Bucks County Welcomes Spring with the Bucks Beautiful Garden & Home Show

Last weekend, pots of colorful tulips, daffodils, pansies and other plants greeted visitors to Bucks County's biggest home and garden and home show.

The show featured exhibits from area home product and landscape design companies and seminars about gardening and saving energy. Proceeds from the three-day event benefit the Bucks Beautiful Scholarship and Garden Grant programs. Bucks Beautiful is a program of the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce.

On Saturday, perennial plant expert Kent Russell packed the room for his talk on "Candy in the Garden." Russell's roots so-to-speak are planted firmly in Bucks County. He grew up tending and propagating plants at the family business, Churchville-based Russell Gardens. Today, Russell does what he loves best: speaking about his favorite plants and designing gardens for his clients.

Always entertaining and informative, Russell brought pots and pots of his favorite shrubs, perennials and annuals, and spoke about their merits. However, "spoke" would be an understatement: this man loves plants and anyone who has heard him speak knows this after just a few minutes. He gushes about colors, textures, fragrance and other attributes. Gardeners love him and eat up this "candy" lecture.

"If you're here to hear about making Easter candy, you're in the wrong lecture!" joked Russell.

Russell's "Candy in the Garden" lecture refers to "eye candy," of course. A "perennial" jokester, Russell knows how to work a room and bring down the house with his garden humor. A woman in the next row was laughing so hard, she wiped away tears. I've attended many garden lectures throughout the years, and no one hits the funny bone in quite the way that Russell does.

As Russell spoke about some of his favorite plants, hellebores were on his mind. Lots and lots of hellebores. If you're not familiar with these late-winter, early-spring blooming perennials, you'll want to get acquainted with them. These deer-proof plants bloom reliably in a variety of tough conditions from sun to shade. Both the rosey-purple and greenish-white varieties perform well in my clay soil.

Geraniums are one of the most popular annuals on the market. You can find traditional red geraniums just about anywhere, but if you want something a little bit different this year, try some of Russell's favorites that include scented geraniums with fragrant rose, citrus, peppermint, nutmeg and lemon-scented leaves.

Someone grabbed the hanging basket overflowing with peppermint-scented geraniums as soon as the lecture ended. With delightful, large wooly foliage and peppermint-scented leaves, it's a great novelty plant that's sure to spark lots of conversation with friends and neighbors this summer. You won't be able to keep your hands off of its soft, fuzzy leaves.

Other geranium favorites include: 'Occold Shield,' a showy variety with clusters of coral-red flowers above rounded, golden-green leaves with bronze centers. 'Crystal Palace Gem' bears bright red flowers above rounded chartreuse and green variegated leaves. The beautiful clusters of salmon-colored flowers dance above the banded green leaves in the appropriately named, 'Bird Dancer.' 'Persian Queen' flaunts her bright-magenta flowers above the striking chartreuse leaves.

"What about 'Mr. Henry Cox?'" asked a gardener who knows her plants. "Oh yes! We couldn't forget him!" Russell grabbed the potted plant as everyone oohed and aahhed. You won't even care if this geranium blooms with its striking banded scalloped-toothed green, red and golden multi-colored leaves, although the blooms are a medium pink. When you plant 'Mr. Henry Cox,' you'd better stick a label in the container because everyone will want to know his name.

Russell spent more than an hour pulling out pot after pot of mostly perennials and annuals and some shrubs. Other favorites of his include the annuals 'Kiwi Fern' coleus and yellow-blooming 'Samantha' variegated leaf lantana. 'Arnold Promise' witchhazel, a large shrub, bears yellow blossoms before the forsythias and daffodils. 'Pink-a-Blu' blueberry works well in a whiskey barrel container or the garden. This bush bearing bright pink berries and red fall leaves grows to about four feet tall.

"I like to combine fragrance, color, foliage and texture in pots," said Russell. With the selections he brought, gardeners are sure to have a colorful, carefree garden this summer. During his talk Russell kept referring to a former audience member who once asked, "Do I need to water [the plant]?" "Yes, plants do need water!" he quipped. But we're all looking for more drought-tolerant plants so as not to become slaves to the watering can. Personally, I can vouch for the annual lantana; these beautiful, yet tough, drought-tolerant annuals come in a variety of colors. Once you try some in one color, you'll want to try more in other colors next year. These plants are on my "must have" list every year.

For more information, visit: bucksbeautiful.com/html/fair.htm.