Shop with us for your last minute Christmas gifts!

We just received another shipment of poinsettias to go along with the rosemary and lavender trees. These plants are nice to decorate with, and they make unique gifting items. We also have a few Norfolk Island Pines that are fun to decorate for the holidays and then can be enjoyed in the house the rest of the year. Take them to your Christmas parties!

Our gift department has some new thermometers and outdoor clocks. We also just got in some new solar stakes and a few decorative pieces for the outdoor areas. We have new birdhouses, new hanging décor and a new rain chain option! Our Kinetic spinners are very colorful, unique and intriguing yard art. The art poles, flags, mail wraps and mats make great gifts and are wonderful decorative pieces around your own home during the holidays. We've had lots of questions about the art poles here in the store. Be the first one in your neighborhood with the new trend, or give them as gifts to family and friends!  

We continue to stock a great selection of rain gauges, tools and chimes to gift and have added a new bamboo chime to the mix. They can remind you of warm weather, and sandy beaches, during the cold months of winter.  The indoor gardening items like the heat mats, germination stations, the new thermostats and grow lights also make great gifts for winter activities for gardeners.

Seed packets, trinkets and tools are fun stocking stuffers and why not drop a few paperwhites in the stocking too to grow inside this winter!  We've even got kid's covered with their own tool line. Get them set up to help you work outside this coming year.

To top off all the new items in the store, we also have winter containers you might consider gifting. Check out the hanging baskets at our front door and the drop-in pots you could surprise your relatives with for the holidays. Now that is definitely the cool and unexpected gift!

If you're still not sure what to gift this holiday season, or to stuff in the stocking, give everybody Skinner gift cards! You can purchase them in any amount and they have no expiration dates attached to them, so people don't have to use them all at once.  How wonderful is that?! It just might  be the best gift at the Christmas exchange this year. Santa definitely approves!

It's an exciting time of year around the store, and we sure have a lot of neat presents for the gardener's on your Christmas lists. Come shop at Skinner's for your last minute gifts.

New Item! Outdoor Clocks and Thermometers!

Outdoor Clocks and Thermometers

New items in the store are the outdoor clocks/thermometers. They have arrived just in time for Christmas! We have a very nice thermometer, and two great options that have clocks with a thermometer in them. These are useful and attractive outdoor accessories for all yards. Stop by and check them out. They would make great Christmas gifts!

Cameron's Message 12/5/14

We are officially in the Christmas Season!

All the plants have been tucked away into our overwintering structures and Christmas trees, greens, wreaths and winter porch pots have taken their place…ahhh, the fresh smells of the season! Inside, you’ll find poinsettias, amaryllis and of course, lots of great tools and gardening gadgets.

At home, I’ve wrapped things up for the season too. The planting is done, I’ve spread the last wheel barrel of mulch and I’ve put my own tools away for the season. Landscape projects have now been replaced with holiday decorating projects. The Christmas lights are up, the inside of the house has been transformed (okay, my wife did all of that!) and working up some winter porch pots is definitely in my future.

It’s only been a few weeks of “winter” and already my mind it scheming on next year.

That’s just the way all of us gardeners are wired. We’re always looking ahead and making plans for the future, anticipating all the great things to come…hopefully!

There’s nothing wrong with that, just make sure you take time to enjoy today.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hectic pace the Holiday Season brings and sometimes that can lead to too much focus about tomorrow and not enough on today. I know I’m guilty of it.

My advice, slow down and enjoy!

Enjoy everything this time of the year brings. Celebrate the Season with family and friends and enjoy every day to the fullest. There’s lots of down time in January to worry about the garden!


Happy Holidays!

-Cameron Rees

Great Books for Gardners

A few weeks ago on my radio program, I got a question about my favorite gardening-related books. I quickly came up with two of my favorites, The $64 Tomato, William Alexander and The Last Child in the Woods:  Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv.

The first is a humorous story of the fanatic passion we all share when it comes to our garden. Read it and see if you don’t connect with the author’s experiences. I know I did!

The second is a much more serious look at how the absence of nature in our children’s lives is so directly connected to so many of the issues our younger generations face. This is one that everyone should read. If you grew up playing outdoors as a kid, like most of us did, you will connect with this one.

I put out the call for other favorites and got all kinds of recommendations. I haven’t read any of these, so I can’t tell you anything about them, but a lot of them certainly have caught my eye. I’m definitely going to add a few to my own wish list. If you have a gardener on your shopping list this season, you might want to check out some of these titles too.

Garden Dreams, Ferris Cook

People with Dirty Hands:  The Passion for Gardening, Robin Chotzinoff

One Man’s Garden, Henry Mitchell

Rhapsody In Green:  The Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverly Nichols, Beverly Nichols and Roy C. Dick

Prairie, A Natural History, Candice Savage

Wicked Plants:  The Weed that Killed Lincolns’ Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, Amy Stewart

Wildlife Friendly Plants:  Make Your Garden a Haven for Beneficial Insects, Amphibians and Birds, Rosemary Creeser

Bringing Nature Home:  How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Douglas W. Tallamy

Legacy and Challenge, Rachel Carson

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, Tracy DiSabato-Aust

Noah’s Garden:  Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards, Sara Stein

The Informed Gardener, Linda Chalker-Scott

The After Dinner Gardener, Richard W. Langer

The Bad Tempered Gardener, Ann Wareham

How to Buy the Right Plants, Tools & Gardening Supplies, Jim Fox

Vince Dooley's Garden: A Horticultural Journey of a Football Coach, Vince Dooley

The Complete Book of Garden Magic, Roy Biles

Decorate with Fresh Greens and More!

 Finally some cold weather!  That cold weather can only mean one thing, it is the holiday season!  Christmas trees, wreaths, greens, roping and porch pots of course.  It is time to decorate.  You can get everything you need to decorate your porch, patio, banister and home here at Skinner’s.  Fraser Fir trees make great trees to decorate with their short, firm needles.  Add some roping and greens to your porch rails and fencing.  Every front door certainly needs a wreath with pinecones and ribbons this time of year.

Don’t think your window boxes and patio pots are done for the year!  It’s time to fill them with greens! You can even keep the soil in there to help the greens stay upright.  Pinecones, dogwood stems and holiday picks and ribbons finish them off nicely!  If you don’t know how to make a porch pot, call and ask when the next class is! 

See you at Skinner’s!

Cameron's Post November 20, 2014

So… I was working in my yard, trying to finish off a couple of last second landscape projects when “IT” hit…the “Cold Front”!

You know what I’m talking about…the cold front that hit us the day before Veteran’s Day.  It was something else, wasn’t it? Funny, everybody’s been talking about it like it was the moon landing. Where were you when it happened? Did you see it? Did you hear it? Did you smell it? Everyone’s had a story!

It was quite an experience though!  One minute it was calm and beautiful, and then…just like someone flipped a switch, the winds picked up and the temperature went down.  And it just kept going down! Now we’ve even had snow. The weather certainly does keep us on our toes!

Needless to say, the arrival of cold weather has pushed us into winter mode around here and into it a little sooner than expected. We rushed to get all our plants under cover and finished just in the nick of time. Our once full and beautiful sales yard now looks sad and empty. Oh, our plants are still here, we’ve just tucked them into our overwintering houses to keep them safe from the winter temps . Once it warms back up, if you need some trees or shrubs to finish  some fall projects, we can still get you fixed up.

If you didn’t get all your projects wrapped up, there’s still time. There’s still time to finish up some late season planting, there’s still time to do your fall fertilizing and still time to make sure you have everything ready for the winter. But I wouldn’t put it off too much longer. One of these days it’s going to get cold and stay cold!

As this year’s growing season winds down, I want to say Thank You! Thanks for coming out to see us and thanks for making past season such a good one. It’s been a great year and it’s all because of you. We sincerely appreciate your business!

THANK YOU!

I hope you have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving!

Bringing Plants Indoors With No Passengers

 It is the time of year to move plants indoors, and with that, they need to be treated with Hi-Yield Systemic Insect Granules. Sprinkle the granular insecticide in the soil, scratch it in, and water the area a little bit to activate the chemical. Since it is a systemic, the plant absorbs the chemical up through the root system, and it helps protect the plant’s new growth for up to eight weeks. At the eight week mark, it’s recommended you reapply. This is a good product to use on houseplants, or items you’ve brought indoors for the winter season. It’s especially helpful if the plants have been moving from indoors to outdoors and back and forth. It is important to apply this product before actual bug problems occur, or at the first sign of a problem. If you have any immediate concerns with bugs on the foliage, you may need to use our Bonide Insecticidal Soap to treat the actual plant leaves. Follow all label instructions for more information and guidance.