Container gardens are an elegant way to transform the entrance to your home and to create exquisite garden living spaces all year round. Petals & Branches works with the client to meld their individual style and aesthetic of their home with unique combinations of plant textures, colors and forms. Even in New England, container gardens can be glorious all four seasons with the correct plant selection, container preparation, irrigation and maintenance.

Petals & Branches also offers garden design from the smallest container garden to complete landscape garden design.

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CONTAINER & TERRACE PLANTING SERVICES

Outdoor Living Spaces

Beautiful tranquil outdoor living spaces are more desirable than ever. Even the smallest outdoor space can be transformed with container gardens. Terraces can be defined into lush outdoor living rooms using containers planted with hedges of evergreens, shrubs, small trees, perennials and annuals.

We will create a patio oasis with container gardens, inground perennials and shrubs which will seamlessly integrate with your existing landscape. Need to create a screen for privacy on a roof deck or to hide an unsightly AC unit? Container gardens can work magic. Complete your terrace or roof deck transformation by creating magical evening atmosphere with customized lighting solutions.

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Welcome Home

Petals & Branches select and design window boxes, front porch containers and entrance containers to showcase the beauty of your home not only to passersby but more importantly to welcome you home.

Whether your home calls for topiariaries, evergreens, lush annual arrangements or all three, Petals and Branches carefully considers your personal design preference as well as the architecture of your home. Flowering shrubs, evergreens, groundcovers and endless varieties of glorious seasonal perennials not only transform your home’s curbside appeal but can make the “not so appealing” aspects disappear. Year round containers that reflect your landscape make your curbside appeal “love at first sight”.
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CONTAINER PLANTINGS ALL FOUR SEASONS

SPRING

| MARCH TO MAY

Spring containers bloom before your eyes. Fresh vivid green sprouting bulbs; daffodils, baby narcissus, hyacinth, and tulips among cold loving annuals like pansies, osteospermum, lobalaria, and perennial hellebore transform containers daily with their stunning, fragrant palette of pinks, violets, yellows, and blues. The spectacular budding branches of spring; pussy willow, forsythia and magnolia accentuate this glorious, and hopeful season.

SUMMER

| JUNE TO SEPTEMBER

So much to choose from! Summer’s hot palette of reds, oranges, yellows, deep purples and blues come in endless textures and forms. Heat tolerant annuals; calibrachoa, verbena, scaevola, salvia, flowering vinca, tropicals; mandevilla, hibiscus and jasmine, and perennials; lavender, salvia, hydrangea, grasses, herbs, succulents and rose bushes perform all summer long. Brighten your shady spots with stunning dragon wing begonia, dramatic colasia, vibrant heuchera foliage and endless hues of impatiens. Roof decks and patios are your summer living room. Long, rectangular containers with rows of evergreen emerald boxwood or roses “skirted” with annuals instantly define your space into an intimate oasis. Integrate perennials and flowering shrubs in your flower beds along your terrace border. No space is too small to create a lush secret garden.

FALL

| OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER

Autumn is New England’s proudest season. Oranges, yellows, purples, deep pinks, earthy greens, browns and greys reflect the performance of our fall foliage. Pansies are back! Despite what their name implies, pansies are tough as nails and can survive more than one frost. Their jewel tones are gorgeous with other cold tolerant bloomers like kalanchoe, hellebore, echinacea and montauk daisy. Spectacular, sculptural ornamental cabbages artfully arranged open to deepening magenta, purples and titanium white and green combinations. Ornamental pumpkins used artfully in containers like enormous blossoms are a signature design of Petals & Branches. Up for some spooky Halloween fun? We go beyond. Lifesize, hand wrapped skeleton mummies suspended from rooftops, pirate skeletons battling giant spiders climbing the walls of your home looking for an entrance, witch pumpkinhead window boxes that make you do a double take? Let’s come up with a showstopper!

WINTER

| DECEMBER TO MARCH

The Cinderella of the four seasons! Often ignored and overshadowed by the other three seasons, winter is the lowest maintenance, longest lasting beauty of them all. With knowledgeable selection and sourcing of long lasting evergreens, berries, seeds and pods winter containers can last well past the holidays. Petals & Branches create spectacular arrangements which will make you rethink what winter containers, garland and wreaths can be. Using evergreens sourced from Oregon, european greens, african pinecones, eucalyptus pods, eucalyptus seeds, lotus pods, ibex berries, birch poles, stunning branches of dogwood in their natural red or yellow, or birch brand in taupe or metallic dipped for a touch of glam. Want some extra bling for the holiday ball? Whether you prefer subtle sparkle with decorative pine cones: frosted white, glittered, metallic, even red waxed dipped or you want to go all out with glamorous bling, it will be stunning.
Remove the Christmas baubles after the holiday and you still have a gorgeous winter container. Let’s light it up. Showcase your trees stunning forms, along with your front porch, entryway, portico, lamp posts and fence. Well constructed winter containers installed and watered before the frost hold up through the toughest winters. The branches freeze into the soil which with tight construction protects them from deconstruction due to wind and snow. The crowning glory… you don’t need to water!

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CONTAINER PLANTINGS
ALL FOUR SEASONS

SPRING

MARCH TO MAY

Spring containers bloom before your eyes. Fresh vivid green sprouting bulbs; daffodils, baby narcissus, hyacinth, and tulips among cold loving annuals like pansies, osteospermum, lobalaria, and perennial hellebore transform containers daily with their stunning, fragrant palette of pinks, violets, yellows, and blues. The spectacular budding branches of spring; pussy willow, forsythia and magnolia accentuate this glorious, and hopeful season.

SUMMER

JUNE TO SEPTEMBER

So much to choose from! Summer’s hot palette of reds, oranges, yellows, deep purples and blues come in endless textures and forms. Heat tolerant annuals; calibrachoa, verbena, scaevola, salvia, flowering vinca, tropicals; mandevilla, hibiscus and jasmine, and perennials; lavender, salvia, hydrangea, grasses, herbs, succulents and rose bushes perform all summer long.
Brighten your shady spots with stunning dragon wing begonia, dramatic colasia, vibrant heuchera foliage and endless hues of impatiens. Roof decks and patios are your summer living room. Long, rectangular containers with rows of evergreen emerald boxwood or roses “skirted” with annuals instantly define your space into an intimate oasis. Integrate perennials and flowering shrubs in your flower beds along your terrace border. No space is too small to create a lush secret garden.
Show more
Show less

FALL

OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER

Autumn is New England’s proudest season. Oranges, yellows, purples, deep pinks, earthy greens, browns and greys reflect the performance of our fall foliage. Pansies are back! Despite what their name implies, pansies are tough as nails and can survive more than one frost. Their jewel tones are gorgeous with other cold tolerant bloomers like kalanchoe, hellebore, echinacea and montauk daisy.
Spectacular, sculptural ornamental cabbages artfully arranged open to deepening magenta, purples and titanium white and green combinations. Ornamental pumpkins used artfully in containers like enormous blossoms are a signature design of Petals and Branches. Up for some spooky Halloween fun? We go beyond. Lifesize, hand wrapped skeleton mummies suspended from rooftops, pirate skeletons battling giant spiders climbing the walls of your home looking for an entrance, witch pumpkinhead window boxes that make you do a double take? Let’s come up with a showstopper!
Show more
Show less

WINTER

DECEMBER TO MARCH

The Cinderella of the four seasons! Often ignored and overshadowed by the other three seasons, winter is the lowest maintenance, longest lasting beauty of them all. With knowledgeable selection and sourcing of long lasting evergreens, berries, seeds and pods winter containers can last well past the holidays.
Petals and branches create spectacular arrangements which will make you rethink what winter containers, garland and wreaths can be. Using evergreens sourced from Oregon, european greens, african pinecones, eucalyptus pods, eucalyptus seeds, lotus pods, ibex berries, birch poles, stunning branches of dogwood in their natural red or yellow, or birch brand in taupe or metallic dipped for a touch of glam. Want some extra bling for the holiday ball? Whether you prefer subtle sparkle with decorative pine cones: frosted white, glittered, metallic, even red waxed dipped or you want to go all out with glamorous bling, it will be stunning. Remove the Christmas baubles after the holiday and you still have a gorgeous winter container. Let’s light it up. Showcase your trees stunning forms,along with your front porch, entryway, portico, lamp posts and fence. Well constructed winter containers installed and watered before the frost hold up through the toughest winters. The branches freeze into the soil which with tight construction protects them from deconstruction due to wind and snow. The crowning glory….you don’t need to water!
Show more
Show less

LANDSCAPE GARDENS

Petals & Branches offers garden design from the smallest container garden to complete landscape garden design.

Whether you want to simply pepper in some interest to your existing garden with perennials or shrubs, need a solution to an area that is currently an “eyesore” or a complete landscape redesign, our plant knowledge and artistry will work with you to come up with stunning transformations.

MAINTENANCE

We’ll design a plan that fits your lifestyle.

Container Preparation

Container garden maintenance begins with providing your plants with the environment they need to thrive. Proper drainage, insulation and soil are crucial for long lasting, thriving plants. Foam board insulation on all sides cool the walls of your containers protecting your plants from the intense heat planters can induce.

Annuals in containers need “false bottoms” with drainage mat and perforated pipe for optimum drainage to prevent waterlog, rot and mold. Boxwood, evergreen, roses and trees need deeper soil to establish healthy roots.
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Optimal Blossoms, Growth & Form

All plants need food to thrive. Roses need different nutrients than boxwood, boxwood different from hydrangea, hydrangea different from azalea, azalea different from hibiscus, annuals different from all of them. You get the idea. Knowledge of the correct fertilizer, how much to apply and when is paramount to providing the optimum performance and preventing disease.

Early recognition of infestation and disease your plants are susceptible to are essential to the life of your plants. Correct pruning of rose bushes, deadheading and trimming of annuals and cutting back of perennials produce optimum blossoms and longevity of your containers design and form.
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Container Garden Irrigation

Don’t have irrigation installed? We work with the best in business to design the optimum zone set up for your plants needs. Summertime plantings in New England need hydration TLC beyond irrigation. Forecasted temperatures need to be closely monitored to adjust irrigation times. Hand watering before and after a heatwave is essential for plants to recover.

ABOUT

KIM HEXAMER

Horticulture is deeply rooted in both sides of my DNA. My mother’s gardens in Connecticut and Vermont were, to this day, some of the most beautiful estate gardens I have ever seen. My father, and his father and his father were raised on our family farm. The house I grew up in sat on what was left of the farm alongside the three original historic “Most Beautiful Barns of Connecticut”. My great, great grandfather wrote and illustrated numerous published botanical works. Do you like asparagus? He brought it to the U.S from Germany.

After graduation from college with a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree I moved to Los Angeles where I started work as a graphic designer for an advertising agency and then in house for Orion pictures. Two years later I moved to Portland, Oregon where I worked in advertising as an art director. When my children came along I freelanced for a few years before becoming mom full time. To fulfill the void of a creative outlet I returned to my botanical roots. Expressing creativity through the beauty and wonderment of living plants has been more fulfilling than anything I had experienced or imagined.

I began designing gardens for family and friends and eventually for clients when time allowed. When my youngest child went to college, I became a Certified Master Gardener. I started working full time in container design for a premier commercial / residential landscape design company. I was then offered a position with Back Bay and Beacon Hill’s top residential landscape designers creating the highest end: window boxes, urns, roof deck and patio container gardens. For the first time ever the firm was voted “Best of Boston” in 2020.

Petals & Branches is the culmination of my creative journey and the continuation of my family’s passion for all things botanical.

kim@petalsandbranches.com  | 617-620-2326 | Instagram: @petalsbranches
P.O. Box 81447, Wellesley, MA 02481

CONTACT

kim@petalsandbranches.com
617-620-2326
Insta: @petalsbranches
P.O. Box 81447
Wellesley, MA 02481