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Janet’s Journal: Double Your Perennials, Double Your Fun

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Pair perennials properly to create superb companion plantings

Crocus, a spring-blooming lark, has an additional qualification for doubling up: It has a shallow root and so can be paired with tap-rooted myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites).
Crocus, a spring-blooming lark, has an additional qualification for doubling up: It has a shallow root and so can be paired with tap-rooted myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites).

Quamash (Camassia leichtlinii) is a lark, a spring-blooming bulb of wet places. When it fades into dormancy, it can be covered by a late rising, moisture-loving owl: boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum; foliage in the foreground). Boneset is a relative of another, better known owl, Joe Pye weed.
Quamash (Camassia leichtlinii) is a lark, a spring-blooming bulb of wet places. When it fades into dormancy, it can be covered by a late rising, moisture-loving owl: boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum; foliage in the foreground). Boneset is a relative of another, better known owl, Joe Pye weed.

Doubling up on perennials. It’s the designer’s color-hungry attempt to copy and even improve on nature. Nature, which blankets the ground below trees with spring ephemerals and populates a prairie with low-growing vernal species among taller, later-blooming types. In both instances two perennial groups co-exist harmoniously. The spring species live fast and finish their business as the summer crowd takes over. The summer species graciously shed their leaves or topple to the ground at year’s end, letting in light to fuel the next cycle.

The designer who doubles up perennials will plant two species where one might be expected to fit, pairing them in one of several ways:

A) Larks with owls: One species that starts and finishes early in the season with another that comes on later. Larks often have a summer dormancy, or don’t suffer when the gardener cuts them back hard early, to make room for the owl.

B) Layered species: One wide, ground floor occupant below a narrow high-riser.

C) Equitable competitors: A shallow root scrambler with a deep or tap root, each drawing on different levels for water and nutrients, and the scrambler able to move out of the way as the other grows.

The concept is simple. Yet it is an attempt to copy natural elegance so it requires observation, patient trial and a certain ingenuity in execution. I coined the phrase “doubling up” for my garden design classes. So here are some successful doubles and the most important practical lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Perennial alyssum is not only a tap root plant but a ground floor specialist. Thus it doubles-up well with a shallow-rooted high riser such as Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum).
Perennial alyssum, left, is not only a tap root plant but a ground floor specialist. Thus it doubles-up well with a shallow-rooted high riser such as Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum, right).

Be a matchmaker.

In the accompanying chart are species for doubling up, each with its qualifications listed – lark, owl, ground floor, high riser, tap root or shallow-rooted scrambler. Any species that rates a check in the “lark” column (A1) is a suitable candidate for pairing with an “owl” (A2). High risers (B1) can double up with any ground floor specialist (B2). Tap roots (C1) are right to be teamed up with shallow root scramblers (C2).

Always plan for “Right Plant, Right Place.”

In making these pairings, I leave it to you to familiarize yourself with a species’ cultural requirements—amount of sun, moisture needs and soil preference. I trust you’ve already learned the lesson that it only pays to plant where you know the species will thrive, so you’ll pair off plants only if you know they both suit the site, or you’ll modify the site. For instance, oriental poppy, a lark, can share space beautifully with the owl, hardy hibiscus, but only if you can meet the former’s need for deep, well-drained soil, plus keep that soil moist enough to satisfy hibiscus, a native of damp pond edges.

Aim for more than one qualifier.

Plants get along in crowded quarters even better if they have compatible adaptive characteristics from two or even three of the categories. For example, balloon flower as a high riser does well with ground floor rock cress. You will learn to recognize the match is more sure when you see that it also pairs a tap-rooted owl (balloon flower) with a shallow-rooted free ranging species that does its growing in late winter (evergreens have that advantage!) and early spring.

I might also pair balloon flower with hybrid pinks for the high rise/ground floor match, but I’d be less confident of success. Neither is shallow-rooted so they will compete with each other more than is good. Also, because the pinks can’t scramble—i.e. move readily by surface-rooting stems into better space when conditions such as shade from a growing partner becomes greater in one spot than another—it will be a bit slow to react to openings in the balloon flower’s “canopy,” suffer more thin spots, and be less vigorous overall.

Lark and owl: The lark, Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), is a great match for the owl, Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum), because both are at home in the shade.
Lark and owl: The lark, Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica, left), is a great match for the owl, Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum, right), because both are at home in the shade.

Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is another late-rising owl, excellent for covering the departure of larks such as tulips and daffodils.
Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is another late-rising owl, excellent for covering the departure of larks such as tulips and daffodils.

Wait to see who wins.

Yet you should keep an open mind as you pair the plants and avoid making snap judgments once you’re growing the doubled-up combination. Some pairings will test your determination, requiring the patient trial I mentioned earlier. I call this period “see who wins” even though what I always hope for is a long-term balance of power.

When one plant is slower growing than the other, but persistent enough to endure, it’s all a matter of time. Tap-rooted, high riser gas plant increases so slowly that it may be years before it’s a visually wonderful match with shallow-rooted, ground floor sedum ‘Vera Jameson,’ but that day is almost sure to come.

However, when the paired plants are both vigorous growers, it’s best during the wait and see period to adopt the laissez-faire of a really good kindergarten teacher. Watch and tolerate rambunctious individuals so they have leeway to grow, and step in only when one’s assertiveness becomes a threat to another’s growth. Stepping in between plants may involve judicious cutting back during the season, yearly thinning, or staking the lark to allow the owl to emerge with straight stems.

Consider once more the oriental poppy/hardy hibiscus double up. Through a wait-and-see strategy, I learned that a slow-growing pink cultivar of oriental poppy may coexist peacefully with hibiscus, but the rampant red-orange standard doesn’t play nice and will abuse a well-mannered partner if I turn my back. One year, I planted both types of poppy, each with a hibiscus companion. The pink poppy and its hibiscus are still happy campers seven years later, without any interference from me. The red-orange beast, however, acts like a red tide and would reduce its hibiscus partner to a tired swimmer trying to keep her nose up to that crimson surface, except that I act as referee.

So I wade into my red-orange poppy every June as the flower petals fall to remove that foliage before its time. I grasp each cluster of poppy leaves and stalks, then give a sharp tug to break it off below soil level. I learned that this does not kill the poppy, just slows its spread. It does free the emerging hibiscus shoots from the poppy’s shade. I can almost hear the hibiscus gulp in air as I pull the poppy out of the way.

Tap root and shallow. The category “tap root” doesn’t always mean a single, straight root but a root that is deep. Hybrid lily, left, has a deeper root than perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum a.k.a. Conoclinium coelestinum, right), so the two can co-exist harmoniously.
Tap root and shallow. The category “tap root” doesn’t always mean a single, straight root but a root that is deep. Hybrid lily, left, has a deeper root than perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum a.k.a. Conoclinium coelestinum, right), so the two can co-exist harmoniously.

Accommodate the staggered start.

Some pairings involve plants that are best planted in a certain season—bulbs in fall, the first sowing of a self-seeding annual in spring. Yet you may want to plant their double up counterpart earlier or later. Or you may decide to try doubling up beginning with an established plant in your garden. The challenge is to insert the second plant and insure its good start but cause minimal disturbance to the first.

It can be a puzzle to do this with bulbs, especially the big ones. The plants they double so well with are often in full, glorious bloom at bulb-planting time. Perhaps tiny bulbs can be shoehorned in with a narrow trowel, but the gardener can’t bear to insert a spade and ruin that show. The best answer I’ve found is to wait until November to add the bulbs. Then the new additions still have time to get established before their debut, yet I’m less hesitant to plant in the other plant’s midst.

The reverse of that situation, planting an owl companion in spring among already established larks, is also difficult. Digging to place a one-gallon container of Japanese anemone among bulbs is likely to destroy or at least set the bulbs way back. When working among spring bloomers, it’s more do-able to trowel in several three-inch pots, small divisions of a late riser perennial, or the smallest available cell packs of an annual, or simply sow seeds between the established plants.

Sometimes you do have space at ground level for digging, but the air space is full of stems of established plants. You have to be a terrific lightfoot to avoid bending or snapping stalks as you work in that already tight place. I find elastic tarp straps helpful for cinching in existing plants, temporarily reducing their girth while I plant between them.

Have fun but don’t go broke!

Which brings me to one final, practical aspect of doubling up—the cost. It’s more costly than conventional planting because you plant two for one and there is always the chance that a pairing will fail. That consideration, along with the knowledge that small plugs make better double ups, keeps me always on the look-out for small starts at garden centers and plants that can be divided to plant as double ups. You can also do some begging of perennial divisions from fellow gardeners. Since you’ll request only very small divisions, perhaps your friends will be more likely to say yes. Then you can cut your costs even as you double your perennial show!

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: The Value of a Garden

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This “rain garden” full of wetland plants was installed to catch run-off water and let it be filtered by soil and roots rather than sluiced directly into the storm drains with its full load of road-collected pollutants.
This “rain garden” full of wetland plants was installed to catch run-off water and let it be filtered by soil and roots rather than sluiced directly into the storm drains with its full load of road-collected pollutants.

Standing in my garden where she’d come to see a plant and size it up for inclusion in her own collection, my client spread her arms to encompass the whole yard and said, “Let’s have it all. What would it cost to do all this at my place?”

Given the size and basic composition of a garden—mostly perennials, perennials and annuals, shrubs and perennials, etc.—I can answer with a dollar figure. Yet I hate to, as it puts such a definitive edge on a garden. With a price tag neatly tied to one corner, a garden seems comparable to any other item that can be bought and sold.

Call me a gardening addict, all mixed up by too long an association with landscape architect Thomas Church’s proclamation, “The only limits to a garden are at the edges of your imagination.” For I think putting a dollar figure on a garden is too simplistic, that the other strings attached are more important and make it a far more complex consideration.

For my client, under the impression that a checkbook could transplant my garden to her property, I would say, “It’s not just the money, it could change your life, and your family, fundamentally, in many ways we should talk about.”

What is it worth toward family harmony that there is an outdoor room where people made memories together?
What is it worth toward family harmony that there is an outdoor room where people made memories together?

Diversity is a great mental stimulator, and attraction to life in general. The more species diversity there is in a landscape, the more interesting will be the life forms that gather there. A garden has far more diversity than basic lawn and shrubs, so it can support butterflies and their predators as well, like the praying mantis shown here.
Diversity is a great mental stimulator, and attraction to life in general. The more species diversity there is in a landscape, the more interesting will be the life forms that gather there. A garden has far more diversity than basic lawn and shrubs, so it can support butterflies and their predators as well, like the praying mantis shown here.

How much value can be assigned to the health of the gardener, who is drawn to go outside and putter. It’s been estimated that gardening and jogging burn an equivalent amount of calories, but gardening uses more muscle groups and imparts less forceful impact on the knees!
How much value can be assigned to the health of the gardener, who is drawn to go outside and putter. It’s been estimated that gardening and jogging burn an equivalent amount of calories, but gardening uses more muscle groups and imparts less forceful impact on the knees!

Shouldn’t the garden get credit when a child steps into an exciting, influential career in life sciences?
Shouldn’t the garden get credit when a child steps into an exciting, influential career in life sciences?

Hidden value to the person and the family

What is it worth, after all, that families stay together through shared memories because they have an outdoor room to enjoy and recall as stage and backdrop for important events?

Health is priceless, but poor health’s costs are harshly defined in drugstore and doctor bills. Should we begrudge the money spent on a garden whose upkeep brings us physical well being? It gives us better muscle tone through bending and stretching, strengthens our respiratory and circulatory systems by providing regular opportunities to rake and wheelbarrow, and when we’re ill, helps us recover more quickly. (Studies in hospitals have linked shorter stays and lower use of pain-killers to the view from a patient’s room—those in rooms with a view to greenery left sooner, having taken less medication, than those with windows looking out onto other buildings or hardscapes.) Should we simply use our gardening money for a health club membership instead? Or invest it wisely since eventual health care costs will be exponentially greater?

What about the value of stress relief, mental health and imagination? Just looking at greenery has been proven to slow the heart rate and increase the alpha brain waves associated with relaxation, creative thinking and problem solving. Being in direct physical contact with plants is even more powerful, as any mental health care practitioner will tell you who uses horticulture as therapy for patients.

Let’s add something for that one child who lives in or visits that garden and takes an important mental leap after a gardener explains something like the fact that a seedling plant may not be just like its parent. When that first peek into the field is the child’s stepping stone to a career as a top level genetic researcher, why not credit his or her lifetime salary and awards to our garden’s output?

Connectivity and resources for the community

Influence is worth something, and gardens are notably influential in a neighborhood. Eventually most gardeners see it, how their use of flowers or attention to lawn and shrubs catches on in nearby properties. Even in the most dilapidated neighborhood, it’s the home with the neat yard that garners respect and gradually raises the standards for everyone. The existence of a garden is both incentive and deterrent—studies in urban Los Angeles indicate that graffiti and other building defacement happens less where there are diverse, tended plantings.

Communication is more lively and there’s more camaraderie in neighborhoods where people are seen in the yard and lean on the fence to exchange news. The gardener who is outdoors regularly is likely to be an essential link in passing the word during emergencies small and large, from lost dogs to missing children. That person is more likely to notice and sound an alarm when things look wrong. Little things like a nod and a greeting, more important ones like acknowledging big changes in one’s life from the birth of children to loss of loved ones—these are the vital links that bind us, activities more likely to involve gardeners than people shuttered with their home entertainment systems.

To save time and money you can change front yard gardens (above) back into sod (below) but what will you lose in mental stimulation, wildlife habitat and eye-relief by reducing the species diversity?
To save time and money you can change front yard gardens (above) back into sod (below) but what will you lose in mental stimulation, wildlife habitat and eye-relief by reducing the species diversity?

gardens-without-plant-diversity-lack-stimulation-0518

Cleaner environment

Gardeners tend to reach out and spread the green. Every year, garden clubs, Master Gardeners, volunteer foresters and informal teams in southeast Michigan are responsible for hundreds of new trees and acres of colorful displays, planted free or at a very low cost. These plantings open minds at libraries, heighten the image at civic centers, increase enjoyment and learning at zoos, parks and museums, and help ease the pain at hospitals and convalescent centers.

Where diverse plantings are, there are more birds. Proven by federal studies to be highly effective weed-seed eaters and bug catchers, they’re also heart-lifting singers of song who just can’t survive on grass alone.

Cleaner air is one of the benefits we all reap from gardens. The gas-scrubbing powers of green growing things has been proven many times over, but the garden’s effect on air quality goes beyond that. Every square foot of garden is one foot that might be tended without the use of power mowers and string trimmers, machines that are dirtier than cars in terms of emissions—and noisy to boot.

Gardens purify water, too. At a conservative estimate, every 100 square feet of garden in Michigan can absorb and filter 720 gallons of water per year that would have run rapidly off of hardpan sod or paved surfaces. As run-off, that water would have sluiced away into storm drains loaded with pollutants such as oil drips from vehicles and animal feces. As we’ve learned through increasingly common notices of beach closings, what goes into storm drains often flows directly into streams and lakes, and sometimes finds its way back into the drinking water supply. Absorbed into the loose, receptive soil in a garden, that water will not run but fall gently through a cleansing filter of soil particles and roots to have all or most of its pollutants stripped away before it returns to groundwater, wells, streams or lakes.

Every day in one way or another, a garden increases in value.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: An Introduction to Green Roofs

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Left, Liatris, butterfly weed and 148 other drought- and heat-tolerant species cover 20,000 square feet atop Chicago City Hall. Green roofs fight smog by cooling the buildings under them and the city as a whole.
Left, Liatris, butterfly weed and 148 other drought- and heat-tolerant species cover 20,000 square feet atop Chicago City Hall. Green roofs fight smog by cooling the buildings under them and the city as a whole.

Here’s what I’ve learned about green roofs for you and me.

Going green does cut heat, thus reducing smog and its attendant miseries. Tests in Toronto, Chicago, Seattle and other cities prove this cooling effect. Chicago City Hall went green in 2001 while the county building, a mirror image twin next door, still cooks under asphalt. Air temperature, humidity and the intensity of solar radiation are monitored on both roofs, but I was there and did not have to look at a thermometer to know I was 50 to 55 degrees cooler on City Hall. In Evanston, Illinois, the difference between the leaf-topped Optima Building roof and its neighbors’ has been almost 100 degrees on occasion. In Toronto, a billion square feet of roof absorbs and radiates enough heat to keep the city 7 to 18 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. Readings from test buildings there have fueled computer models that show there could be 3 degrees of cooling if just 6 percent of the roofs went green.

The conventional asphalt roof on Cook County Building is now in stark contrast to Chicago City Hall, its mirror image twin next door. Temperature, humidity and stormwater runoff figures collected from building pairs like this provide the proof that green roofs can make a big improvement in air quality.
The conventional asphalt roof on Cook County Building is now in stark contrast to Chicago City Hall, its mirror image twin next door. Temperature, humidity and stormwater runoff figures collected from building pairs like this provide the proof that green roofs can make a big improvement in air quality.

Green roofs have direct payoffs, too. The building beneath stays cooler so air conditioning costs drop. The thick top is good insulation, so heating bills may be less. It insulates against sound, too—airport neighbors, take note.

A planted roof lasts longer since the planted layer buffers wind, sun and fast temperature swings. Flat and minimally-pitched roofs, the best candidates for green systems, may last twice as long as conventional caps. In Germany, where green roofs have been in place over thirty years, 14 percent of new buildings in this style are going green. Building owners no longer plan to reroof every 15 years, but expect upper crusts to remain sound for 30 years.

All these numbers are good, but don’t come cheap. A green roof costs $9 to $18 per square foot—excluding soil mix and plants. All told, topping a building this way is a 30 to 60 percent bigger investment than conventional roofing. Just look at the construction details to see why.

More conventional rooftop gardens, like this one designed by the author, are also valuable in reducing air temperatures, purifying the air and improving the view and attitude of the neighbors. In every green roof, 50 percent or more of the water that falls on planted surfaces is taken up by the plants, reducing the strain on overloaded, contamination-troubled storm drains.
More conventional rooftop gardens, like this one designed by the author, are also valuable in reducing air temperatures, purifying the air and improving the view and attitude of the neighbors. In every green roof, 50 percent or more of the water that falls on planted surfaces is taken up by the plants, reducing the strain on overloaded, contamination-troubled storm drains.

In the north Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, a retail store named The Garden Room is roofed with an intensive planting system, meaning it has deeper planting areas than those with extensive systems. Its 18-inch depth of soil mix can support trees, shrubs and perennials.
In the north Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, a retail store named The Garden Room is roofed with an intensive planting system, meaning it has deeper planting areas than those with extensive systems. Its 18-inch depth of soil mix can support trees, shrubs and perennials.

A green roof consists of up to ten layers. First, a protective mat goes down on the roof itself—not to protect the roof but to prevent punctures to the second layer, a waterproof membrane. Over the waterproof membrane is another protective mat, then a root barrier, perhaps some insulation, a drainage layer of gravel or waffle-like panels, and a filter pad to keep fine particles of soil out of the drainage layer. Then there’s the planting medium—usually soilless and 3 to 18 inches deep. Last come plants and a woven mulch blanket to keep the planting medium from blowing away until the plants cover it completely.

There are two kinds of green roof. Extensive systems consist solely of shallow rooted plants like sedum. Ford Motor Company’s huge building in the Rouge Complex has an extensive system. An intensive system has deeper planting spaces able to support many kinds of plants, even small trees.

I’d like to walk on and dabble in my own roof plantings, so the roof must be engineered to hold more weight. I once computed the weight of a roof garden I designed, which meant estimating saturated weights of soil mixes, root balls, perennials, trees, mulch, planter boxes and statuary. An engineer from the architectural firm added my garden’s weight to snow load and other factors, and designed for a “dead load” of 250 pounds per square foot. That’s twice what some roofs are designed to hold and it’s all reflected in construction costs.

The Garden Room’s roof is a sales area, where decorative pots, plants, art and furniture can be displayed among more permanent plantings chosen for drought and heat tolerance. Community groups are also encouraged to make use of sitting areas on the roof for meetings.
The Garden Room’s roof is a sales area, where decorative pots, plants, art and furniture can be displayed among more permanent plantings chosen for drought and heat tolerance. Community groups are also encouraged to make use of sitting areas on the roof for meetings.

Yet I still think this idea is worth pursuing. I’ll be proud to do more toward water purity, by living beneath plants that will use half or more of the water that falls on the roof. Every drop they use is that much less water cascading through downspouts and into storm sewers. Less water running that route means fewer pollutants swept into rivers and lakes.

Maintenance details are still elusive. Roof owners and industry promoters I’ve interviewed admit that care is required – weeding out undesirable plants, for instance. Since weed trees sprout even in our gutters, it’s no surprise to hear they’ll grow on a green roof. What no one seems yet willing to describe are the tactical details. Does killing a weed up there mean spraying it with a herbicide—not my bag!—because pulling it would disturb the soil mix? If I pull weeds do I have to keep carting replacement soil mix up to the roof?

There’s plant replacement, too. Even the most drought-tolerant plants above the most clever water-reserving drainage system may fail and need replacing. I’m still seeking figures, which may just mean waiting a year or so. Chicago’s very helpful, education-oriented project began with 150 species and the project managers intend to publish performance evaluations on all of them.

That leaves only the roof repair angle. What if the membrane springs a leak? It’s vulnerable at the same places my old roof is—where chimney and roof meet, for instance. Will calling someone to make repairs be like trying to find someone to fix our solar panel? A solar panel fixer’s as rare as a blue poppy, even though solar technology was supported by government incentives in the 1970s. America’s green roof industry is light years behind Germany’s where 43 percent of cities offer incentives to build them.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: Troubled times for the white pine, Michigan’s state tree

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It is important to differentiate between white pine decline, and normal fall color, shown here.
It is important to differentiate between white pine decline, and normal fall color, shown here.

A healthy white pine is full and dark green.
A healthy white pine is full and dark green.

Many people in Michigan have noticed the yellowing and thin appearance of white pines that have stood sentinel and provided shade for decades. Some who didn’t recognize those earlier symptoms will see the first sign of this region-wide white pine problem as a dead tree.

What horticultural professionals have noticed in the Midwest, including southern lower Michigan and some areas further north on the mitten, is best described as white pine decline.

Decline is reduced vigor, below-normal functioning and slower growth in a tree when those symptoms can’t be attributed to a specific disease or insect. Trees in decline may fall prey to insect or disease problems because they are weak, but those are additional complications rather than causes of decline.

A tree may decline for many years. If its situation doesn’t improve, it may exhaust its lifetime starch reserves and begin to exhibit dieback—which looks just like it sounds and often ends in death.

I first noticed white pine decline in the mid 1990s. Many white pines yellowed suddenly, alarmingly and at least one 40-year-old tree on a property I garden died. Based on the positions of the most afflicted trees relative to northwest winds and open ground, and a severe winter that had just passed, I attributed the problems to cold-related root damage. Others came to the same conclusion and experience since then seems to support this.

When placed side by side, braches from stressed and unstressed pines exhibit noticeable differences.
When placed side by side, braches from stressed and unstressed pines exhibit noticeable differences.

Advanced dieback has occurred on this white pine tree.
Advanced dieback has occurred on this white pine tree.

Do you remember February, 1996? The white pines do! On the night of February 2-3, temperatures from the Great Plains to New England dropped to lows never seen before or not seen for 40 years. That week, the outbreak of Arctic air set nearly 400 record daily minimums and at least 15 all-time lows in the eastern U.S. Wind chills of -50 and -100 degrees were common.

In southeast Michigan, the mercury plummeted 15 to 20 degrees in just a few hours on a night when there was not even a trace of snow to insulate the soil. Branches and trunks of some plants died, and the frost knifing suddenly and deeply into the unprotected soil killed roots even on hardy, established plants.

This healthy branch shows the normal retention of needles for three years.
This healthy branch shows the normal retention of needles for three years.

By spring, gardeners would be mourning the loss or severe damage of thousands of decades-old Japanese maples, and finding privet hedges, rose of Sharon shrubs and even stalwarts such as old junipers dead or killed to the ground. Plants hurt but not killed would begin the slow process of regenerating roots and limbs only to be socked with drought years, one after another.

Shallow-rooted plants like white pine may have been worst hit. Left with fewer roots than they should have, they were not likely to take up enough water and nutrients to fuel regrowth. They were in trouble even if drought had not begun to compound the loss.

Six years later, my tally sheet of all the white pines I see regularly in my travels and those I tend reads this way: Some of the first-affected died and many are still struggling. Some which did not initially show symptoms developed them during subsequent drought years. Only a few recovered. Very few escaped all damage.

This white pine, next to the spruce on the right, is yellow and thin—signs of decline.
This white pine, next to the spruce on the right, is yellow and thin—signs of decline.

In its bulletin, “Decline of White Pine in Indiana,” Purdue University Cooperative Extension reported, “white pine decline… has been a problem for many landscapes in Indiana. …Declining trees usually look a pale green, or even yellowish, compared to healthy trees. Needles are often shorter than normal; sometimes the tips of needles turn brown. Needles from a previous season often drop prematurely, giving the tree a tufted appearance.

“With loss of needles, the tree has a reduced ability to produce the energy it needs to survive…

“With severe or compounding stress factors, the tree may gradually decline and eventually die. Decline may be gradual or rapid, depending on the number and severity of stress factors.”

University of Missouri Extension made similar reports like this one from August, 1999: “We have received many white pine samples into the Extension Plant Diagnostic Clinic this year… from mature white pines, about 20 to 30 years old that are in a state of decline. …Other Midwestern clinics have also seen (this) and have been unable to explain most cases of decline…”

“We therefore believe… that the problems we are seeing with white pine may be related to environmental factors and site conditions… such as heat, stress, drought, flooding and sudden extremes in temperature and moisture.”

Note that experts don’t lay full blame on the cold but on a combination of causes. Ironically, reliable cold and snowier winters may have worked in some trees’ favor.

Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and the southeasternmost part of Michigan, which have all seen many white pine problems since the 1996 freeze and subsequent droughts, are south of white pine’s native range. Since a species’ native range is delineated at least in part by climate, we know that something about the weather in our area is probably not optimal for white pine. A record-breaking warm-up that came after the 1996 cold snap may be one of the climatological events these trees can’t handle. Two weeks after the freeze, all across the area affected by decline, temperatures jumped into the 70s, 80s and 90s. For the most part, white pines growing where there was the usual reliable snow-cover or where the warmest air didn’t reach, fared better.

What happened to the white pines was outside current experience, on a scale so broad that few had the perspective to be able to recognize it. Now that we look back and know how long a tree has been declining which we just noticed this year, we can wish we knew more earlier, but it won’t get us anywhere.

So if you have a troubled white pine, have it inspected by an arborist. Rule out disease and insect problems. Give it the help it needs to fight any secondary problems. Do what you can to alleviate underlying stresses.

Establish a regular watering routine and fertilize the tree in early spring to see if it responds. Aerate the soil if it’s compacted. Be pleased if the tree reacts positively, but be realistic about its chances and your needs. Many of these trees are years past their point of no return. Even those which respond positively to treatment may take many years to recover.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: Celebrate and respect the diversity of native plants

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The new gardening ethic can help insure that future generations will still know the unique look of dunes along Lake Superior, covered in native goldenrod and tansy.
The new gardening ethic can help insure that future generations will still know the unique look of dunes along Lake Superior, covered in native goldenrod and tansy.

Do you ever travel for the pleasure of experiencing the exotic? To absorb a city’s regional feel, discover landscapes with unfamiliar hues and textures, or hike through natural areas where native plants in their native settings show you their unbound souls?

Then you probably appreciate diversity, too. You drive quickly away from your destination’s airport with its too-same hotels and restaurants. You’re thrilled to see cactus in a gravel mulch when you’re in the desert, disappointed to see bluegrass sod patched into prairie.

Chances are that you, like me, appreciate the plants you meet on your travels so much that you seek them out and add them to your garden.

“Invasive” becomes a watchword

It’s time to think about this. Not to stop collecting, necessarily, but to be more discriminating in what we plant. We’re in danger of homogenizing the natural world, with the same speed and dulling effect as fast food corporations expanding their territories.

I’m referring to invasive plants. Those plants the USDA considers for official weed status because they exhibit the ability outside of their native range to spread in ways that “threaten the survival or reproduction of native plants or animals or reduce biological diversity.” And I’m focusing on the ones deliberately introduced, not those inadvertently carried as cloth- or shoe-clinging seeds, discharged whole from a ship’s ballast tanks, or unwittingly planted as vegetative bits in root balls shipped between states.

A native wet prairie like this one on Walpole Island consists of dozens of species growing in harmony, each blooming in its season. Some people like the massed bloom of loosestrife better than this natural show, but the butterflies, hummingbirds and songbirds that reap crop after crop of nectar and seeds from this stand would disagree.
A native wet prairie like this one on Walpole Island consists of dozens of species growing in harmony, each blooming in its season. Some people like the massed bloom of loosestrife better than this natural show, but the butterflies, hummingbirds and songbirds that reap crop after crop of nectar and seeds from this stand would disagree.

You already know a few of the worst

If you’re a lover of Michigan forests, you probably know Norway maple (Acer platanoides) is one of these deliberate introductions now seen as a big mistake. The species seeds prolifically into our woods, crowding out native saplings so that autumn hillsides once red maple scarlet in fall are muting to European yellow. They throw such long-season shade that they close the early spring window of sun our native wildflowers evolved to exploit, gradually killing the beauty at their feet. Even their roots are sinister, suspected of allelopathy, a plant kingdom domination ploy in which they exude chemicals that kill or stunt the growth of other species.

Those who find peace in walking our Great Lakes shores might picture baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata) in this role. Pretty in a garden, it’s a killer on the dunes, bullying and displacing bright orange hoary puccoon, dreamy off-white death camas and other natives.

Even those who don’t hike in but merely admire from a car window our extensive, water-purifying wetlands, know purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) as this kind of cultivated criminal. Watch for just a few years as one tiny fluorescent pink patch expands to cover acres. Like the other alien invasives, loosestrife changes not only the plant community but the entire food chain that rests on its shoulders.

Once we might have thought it an inconsequential loss when this bright gold colony of the native horned bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta, blooming yellow in mass) is overrun by an invasive alien such as creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens). Now we know that a specific insect might be totally dependent on the bladderwort, and a songbird on those insects, and so on up the food chain.
Once we might have thought it an inconsequential loss when this bright gold colony of the native horned bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta, blooming yellow in mass) is overrun by an invasive alien such as creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens). Now we know that a specific insect might be totally dependent on the bladderwort, and a songbird on those insects, and so on up the food chain.

Continue excluding known criminals, or ask credentials of all?

Under the United States Department of Agriculture plant importation regulations, inspectors reject excluded species, using a “black list” of plants known to have become invasive to the point of widespread economic and environmental impact. Under “white list” policy, new species are excluded until proven innocent, and the burden of proof rests on the importer. A grower who wants to import a species for agriculture or horticulture must conduct and file for approval a risk assessment, which evaluates the plant’s potential to spread and the impact of such a spread on native species.

Can such a policy really stem the tide of homogenization? It’s debatable. Battles still have to be fought against invasives already here. Even if white listing had been in place and effectively enforced since the earliest days of U.S. independence, it still would have come too late to shut the door against groundcover myrtle (Vinca minor, currently endangering American forest ecosystems), privet shrub (Ligustrum sinense, crowding out prairie and woodland plants alike in many states), or the glossy buckthorn tree (Rhamnus cathartica, a serious threat to both dry and wet plant communities). And import restrictions might not have stopped the importation of kudzu (Pueraria lobata, the vine that’s engulfing the southeastern U.S.) because at that time its economic promise seemed greater than any foreseeable risk. And even today we probably couldn’t predict the latent ability of a meek creature like Grecian foxglove (Digitalis lanata) to explode into certain special niches as it has done into the prairie in one Kansas county.

Norway maples can have respectable gold color in fall. But when this invasive tree displaces red and sugar maples in the woods and in the fall show, we are the losers.
Norway maples can have respectable gold color in fall. But when this invasive tree displaces red and sugar maples in the woods and in the fall show, we are the losers.

Few plants shine so brightly in fall as our native red maple.
Few plants shine so brightly in fall as our native red maple.

Might we control this at our garden level?

It’s a hot topic. A species that would run rampant if given free reign could be an acceptable team player in a controlled setting, like a private backyard garden. I’m among those who bridle at the thought of being told what I can and cannot plant, even though I greatly value and work to preserve our native species and systems. For financial reasons, many professional growers also balk at the idea of white listing. They know that what’s new, sells and what’s held up in testing becomes old quickly. Some also profit from the fact that what’s invasive, propagates quickly for sale. Who can predict whether people will voluntarily lean toward responsible stewardship of native diversity, as expected by some policy makers, or whether individualism, capitalism and the rising cost of controlling invasives will lead to a white list.

Happily, a few environmentally conscious commercial growers and botanical institutions have already begun doing pre-introduction assessment of new species. Some have evaluated and then decided not to introduce new species, or to issue them only with warnings. Certainly more of this will happen as awareness of the problem grows within the gardening community and buyers begin to question and reject the next gooseneck loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroides), spreading buttercup (Ranunculus repens) or Mexican bamboo (Polygonum cuspidatum) that comes along.

Baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata) is a beauty in the garden, a bully on the dunes.
Baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata) is a beauty in the garden, a bully on the dunes.

What you can do now

You and I may not be importing, introducing or selling new species, but the cumulative effect we have on their spread is mighty. The policy makers know this, and some feel that better enforcement and publicity may make white lists unnecessary.

So I hope that your awareness prompts you to think twice about buying plants from growers who act unethically. I refer to people best summed up by this exchange between myself and a world-renowned grower I will allow to remain anonymous for the time being:

Reporter: “I was alarmed at how quickly that plant spread, right out of the garden and even through mowed lawn.”

Grower, smiling rakishly, even proudly but certainly without any hint of remorse: “Yes, it is quite the thug, isn’t it?”

I hope for several things. That you will try to say “no” to species that prove themselves invasive in your garden, either by rigorously confining them or disposing of them in a final way. That you will question the urge to and consequences of deliberately planting surpluses from your own garden in nearby untended fields and woods. At the very least, I pray that you will think twice when someone offers you a plant that they “have too much of.”

Gardening is all about hope

Maybe our children will be able to enjoy the same kind of vacations that have delighted us, and walk with mouths agape in alpine meadows or tidal flats or cypress swamps full of plants they’ve never seen. Maybe they will also be able to proudly and accurately say to visiting gardeners “That carpet of trillium? Yes, it’s a Michigan native and we make sure it always will be.”

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: Gardening and Growing Older Gracefully

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High-maintenance perennial beds can be changed over to, or allowed to become, groundcover and shrub areas. These at the Laudenslager residence contribute foliage color, texture and other benefits, yet require far less care than typical flower gardens.
High-maintenance perennial beds can be changed over to, or allowed to become, groundcover and shrub areas. These at the Laudenslager residence contribute foliage color, texture and other benefits, yet require far less care than typical flower gardens.

Virginia Smith poses sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) as an example of an acceptable weed that succeeds on many levels. It fills in bare spaces, cohabiting agreeably here with blue-blooming Ajuga repens, and also offers features the older gardener learns to appreciate. “It’s so pretty in shape, foliage color and texture; it’s not just a bloom thing.”
Virginia Smith poses sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) as an example of an acceptable weed that succeeds on many levels. It fills in bare spaces, cohabiting agreeably here with blue-blooming Ajuga repens, and also offers features the older gardener learns to appreciate. “It’s so pretty in shape, foliage color and texture; it’s not just a bloom thing.”

When I was just five years old, Mrs. Kissinger’s age was as definite to me as my own. She was old. Grandparent old. Hair in a bun, crinkly-eye old. I can still hear the quaver in that voice that coached me to recognize weeds, and see the wrinkles on the fingers that pinched an apron into a sling for picking peas. The gold seal on the certificate of age I fashioned for her was that she could call my Dad “Johnny” and “son.”

She always seemed to be smiling when she was in the garden. Recently that memory has become a stand-out, a marked contrast to some of what I’ve been seeing in myself and my friends as we acquire age.

I see fretting (“This is just too much work anymore”) and hear worry (“That bed’s gotten totally out of control”). I’ve commiserated with others over keeping up with the over-ambitious creations of our own youth. Worst, in contemplative moments I’ve recognized in my own negative thoughts the same whines and crying I’ve heard from and disdained in others.

Nigella (Nigella damescena) is one of the plants that Virginia Smith and Wil Strickland call an acceptable weed. It has redeeming physical features and will seed itself into bare spaces before weedier species can do that.
Nigella (Nigella damescena) is one of the plants that Virginia Smith and Wil Strickland call an acceptable weed. It has redeeming physical features and will seed itself into bare spaces before weedier species can do that.

This is not a new phenomenon, this reconciliation of garden and gardener over time. Gardeners have made this life passage before. Some, like Mrs. Kissinger, smiled as they went and their gardens reflected that contentment and calm. She found a way to accept the realities, anticipate the challenges, make the changes, and grow old gracefully.

It’s been my good fortune as a professional gardener to work with many people and to see many approaches to this phase of gardening. I’ve bailed out gardeners who made commitments beyond their physical means or who fell temporarily behind because of an illness or injury. I’ve worked regularly with individuals who need help on certain tasks but not others. I’ve even drawn and executed designs aimed specifically at reducing work for older or less able hands. Most important to me, I’ve had the privilege of working once again for the smiling older gardener and the wise gardener approaching age. I can understand the need and their advice. Here is what they say.

Judith Mueller’s life philosophy helps her to garden as gracefully now as she did 30 years ago. She views gardening as a continual choice, made each year. How she gardens each year changes with her own situation that year.
Judith Mueller’s life philosophy helps her to garden as gracefully now as she did 30 years ago. She views gardening as a continual choice, made each year. How she gardens each year changes with her own situation that year.

Judith Mueller: Making Choices, Keeping Fit

Judith Mueller doesn’t have a grand plan to garden forever, even though she thinks she will. She takes one season at a time.

Even before she became an empty nester and grandparent, certain of her friends would come over, look at her extensive gardens and say, “You’re crazy! How do you keep this up?”

Her response has always been, “It’s what I choose to do with my time.”

“I know that a garden doesn’t all have to be done today. It’s an ongoing process and it’s not over until I say it’s over.

“So I looked at what shape the gardens were in and decided what I could do myself, what I needed to get help for, and what I can let go of and let someone else do. This year that meant I looked around and got help edging and mulching. Someday I might have to cut back, maybe on the size of my beds. Or maybe I’ll have to ask for more help. But I don’t think about that now because for this year I can handle it.

Just one of the reasons Mueller feels gardening is important is that, “It keeps us mentally alert and healthier.” Her career in a medical profession makes her especially aware of how much good her hobby does her. “I don’t get aches and pains like I know some people do. And people ask me things like ‘How did you lift that?’ So I know I must be strong and healthy for my age.”

Mueller advises that gardeners who want to keep going, keep fit all year. “Don’t rely on gardening alone to keep you in shape through the off season. I’d rather not have to work out, but gardening, especially spring work, can be really overwhelming as you get older, if you’re not in some kind of shape.”

Recuperating from a heart attack forced Wil Strickland to take a step back and assess not only his garden but his place in it. “I flit from job to job more now,” he says. “I don’t try to weed a whole bed at once, just to fill one bucket with weeds. People who come to your garden will forgive your weeds.”
Recuperating from a heart attack forced Wil Strickland to take a step back and assess not only his garden but his place in it. “I flit from job to job more now,” he says. “I don’t try to weed a whole bed at once, just to fill one bucket with weeds. People who come to your garden will forgive your weeds.”

Wil Strickland: Forced to Look

Wil Strickland, whose garden and face are well known in Ann Arbor, laughed when I asked for his input. “It’s ironic you should ask me about how I cope with gardening now that I’ve had a heart attack. Because right now I have never felt better and may be healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. But you’re right, I have had to look at things differently, and I have made some changes.”

He makes four recommendations.

One: Choose your weeds. Pick willing spreaders that you can easily identify and don’t mind having in your garden, and let those go ahead and take over. Something like forget-me-nots will merrily fill in bare spaces, choking out what would be less welcome weeds.

Two: Mulch. You can’t ever do enough of it. As you approach the golden years, beef up your garden, too, so there is less space between plants, less room for weeds to get started.

Three: Start eliminating high-maintenance plants any time. Those plants that need the most work—dividing or pruning or fending off pests—are the ones you should let go. Switch to lower-care plants, such as shrubs and groundcover combinations. You don’t want to be in that situation Strickland cites, “with a garden full of plants you love but can’t possibly maintain anymore. There are so many plants you can try that you might surprise yourself and find out roses or irises aren’t the only things that can make you happy.”

Four: Garden in big pots. “It’s the ultimate answer,” says Strickland. “You can do floral arrangements, or grow vegetables or anything you want. Perhaps you’ll need to have someone help you set them out, but they can be set anywhere without worrying about whether the mower can get around them, they don’t need edging and they’re a wonderful height!”

“I don’t kneel any more, I bend, says Virginia Smith. I keep an open mind about what I can do even though I can’t do it the same way I once did.”
“I don’t kneel any more, I bend, says Virginia Smith. I keep an open mind about what I can do even though I can’t do it the same way I once did.”

Virginia Smith: Happy to Work

Mueller and Strickland are both starting down a path that Virginia Smith found years ago. “Attitude is the most important thing you need to keep gardening gracefully, which is what I like to think I’m doing. It’s one of those things you have to accept. I think of so many things I did so easily a few years ago that I wouldn’t even attempt now. But rather than railing about what I can’t do, I say look at all I can do.”

Smith gets help a couple of times a year, with big seasonal jobs like mulching and pruning. But most things she keeps doing herself, making little changes all the time in how she does the work. “I can’t get on my knees anymore, so I bend over to plant. After a period of time my back gets tired so then I go do some pruning, which uses a different set of muscles and a different mindset.”

Make paths wider and easier to walk, like this one at the Sapelak residence. Youthful greediness leads to narrow paths, as we covet every square foot for yet another plant. Wide paths are wiser, and more generous. They are low care and make navigation easier for both wheelbarrow and wheelchair.
Make paths wider and easier to walk, like this one at the Sapelak residence. Youthful greediness leads to narrow paths, as we covet every square foot for yet another plant. Wide paths are wiser, and more generous. They are low care and make navigation easier for both wheelbarrow and wheelchair.

Changes in the garden itself have also allowed Smith to keep gardening. “I use a lot more annuals than I used to, and I’ve designated some spots that are just for annuals, spots that are not too big but just the right size. They’re always ready for me to plant. As soon as the weather lets me plant annuals, I can fill those spots. It’s very gratifying, right away. I also do more annuals in containers, pots I can fill with lighter weight styrofoam and potting soil so they’re light enough for me to move around to just where I need them.”

An altered perspective on what must be done on any one day is helpful, says Smith. “I don’t set deadlines anymore—I just do what I feel like doing. Then I rest a while and if I feel like doing more, I do.”

On the other hand, with its passage, time has become more valuable. “I’m less reluctant to move something if I don’t like it where it is. I’ve either gotten more brave or more foolish!”

Having to decide what one can and can’t accomplish and determine what you most want to do with your time has also changed Smith’s outlook on some plants, even weeds. “I’m more patient with plants I used to pull out because they were too aggressive, things like sweet woodruff that take over. I used to pull them to keep them under control. Now I just keep them from choking plants I really like, and enjoy them wherever they’re pretty enough to just put up with.

“I enjoy gardening more every year,” says Smith, and she smiles.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

The Ultimate Garden Tool: Your Vehicle

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Garnet Bowden lets husband Kurt do the loading at the garden center. “Weight isn’t a consideration in this load, so I can just load things in order by how we want to take them out—first in will be the last out. If we had anything very heavy it would have to go in first, to sit further forward so it wouldn’t weigh down the back end too much.”
Garnet Bowden lets husband Kurt do the loading at the garden center. “Weight isn’t a consideration in this load, so I can just load things in order by how we want to take them out—first in will be the last out. If we had anything very heavy it would have to go in first, to sit further forward so it wouldn’t weigh down the back end too much.”

All the signs are there. Fast food wrappers, cell phones, toiletry kits, children’s toys, recorded books and dozens of other items. A vehicle’s standard inventory tells it all—we live in our cars. Since two out of five Americans professes to gardening as a primary hobby, it shouldn’t be surprising that spades, pruning tools, plant identification texts and earth-stained gloves are commonplace in cars. That basic kit allows the average gardener to lend a hand at the in-laws or the subdivision entrance, and take advantage of roadside floral events.

For an increasing number of horticultural enthusiasts, that basic kit isn’t enough. Approximately 5,500 Master Gardeners are active in Michigan at any one time, volunteering about 200,000 hours a year at parks, schools, civic areas, farm markets, demonstration gardens, hospital therapeutic gardens and more. Other such programs enlist gardeners in growing and almost uncountable numbers – 350 official volunteers at The Detroit Zoo, for instance, are adept at sweet-talking family and friends into packing the necessities and meeting up at the zoo for a day of gardening. These are serious gardeners on wheels, packing garden carts, plants, mulch and assorted power tools.

That makes the car the ultimate garden tool. So of course some people have begun to seek, design or wish for the deluxe model. Others use ingenuity to turn everyday wheels into garden hybrids. And some must work undercover to take their passion on the road.

Deb Hall spent several days installing shelving and hardware for storing tools and materials in her cube van. Her system leaves plenty of room for a wheelbarrow, bagged materials and plants. The van is the envy of all her gardening friends. “I love it!” says Hall.
Deb Hall spent several days installing shelving and hardware for storing tools and materials in her cube van. Her system leaves plenty of room for a wheelbarrow, bagged materials and plants. The van is the envy of all her gardening friends. “I love it!” says Hall.

The deluxe model

Some gardeners give tours of their garden. Deb Hall gives tours of her garden vehicle. It’s a “cube van,” a tool shed on wheels that can also transport dozens of flats of flowers, enough trees and shrubs to plant an entire backyard or construct a water garden complete with fish. When it was time to retire her previous vehicle, Hall says, “I decided to get it for convenience, so I wouldn’t have to haul a trailer. I don’t handle trailers very well, but I wanted to get things done without making two or three trips. I also realized if I had it, I could be more organized because I could shelve things. It’s been fun, a growing thing, to learn even better ways to keep things organized.”

Hall’s van is the envy of other members of the Association of Professional Gardeners, such as Sharon Cornwell. “I love her truck!” says Cornwell. “Every tool has a spot. I’m sure she’ll even come up with a shelf unit so she can carry tons more flats of flowers. And it’s a great place for the whole group that’s gardening together to eat lunch. You all get in back, sit Indian style and chill out for a while!”

Ingenious hybrids

Brenda Sutton of Redford takes her gardening skills on the road several days a week and likes to be ready for everything. She considers what to take along each day, which revolves around some “regulars,” tools that can be used for most basic chores—spade, garden fork, trowel, pruning shears and a weeding tool. Although the Saturn’s back seats can fold down, making room for long-handled tools, the cargo space still won’t handle a wheelbarrow. That’s why Sutton includes a five-gallon bucket and a small tarp on her list of regulars—together they can take the place of a wheelbarrow.

Judy Jacobs of Franklin trundles tools and supplies around the Detroit Zoo in a red wagon. That’s not unusual among the adopt-a-gardeners, but it is unusual that all of Jacobs’ gear arrives at the zoo in her convertible. Not a car most people would want to see exposed to the elements, so to speak.

Tips for using your vehicle to haul plants and garden tools

  • Cardboard boxes that can be folded flat when not in use are handy accessories. Flattened, they can line a trunk or interior to keep it mud-free beneath plants or tools. They can also fit vertically next to tools to prevent gouged interior molding. Boxed, they can hold several potted plants to prevent tipping.
  • One or two disposable rain ponchos take up almost no room in a glove box or trunk, are always handy for the gardener, and can double as seat protectors under plants.
  • Elastic tarp straps also take up very little space but are indispensable for securing items that might shift.
  • Thick string is a great asset. It can stabilize loads and, gently used, can wrap around and compress plant crowns to half their actual size, or less.
  • If you put in a water garden with a flexible liner, save the scraps of liner. Bigger bits are excellent for lining a trunk and small scraps, placed between stacked bags of mulch or soil, create a non-skid surface to reduce the chance that heavy bags will slide onto adjacent plants.
  • A wide plastic spackling knife is useful for scraping tools clean before packing them back into the car.
  • Old canvas and cloth tote bags can be slipped over the blades of metal tools to prevent scratches to a car’s interior and to catch flaking dirt as well. Used this way they also muffle the telltale metallic clanking.
  • Open the windows if you must leave the car when it’s loaded with plants or bagged materials, to prevent condensation on interior surfaces.
  • In standard cars, load very heavy things first, pushing them toward the front of the vehicle to avoid weighing down the car’s back end. In a truck or bigger SUV built to handle heavy loads, put the weightiest things in last so you won’t have to slide them so far to unload them.

“I really enjoy my little car but I also need to take my garden tools around town – to my kids’ homes, the zoo, and to places where I work as a garden coach. So I took a good look at what I needed and worked out this system,” explains Jacobs. “With the top down and a tarp on the back seat, I can load the wagon and tools without leaving a mark. Plants can sit right in the wagon and there’s no danger that they’ll tip, which isn’t good for the plants and not so hot for the car’s interior either. And as long as I keep the outside of my bucket clean I can carry it right on the front seat, filled with all kinds of hand tools.

“My system does have its limits. Lately, I’m doing more and bigger gardening projects, and I have used my husband’s car more often—something he’s not too pleased about. He told me, ‘If this keeps up, you’re getting a truck!’”

Kurt and Garnet Bowden of Oxford came prepared to the garden center one day this spring. “We do lots of home improvement things – that’s one reason we both drive SUVs,” says Garnet.

Landscaping projects are annual events at the Bowden house, she adds. “This time we were redoing all along the front of the house. We tore out everything that was there. It was kind of an afterthought, as we got ready to go to buy plants, that maybe we should take both vehicles. We’re glad we did – we fit a whole bunch of evergreens, lots of flowers and a couple of trees in there. Kurt’s the packer. I just stepped back and let him go. When we get home we’ll just drive around the yard delivering everything where it belongs. The SUVs are our four-wheel-drive wheelbarrows!”

Undercover but on the road

Sometimes we drive borrowed or rented vehicles, or a car that significant others in our lives have designated off-limits for gardening ventures. Yet horticultural opportunities crop up at unexpected times. When that happens, what we’ve learned in sanctioned garden-mobiles can pay off in spades.

D prefers to remain anonymous, the better to protect her secrets from a disapproving spouse. “If I see there’s a good deal at the nursery but I’m in his car, I work fast and use lots of plastic to avoid leaving any evidence. I also take a careful look before loading up, to be sure I can remember exactly where everything was to begin with, so it all ends up in that same order once I’m done. Once I found a great rock—we’re always looking for good rocks along the side of the road—but all I had was his car. I put it in an old bowling bag to get it into the car without scuffing the exterior or interior. If it was bigger than the bag I would have had to wait until he was home, and we’d go back for it in our van. But then the rock might have been gone!”

D’s daughter K says, “It’s funny. They both agree the van is okay for gardening stuff. When the two of them are driving, they’re always on the lookout for rocks and they’re so cute when they find one. They carry this old towel just so they can roll a big rock onto it and lift it together.”

Perhaps what you’ve seen and read here will come in handy when you pack for your next gardening field trip. But every time you get behind the wheel, keep at least this last thought in mind. Since forty percent of the population has garden fever, many of the cars around you at any given time are being driven by gardeners. That’s a lot of people keeping one eye on the shoulder, studying landscapes and gardens while they drive and taking corners at unpredictable, subdued speeds lest their plants tip. At least a few of them may also be prone to sudden starts of alarm when shifting boulders go ‘thud’ in the trunk. So always be prepared for unexpected moves by fellow mobile gardeners, and do your own garden packing carefully so you can keep your attention on the road!

Janet’s Journal: Fertilizing Tips

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Simple suggestions for wiser fertilizer use

Exotic species such as rhododendron and azalea that wouldn’t normally be found growing in Michigan’s alkaline soils need special fertilization every week or two from early May until late July. Use a water-soluble fertilizer that includes micronutrients. Products range from seaweed solutions to acid-loving plant powders that dissolve in water. Spray the solution onto the plant’s foliage, so some nutrients can be absorbed directly into the leaves.
Exotic species such as rhododendron and azalea that wouldn’t normally be found growing in Michigan’s alkaline soils need special fertilization every week or two from early May until late July. Use a water-soluble fertilizer that includes micronutrients. Products range from seaweed solutions to acid-loving plant powders that dissolve in water. Spray the solution onto the plant’s foliage, so some nutrients can be absorbed directly into the leaves.

  1. The basic idea of fertilization is to supplement the soil rather than the plant. Just because the label says “Lawn Fertilizer” or “Rose Food,” it doesn’t mean that fertilizer must be used exclusively on that plant, or that plant must have its namesake fertilizer. Specialty fertilizers in general were formulated to meet greenhouse growers’ needs, providing enough nutrients in the right proportions for the named plants when those are growing in soilless peat-bark mixes. A Michigan State University Extension soil test is a better guide for choosing fertilizer for field-grown plants. It pinpoints nutrients present and lacking in a soil. You may correctly use lawn fertilizer on roses and vegetable formulas on trees if those products most closely match the nutrient ratios prescribed by the MSU soil test result.
  2. An excess of any nutrient can be wasteful, or even harmful, to plants or the wider environment. Avoid “bloom builder” fertilizers with an extremely high middle number (10-30-20 and 5-30-5 formulations are two examples) unless you know your soil is deficient in what that middle number measures, phosphorus.
  3. Learn to recognize needy plants by diminishing leaf size, paleness or washed-out bloom color. Use water soluble products as mid-season supplements for these plants – kelp and fish emulsion sprays or water soluble powders.
  4. Accept the fact that some plants are so far removed from their forebears that they need more nutrients than nature can supply. Varieties of rose, delphinium, clematis, dahlia, tomato and corn bred for enormous flowers or fruits won’t live up to their catalog descriptions without fertilizer supplements.
  5. Likewise, plants that you plant in soil that is very different than their native habitat will probably need special attention. Rhododendrons, azaleas, pieris, mountain laurel and heather cannot obtain essential nutrients from alkaline soil and so require “acid-loving plant” fertilizers that supply micronutrients in water soluble form.
  6. Use MSU Extension’s soil testing lab to learn what nutrients your soil really needs. (Contact your county’s MSU Extension office for a soil testing kit and instructions.) You may be surprised. Some soils have everything a plant needs except nitrogen, so the fertilizer recommendation from MSU’s soil lab may call for a simple nitrogen source such as 20-0-0 lawn fertilizer.
  7. Don’t use it if you don’t want to. Keep your soil’s organic matter content high by continual sheet composting – layering nutrient-rich plant matter such as fallen leaves and kitchen parings over the soil. Organic matter decomposes into nitrogen and other nutrients. One percent of organic matter in the soil yields nitrogen at a rate comparable to fertilizing with one pound of actual nitrogen per thousand square feet. It takes 3 pounds of 33-0-0 or 100 pounds of 1-0-0 fertilizer to do the same for that 1,000 square feet.
  8. Microorganisms and other soil-dwelling creatures must digest slow-release organic fertilizers such as cottonseed meal and feather meal before the nutrients in these products become soluble and available to plant roots. So apply such fertilizers a month or two before you expect the plants in that area to begin rapid growth.
  9. “Organic” and “inorganic” (manufactured) fertilizers often look very similar and other distinctions between them are also fuzzy. A plant can’t use either type of fertilizer until it has been dissolved in water. Most “organics” must be broken down by fungi and soil-dwelling creatures before they dissolve, while many “inorganic” fertilizers dissolve immediately. Yet fish emulsion, kelp and compost tea are organic and water soluble.

Flower color may be deeper in some species when the plant is given supplemental fertilizer. But fertilizer isn’t necessary if the flowers and colors in your garden measure up on the yardstick that counts most—your own appreciative eye.
Flower color may be deeper in some species when the plant is given supplemental fertilizer. But fertilizer isn’t necessary if the flowers and colors in your garden measure up on the yardstick that counts most—your own appreciative eye.

The queen of vines, large-flowered clematis, has a reputation for loving alkaline soils. Although this myth has been dispelled by experts, many gardeners continue to spread agricultural lime or gypsum at the feet of their clematis. In Michigan’s naturally-alkaline soils, this repeated liming can be counterproductive, blocking other nutrients from reaching the plant.
The queen of vines, large-flowered clematis, has a reputation for loving alkaline soils. Although this myth has been dispelled by experts, many gardeners continue to spread agricultural lime or gypsum at the feet of their clematis. In Michigan’s naturally-alkaline soils, this repeated liming can be counterproductive, blocking other nutrients from reaching the plant.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: A Veggie Smart Perspective

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Harvest time at Ernie Bergeron’s—beautiful as well as tasty and fragrant.
Harvest time at Ernie Bergeron’s—beautiful as well as tasty and fragrant.

One man’s successful transition of backyard lawn to vegetable garden

Rainwater can be collected for irrigation. Bergeron’s downspouts fill rain barrels. The barrels are elevated on blocks so they can be tapped to supply the garden.
Rainwater can be collected for irrigation. Bergeron’s downspouts fill rain barrels. The barrels are elevated on blocks so they can be tapped to supply the garden.

Being laid off from your job can certainly change your perspective. In the early 1970’s, trucker Ernie Bergeron received a lay-off notice. Perhaps it was because the future wasn’t looking too bright that a new, dim view of lawn overtook him one day. He recalls standing in his backyard and wondering, “What am I growing all this grass for? I can’t eat grass!”

So he started digging, and planted a vegetable garden. 30 years later, retired but still digging, he improves his techniques every year. The vegetable “bed” now fills every inch of his 750 square foot backyard. It lives up to Bergeron’s description—“my country garden in the city,” partly because it’s completely walled off from the neighbors by lush, bird-planted grape vines and black raspberry bushes that grow along the enclosing fences.

It’s as self-contained as any farm, too. It includes some perennial crops as well as the more standard annual vegetables. There’s a compost area, rainwater collectors and a gravity-fed irrigation system, storage for equipment, plus many practically ingenious and whimsically inspired inventions. A salvaged 55-gallon drum is the main element in an elevated, rotating compost bin, which he turns daily to reap a steady supply of crumbly dark compost. His latest project was once a truck cap. It sits on a cinder block frame now, its black sides absorbing heat and windows oriented to admit light. Bergeron’s fitted it with shelves and is nearly ready to put it to use as a greenhouse.

Vegetable gardening isn’t so popular as flower gardening, but you wonder why, when you stand in Bergeron’s domain and sample the produce. One bite of a fresh-picked cuke or whiff of a warm, ripe pepper and I’m ready to redesign some flower beds to make room for potatoes, corn and beans. It’s like trading one sense for two or three—less visually exciting, perhaps, but heavenly in scent and taste, and much more likely to draw me in to touch and fondle.

And as for the possibilities – the sky’s the limit in this oldest of gardening pursuits. In the 6,000 years that beans have been cultivated, gardeners were not sitting still but selecting and passing on their favorite varieties. Although commercial farmers in North America now restrict themselves to just six potato cultivars, hundreds of types still exist, legacy of ancient New World gardens that provided a range of potato-y flavors from nutty to tart.

It would be a shame, on many levels, to let that legacy pass. European explorers of the 18th century found far better gardens in the Americas than they had known back home. Native Americans grew more species and varieties than most Europeans had ever seen, and in many cases used more advanced techniques. It’s likely that Bergeron, keen on treading lightly on the Earth by growing organically, would have enjoyed comparing notes with those gardeners. They would both know from experience that thorough soil preparation and the plant’s own health are the best defense against any pest.

Bergeron worked hard on his soil preparation at first, but now he works smarter and less hard. “What I found when I first started digging was that this lot was used once for a dumping site. A manufacturing plant that was near here seems to have just dumped truckloads of scraps. It was disgusting. I knew I had to do something to make the soil better.

“Now I cover the whole yard with 10 to 12 inches of leaves in the fall. I wait until it dries in spring then sometime in May I turn the leaves and till them in. Maybe I’ll till them twice if they weren’t all the way dry the first time. Then I level it all and make my raised beds.

“I use string to outline my paths and then dig down, taking soil from the paths, throwing it on the rows and leveling it off. I usually make the rows no more than four feet wide so I can work in them without stepping in them. I can work two feet into the row from either side without stepping on it. It’s important to stay off the rows because the plants grow so much better in loose soil.

“I don’t start seed in the house, usually. The plants are too spindly when I grow from seed in the house. I buy my plants already started, although this year I’ll try out my new greenhouse. Some things I sow directly, of course—beets and carrots, for instance. I make my little rows and start the seed right there.

“I cut some rhubarb and horseradish in May. How do I manage to work around perennials like horseradish and rhubarb when I till in the leaves? I just till right over the horseradish – small pieces come up all over; enough for me to use if I watch for them. The rhubarb grows along the edge with the raspberries and the grape vines on the fence, where I don’t till.

“I don’t do much to the fruit. I prune the raspberries when I have time. I cut the dead canes out and throw a shovel of compost over their roots once in a while. I actually don’t dare go right in with them because I’d be sure to cry and because of what I’d look like—a guy trying to wrestle a wildcat!

“I grow way more than I can eat—here, have some of this cabbage, and some cucumbers. And I eat things other people might not think to try—here, taste this,” he says, pointing to the weed purslane that covers a bare area. “Really high in vitamin C, and tasty!”

“Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers – it’s free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one!,” says Bergeron.
“Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers – it’s free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one!,” says Bergeron.

Ernie Bergeron’s suggestions for the vegetable gardener:

  1. Don’t plant too early. “I usually wait until the latter part of May to plant. I’d rather be late than early.”
  2. “Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers—it’s free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one! I shovel compost onto the beds, and also make compost tea. And not only do my plants grow, but they grow well, even though I’ve been growing the same things in the same places all these years. No rotating—there’s really not room to rotate in a yard this small, anyway. It’s the compost and all the leaves I add that does it. If I have to buy fertilizer, I use fish emulsion and use it sparingly, maybe one or two times a season if the plants look a little pale.”
  3. “Get away from chemicals. You don’t need them if the soil is in good shape. And encourage birds—a bird feeder I made from a metal trash can lid brings lots of birds in here. My friends the sparrows eat lots of bad bugs!”
  4. “Keep weeds down by mulching with grass clippings or with leaves. You can store the leaves in bags from the previous fall. Just put the leaves in trash bags then cover the bags with a tarp so moisture doesn’t get in.”

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Garden Forecast: Pleasantly Foggy

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After winter, predicting what happens to garden plants is as tricky as predicting the weather or the economy

Even a leafless tree can provide a windbreak and hold in a bit of radiant heat from the ground during the coldest winter nights, all good things for a plant at its feet. Yet none of this is any consolation if an ice-laden limb of the tree flattens everything in the understory!
Even a leafless tree can provide a windbreak and hold in a bit of radiant heat from the ground during the coldest winter nights, all good things for a plant at its feet. Yet none of this is any consolation if an ice-laden limb of the tree flattens everything in the understory!

Perhaps that mountain ash, burning bush, lilac or rhododendron died as a result of black walnut blight, poisoned by accumulation of chemicals produced by walnut roots. Or maybe the victim would have survived with more moisture. The more water that goes into the soil under a black walnut, the more the toxins are diluted, so that even sensitive plants may survive.
Perhaps that mountain ash, burning bush, lilac or rhododendron died as a result of black walnut blight, poisoned by accumulation of chemicals produced by walnut roots. Or maybe the victim would have survived with more moisture. The more water that goes into the soil under a black walnut, the more the toxins are diluted, so that even sensitive plants may survive.

This past winter was odd, weather-wise. That’s not surprising, since few seasons ever match all the averages. At winter’s end the standard greeting between two gardeners is “Hello! Weird winter, huh? What do you suppose all that (fill in weather feature here) will mean to the garden this year?”

Needled, waxy species such as junipers usually have an advantage over broadleaf evergreens like boxwood and rhododendron in an exposed and windy winter. Yet if this big plant was newly planted last fall, still possessing only the unnaturally small rootball of the nursery field, wind may have rocked the plant and broken many roots.
Needled, waxy species such as junipers usually have an advantage over broadleaf evergreens like boxwood and rhododendron in an exposed and windy winter. Yet if this big plant was newly planted last fall, still possessing only the unnaturally small rootball of the nursery field, wind may have rocked the plant and broken many roots.

Have fun soliciting and making predictions but treat it as what it is, a game. Use it to pass the time until spring arrives with the real answers. Don’t take any prediction too seriously, no matter the source.

A warm winter may be easier than usual on hybrid roses. But single-digit air that arrives in late winter when there is no insulating snow over the roses’ roots may do more damage than another year’s sub-zero snowy January.
A warm winter may be easier than usual on hybrid roses. But single-digit air that arrives in late winter when there is no insulating snow over the roses’ roots may do more damage than another year’s sub-zero snowy January.

That goes for the pictorial prognostications that accompany this story. Don’t fret over any of them, just consider them as the possibilities they are.

My goal here is to convince you that it’s not possible to make an accurate forecast of what effect a particular stretch of weather will have on a given garden. It’s far better, and more fun, to match plants and sites, then see what happens as millions of years of genetic development goes head to head with all the vagaries of the rest of the natural world.

If you want to explore this position, start by comparing garden forecasting with two disciplines that rely on prediction: meteorology and economics.

First, there’s meteorology, a science that even the most critical person admits has improved over the past 40 years in its ability to predict tomorrow’s weather. To make predictions, forecasters use precise data collected from thousands of weather stations across and above the world. These numbers are transmitted instantaneously to central reporting offices where all the factors that influence the speed, direction, temperature and humidity of air currents, plus the atmosphere’s current vital signs, are fed into sophisticated computers. There they churn as hundreds or thousands of equations whose answers are compared to known history and probability, then displayed as predicted future air pressure, wind speed, cloud development, etc.

This system for analyzing the atmosphere had its beginnings in prehistory when the first farmer or sailor squinted into the wind and tried to recall when he or she had seen a sky quite like that and what had followed in that sky’s wake. By 2,000 years ago, these forecasters had help from weather vanes and rain gauges, but it wasn’t until the mid-1600s that they understood the need to measure air pressure, humidity and temperature and invented the barometer, hygrometer and thermometer. Thus today’s computers have no more than 350 years of data to work with. For many New World areas the records cover less than 100 years.

Beautiful but stupid, that’s a forsythia. Just a few days of cold then a warm spell can trick the chemical clock in a forsythia bud into acting like winter is over. Flowers that open early, even part-way, won’t be part of the spring show. Some other plants that bloom out of season in late fall, such as azaleas and lilacs, may fare better next time if fertilized differently. A nutrient-deficient bud may not harden as well or set as dependable a chemical clock.
Beautiful but stupid, that’s a forsythia. Just a few days of cold then a warm spell can trick the chemical clock in a forsythia bud into acting like winter is over. Flowers that open early, even part-way, won’t be part of the spring show. Some other plants that bloom out of season in late fall, such as azaleas and lilacs, may fare better next time if fertilized differently. A nutrient-deficient bud may not harden as well or set as dependable a chemical clock.

With simple math (at least I’m told it’s simple!) one can look at the number of variables, the amount of historical data on hand, the possible combinations of variables and locations for which we desire weather forecasts and see that we just haven’t been at this game long enough to know all the possible answers.

Lilac is a tough character that isn’t phased by unusual winter temperatures. Yet, if a foot path to the school bus stop passes over this plant’s roots, it may be in trouble. That pressure on the soil, buffered during a normal winter by ice in the ground, may pack the soil all year if the soil is not frozen. Soil there may now be so compacted it’s suffocating the roots.
Lilac is a tough character that isn’t phased by unusual winter temperatures. Yet, if a foot path to the school bus stop passes over this plant’s roots, it may be in trouble. That pressure on the soil, buffered during a normal winter by ice in the ground, may pack the soil all year if the soil is not frozen. Soil there may now be so compacted it’s suffocating the roots.

Another place where accurate forecasts would be gold—literally—is the field of economics. It’s a science barely 300 years old and which only took on its current form about 70 years ago. It’s so new that we really don’t expect reliable predictions and accept widely varying interpretations of the same “leading indicators.” Economists are still debating how much influence each accepted variable has on overall economic growth and recession, and theories are still being advanced and tested that would change the variables themselves.

So there you have it, two areas where there is a pressing need for accurate forecasting. In one, we’ve strived for thousands of years yet we’re still only close in our predictions. In the other, although the search for reliable forecasts is fueled by the weight of all the world’s money and we have hair-splittingly accurate accounts of every conceivable factor for 70 years, experts still can’t agree that we’re even looking at the right numbers.

This coral bells might have gotten ahead, making more roots than usual during a warm winter. However, if there is no snow to insulate it against dry, cold winds in late winter, it may lose as much leaf to dehydration as the extra starch in the roots will be able to replace.
This coral bells might have gotten ahead, making more roots than usual during a warm winter. However, if there is no snow to insulate it against dry, cold winds in late winter, it may lose as much leaf to dehydration as the extra starch in the roots will be able to replace.

The basic natural factors that affect an individual plant’s performance are at least as complex as those that influence the weather. And because people are the ones who plant, prod and rate the plants whose futures we’d like to predict, human actions have to be taken into account, too.

Just to start building a history on which garden predictions might someday be based, we would need complete meteorological records for the garden area plus accurate daily measurements and seasonal averages of soil density, temperature, moisture levels, available nutrients and resident pathogens. Also important would be an objective evaluation of the relationship—beneficial or antagonistic—between each pair of plants so we could weight a plant’s possible response to adverse conditions for whether it was being assisted or debilitated by its neighbors. Of course we’d need reports on all human, animal or insect activity in the vicinity and detailed descriptions of the plants themselves, including their ages and past “medical” history.

Plants such as astilbe (also coral bells, rhododendron, azalea, yew, burning bush and many more) suffer extra damage from root loss if root-chewing black vine weevils were living in the soil near their roots in winter. The weevil grubs feed every day that the soil is not frozen, even under January’s and February’s snow. But if moles and shrews are also active during a warm winter, the weevil grubs may be wiped out.
Plants such as astilbe (also coral bells, rhododendron, azalea, yew, burning bush and many more) suffer extra damage from root loss if root-chewing black vine weevils were living in the soil near their roots in winter. The weevil grubs feed every day that the soil is not frozen, even under January’s and February’s snow. But if moles and shrews are also active during a warm winter, the weevil grubs may be wiped out.

Meteorologists turn to the National Weather Service for reports. Economists tap the National Bureau of Economic Research for essential statistics. Pressing need and the importance of money fuel these data-gathering efforts. There’s no big pay-off in collecting garden stats. So don’t hold your breath waiting for the Garden Prognostication Agency to appear.

Do keep doing your best to match each plant you grow to a site that provides the conditions it would have had in its native setting. Embedded in every well-sited plant is the ability to survive just about everything that Nature can throw at it. Grow it in the right amount of light and in the type of soil that species evolved to exploit. Water it as if you are the gentlest rains of that plant’s homeland. That plant will not only light up your life in a “normal” year but provide you with something to crow about in the bad times.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

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