The month of May is a time of change and renewal.

The month of May is a time of change and renewal.

Students are finishing the school year, the doldrums of winter are finally over and people begin thinking about their summer vacation plans.

Contributed by: Matthew Lane – Published Thursday, May 18, 2022

May is also the perfect time of the year to plant a garden, landscape your yard or just buy a couple of houseplants to brighten up the indoors. The month is named for the Greek goddess of growth after all.

PROTECTING THE POLLINATORS

If you’re not entirely sure what to do with your greenspace this year, here are some suggestions from three local growing experts who each bring their own style when it comes to plants.

Neil Brown is a chemical engineer at Eastman Chemical Company, the chair of Keep Kingsport Beautiful and a gardening enthusiast. Since moving back to Kingsport in 2014, Brown has embraced his green thumb and dove head first in improving the overall look of the Model City.

One of his key issues when it comes to managing your yard is trying to focus on pollinator conservation as much as possible. Pollinators are animals, such as bees, moths and hummingbirds, which carry pollen from flower to flower, essentially helping plants reproduce.

The service these animals provide is necessary for the reproduction of more than 85% of the world’s flowering plants, as well as two-thirds of the world’s crop species, according to the Xerces Society – an international conservation non-profit organization.

“Pollinators are important to our economy and our civilization,” Brown said. “Which is why I’d like to see more people in our community keep pollinators in mind when planting flowers.”

How you do that is by planting pollinator-friendly plants, Brown said, such as nectar plants (honeysuckle, zinnia and day lilies) and host plants, which are plants insects lay their eggs on and then eat as they grow.

“Having a mix of nectar plants that are blooming at different times of the season to help as many species as you can, as well as different host plants for different types of butterflies, is the best way to help pollinators,” Brown said. “Having highly manicured turf grass? That’s the worst thing you could do. It’s better to do nothing with your yard than to do that.”

For more information on pollinator conservation visit xerces.org.

WEIRD AND WICKED

If you’re new to gardening and not entirely sure what to do with your yard, then going with reliable options might be the best (and safest) choice for you. However, veteran planters might want to live on the edge a little bit and go with something different…something wicked maybe.

That’s where the Wicked Plant Shop of Colonial Heights comes in.

Owner Jane Hall, who opened the business back in March 2020 with her daughter, said that’s the specialty of the Wicked Plant Shop.

“If you read the definition of ‘wicked’ in the dictionary, the last entry is exceptional,” Hall said. “We wanted to be exceptional, to have the weird and different stuff. We wanted to be above what everyone else was doing.”

Hall does that by buying from and supporting local farmers within 200 miles of Kingsport. The fewer the miles on the plants, the better, she says. Seeds come from Asheville, hanging baskets from Piney Flats, trees and shrubs out of Bristol, annuals from Knoxville and perennials from Blacksburg, Virginia.

When the Wicked Plant Shop opened its doors, it did so three days before the country shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Hall thought her budding enterprise would die off before it even got started.

Not so, she said. Turns out her plant business was deemed ‘essential’ and many people, who were forced indoors, wanted and needed to have something green in their lives.

“Little did we realize that COVID did us a big favor. We stayed open and found ways to be productive during the pandemic,” Hall said. “People were home, trying to improve their home, so they and went out and got house plants. This plant craze went ridiculous and we still have a lot of those customers today.”

In addition to the unusual offerings, the Wicked Plant Shop keeps a selection of popular plants, house plants and succulents, perennials, annuals and edibles and has just recently dove into water plants.

Their planting bar is free, you can come in and staff will help you put together most any type of garden – fairy, herb or geraniums – along with coaching you on how to build them. That last part, the coaching, is something Hall said makes her shop different than others.

“We’re coaches, we know what to put into containers and when you come here, we’ll know our plants,” Hall said. “We’re here to help our customers and talk them through how to take care of that plant.”For more information on the Wicked Plant Shop visit their website at www.thewickedplantshop.com.

Everything was going well. Then the pandemic hit.

Naturally the two men panicked, but like with the Wicked Plant Shop, the Downtown Plant Bar did rather well during the pandemic.

“People sat at home and realized their house was empty and that they needed it to feel alive,” Pannell said.

For nearly a year, Pannell and McClure did curbside pickup at the Downtown Plant Bar with the most popular item being a $15 succulent in a terra cotta pot with moss and soil. Parents, grandparents and homeschoolers bought them by the dozen.

Today, the store (now located on Sullivan Street) is back to normal, offering a variety of indoor tropical house plants, succulents, indoor ferns and prayer plants. The two men specialize in terrarium building for customers in private events, birthday parties and corporate team building exercises. The business has held three street fairs along Sullivan Street and just this past April, held a craft and plant fair in Glen Bruce Park.

“We’ve been in our building two years in June and the location has been good for us and since we came in other stores have popped up nearby,” Pannell said. “More than 70% of our pandemic customers are still with us, so the interest in plants stuck with a lot of people.”For more information on The Downtown Plant bar visit their website at www.downtownplantbar.com.