HAZELTINE NURSERIES, INC.

A Naturally Grown Company

Written by Suzi Harkola & Photography Courtesy of Hazeltine Nurseries

As spring arrives this month, consider marking the beginning of the new season by sprucing up your home, garden or business with vibrant plants and fragrant flowers. Whether you are looking for a few spices for an herb garden, want to select plants that will attract butterflies to your yard or have a larger landscaping endeavor in mind, Hazeltine Nurseries in Venice can guide you every step of the way.

The Festive
Holiday Bottlebrush

By Christiane Francin

The striking bold red spikes of the bottlebrush (Callistemon spp.) enhance gardens all over the world. Native to Australia and successfully introduced into similar climates, the plant comes from a genus of 34 colorful species, all in the family Myrtaceae, leading to a rainbow-rich variety of beautiful alternatives for gardening. This distinctive medium-sized shrub, with showy red blooms, is named for its resemblance to a brush for cleaning bottles. Offering beauty with a lifespan of 20 to 40 years, this dense evergreen shrub will add a colorful charm to your home.

MOONLIGHT GARDEN

Written by Sam Schunk

Think of the unexpected appeal of entering into a private garden. To set your garden apart, you may want to use a fence or hedge, or secluded location. A white picket fence, especially when contrasted by plants with dark foliage, may create a striking visual display.

SUCCULENTS...

A Multitude of Choices to Enhance Your South Florida Landscape

Written by Suzi Harkola

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Florida succulents are popular in both indoor and outdoor garden settings. They’re beautiful, a breeze to care for, and nearly indestructible.

Succulents are appropriately named, as they store water in their leaves, stems or roots. These plants can take many shapes, from tight rosettes to columns of trailing leaves, or just the compact, needled variety that we also call cactus. Gardeners may know them as “hen and chicks,” aloe, desert rose, sedum, kalanchoe or jade plants.

Sprouting Fun from a Seed!

People love pumpkins!

They’re easy to grow, make cute decorations, and are used abundantly in recipes, since their flowers, seeds, and pulp are edible. This gourd-like squash is thought to be native to North America; similar fossilized seeds have been discovered dating as far back as 7,000 B.C.

Their Amazing Longevity

Humans have the insight to imagine a time span of hundreds of years, but it is hard to comprehend 354 million years. That is how long ago ferns have been proven to have existed, according to fossil dating. For 64 million years they grew in a warm, humid climate in swamps and contributed a great amount of oxygen to the air; so much so, that plants reached gigantic sizes. When the ferns died they formed peat beds, which, after time and compression of layer upon layer, eventually became coal or the carbon in that particular period in history known as the Carboniferous Era.

The leaf of the fern is known as the frond, and today varies in size from the tree fern’s 12-foot length to the tiniest mosquito fern with leaves of only 1/16 of an inch long. The frond begins in a tightly curled shape known as the crosier or fiddlehead, and during development, unfurls to become a leaf.

We love our ferns in flower arrangements, in our gardens and on our nature walks.

The next time you gaze at their beauty, try to fathom their emergence almost 400 million years ago!