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Our nursery covers 4.5 acres, with more than 500 varieties of trees, shrubs, vines and ground covers. Our knowledgeable staff will help you select the perfect trees and shrubs to complement your garden setting. Color All Summer Long – Starring Crape Myrtles! What plant gives you tons of brilliant landscape colors all summer long and comes in many forms and sizes for every landscape application? The reply is crape myrtles.  The summer has just started and so has the blooming period of the crape myrtles around homes, businesses and public places. There is no better signature plant of Maryland summers and the South as this wonderful flowering shrub. So, does this popularity come with a price? Have crape myrtles become much too common and so over-planted as to become a visual bore, rather than a blessing? Not a chance, say most area gardeners.Summer is the season of color and the numbers of new and interesting sizes, forms, and shades of flower color that are available with the crape myrtles is quite impressive. Its ability to produce cycle after cycle of blooms on new growth make it a reliable bloomer from late June through September. It delights in the sun, likes the heat and is not bothered by the high humidity. Whether used in pots or as low, medium or tall shrubs, as well as low-growing trees, there is a place for a form of crape myrtle just about any place in the yard. Some of the best new varieties are available to our customers now. The Filligree Series of dwarf crape myrtle from the Fleming Brothers Nurseries of Nebraska are available again this year in red and purple flowers. The ‘Red Filli’ and ‘Violet Filli’ grow to 12 to 18 inches high and are the only crape myrtles that survive the winter in temperatures in USDA Zone 4 (winter temperatures down to -20°F). They are excellent choices for low all-summer-blooming hedges and borders. Our large selection of many varieties of crape myrtles at Homestead Gardens is increasing so that we will have one of the largest selections in the area to choose from by the time of our annual Crape Myrtle Festival, July 17 thru 19. Please stop in this month to check out the many blooming crapes that will be on display and to ask our nursery staff any questions you may have about planting and caring for these flowering marvels that have been called the “lilacs of the south.”
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Forests are our most strategically important natural resource. Trees protect water quality, clean our air and provide wildlife habitat. One large tree can eliminate 5,000 gallons of stormwater runoff each year, and well placed trees can help reduce energy costs by 15 to 35 percent.
