SUMMER FLOWERS HERE SOON

Although most pansies are at their peak color display, we are beginning our summer flower plantings this week. We delayed our changeout a week due to the cold spring, but with last week's weather in the upper 80’s and this week's dryer, warmer forecast, it's time to change to summer flowers! We contract grow our flowers with Cedar Glen Nursery. Cherie Sigmund is giving your flowers daily love to get them ready for planting next month.  

Summer flower planting is always an exciting signal that summer is forthcoming and we are excited again to produce new and unique color combinations. Seasonal color is an area where we shine as our color combinations are always creative and our maintenance program ensures peak health and color. We are thrilled to see our 2023 displays get installed as summer arrives.  Check out our website for more about our Seasonal Color Programs.

Goodbye Pansies!

Although we are pretty proud of our pansy program and love the color they provide in the late winter and early spring, this was a tough year for most pansy plantings. Our wet winters always create some challenges with getting pansies to survive so we can enjoy this time of year. Normally improving weather in March and April bring pansies back to life, but our cold wet spring delayed the pansy bloom so it was not as good as normal.  

Our Pansy Maintenance Program Provides the Best Results

Year after year we see other contractors' flowers struggle and barely bloom and sometimes die due to their lack or maintenance after planting. Below are pictures of some other contractors' maintained pansy plantings that are suffering from disease.  We are not sure why anyone would keep planting pansies if this is all they get.

Our wet winter weather breeds disease which is hard to control. However, we have developed a program that is very effective. This program includes two additional services to prevent disease. When we plant pansies, we add fresh potting soil to which is sterile and keeps the soil surface less infected with disease.  We then treat our pansies with fungicides every few weeks throughout the winter to combat the disease pressure. There is no additional charge for these services as they are built into our fall pansy planting and the cost is all-inclusive. As we have promoted, our program is intensive and may cost a little bit more but it is well worth it. We do what it takes to ensure our customers' pansies survive and thrive.

Although our annual addition of potting soil and fungicide treatment has been relatively effective, we are seeing increasing disease pressure the longer an area has been planted with pansies. The disease can build up over the years making the need to replace the entire soil in the planting area. We are now proposing that potting soil be removed every few years to start with fresh soil throughout the root zone instead of just the soil surface. This has proved to greatly reduce disease problems and the need for frequent fungicide treatments.  You will likely see this proposed in the future.