I just started planting Ruby Falls redbuds two years ago. We were working on a pond and landscape installation in Sperryville and I needed some special trees. I was walking the wholesale nursery with my sales rep when, in the…

I love Forest Pansy redbuds (Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’). It’s as if someone was admiring an Eastern redbud and thought “this is a great tree, but you know what would make it better? PURPLE LEAVES BABY!” The leaves are what…

Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) is a sign to start getting excited, another winter is ending! My work as a Virginia landscape designer takes me all over Virginia, and I love seeing those flashes of bright pinkish-purple blooms lighting up the…

There are a few trees that most people can readily identify. Birch trees are one, no doubt about it. The graceful, multi-trunk form and light, peeling bark are pretty much iconic. Here in Virginia, the birches that do really well…

Common names for plants are a funny thing. They run the gamut from evocative – Queen Anne’s lace, butterfly weed – to kind of horrifying. Black chokeberry is so named because the fruit is so overwhelmingly bitter and astringent that…

When you say “Japanese maple” to most people, they picture a low, weeping tree, often with red or burgundy leaves trailing along the ground. There are a lot of wonderful upright Japanese maples, like the Bloodgood maple (Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’).…