What's New at Meadowbrook Farm
Customers who shopped at Meadowbrook Farm during June received points for every dollar they spent. Now, during the “dog days of summer”, they are able to cash in those points, save money, and freshen up their homes and gardens.
Did you shop here in June? Come to Meadowbrook Farm and redeem those accumulated points today.
We have new flowering annuals such as petunias, marigolds, bidens, angelonia, and impatiens in gallon pots for irreplaceable, instant color. There are beautiful mid-summer blooming perennials such as echinacea, lilies, coreopsis, and liatris, and interesting trees and shrubs like oxydendron and illicium. Of course our claim to fame is our tropicals: plumbago, cannas, and gardenias are beautiful, and the mandevilla and dipladenia are looking for a home trellis to climb on.
Summer in the Garden
This summer Meadowbrook Farm has surprises around every corner. Those two crazy gardeners, Glenn Ashton and Tom Reber, are playing dueling gardens (instead of banjos) with plants in hand.
In case you haven’t met him, Tom Reber is our new estate gardener for Mr. Pennock’s home. He is a recent graduate of the Longwood Gardens Professional Gardener School. He also has a degree from Dickenson College in Fine Arts. Whenever I have met a person with a combination of knowledge and passion, it has always been astonishing to see what they can dream up. Tom is refurbishing the gardens in his first season here. There are plantings in every nook and cranny and even tropical plants and succulents in the glass room. He is training a Brugmansia to arch over the outdoor dining area and has some beautiful succulent pots planted around the fountain in the courtyard.
Glenn, on the other hand, brings his self-learned horticulture knowledge to us and exceeds his goals every year. With Tom to antagonize him, Glenn has some conjured up surprises of his own. Upon arrival, as you enter the perennial garden, you will find huge baskets of mixed, unusual plants hanging from the trees!
In pocket gardens, the vegetable garden, and the woodland shade garden you will be amazed to find our finest specimens of tree ferns, colocasia, alocasia, farfugium, begonias, crinum, cyperus, melianthus, and phormium.
Many of these beauties are our stock plants for the Philadelphia Flower Show. Being un-potted and planted out for the summer allows their roots to spread and they are very happy (that is, if plants can be happy). There isn’t any bondage in a clay or plastic pot to stress them out. There are some very happy Meadowbrook Farmers too! The greenhouse staff: Merideth Story, our propagator, Pamela Kates and Sharon Kaszan our growers, and Jennifer Palys, our waterer, do not have to fret on super hot days about keeping these plants watered and alive.
-- Diana K. Weiner
| Click here for a list of fun garden activities you can do in your home landscape this summer. |
