It may be overcast outdoors, but our garden house is is filling up with the first annuals of the season. Come and enjoy the flowers!
Houseplants and tropicals available this weekend
We're in the process of unpacking a whole truckload of houseplants and tropicals. They should be ready for browsing this weekend!
Whether your space is large or small, you can grow your own fruit!
Make your spring sweet with our fresh selection of fruit trees and shrubs. Add an old standby to your garden, like an apple or a peach, or try something new, like an Asian pear!
Short on space? Here are some fun fruits to try:
Top Hat Lowbush Blueberry is self-fertile and small enough to grow in a container, which makes it simple to provide the acidic soil that it needs to thrive. It's also a beautiful plant, with fine, glossy green leaves display blazing fall color, and it bears masses of tasty wild blueberries!
Caroline & Heritage Raspberries both bear two crops in a season, and are easy to train upright along a fence or wire support. Chester Blackberry is a thornless variety. All of our brambles are self-fertile.
Stanley Plum is meltingly sweet and self fertile, available on dwarf rootstock. It makes excellent dried fruit, as well!
The columnar apple trees have a narrow footprint, growing upright rather than outward, and produce a generous crop of fruit. Choose any two for cross-pollination, or plant one near any white flowering ornamental crabapple tree.
We also have a selection of robust dwarf freestone peaches and dwarf Apricots for northern gardeners, which are not only delicious, but bear exquisitely ornamental flowers in spring.
If you've got a little more room, check out our semi-dwarf fruit trees and fruit-bearing bushes.
Carmine Jewel Bush Cherry is an unusual and attractive shrub that grows about 6' tall and wide, bearing tasty pie cherries that are sweet enough to enjoy out of hand.
Highbush blueberries are semi self-fertile, but they produce the heaviest crop if you plant two or more.
European Pear trees and Asian Pears are your best bet for long keeping fruit, so if you want to enjoy the fruit of your own backyard late into winter, get a pair of pears! As a bonus, pear blossoms (particularly the Asian Pears,) are especially attractive to the earliest spring butterflies- ours are often swarmed by Red Admirals in April.
Both sweet cherries and pie cherries make excellent home grown fruit. Sweet cherry trees need another variety to cross-pollinate with, but pie cherries are self fertile.
We've also got a selection of apple trees adapted for Midwestern gardeners. Most apple trees require two or more varieties within 50' to cross pollinate with (or a white-flowered crabapple tree,) but if you can only plant one, take home a self-fertile Golden Delicious. While grocery store Golden Delicious are unripe when picked, and therefore bland, a fully ripe apple fresh off the tree is richly flavored with dessert-quality sweetness and just a hint of spice.
Our fruit trees sell out fast, so visit early for the best selection!
Schedule your free mulch delivery early!
Our 2021 Mulch Madness season is scheduled from April 5th-April 24th, but if you call our Stone Market at 309-689-2513 from now through April 3rd and mention Mulch Madness, you can schedule a free hardwood mulch delivery ahead of the rush!
The Green Thumb Garden Show is Back!
The Green Thumb Gardening Show is back on 1470 WMBD, at 7am on Saturday mornings! Tune in to hear Ethan Wise and Dan Diorio talk gardening for Central Illinois.
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