My Backyard At Nectars

06/06/2026

**We're too tall for our pots sale!**

2 gallon Halesia carolina.

Regular price $40.

Sale price $25.00

Only 2 plants available! Someone took 5 this afternoon!

06/06/2026

The Inkberry in our home garden are in full bloom! What a show...if you look closely!

Covered in bees of all sizes, Ilex glabra is one of our most adaptable New Jersey native evergreens. Happiest in full to part sun in moist acidic soils with good drainage, I've personally seen it growing in the Pine Barrens in pretty deep shade along a water's edge. It can also tolerate wet soils, clay, and it even has a little salt tolerance. In our yard here, Inkberry sits well in a sandy loam and shows great deer resistance.

At the garden center, we currently have 'Shamrock' in stock which reaches 5' in height over time. It is a female cultivar, meaning it will get little black fruit if a male is present. (Please note that we currently have no males at the garden center). I tip prune our shrubs often as to help keep them more compact, though like many native shrubs, Ilex glabra can get a bit woody on the bottom. You can always plant perennials or a lower shrub to help cover these legs up. Inkberry does colonize when happy, but this can be contained with some pruning.

There are only two male cultivars of Inkberry that I know of, one of which is 'Squeeze Box', and is pretty hard to come by. I bring it in whenever possible. I also do my best to label male and female plants at the garden center when I am able to source the straight species and berries are present.

Happy Saturday from My Backyard to yours. We are open today and tomorrow from 10am-4pm.

06/04/2026

Spirea alba var. latifolia or Spirea latifolia is a New Jersey native shrub reaching 2-4' in height, is more commonly known as Meadowsweet. Wildly adaptable, Meadowsweet does best in full to part sun in moist to wet soils, but adapts well to filtered sun, average and even compacted soils.

With months of bloom time, Meadowsweet is a great plant for all sorts of pollinators. Its pale pink to white blooms are lightly fragrant. The soft green leaves provide food for the Spring Azure Butterfly, the New Jersey Tea Moth, and others. Stick this plant by your pool or patio, I'd suggest it as a native substitute for the wildly popular panicle Hydrangeas. Meadowsweet can be pruned in late winter to better shape your plants, remove old wood, and control or slow its colonizing habit.

Deer resistant. Plant a single shrub or plant it in mass. A rain garden sub shrub to accent a Buttonbush, or a shrub to stabilize an embankment. By a pond or at the woods' edge... the choice is yours.

In reading some about Spirea latifolia, I had read this plant will "never win a Spirea beauty contest." While this plant may never be as bright and colorful as some of the Japanese varieties in cultivation, our native birds and insects will much prefer this species. To me, that holds all of the beauty in the world.

Happy Thursday, from My Backyard to yours.
Keep your plants watered and stay hydrated as we start to gear up for Summer time temperatures.

06/04/2026

We are a few days late here with this month's native plant count, but I thought it would be fun to share this old count from two years ago...

This past May (2026) we sold a total of 4,932 Northern American Native Plants, bringing our running total just a pinch over 33,000 plants!

One customer might come in and buy one plant, another customer buys three..and while you may not feel like you are making enough of difference, when you think all of the plants we have planted together...you just have to feel good!

So again, we thank you. We thank you for caring about the earth and for planting for pollinators. Every plant sold is one step in the right direction, we couldn't be any more AMAZED at how quickly these plants are moving!

In other exciting news, we've just hit 3000 Facebook followers! We thank our customers, but we are equally grateful for those following along as well. Every like, comment, or share helps us get the word out and introduces us to even more people.

This is shaping up to be a National Pollinator Month for the record books. Let's see how many plants we can get in the ground this month!

What plant are you still wanting to add to your yard this Spring??

06/03/2026

06/03/2026

Penstemon digitalis, a New Jersey native perennial that fills the late Spring bloom gap in the most ethereal of ways...and the bumblebees will thank you for it!

Happiest in full to part sun, Penstemon digitalis (or Foxglove Beardtongue) reaches 2-5' in height and can be quite the reseeder. It prefers average to dry soils, and while it can tolerate heavy clay soils, good drainage is a must.

In our Bound Brook garden, I have Penstemon digitalis planted with Little Bluestem, Rattlesnake Master, Baptisia australis, Silene virginica, Monarda bradburiana, and even Penstemon digitalis 'Onyx and Pearls' to give me some color when other plants aren't blooming.

I've mentioned bumblebees, but Penstemon are also enjoyed by hummingbirds and serve as a host plant to quite a few different butterflies and moths.

Resistant to deer and rabbits, this is a true pollinator favorite plant. Do you have the right spot in your yard for Foxglove Beardtongue? Would you add it to your yard? If you have it, do you love it? What's it planted with?

Happy Wednesday, from My Backyard to yours. The garden center is open today from 10-4pm.

06/02/2026

These Painted Lady Caterpillars are devouring our Pussytoes! Everyone is celebrating National Pollinator Month...what a vision this morning!

While these photos are from our own home garden, we do carry Plantain Leaf Pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginfolia) AND Antennaria neglecta (Field Pussytoes) at the garden center.

Of my favorite things in nature's design is how entire plants can be devoured by caterpillars, and the plants don't skip a beat for the next round of caterpillars.