How does your garden grow? Food and flowers take on new roles in landscaping

This story is from the July 2024 Home Builders Association of Greenville official publication, part of a special flip edition ofTALK Greenville. 

Ornamental and foundation plantings are classic landscaping solutions that will always have their place for homeowners. But Stephanie Szkolnicki, owner of Southern Garden Solutions, says she loves helping homeowners create the gardens of their dreams. Often, that means introducing them to native plants, flowers that will overflow their vases and foodscaping that makes vegetable gardening part of everyday life. 

“I'm a huge proponent of perennials just because they come back year after year, but there are actually a lot of native plants that do well in the summer,” Szkolnicki says. 

For abundant summer color that survives the heat, Szkolnicki is partial to echinacea (coneflowers), rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan) and Shasta daisies. For annuals, zinnias can offer armloads of cut flowers.  

“If you keep cutting those – deadheading them or taking them in for cut flowers – they keep producing,” she says. “The point of the flower is to create the seeds for the next generation.” 

Take the flowers before they go to seed and the plant will continue to produce flowers.  

More summer favorites? Szkolnicki loves asters, which bloom from early summer well into the fall. She also adds beebalm and milkweed, which are great food for pollinators.  

Upstate homeowners are often fighting (and losing) the garden battle with wildlife, as deer, squirrels, rabbits and even bears help themselves to the all-you-can-eat buffet of plants. Szkolnicki’s solution is to enclose the garden, as she recently did for a client in Greenville.  

“It's enclosed with wire fencing that has one-inch holes so that your pollinators can still come in and go out,” she says.  

A bounty of foodscaping 

Foodscaping is transforming yards into homegrown bounty for people and pollinators.  

“Kitchen gardens are a big trend right now,” Szkolnicki says. “People are wanting to learn how to grow their own food and do it kind of quickly. They want to have a little bit more time outdoors and know what's going into their food.  

For homeowners who don’t necessarily want to grow their food, but want to do something environmentally friendly, Szkolnicki has some suggestions. 

“A lot of people are turning to native plants and doing rain gardens to capture water as well, or encouraging pollinators with native plantings,” she says. "Those are the things I see shifting. There's always hardscaping and ornamental plantings, but I think a lot of people are becoming educated about pollinators and beneficial wildlife and how we support those in our suburban areas, and then also, how do we make our little plot produce for us too?” 

Beat the heat ... and plan ahead 

For the dog days of summer, gardeners can focus on watering needs and pressure from humidity and pests, even as they plan for fall, when it will be time to plant trees, bulbs and some native plants.  

“I think the biggest thing for me in July is scouting for pests before they become a bigger issue, and then just being consistent with watering,” Szkolnicki says.  

Learn more at southerngardensol.com.