some order in your diverse garden. Shiny stainless steel posts can pose through the blossoms and leaves of your garden floor and reveal the names to your lively disarray of stems, seeds and petals. Kincaid Plant Markers can provide you with nameplates so that you can find your favorites, watch for the next burst of color and share your gardening passion with family and friends.

Let Steel Plant Markers Separate Your Edibles From Your Ornamentals

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Vegetables 1Diversity is a good thing—so why not mix your edible garden with your ornamental garden? Tucking marigolds next to tomato plants and growing green beans on the fence line behind the petunias uses your garden space well and adds a mix of leaf and flower shapes and colors to your yard. Garden experts have even connected the benefits of planting certain ornamentals next to edibles in helping reduce certain garden pests, attracting pollinators and other benefits. With the help of steel plant markers to help keep track of where you’ve tucked in all of your edibles, you can enjoy a well-mixed edible and ornamental garden.

Many edibles have a natural beauty that shines like other flowery ornamentals. Artichokes lend an interesting shape to other flat leafy plants and also have beautiful flowers. Herbs like oregano and chives will sprout purple flowers that blend in with other flowering perennials in your landscape.

Nutritious leafy edibles can provide nice neat borders for your flower gardens. Lettuce, kale and cabbages are some of the greens that gardeners use to make edible borders. Harvesting some leaves throughout the season keeps the border nice and tidy and provides your body with nutrients. Vines of squash, cucumbers and other edibles can also provide borders or boundaries among your plants. Let the leafy vines of watermelons hide the bare legs of tall hollyhocks or a woody shrub.

When you have a small garden, it benefits to find creative and space-saving ways to mix your edibles and ornamentals. Wide-spaced rows of vegetables might work when you have a lot of acres, but in a backyard, you might have to cherish each little patch of visible dirt that there is. Blending ornamental flowers with fruit and vegetable flowers works seamlessly. When you use steel plant markers, you can tuck markers discreetly between plants so that only you see them or you can showcase them so that they become the ties that bind the garden together in unity.

Espaliers, pergolas and arbors can lift your fruit off the ground and provide living fences and roofs to your yard. When you only have a small garden space to work with, these structures only ask for a tiny bit of soil in which to root and then send their vines and branches airborne; upward and outward in bounty. Grapes, fruit trees, vegetables and more can thrive in the airspace of your yard.

Steel plant markers like the ones manufactured by Kincaid Plant Markers can help you keep all those herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruits straight in your garden. When the garden grows lush and plants start to mingle their flowers and leaves, it can be more difficult to differentiate your edible plants from your perennials. Steel plant markers not only add a classic touch to your garden with their silver shine, but will be more durable and resistant to rusting or weather damage.

Incorporate Nameplates for Gardens Into Your Garden Design

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Garden 3Whether you are just digging the spade into your yard for the first time or you are transplanting some perennials around the yard, you are probably thinking about garden design. What plants will you use? How many of each will you use? How many beds will you develop? What shapes will they be in? The choices can seem endless and overwhelming if you don’t have a theme or a plan to guide you.

With some overall concepts to use in planning and by adding nameplates in your garden you can better organize your personal ideal garden strategy. Learn 2 Grow gardening experts suggest following these basic themes when planning or reorganizing a garden:

  • Repetition/Consistency
  • Rhythm/Transitions
  • Simplicity/Proportion
  • Unity

Even if you have a huge area in which to garden, it doesn’t mean that you have to put a different plant in every corner. Too many different varieties can be difficult for the eye to take in and won’t create a very relaxing atmosphere. Clumps of the same plants can still add dramatic effect, but keep a uniformity that is soothing to the eye. If you’re working on creating a new flowerbed, it might be as simple as thinning out some of your existing perennials and spreading them about the yard.

Spreading the same plants about also creates a rhythm and consistency in the yard. It ties the gardens together in unity. Rhythm can also be created by making transitions along the garden pathways. Plants or some simple sculptures, rocks or pieces of drift wood can either blend in throughout the plants in the yard or stand as structures that alert the garden stroller to a new type of garden or to the entrance or exit to the garden.

When using structural objects in your gardens, try to keep them mostly uniform. Too many fountains or woodland animals or other objects can make the garden cluttered or make it look too unorganized. Let the plants be the focal points and only use the structures if they complement the plants.

Nameplates for gardens can also add repetition, rhythm and simplicity to the garden. They cover and unify the overall garden with their style and function. Nameplates for gardens can merely identify plants or they can label garden “rooms” and serve as transitions throughout the garden.

At Kincaid Plant Markers we suggest that when you plan your garden you also consider how nameplates for gardens can help you create unity, rhythm, repetition and simple style in your landscaping. Beautiful blooms and hearty perennials deserve durable stainless steel posts to highlight their resilience and longevity. Planning a garden doesn’t just involve the plants that are going in the ground, it incorporates structural function and design that help you create cohesion to your landscaping and help tell your garden’s story.

A Plant Marker For Iris Blooms to Share the History of Your Garden

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Iris 1A walk in the woods looking for wildflowers might uncover more than spring and summer blossoms—it might uncover an old homestead. A row of irises blooming rather uniformly in the woods could indicate that an old wall used to be there and that a family once enjoyed the company of those irises cozied up next to their home over a century ago. Irises have been used by many a historian to map out old homes on what was once the frontier.

Today we enjoy irises alongside our house foundations and in our flowerbeds, too. While purple is a common iris hue, there are many different colors of iris available. They also can fill your yard with color throughout the early spring and through the mid-summer. From the first blooms of the dwarf irises to the last blooms of the dutch hybrids, you can enjoy irises for longer than just early spring. Some irises even re-bloom a few times throughout the growing season. With irises blooming year-round, a plant marker for iris blooms can help you anticipate those next blossoms of purple, yellow, pink or coral.

Irises come in many varieties including the following:

  • Bearded Irises (Iris germanica and hybrids)
  • Dutch hybrids (I. hollandica)
  • Dwarf Irises (I. reticulata and I. danfordiae)
  • Japanese Irises (I. ensata)
  • Louisiana Irises (I. fulva, I. giganticaerulea and I. brevicaulis)
  • Siberian Irises (I. siberica)

The strong erect stems of irises stand tall and steady in narrow or wide-necked vases. They provide large flowing blooms that will complement other arrangements of leafy or miniature flowers. Some irises are also very fragrant as well as showy.

If you notice over the years that your irises aren’t quite blooming the way they used to bloom, it may be time to separate them a bit. Different species of irises may perform better depending on how they are divided. While most irises are best divided and replanted in spring or fall, the bearded irises prefer to be divided just a few months after they’ve bloomed while it’s still hot outside. Cut the slender leaves back to about a third of their natural height and then separate the rhizomes.

When you divide your irises, it is also a good time to discard any rhizomes that are partially rotten or damaged by insect pests. Some of that damage could be due to the iris borer, an insect that leaves rhizomes mushy or punctuated with holes. Another sign of this lethal pest is that your iris leaves are streaked with yellow.

To avoid attracting the iris borer, be sure and clear away wet leafy debris from the base of the iris plants. Only a plant marker for iris blooms should be nestled up against the flat pointed leaves.

While irises can mark the sites of old homesteads, we can help mark your irises for the next generations. Our 100 percent stainless steel Kincaid Plant Markers will last through the season’s volatile moods, not fading and not rusting away. A plant marker for iris blooms will help you keep the history alive on your own home’s site.