Some of us seem to be endowed with the proverbial “green thumb,” naturally gifted from birth with the ability to fill our homes and gardens with lush, thriving foliage and blooms. Others of us — well, maybe we’ve had one or two past experiences where plants died on our watch, and now we’ve branded ourselves as “bad gardeners.” Fortunately, for people who think of themselves as gardening-disabled, Miles Kimball offers some solutions that might even have your plant-proficient neighbors getting a little green.

Pre-Seeded Flower Mats: Just Add Water

Shade-Tolerant Blooms. For easy-to-grow garden flowers, Miles Kimball offers a nice assortment of pre-seeded flower mats, rolls and bags, all with different flower mixes and sun requirements. Our selection includes many varieties that are shade tolerant. This way, even those of you who don’t get much direct sun exposure in your yard, can enjoy watching gorgeous beds of blooms pop up before your eyes. One shade-tolerant choice is the Hens & Chicks, which thrives in partial to full shade. After approximately three weeks, the mat yields 15 varieties of flowers and plants, including poppies and forget-me-nots.

Another option for shade environments is our lovely Bag o’ Blooms Shade-Loving Pansies, a bag pre-seeded with magnificent purple and yellow pansies. All you do is hang the bag wherever you’d like some floral fabulousness — like on an exterior wall of your porch, or a deck, trellis or fence — and water it. Within a few weeks, your friends will be “oohing and aahing” over the bounty of blooms.

Sunnier Spots. If you have areas of your yard that get more sun, Miles Kimball has several other fragrant and easy-care flower collections. Our Sunny Tree Ring, for example, is perfect for covering the ground beneath a tree with cheery blooms in multiple hues — including pink, orange, rose, mauve, blue-violet, purple, white, blue, yellow and red — throughout the summer. The best part is that these are perennials, which means they’ll continue to bloom year after year.

Or how about attracting some fascinating garden visitors to your yard with our Butterfly and Hummingbird Roll-Out Seed Mat? With partial sun and water, this mat produces an amazing array of vibrant flowers, selected especially for their attractiveness to butterflies and hummingbirds. If you know someone who’s particularly fond of these delicate creatures, this seed mat makes a perfect spring gift.

Other Special Picks. Miles Kimball’s Honeybee Garden Flower Mat serves a dual purpose by offering a summer medley of spectacular, aromatic flowers, specifically selected for their ability to attract honeybees. As you may know, honeybees and a great number of other insect populations are declining worldwide due to factors such as pesticide use, habitat destruction and climate change. By planting a honeybee garden, you can help support one species of these important pollinators.

Finally, if you love the look of a uniform cluster of one type of flower, check out our Sunflower Garden Mat or Merry Marigolds Mat.

Unique Plants for Extraordinary Gardens

All of Miles Kimball’s Garden Center plants are carefully chosen, with due consideration to their ease of planting and maintenance — according to their specified seasonal planting requirements and suggested type of soil, of course. Some of our plant varieties are quite exceptional-looking, and we encourage all beginning gardeners to challenge themselves by trying a couple in your own yard or house. We offer further help by pricing all our products reasonably, enabling more people to try something new. In the case of our Plant and Garden Department products, you have the opportunity to raise healthy plants with ease (as well as raise your gardening confidence).

One of our plants renowned for its heart-shaped, bluish-tinged leaves with dramatic ribbed veins is the Blue Angel Hosta. This member of the lily family is a large-leaved Hosta, which looks lush and tropical when used for groundcover. Although the Blue Angel Hosta may be exotic in appearance, it is still considered easy to grow.

Another easily cultivated, but distinctly striking and showy plant within any landscaping scheme, is our Nikko Blue Hydrangea. This versatile, fast-growing shrub produces large clusters of bright, indigo-blue flowers. Interestingly, the color of the flowers can vary according to the acidity of the soil; more alkaline soils, with a pH greater than 7, result in pinkish-colored hydrangea blooms. A nice advantage of the Nikko Blue Hydrangea is that it has an extended bloom during the summer — more than four weeks.

One other Miles Kimball favorite is the Peacock Jasmine, which blooms almost continuously once it’s mature. This delightful plant has delicate leaves and elegant, pure-white buds. When in bloom, it exudes a blissful fragrance, which is especially pleasurable when you grow this plant inside the house in a small pot. The Peacock Jasmine does not need much direct sunlight, so it makes a great indoor plant that will bring you joy every day with its exquisite appearance and sweet aroma.

Sowing the Soul

There are few things quite as natural and satisfying as sowing and raising plants and flowers. It can give you a fulfilling sense of creating something beautiful from what began as a plain-looking seed or bulb. We at Miles Kimball hope that even those of you who may think of yourselves as “plant-killers” will take advantage of our Garden Department selection and affordability to experiment with and be captivated by this simple, surprisingly rewarding experience of nurturing another living thing.