Our spring season has drawn to a close and Shady Hill is now closed, as we begin to plant geranium stock plants for next year, as well as poinsettias for Christmas. Yikes. Hopefully, all of your gardens and planters are doing well as we head into more of the hot days of summer. Although the greenhouses are closed, we are here every day, if you ever have any questions or need any advice or suggestions. Just give us a call.

Our greenhouses in Elburn will open for the fall season on Monday, August 23. We will have a wide range of colors of fall mums, as well as pansies, flowering cabbage and kale and other flowering and foliage plants for autumn containers. All of the plants that we grow for the fall are selected with cool weather performance in mind, so that they can replace or enhance your summer containers and last late into the fall season.

For the past couple seasons, our mixed fall planters that we potted up in bushel baskets, galvanized buckets and artificial pumpkins were quite a hit so we will have even more of those this year.  And, we are going to have a couple of our Plant Your Own Container classes that were wildly popular during the spring.  That way, you can bring a pot or container of your own or purchase one of ours to plant.  We will have specific information about those on this site soon.  You can also sign up for our e-mail list at the bottom of this page, to make sure you know about all of the events going on at Shady Hill.

We will again have our “Pick Your Own Cut Flowers” which seem to become more popular each year. It is an idea that we originally saw in Seattle, but had not seen in this area. This year you can expect to find Sunflowers, Zinnias, Celosia, Dahlias and Snapdragons, as well as some other flowers that we will be growing in our beds. Customers often remark that they love the freshness of cutting the flowers and taking them home, as well as being able to pick and choose in our garden, instead of their own!

Another new idea that has been gaining popularity is our ‘Pick Your Own Tomato’ section. The cut flowers worked out well and some gardeners don’t have enough sun or space for tomatoes, so this can help you out with that. There is just no beating the taste of a tomato fresh off the vine and we will have an assortment of varieties including some of the heirloom varieties. We are even planning to have a Tomato Tasting again this year, so that gardeners can sample and vote for their favorite. Next spring, we can let gardeners know which varieties are the most popular when they are choosing plants. Watch this site for additional information or sign up for our e-mail list below, so that you will definitely be notified.

Fall is also a great time to plant perennials as well as bushes and shrubs. You get a jump on next season and the plants do not have to deal with the stress of the heat of the summer and you don’t have to deal with all of the extra watering! We will have a selection of both, so stop out sometime soon and see what we have to enhance your yard.

Stop out to Elburn this fall and see what is growing at Shady Hill.

If you have any questions or need any information about anything going on at Shady Hill, please call us at 630-365-5665 or e-mail Joe at jheidgen@sbcglobal.net or Matt at mheidgen@sbcglobal.net.