Linda's Top 5 Plants

What makes you LOVE a certain plant? Do you look for COLOR? Texture? The shape? Do certain plants have special meaning for you? Or maybe you have memories of plants that your grandparents had in their yard growing up?

All of us here at Natural Plus love helping you find the perfect plants for your yard that you will love for years to come. And, after being in business for 42 years, we have figured out what plants do well and are our favorites!

If you’re in the market for some new trees, shrubs, or perennials, you’re going to want to follow along with these blog posts, I’ll be sharing each of our top 5 favorite plants with all of you!

1.    Sugar Maples – Sugar maples are majestic, sturdy, and long lived.  They also have stunning fall colors of oranges, yellows, and reds.  A couple varieties now available are Fall Fiesta and Green Mountain.

Photo from Bailey’s Nursery

2.    Flowering crabs – After long Iowa winters, there is nothing more beautiful than the spring blooming flowering crabs.  There are many varieties available and the newer varieties are disease resistant. My top 2 picks are Spring Snow (white blooming and fruitless) and Prairie Fire (deep red blooms and small berries).

3.    Exochorda Lotus Moon – Commonly known as “Pearl Bush” this is a newer shrub recently added to our inventory. It is a beautiful green upright bush that grows 4-5’ tall. What sets it apart are the white “string of pearls” blooms in June. Truly beautiful.

4.    Hardy Hibiscus – These hardy perennials emerge from the ground mid-June and by August are 4-5’ tall and are covered with very large tropical looking blooms that are about the size of a dinner plates. These come in various colors of white, pinks, and reds.

5.    Coral Bells – These perennials are by far my favorite. They grow in sun or shade and don’t require a lot of attention. Flowers are insignificant, but leaf colors are vibrant from spring through fall and they especially add color to shade gardens.  Depending on variety, leaf colors include yellow, gold, peach colors, red, and burgundy

And, in case you missed them, here are owner Dave’s Top 5 Plant Picks and employee Mike Watson’s and Ree’s.

LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN: REST, RELAX, and RENEW

Lessons from the garden: Rest, Relax and Renew

written by Linda Hopper

Most of us live and work on the fast track. Between work, family, yard work, holidays, and other commitments our tanks are often running on empty.  We go-go-go.

But then - sometimes in the winter, when the garden is resting, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.  We are often stuck inside. Sometimes the winter blues set in.

We need to take a lesson from the garden – Rest, Relax and Renew!

Here are some ideas on how:

• Take an extra nap

• Read or meditate

• Resume a hobby

• If all else fails – find some garden books and look forward to spring!        

Spring will be here soon and we will be back on the fast track.

And then we will long for a day to relax…

Enjoy it now!

THIS NURSERY GIG

🍂This nursery gig 🍂

I hear often, “You have my DREAM JOB! I would love to work outside with plants all day! 🍃

Yes, yes, I do love that part, but as a business owner, that part is a small piece of the bigger picture of owning and operating a retail nursery business.

Running a business is no joke. There is so much that goes in to it—the marketing, the finances and accounting, the billing and estimating, the ordering, the inventory, tracking, bill paying, payroll, decision making, customer service, employees, Human Resources, emails and phone calls—oh the emails and phone calls, and the list goes on and on.

I’m definitely not complaining because being busy is a good sign in business... but, man oh man have we learned so much in the last 5 years.

And having Holtan has shifted priorities for us. We want to work a little less, so we can enjoy him a little more. Sometimes phone calls don’t get made, or emails don’t get answered because we choose family over business. We are grateful to have customers who understand. 

So thank you to all of our customers who have stuck with us over the last 40 years, and especially the last 5... as we have transitioned the business out of Dave and Linda’s hands into ours...

The nursery will continue to change as our family changes. I’m not sure what that looks like, but i imagine time will tell and I trust it will be right. I suppose that’s the beauty of this thing they call a “small family business.”

How fortunate are we that we get to choose what we want for our lives?

Is it scary? Yes.

Is it worth it? ALWAYS YES.

We are looking forward to trying some new things in 2019 and continuing to serve our customers with quality plants and the knowledge to care for them.

Thanks for being here!