Garden Center: Check out the Clearance items in the Garden Center!

Nursery: Great selection of Butterfly Bush, Grasses and Xeric Shrubs.

Perennials: New Arrivals coming in weekly! Hurry in for best selection.

Greenhouse: Lots of color!

HCG Alb: Color on Sale! Come in now for best selection. Also, continued, ‘Selected’ Large Trees and Botanical Interest Seeds on Sale 50% OFF.

Saturday August 4

Rain Barrel Event!

Andy Mogg and Bob Bruce of SFG will be on hand to help with your Rain Barrel selection and answer any questions you may have about water catchment.

Now through August 29th
Free guided tours through our Xeric Garden have begun and will run on Wednesdays at 10am and Saturdays at 10 & 11am.

• Refresh your garden by planting August and September blooming perennials such as Salvia, Asters, Agastache or Mums for late season color. We have a large selection ready to plant.
• It's time to fertilize trees and shrubs if you haven't already done so. Fertilizing with nitrogen after the beginning of August could cause green growth that may freeze in October. We recommend Yum Yum® Mix or Gro-power. Both these organic fertilizers have a low nitrogen level.
• An average rain provides 300 to 600 gallons of water off a 2,000 sq. ft. roof. Save all that water in our freeze-proof, crack-proof rain barrel, so sturdy it's the last rain barrel you'll ever buy!

 Weekly Sales

20% OFF Rain Barrels – All sizes & colors. Offer good through 8/9/07. Special Orders Accepted. Not to be combined with any other offers or discounts.

25% OFF Lilacs & Butterfly Bush. Offer good through 8/9/07 or while supplies last. Not to be combined with any other offers or discounts.

25% OFF Summer Annuals and Annual packs – Excluding Geraniums. Offer good through 8/9/07 or while supplies last. Not to be combined with any other offers or discounts.

Getting a Sense of Scent
By Cindy Bellinger

The other evening as I climbed the steps to the deck I caught a whiff that about knocked me over. A pot of large marigolds nearby had just sent up a scent. Hmmmm. That's what gardening is all about, I thought. Lovely.

And this made me think about choosing flowers. You need to consider all kinds of angles when choosing a flowering plant--cultural needs such as sun, shade, soil type, watering requirements. So why not take one extra step and add to the list flowers that smell good, too. Following is a partial list of smell-good flowers.

Scented Flowers

Perennials

• Chocolate Flower, Lilies, Soapwort, Creeping Phlox, Aster
• Garden Phlox, Dianthus, Sweet Violets, Peonies
• Candytuft, Wallflower, Four O’Clocks, Evening Primrose
• Agastache, Dame’s Violet, Forget-Me-Nots, Passion Flower, Bee Balm, Lupine

Annuals

• Sweet Peas, Stock, Petunias, Dahlberg Daisies, Nicotiana
• English Primrose, Dianthus, Miniature Carnations, Sweet Alyssum

Placement
Large pots of scented flowers can be installed around the garden for instant fragrance. Still, the trick to bringing flower scents into your landscape is finding a strategy to placing those flowers. Plant in the ground or arrange containers so the flowers can absorb the day's heat. The stuff that makes scents builds up in flowers through the day; come nightfall that's when the fragrances are released. Also, so the scents don't dissipate too quickly, set flowers away from wind channels, too.

Other spots for scented flowers

• in window boxes under open windows
• near screen doors that are left open
• near entrances so guests are welcomed with fresh garden scents

Like texture and height, fragrance adds another dimension to any landscape. A garden may be pleasing to the eye, but an unexpected fragrance truly lifts it out of this world. And keep in mind that fragrant landscapes also let young children and people with limited eyesight enjoy yet another element of a garden.

Read My Little Garden Patch - gardening column by Cindy Bellinger.