Category: garden gifts

June Calls for Gift Giving

JUNE . . . Celebrate Teachers, Graduates, Brides, Grooms & Dads, Graduations & Weddings.

This June, give your favorite bride and groom or graduate a gift that will keep giving through the years. Alden Lane has a great selection of gift giving ideas. Drop by and let us show you some of the following:

  • A houseplant for a new apartment or dorm.
  • Give a tree to commemorate the occasion.
  • Accessories for the home and garden.
  • Slate heart stepping stones you can personalize with our sidewalk chalk.
  • Gift baskets for the new garden filled with seeds, gloves and gardening tools of all kinds!
  • A piece of garden statuary that will improve with the passage of time.
  • A flowering plant that will be a reminder of the occasion when it blooms on the anniversary each year.

Remember Dad – It’s Father’s Day – June 17th

Come by the nursery for great gift suggestions for dad!

  • A gift box of Dutch House Sea Salt Caramels.
  • A tabletop Aquaflame Candle Fountain for his desk.
  • Statuary benches, arbors, garden art and more to create the feel of an outdoor room for relaxing.
  • Decorative containers to fill with plants of his choice for deck and patio.
  • His own orchard of fruit-filled trees.
  • Shiny new tools for his gardening collection.
  • Plant a citrus tree for dad. It’s a gift that gives more each year.
  • Lush houseplants for his office that will beautify and clean the air.
  • Cheerful color bowls.

We provide complimentary gift wrap.
Remember your favorite teachers . . .
. . . with a blooming plant or special treasure from our Gift Shop. We’re happy to help select and wrap.

Your Edible Landscape – By Nancy McNeish

This year Alden Lane features a monthly look at growing edible plants in your home landscape, beginning with fruit trees.

My neighbor’s tree has large, dark green, leathery leaves which are deeply lobed. It is a smallish tree, more like a dense, full bush, and graces the walkway up to the front door. Best of all are the rich black fruits with a sweet strawberry-colored interior which ripen twice a year and are eagerly collected by another neighbor. It is a ‘Black Mission’ fig, a tree cultivated in California since the Spanish settled here.

Mission Fig is but one of many varieties of attractive, productive, edible plants suitable for growing in your front yard. Following my neighbor’s lead, I now have a ‘Violette de Bordeaux’ fig growing in my front yard. It produced its first fruits the autumn after I planted it.

I also have a glossy-leaved navel orange, a multi-graft pluot, and a dwarf peach/nectarine growing among my other front yard landscape plants. And why not? My south and west exposures are ideal, and the fruit trees are just as attractive as more traditional landscape plants. Sweet homegrown fruits are the reward.

Mid to late January is the ideal time to select and plant your favorite fruit tree from our abundant selection. Roots establish more quickly in winter moist soils, and new green shoots will quickly follow. Alden Lane’s “Fruit Picks” for ­delicious and beautiful deciduous (leafless in winter) fruit trees:

Apple – Columnar ‘Northpole’ and ‘Scarlet Sentinel’ are strikingly handsome accents for small spaces.
Cherry – Frothy late white flowers yield early fruits. Try all around champ ‘Lapins’.
Peach – Cute as a bug dwarf ‘Garden Sun’ or ‘Pix Zee’ forms lush, tropical looking bushes.
Pear – Choose disease resistant ‘Harrow Delight’ or ‘Warren’ for clouds of white spring blossoms and heavenly flavor
Persimmon – Easy to grow with showy fruits which light up the autumn landscape. Enjoy the large fruits of ‘Giant Fuyu’
Plum – Gorgeous ‘Weeping Santa Rosa’ combines flowing fountain form and classic, rich, dark fruits
Pluot – Kick the sweet up a notch with ‘Flavor King’, a naturally smaller tree or ‘Splash’, with very sweet orange-colored fruit

See our Backyard Orchard Page

Plant Nannies – Vacation Waterers

plant-nanny-wineThe Plant Nanny company fills an important need for the plant kingdom providing water reservoirs that will not only provide additional water to extend the time between watering but… they do this job beautifully.

Plant nannies include a terra cotta probe which fits into the soil topped by either a beautiful , handmade glass globe or a recycled wine bottle (provided by the gardener).

Perfect for stretching the time between watering house plants. May also be used outdoors.

Planning a vacation? Begin to use Plant Nannies now so plants are accustomed to this new source of water by the time you leave town.

See when to water.  Use recycled wine bottles as a water reservoir.  Insert the pre-soaked terracotta stake near the center of the plant, fill a wine bottle with water and set it into the stake. Lasts 7-10 days for medium to larger plants.  The set includes 4 stakes and instructions.

The fluted or spiral watering globes and ceramic stake sets are not just beautiful, they make plant care easier.

Water less often and know at a distance when you need to add more.  Use indoors and outside.  Great for vacation plant care.  Comes in 2 sizes and several styles.

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