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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.

Janet’s Journal – A Drought Diary

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Some gardening seasons are better than others. Don’t look and learn only during the best years, but also when disasters such as drought strike. There’s a lot to be learned, such as the fact that butterfly bushes, sedum and grasses not only survive drought and heat that wipe out astilbe and daylilies, but also look good under those conditions.
Some gardening seasons are better than others. Don’t look and learn only during the best years, but also when disasters such as drought strike. There’s a lot to be learned, such as the fact that butterfly bushes, sedum and grasses not only survive drought and heat that wipe out astilbe and daylilies, but also look good under those conditions.

Plants that armor themselves against future droughts

After one of the hottest, driest summers in recent memory, we realized that quite a few species were not crispy critters, but actually seemed to be reveling in the heat and drought.

So I began noting plants in my own garden and others that rely almost entirely on rain, and made the following list. It’s hardly exhaustive—it’s heavy on perennials since that’s my gardening specialty, but even that list could be longer—but it’ll be useful for designing dry, gravelly beds or hot places where the hose won’t reach.

Hawthorns provide pleasant bloom in June, fruit for the birds, and respectable fall color. What a delight to know they also perform well in hot, dry places.
Hawthorns provide pleasant bloom in June, fruit for the birds, and respectable fall color. What a delight to know they also perform well in hot, dry places.

Don’t call it a list of drought-tolerant plants. Tolerance isn’t what you should settle for, because it’s not always pretty.

Joe Pye weed is a good example. They showed me their burned-back foliage, their drought defense mechanism. They simply hang on until late June, ugly though they may be with leaves so wilted you can pass your arm between stems without touching foliage, because then they can set buds for next spring. Even if they die back without flowering, those buds survive, insulated below the soil. It’s an effective survival technique, but hardly handsome.

So, some plants perfectly capable of outlasting a drought aren’t listed here. I sought and found plants that fare well in a drought and remain attractive too.

What makes these winners, when other plants shrivel or duck out in a hot, dry season? I’ve noticed a number of common characteristics that probably helped them survive. I’ll describe them so you can be on the lookout for other plants like them. Even without witnessing a plant’s performance under fire, you can probably bet on it if it has one or more of these attributes.

Plants with skinny foliage

The fewer and smaller its leaves, the less water a plant loses through transpiration on hot days. This was important this year, since some plants that might have weathered simple drought couldn’t handle the heat—they couldn’t take up water fast enough on the hottest days to replace what the leaves transpired.

Missing from the list are some plants with tiny leaves but a preference for dry air. Cosmos and annual bachelor button, for instance, are drought tolerant. Both are also susceptible to mildew when they’re under stress, as in a drought. Our high relative humidity insures that spores and chances of infection abound, so we see their lower leaves begin to brown and curl, victims of mildew.

Leaves held vertically

A leaf that stands upright escapes the full impact of midday sun. Bearded iris is a perfect example. It’s a plant that may never be as happy as when it’s planted in that hot, dry strip between driveway or sidewalk and brick house foundation. Yuccas and many ornamental grasses employ the same tactic.

Even large leaves can get by in a drought if vertically arranged. Prairie dock and its relative, compass plant, have huge leaves that stand straight up like canoe paddles stuck butt first into a sandy beach. Both plants impress me most in dry years, standing taller and producing sturdier flowering stems in a dry summer than wet (although prairie dock, a native of seasonally wet meadows, loves being wet at least through spring).

By comparison, and in explanation of some sad losses this year, pity the poor understory species often planted in the sun—flowering dogwoods, Japanese maples, redbuds, hydrangeas, etc. These plants’ leaves are held parallel to the ground, better to catch every photon of light that filters through the forest canopy. The only way for those leaves to protect themselves from full sun is to hang down—to wilt. In a wilted state they can’t photosynthesize, so the plant can starve in the process.

Leaves with a furry coat

The hair that makes a leaf look gray or silver also acts as insulation. Water released from “breathing holes”—the stomata—isn’t whisked away directly by the wind but remains trapped in the hairs as a high-humidity buffer zone.

Even a little bit of hair makes a difference—the downy foliage of a Tellima or the bristles on prairie dock and annual sunflower are examples. Excessive hair doesn’t seem to be the problem for plants that overdressing can be to people, however. Blue mist spirea and Russian sage, two of the best species for hot dry beds, have a coating not only on their leaves but the twigs too.

Leaves can fail to develop their rightful downiness if grown in cool, moist shade. Blue globe thistle and dusty miller are cases in point. They become almost green in the shade and apt to sag at the first taste of drought.

Waxy coatings on leaves

Here’s another means to slow water loss. Myrtle euphorbia’s (Euphorbia myrsinites) wax coating protects it even through winter’s freeze-drying, so I’m not surprised this plant looked blue, cool and comfortable all summer. And although giant crambes burned or were set back, their waxy blue cousin, sea crambe, never looked better than it did in this drought.

Tap roots

Plants that pull water from deep down can grow for weeks and even months after other plants have curled up and blown away. Tap roots are probes that can extend many feet into the subsoil.

Many plants have more than one defense mechanism. Waxy myrtle euphorbia has a tap root. Yucca and yucca-leaf sea holly (Eryngium yuccifolium) have vertically-arranged leaves as well as tap roots.

Butterfly bush may hang its leaves on the hottest dry days, but it comes through with flower even so. Now, if we could only help it stay ahead of the spider mites that also like hot, dry conditions!
Butterfly bush may hang its leaves on the hottest dry days, but it comes through with flower even so. Now, if we could only help it stay ahead of the spider mites that also like hot, dry conditions!

Wide-reaching roots

Far-flung, stringy roots carry junipers, butterfly bushes and hawthorns through a drought. These plants aren’t limited to drawing water from only that relatively small area right outside their own driplines.

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ has become the plant I love to hate, because it’s too perfect. Is it fair that a plant with good foliage all summer, great color all fall, plus winter interest should also handle drought and heat without faltering?!
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ has become the plant I love to hate, because it’s too perfect. Is it fair that a plant with good foliage all summer, great color all fall, plus winter interest should also handle drought and heat without faltering?!

Succulent foliage

You probably know that cacti take up water during the brief desert rainy season and can retain and use it slowly, even over years. Michigan native prickly pear cactus and many sedums can also make use of water that was imbibed weeks before.

Bulbous plants and others with avoidance syndrome

Listen hard, and you can probably hear tulips, daffodils and foxtail lilies humming with delight right about now. These plants developed “grow fast, then hide” traits to deal with bone-dry summers. In fact, Michigan’s normally-moist summers may account for problems we have with these plants as perennials—namely, that they won’t come back. If the bulbs (tulip and daffodil) or roots (foxtail lily) remain cool and moist all summer, they don’t ripen. As a result, they may not set flowers or might not develop a proper protective tunic, which may mean they’ll rot during winter.

Catmint is happy here next to a stone patio in 95 degree heat, even without irrigation.
Catmint is happy here next to a stone patio in 95 degree heat, even without irrigation.

Beats me what gives them an edge

Then there are the plants who survive by some facility I can’t figure. Yet even though I can’t guess why ‘Gold Standard’ and ‘Sugar and Cream’ hostas keep going when other hostas are toasted or prostrated by the heat, I can’t deny my notes—they did stand tall. Tovara, Solomon’s seal and goatsbeard stump me as well, as does siebold viburnum—this last has hairy leaves and twigs, but so do other viburnums that scorched and drooped this summer!

Most of these enigmas are shade-loving plants, and as such are not likely to withstand drought and heat if moved out of their element. However, I’m convinced that shade alone did not save them. Many were survivors in shade gardens among dozens of other shade-loving species that wimped out.

One last thing. If you choose to grow a perennial or hardy woody plant from this list, don’t simply set it out in a dry bed and expect it to thrive. If it was produced in a nursery or an irrigated bed, even if it belongs to the most drought-tolerant species in the world, it will need time to reconfigure its root system from a dense, watered-every-day ball to something wide, deep or both. If it’s a species shielded by furry foliage or a thick, waxy coating, it may come to you less hairy or thinner-skinned than it should be. Once established, things are different, since the plant’s leaves will form in hotter, drier conditions. So provide water during dry spells for at least the first year if you want to see your drought-tolerant plants shine the next time rains fail.

Half the world may feel that yuccas are appropriately named, but even those detractors must admit they shine during a drought.
Half the world may feel that yuccas are appropriately named, but even those detractors must admit they shine during a drought.

Drought-thriving plants

Annuals

  • Dusty miller (Senecio cineraria)
  • Gazania
  • Licorice plant (Helichrysum species
    and varieties)
  • Red fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’)
  • Sunflowers (Helianthus varieties)
  • Verbena bonariensis

Perennials

  • Allium (Allium species)
  • Amsonia (Amsonia tabernaemontana and A. hubrichtii)*
  • Baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata)
  • Barrenwort (Epimedium species)*
  • Bearded iris (Iris germanica hybrids)
  • Blue globe thistle (Echinops ritro)
  • Blue lyme grass (Elymus arenarius, Lymus arenarius). Beware: it’s not a clump-former but a runner extraordinaire.
  • Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii and its hybrids)
  • Catmint (Nepeta mussinii and hybrids)
  • Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum)
  • Daffodil (Narcissus species and hybrids)
  • Dianthus ‘Bath’s Pink’ and other perennial carnations having D. gratianopolitanus in their genes.
  • Fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides)
  • Foxtail lily (Eremurus himalaicus)
  • Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus)*
  • Goldenrod (Solidago species and hybrids). Note: it’s not an allergen and there are excellent clump-forming hybrids such as ‘Goldenmosa’ available.
  • Hosta ‘Gold Standard’*
  • Hosta ‘Sugar and Cream’*
  • Lavender mist meadow rue (Thalictrum rochebruneanum)*
  • Leatherwood fern (Dryopteris marginalis)*
  • Michigan lily (Lilium michiganense)*
  • Myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites)
  • Perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum)*
  • Prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum)
  • Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa)
  • Rose mallow (Lavatera cachemiriana and Malva alcea)
  • Sea crambe, sea kale (Crambe maritima)
  • Showy stonecrop (Sedum spectabile and hybrids such as ‘Autumn Joy’)
  • Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum species)*
  • Starry false Solomon’s seal (Smilacina stellata)*
  • Tellima (Tellima grandiflora)*
  • Tovara (Tovara virginiana, Persicaria virginiana)*
  • Tulip (Tulipa species and hybrids)
  • Yucca (Yucca filamentosa)
  • Yucca-leaf sea holly (Eryngium yuccifolium)

Shrubs

  • Barberry (Berberis thunbergii)
  • Blue mist spirea (Caryopteris x clandonensis, gray-leaf forms)
  • Juniper (Juniperus species)
  • Siebold viburnum (V. sieboldii). Caution: fragrant in bloom, but not in a nice way.*

Trees

  • Hawthorn (Crataegus species)
  • Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos)

* Should be grown in shade or half shade.

 

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

After the Fall: Late-Season Plant Staking

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Many of the players in this scene owe their upright stance to the gardener who took a few minutes in May to position a grow-through support above the plant.
Many of the players in this scene owe their upright stance to the gardener who took a few minutes in May to position a grow-through support above the plant.

Save grace and flower with these restorative plant staking techniques

by Janet Macunovich / Photos by Steven Nikkila

This article is not about proper plant staking, that pre-meditated placing of supports. It’s about staking after a plant falls or when a plant flop is imminent.

Surely you’re familiar with the situation: it takes place in high summer. It involves a perennial whose progress you’ve been following with pleasure—by its fullness and vigor it has made it clear that this year’s bloom is going to be the best ever. The action begins as you step outside to look over your garden and find it, the promising star, leaning drunkenly against a neighboring plant or sprawled flat like a worn out puppy on a hot day.

The next time you find yourself playing this scene, resist the urge to grab all the stems, stuff them together in a string girdle and tether them to a stake. Few things look more ridiculous than bunched, crooked-tip stems with foliage turned inside-out, torn or flattened by the encasing cord. Not only are your efforts sure to produce a visual disaster, chances are you’ll crack stems or flower stalks in the process.

Before you take that route, try one of the following methods of restorative staking.

Left, a grow-through support is a simple, effective device—if it’s used in May. Right, the globe thistle (Echinops ritro) stands tall and straight in July. If you look closely you can see the edge of the support that was placed in May and keeps the plant in line.
Left: a grow-through support is a simple, effective device—if it’s used in May. Right: the globe thistle (Echinops ritro) stands tall and straight in July. If you look closely you can see the edge of the support that was placed in May and keeps the plant in line.

Stakes and crutches

First, gather a dozen or more stakes that are just as tall as or a bit taller than the plant was before it fell. Round up a small hammer. Put your pruners in your pocket, along with a roll of string or wide, soft ties—I prefer to use green- or straw-colored hemp. Often you will need some crutches as well, so take out your loppers and prune a shrub or two to get a half dozen sticks that are at least half the height of the fallen plant and have forked tops.

This globe thistle was not staked in May. By July 1, it’s leaning drastically, inches from a full fall.
This globe thistle was not staked in May. By July 1, it’s leaning drastically, inches from a full fall.

Now, lift a stem of the fallen plant you’ll be staking. Raise it gently toward vertical to see how far back you can push it without cracking it. Lay the stem back down again.

Insert 4 or 5 bamboo canes, straight sticks or hooked-end metal rods in the center of the plant’s air space. Imagine a spot about six inches underground, directly below the center of the plant’s crown. Insert the stakes as if they would meet at that point below the plant. Angle them so they are not straight up and down, but lean outward slightly to match what your test lift said the stems can bear.

Insert 6 or 8 more stakes to make a ring around the first. Lean these stakes outward to match the angle of the inner ring. An important note: You must be happy with the stakes’ positions before you start to work with the stems. The stakes should cover space evenly and gracefully—I aim to make them look like the spray of a fountain. I have learned that if I am not pleased with the stakes alone, I will not be happy with the finished staking either.

Tap the stakes into the ground with a hammer. I’ve found that if I use my weight to force them in, it’s too likely that I’ll lose my balance at least once and end up stepping or falling into the plant’s prostrate stems.

Set the stakes just deep enough to be steady. They don’t have to be driven to China, because each one is only going to support one or perhaps two stems.

To position the stakes well, you may drive them right through the crown of the plant. Don’t worry too much about this. Most of the time, the stakes will go through without serious damage. Once in a while a stake will pierce an important root or stem base, in which case the stem will tell you by wilting the next day and you’ll just cut it out then.

All of the fallen stems will be tied to or contained within the stakes you see here. You should be happy with the arrangement of the stakes before tying stems to them.
All of the fallen stems will be tied to or contained within the stakes you see here. You should be happy with the arrangement of the stakes before tying stems to them.

Next, take a look at the fallen stems. Picture the crown of the plant as a bull’s eye target and pick 4 or 5 stems that emanate from the bull’s eye at the center. Raise them gently, one by one, to meet in the middle of the inner ring of stakes. This often requires patience to separate the stems from the heap and guide them past the stakes without breaking them or tearing foliage.

Tie these central stems together, loosely. Let them lean against an inner-ring stake. This is only a temporary arrangement, so it doesn’t have to be pretty.

From stems still on the ground, select some that arise from the first ring around the bull’s eye. Tie one to each inner-ring stake.

Each of the inner-ring stakes has a stem tied to it now, and several stems stand free in the center. Here, for demonstration purposes, the inner ring of stakes has been temporarily marked with orange sleeves.
Each of the inner-ring stakes has a stem tied to it now, and several stems stand free in the center. Here, for demonstration purposes, the inner ring of stakes has been temporarily marked with orange sleeves.

After the inner ring of stakes is full, release the string that holds the central stems together. Usually these will not fall but will rest against each other or the stakes. However, if it seems like they may slip through and fall to the ground again, take one turn of string around the inner stakes to corral the loose stems within.

Use a figure-eight tie to prevent crushing the stem and to allow it necessary swaying leeway in winds and storms. That is, cross the two ends of your tying string in between the stem and the stake.
Use a figure-eight tie to prevent crushing the stem and to allow it necessary swaying leeway in winds and storms. That is, cross the two ends of your tying string in between the stem and the stake.

Now raise a stem and tie it to each outer-ring stake. Clip out weak and flowerless stems.

Cut off the tip of any stake that shows above the plant.

You can obtain crutches by cutting branches from many common landscape plants, including burning bush, crabapple and spruce. All foliage is removed and soft twigs clipped off to turn this 36-inch piece of burning bush into a crutch.
You can obtain crutches by cutting branches from many common landscape plants, including burning bush, crabapple and spruce. All foliage is removed and soft twigs clipped off to turn this 36-inch piece of burning bush into a crutch.

Use crutches to support the outermost stems of the fallen perennial. These outside stems are often least flexible and most crooked since they were the first to fall. Raise the outer stems one at a time, push a crutch into the ground to support it, then let the stem rest there. Sometimes one crutch has enough forks to support several stems. If so, drop stems one at a time into the crutch—don’t bunch them.

Raise the fallen stem. Push a crutch firmly into the ground so its fork is beneath the stem, then let the stem rest on the crutch.
Raise the fallen stem. Push a crutch firmly into the ground so its fork is beneath the stem, then let the stem rest on the crutch.

Here’s the globe thistle, arrested from its fall and restored to nearly full glory.
Here’s the globe thistle, arrested from its fall and restored to nearly full glory.

If raised before its flowers are open, a stem’s tip will turn up to vertical again. Here’s the plant, proud and tall two days after being staked, its crooked tips already straightening.
If raised before its flowers are open, a stem’s tip will turn up to vertical again. Here’s the plant, proud and tall two days after being staked, its crooked tips already straightening.

Crutches alone

Sometimes when a plant is only beginning to fall or when it has very few stems, it can be returned to grace with just a few well-placed crutches.

Left, This milky bellflower Campanula lactiflora ‘Loddon Anna’ wouldn’t normally need staking but is growing away from the shade of big trees 25 feet to the west. Its stems are likely to descend further unless staked. Crutches are all that will be needed to bring the plant back up from its fall. Right, Each stem was lifted and a crutch pushed into the ground to hold it nearer to vertical. For crutches with multiple forks, additional stems were then lifted and guided into the crutch.
Left: This milky bellflower (Campanula lactiflora ‘Loddon Anna’) wouldn’t normally need staking, but it is growing away from the shade of big trees 25 feet to the west. Its stems are likely to descend further unless staked. Crutches are all that will be needed to bring the plant back up from its fall. Right: Each stem was lifted and a crutch pushed into the ground to hold it nearer to vertical. For crutches with multiple forks, additional stems were then lifted and guided into the crutch.

Lasso it, then crutch it

Throwing a lasso and cinching it around a plant is not attractive or even effective—the whole bale can still slump to one side or the other. However, I do sometimes cinch stems temporarily to pull a plant together while I set crutches.

Crutches are often simpler to place than late-season stakes and are much less visible than any kind of corral or police line you could construct around the outside of the plant with stakes and string.

Left: This culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) was beginning to topple. Although it looks ridiculous in its string girdle, it’s only a temporary measure – a way to make the plant “suck it in” while crutches are placed. Right: While it’s tied up I can set crutches around the base of the plant. They’re sleeved with orange so you can see them better.
Left: This culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) was beginning to topple. Although it looks ridiculous in its string girdle, it’s only a temporary measure—a way to make the plant “suck it in” while crutches are placed. Right: While it’s tied up, I can set crutches around the base of the plant. They’re sleeved with orange so you can see them better.

Left: I’m releasing the plant from its string girdle now, and the stems are relaxing against the crutches. Right: Don’t you think using crutches allows the plant to retain its grace? Just compare it to the strung-up culver’s root in photo number 1.
Left: I’m releasing the plant from its string girdle now, and the stems are relaxing against the crutches. Right: Don’t you think using crutches allows the plant to retain its grace? Just compare it to the strung-up culver’s root in photo number 1.

Another reason to temporarily tie up a plant is to work on a fallen neighbor:

Left: This yellow daylily and blue balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) make a great combination when they bloom together, but the daylily has overgrown its neighbor. The daylily can be divided in fall or spring to reduce its size. For now, I’ll stake the balloon flower. Right: It helps to tie the daylily out of the way while I work on the balloon flower.
Left: This yellow daylily and blue balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) make a great combination when they bloom together, but the daylily has overgrown its neighbor. The daylily can be divided in fall or spring to reduce its size. For now, I’ll stake the balloon flower. Right: It helps to tie the daylily out of the way while I work on the balloon flower.

Left: I’ve placed the stakes and am raising and tying the fallen balloon flower stems. An alternative would be to leave the fallen stems on the ground and use short stakes to keep the tips vertical. I decided against that option since I prefer to have the blue balloon flowers open at the same height as the daylilies. Right: Once the balloon flower was staked, I released the daylily from its bonds. I also clipped back some of the daylily’s leaves to make it less overwhelming.
Left: I’ve placed the stakes and am raising and tying the fallen balloon flower stems. An alternative would be to leave the fallen stems on the ground and use short stakes to keep the tips vertical. I decided against that option since I prefer to have the blue balloon flowers open at the same height as the daylilies. Right: Once the balloon flower was staked, I released the daylily from its bonds. I also clipped back some of the daylily’s leaves to make it less overwhelming.

Wrap-up: a time consuming thing

Staking after the fall takes considerably more time and skill than preventive staking. As an example, staking the blue globe thistle after its fall, including the time required to cut branches and make crutches, took about an hour. Placing the grow-through grid over the globe thistle pictured at the beginning of this article took less than five minutes in May. As my Dad always said, “If you do a thing right at the start, even if it seems like a lot of work, it will still save time in the long run.”

On the other hand, Mom must have told me a million times, “Don’t cry over it! Use your head and come up with a way to fix it.”

Out in the garden in July and August, I smile every time I stake after a fall. I’m not only salvaging a pretty plant, I’m proving my parents’ wisdom.

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

An Expert Perspective: Making the Most of Garden Walks

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You can ask for the names of the plants that thrill you as you tour a garden. But what if you were seeing those plants through the eyes of someone involved with breeding them? What would that expert see?
You can ask for the names of the plants that thrill you as you tour a garden. But what if you were seeing those plants through the eyes of someone involved with breeding them? What would that expert see?

by Janet Macunovich / Photos by Steven Nikkila

Live my life in the garden, that’s what I do. Work in others’ gardens. Teach in gardens. Write about gardens. With all the time I spend there, it seems like my great revelation about making the most of garden walks would have come to me there.

Nope. It came on a horse.

My daughter wanted to go riding, but none of her friends could go. So I went. It was a pretty fall day, but a weekday. The stables were nearly deserted, and the same man who took our money and collected our insurance waivers saddled our horses and one for himself. We’d take his favorite path, he told us, the one he’d first cut through the woods ten years before.

It can be fun, mind-expanding or even shocking to hear what someone else is thinking as they look where you do. When you wonder about how long it took to plant it, they may be pondering what kind of finish those non-plant materials need to be weather-resistant.
It can be fun, mind-expanding or even shocking to hear what someone else is thinking as they look where you do. When you wonder about how long it took to plant it, they may be pondering what kind of finish those non-plant materials need to be weather-resistant.

What do you see? Pretty plant combinations that you wonder if you can grow? Intriguing garden art the source for which you’d like to know? Are those the same things someone else would see? You never know, and therein lies one of the greatest values of taking garden walks!
What do you see? Pretty plant combinations that you wonder if you can grow? Intriguing garden art the source for which you’d like to know? Are those the same things someone else would see? You never know, and therein lies one of the greatest values of taking garden walks!

Single file behind him, we rode into those woods. Quietly at first, enjoying the colors and the sush of hooves on fallen leaves.

Then my daughter pointed out a clump of baneberry just off the trail, turning in her saddle to be sure I looked where she pointed. I saw, and we made some just-to-talk guesses about what else we’d find growing there, if we waded in.

Our guide had not even turned to look, but my daughter, ever the sociable gatekeeper in conversation, called to him. “Don’t worry. We aren’t really going to stop. Way too much poison ivy in there!”

Then, he did stop. Reined right in. “You know what poison ivy looks like?” he asked us.

“Uh, huh,” we both said. I looked at the vines scrambling over brush and along the ground, some shed of foliage, others with a red leaf or two still clinging. Vines on tree trunks alongside the path were presenting their leaves so close that our horses were surely carrying some of the oil on their coats. How could someone who rode this path every day, who dealt with the effects of poison ivy all the time—as he was now proceeding to tell us—how could he NOT know what it looked like?

So we pointed out the vines, the leaves, and some telltale characteristics of both. Pulling a gallon baggie from my jeans pocket—as a dog owner and a cutting-snitcher, I’m rarely ever without one—I covered my hand, reached out and broke off a bit of leafy vine. “Here,” I said, reversing the bag on itself, to seal vine and oil inside. “We can hang this on your bulletin board. It’ll be safe enough in the bag, and people will know exactly what to watch out for.”

You’d probably be encouraged to take home not just the name of the plants, but the tonnage of stone and details of construction if your 70-year-old tour companion said, on seeing this stonework, “You know, Bonnie and I built our stone wall last year by ourselves and it was easier than it looks.”
You’d probably be encouraged to take home not just the name of the plants, but the tonnage of stone and details of construction if your 70-year-old tour companion said, on seeing this stonework, “You know, Bonnie and I built our stone wall last year by ourselves and it was easier than it looks.”

What a nice smile he gave us! So I dared to ask the burning question.

“I wonder,” I said. “I look into the woods here and the poison ivy jumps out at me. You’ve been scanning the woods as we ride, too, but you weren’t registering those vines until just now. What is it YOU see alongside this path?”

So, for an hour or so one afternoon, I looked into those woods through a horse-savvy, outdoorsman’s eyes. There was so much there I would have missed.

The butt of a large tree, sawed off nearly at ground level wouldn’t have interested me, but it made our guide chuckle. “Had to cut through that old tree twice. Once when it first cracked and leaned over the path. A second time when the horses kept shying and wouldn’t walk past the stump I left behind!”

Some tumbled rocks held another story. “I always take a good look around those big rocks because once there was a fox den up there. Those foxes, they sure take care of the mice around the barns.”

On a garden walk, there are so many eyes, and each pair sees something different.
On a garden walk, there are so many eyes, and each pair sees something different.

That eye-opener of a ride changed what I do before going on a garden tour.

I still make my standard preparations. That starts with admitting that no matter how impressive a plant or garden feature is when I see it, I will NOT recall its name, where someone said it came from, or even why it impressed me without a memory aid. So I round up a pencil, a pocket notebook and sometimes a camera, too. I don’t bother with pens anymore, having learned that pencils work even in the rain and graphite scribbles are legible even after something unfortunate like a dip in a water garden.

Then, I take a stroll through my own yard a day or so before the garden walk. The objective is to note my current stars—what’s in bloom or has other appeal such as great form, attractive seed pods or sweet smell. Why? Because my pre-tour perceptions will help me sift through all the beautiful things on the tour to develop a truly practical “must have right now” list.

On the tour, I consider each potential “must have” against that mental snapshot of my own yard. I don’t concentrate hard to do this, just let the visual stimulation switch on what every gardener has: great visual sense. Very quickly, the mind’s eye can tuck the item under consideration into a hundred different real spots, and critique it.

Fun garden art? Lush groundcover? Multi-stemmed tree trunk? A beautiful trellis/vine combination? For each viewer, it may be something different.
Fun garden art? Lush groundcover? Multi-stemmed tree trunk? A beautiful trellis/vine combination? For each viewer, it may be something different.

This process flags for me the things I can buy right away, even on the way home, because they can be added without rearranging a whole garden. I star those in my notes as “must have’s.” The runners-up are noted as well but not starred. I won’t make the mistake of hauling home a bunch of plants that may languish and perhaps die in their pots while I get around to moving a fence or adding a walk (those little details that can delay a planting).

Finally, I recruit a companion for these treks to peek into private gardens. Who? Anyone who would enjoy a pleasant walk who also sees differently than I do. She or he might not even be a gardener and that’s fine because what I hope they’ll bring with them, and give me a look through, is a perspective on gardens and plants flavored by a background in some field I don’t know. It might be that they travel a lot, practice embroidery, admire calligraphy, know how to jet ski or once studied astronomy. Whatever we don’t have in common, that’s what will make the day most interesting. Together, we’ll see more than we would have.

 

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

Janet’s Journal: Gardens Talk

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The garden can proclaim your profession or desired career. Would you say the gardener who placed this sculpture to repeat the lines of the tree is in a design field?
The garden can proclaim your profession or desired career. Would you say the gardener who placed this sculpture to repeat the lines of the tree is in a design field?

Our gardens are reflections of who we are as people

…and when you see a Harry Lauder’s walking stick shrub (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) pruned into a ball, do you suspect an engineer works on the premises?
…and when you see a Harry Lauder’s walking stick shrub (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) pruned into a ball, do you suspect an engineer works on the premises?

by Janet Macunovich /
Photos by Steven Nikkila

First, we talk to the plants. Then, they begin to talk to us. Simply at first—“I need water!”—but eventually they speak with more eloquence—“I would appreciate some micronutrients in my water, darling. And could you see to my friend here? He is making me itchy with his spider mite condition and I’d be greatly relieved if you’d rinse him thoroughly!”

Why was I surprised then, to find that the whole garden begins to tell tales on its gardener? Once I tuned in to the language, I found it was fascinating, a whole new dimension to enjoy.

General-garden and whole-landscape messages follow the same progression from simple to complex that individual plants use as they teach us their language. In the beginning, we may understand only the most obvious statements, such as “This is the door my gardener would prefer you use.” Given time and gardening experience, though, more subtle signs become clear and can apply to almost any issue. These higher-order statements may point us to the best seat in the yard or clue us in to how the gardener in residence really feels about guests—whether he or she truly wants visitors or would prefer they simply stand and look, then go away.

As the gardener becomes more experienced and his or her “vocabulary” of plants and materials grows, the garden becomes more vocal about its owner’s personality. It gives away the gardener who is playful...
As the gardener becomes more experienced and his or her “vocabulary” of plants and materials grows, the garden becomes more vocal about its owner’s personality. It gives away the gardener who is playful…

...an opportunist...
…an opportunist…

The language is most coherent in the true gardener’s garden. As a baby might delight us with playful use of a few sounds, so does a novice planter convey very basic messages of joy or frustration when they work with a flat or two of annuals. Advanced gardeners speak with a much greater vocabulary. Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. Gardeners grow to display theirs in the landscape.

...an optimist, with new plants waiting to be planted even at Halloween...
…an optimist, with new plants waiting to be planted even at Halloween…

Gardenspeak is not alphabet-based, but more like hieroglyphic or Chinese writing. Since its individual characters are so complex, a good reader can form an overall impression of the message’s tone just from the quality of the writing—whether the glyphs are rendered crudely, with competence, or are works of art. Because the characters themselves are more fluid than letters in an alphabet, it’s possible for a master, using only tiny strokes, to change any ideogram into something quite different in meaning. When we garden we write in just such a complex, liquid code made up of our choice and placement of plants, the composition and condition of our paths, the siting and comfort level of seating, and much more.

In this code our gardens make it quite clear where we spend our time—not just what our favorite spots are in a garden, but where we most often are in the building the garden surrounds. They also describe what seasons of the year are important to us. In the landscape and garden are written a person’s life history—what environment they knew as a child, the schooling they had, what attachments they have to other people, whether they own pets, even what the person’s profession is or might be one day. With practice and a gardener’s eye we can decipher another gardener’s hopes and dreams, personal philosophy, and demeanor.

Before this season ends, while there is time to plan changes for next year, look at what your garden is saying about you!

...or an absent-minded person. (This iris survived over a month above ground!)
…or an absent-minded person. (This iris survived over a month above ground!)

Can this garden make it any more obvious that its gardener has her arms wide open in welcome?
Can this garden make it any more obvious that its gardener has her arms wide open in welcome?

Where you’ve traveled or wish to travel might be spelled out in your garden, in plants and accessories.
Where you’ve traveled or wish to travel might be spelled out in your garden, in plants and accessories.

This garden makes no bones about it, someone in the Knorr house enjoys this window!
This garden makes no bones about it—someone in this house enjoys this window!

Lots of gadgets in a garden might mean the gardener is wise to the ways of technology... or when the gadgets reside on shelves and remain in packages it may mean the gardener or gardener’s family wishes to be more technologically adept!
Lots of gadgets in a garden might mean the gardener is wise to the ways of technology… or when the gadgets reside on shelves and remain in packages it may mean the gardener or gardener’s family wishes to be more technologically adept!

Never be overly concerned about what your garden might say. Take a hint from these gardeners, who have relocated almost every major feature in their garden numerous times—we gardeners just keep on growing!
Never be overly concerned about what your garden might say. Take a hint from these gardeners, who have relocated almost every major feature in their garden numerous times—we gardeners just keep on growing!

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

Janet’s Journal: Usual Plants, Unusually Grown

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Part 2 of 2

Shrubs grown as perennials and perennials grown as shrubs

This shrub, golden elderberry (Sambucus nigra ‘Aurea’), is cut back to leave just one or two feet of its two main trunks every spring. The result is a compact, golden “perennial.”
This shrub, golden elderberry (Sambucus nigra ‘Aurea’), is cut back to leave just one or two feet of its two main trunks every spring. The result is a compact, golden “perennial.”

Shrubs as perennials

Dwarf spireas can be treated like herbaceous perennials. Cut back to the ground early each April, they still bloom that summer, although a bit later than otherwise. Cut hard in this way, they are also often denser, a bit shorter, and the foliage color may be more intense.
Dwarf spireas can be treated like herbaceous perennials. Cut back to the ground early each April, they still bloom that summer, although a bit later than otherwise. Cut hard in this way, they are also often denser, a bit shorter, and the foliage color may be more intense.

If we grow a shrub for its foliage (barberry, privet, smoke tree and others), or we like the flowers and they are produced on wood that grew just this year (rose of Sharon, beautyberry, potentilla and others), why not cut it back to stubs every April 1, treating it like the herbaceous perennials we leave standing for winter interest? That’s what we can do with all of those on this list. Some of them you already grow this way (butterfly bush, blue mist spirea, Russian sage), and don’t even give much thought to the fact that they’re shrubs. The others on the list are just as amenable to this treatment.

What can you expect will be different about a shrub treated as a perennial? Cut back to nubs every spring, a shrub may be only 2 to 4 feet tall at its height every year—shorter than otherwise, but tall enough for most gardens. Flowering isn’t usually affected except that it may come later in the season than on un-cut shrubs of the same type—not a problem if you added these plants to your garden specifically to continue the floral show after spring and early summer perennials finish their show. The foliage on first-year branches is often larger and more intensely colored than normal, which is a plus. Also, the new wood itself is often more intensely colored than older branches, so shrubs we like for their stem color in winter are even more attractive when treated this way.

Shrubs grown as perennials: 

  • Barberry* (Berberis thunbergii varieties)
  • Beautyberry# (Callicarpa japonica). Purple berries in fall are the attraction.
  • Blue mist spirea or bluebeard#* (Caryopteris x clandonensis)
  • Butterfly bush# (Buddleia davidii)
  • Chaste tree# (Vitex negundo)
  • Dwarf spirea#* (Spiraea x bumalda)
  • Elderberry* (Sambucus varieties with gold or bicolor leaf)
  • Golden vicary privet* (Ligustrum x vicaryii)
  • Panicle hydrangea# (H. paniculata) and snowball hydrangea# (H. arborescens). Please don’t confuse these with other types of hydrangea such as the blue-, pink-flowered or oak leaf types which need two-year-old wood to bloom.
  • Potentilla# (P. fruticosa)
  • Redtwig and yellowtwig dogwood (Cornus alba, C. sericea). Winter stem color is the primary show.
  • Rose of Sharon# (Hibiscus syriacus)
  • Smoke tree* (Cotinus coggygria)

* shrub grown for its foliage
# shrub grown for its flowers (on new wood)

Perennials as shrubs

Some herbaceous perennials are so large and sturdy that they can overwhelm the rest of a garden. Instead of shrubs, they can be used as hedges, specimens, or even foundation plants. The only catch is that they will vacate their spots once a year, either from fall when they die back until early summer when they’ve once again reached the desired height, or if their stems are sturdy enough to stand over winter, we lose them only from early spring when we cut them back until early summer.

One additional feature I require of perennials used this way is that they be long-lived and clump-forming. I want to be able to depend on them to be in the exact same place for a number of years, as I would a shrub.

Perennials grown as shrubs…

  • Boltonia (B. asteroides). 3 to 4 feet tall. White or pink flowers appear almost as a surprise every September.
  • Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum). 6 feet or more. Produces small sunflowers in July.
  • False indigo (Baptisia australis). 3 to 4 feet tall. Contributes wands of blue flowers every June and can look like a black iron sculpture over winter.
  • Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus). 4 to 5 feet tall.
  • Ornamental grasses, particularly maiden grass (Miscanthus varieties) and feather reed grass (Calamagrostis acutiflora). Heights range from 2 to 8 feet. Fall and winter aspects can be stunning.
  • Peony. 3 feet. Hardly bears listing, since it’s almost a usual thing to grow it as a hedge.
  • Perennial sunflower (Helianthus x multiflorus). Cheery single or double sunflowers several inches across, every August. 3 to 5 feet tall.
  • Purple bush clover (Lespedeza thunbergii). 5 feet tall, with great showers of pink flowers every September.
  • Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). 3 to 4 feet tall.
  • Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. 18 to 24 inches. Like peony, it hardly bears listing since it’s been in foundation plantings for decades.

Vines as shrubs, trees or groundcover

Climbing hydrangea (H. anomala petiolaris) is a very large vine but can be kept pruned to forms that range from shrubby to tree-form espalier.
Climbing hydrangea (H. anomala petiolaris) is a very large vine but can be kept pruned to forms that range from shrubby to tree-form espalier.

We think of vines when we need to cover a trellis or other vertical surface, but many vines are also happy to cover the ground. English ivy may come to mind right away, but keep an open mind to Hall’s honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica ‘Halliana’) and clematis that can be cut back in spring but still bloom that year (late-blooming species such as C. texensis and C. viticella and fall-blooming clematis C. maximowicziana, C. paniculata or C. terniflora).

If I want a vine to cover the ground and provide flower, too, there are some plants I have to strike off my list. Climbing hydrangea (H. anomala petiolaris), wisteria and trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) will clamber happily on the ground but won’t bloom there. Their flowers come after the plant has established a strong vertical framework with permanent (woody) horizontal side branches.

Some vines can also be convinced with regular pruning to stay in a relatively tight shape like a mounded shrub. With staking, they can even be a small tree. Evergreen euonymus (E. fortunei varieties such as ‘Ivory Jade,’ ‘Emerald Gaiety’ and ‘Sunspot’) is so amenable to use as a shrub that many people don’t even know how beautifully it climbs when given a chance.

A few, such as wisteria, trumpet vine, silver lace vine (Polygonum aubertii), evergreen euonymus and climbing hydrangea, can develop main canes so thick that they can serve as trunks. Strap a sturdy young cane to a strong post, cut off all suckers from the roots and shoots from low on the trunk-to-be, and give it a few years to thicken that cane. Don’t forget, though, that most of these are large plants and so their “crown”—once they’re trained as a tree—will need hard pruning at least once a year to keep it in bounds. Some, such as trumpet vine and wisteria, will also sucker like a wild thing, so it’s wise to site them where they will be surrounded by mowed lawn.

 

Janet’s Journal: Usual Plants, Unusually Grown

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Favorite shrubs-as-trees are species with clean branching, such as this burning bush.
Favorite shrubs-as-trees are species with clean branching, such as this burning bush.

Part 1 of 2

Shrubs grown as trees and trees grown as shrubs

How much do you spend each year to stock your garden with unusual plants? How tall are the stacks of catalogs acquired in pursuit of the latest and greatest?

Here’s an alternative idea: spare your wallet and your green thumb by growing more common, easier things. You don’t have to give up your position on the cutting-edge, though—just grow your commoners in unconventional ways.

You’ve seen this approach if you’ve ever noticed a topiary juniper or Wisteria “tree.” Both are run-of-the-mill plants, one transformed through pruning, the other by staking a stem upright and clipping off all branches except those at the top until the stem is thickened and bare like a trunk.
The beauty of these treatments is that they involve plants that are dependably easy to grow, since all of their quirks and problems are well known. Ordinary plants are so widely available that they’re inexpensive to the point of being expendable. That’s important, since when we grow them in extraordinary ways we need to feel free to experiment. The very ordinariness of these plants also makes it more fun to identify them when people admire them as something special or unique: “Oh that?! It’s just an arborvitae!”

Evergreen euonymus (E. fortunei varieties such as this ‘Ivory Jade,’ ‘Emerald Gaiety’ and ‘Sunspot’) is so amenable to use as a shrub that many people don’t even know how beautifully it climbs when given a chance, or how striking it can be as a small tree.
Evergreen euonymus (E. fortunei varieties such as this ‘Ivory Jade,’ ‘Emerald Gaiety’ and ‘Sunspot’) is so amenable to use as a shrub that many people don’t even know how beautifully it climbs when given a chance, or how striking it can be as a small tree.

Shrubs as trees

My favorites in the unusual usual category are shrubs used as trees.

By “tree,” I don’t mean the horticultural definition of tree—a species generally taller than 20 feet but with just one or a few trunks that last its lifetime. I mean a plant in the form popularly associated with the word—a clean trunk or three, with leaf concentrated at the tops of the trunks. And what I mean by using a shrub as a tree is that we choose a shrub of suitable size—new or existing—and prune it to the classic tree form.

In that way, almost any shrub can be turned into a small tree. Just select one or a few healthy, well-placed canes, cut out all others, and remove side shoots up to the desired height. New canes or side shoots may appear and have to be removed in subsequent years. However, the best candidates for tree-dom, such as yews and bayberry, sucker very little and stop producing low side branches after the first year or two of training.

A definite drawback of tree-form shrubs is that a shrub’s canes are generally not so long-lived as a tree’s trunk. So when I cut a laceleaf buckthorn or staghorn sumac down to just three canes and limb those canes up to five feet to turn it into a small tree, it has to be with the understanding that those canes will last only a limited time – maybe ten years. Something will eventually happen to kill that wood, perhaps insect damage or dieback due to age. I’ll have to watch for the early signs of decline, such as reduced growth or premature fall color on a cane, and then allow a sucker or two to develop at the base of the plant as a replacement cane. Or when its canes begin to fail I’ll remove the shrub and start over with something new.

My favorite shrubs-as-trees are species with clean branching, such as burning bush and viburnum. To grasp what I mean by “clean,” just consider the opposite—something like tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) which consists of little more than a rag-taggle of criss-crossing limbs and clutter of short-lived twigs. It makes an ugly shrub and an even uglier tree.

Shrubs grown as trees—a plant list:

Bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica). Semi-evergreen, fragrant in all parts, glossy foliage. 6 feet tall, sometimes 10.

Blackhaw viburnum (V. prunifolium). 12 to 15 feet tall and wide. Pretty white flowers, fruit for the birds, great fall color.

Burkwood viburnum (V. x burkwoodii). Glossy semi-evergreen foliage and fragrant white flowers in spring. 8 or 10 feet tall.

Burning bush (Euonymus alatus, both the 8-foot dwarf and the 15-foot standard). Often mistaken for a Japanese maple for the horizontal branching and fall color.

Doublefile viburnum (V. plicatum). 8 feet tall with wonderful horizontal branches, double rows of lacy white flowers followed by brilliant red fruits and maroon fall color. Have admired it even as a single-trunked tree (at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario). Its stems are only marginally hardy in zone 5 so the trunks may die back unexpectedly unless it’s planted in a protected area.

Sargent viburnum (V. sargentii). Resembles a round-headed 12-foot crabapple, with bright red fruits that last into winter.

Shrub juniper (Juniperus chinensis, spreading forms). The initial task of cleaning off the lower portions of selected trunks can be itchy-scratchy work, but the flat-topped, 10-foot evergreen tree that can be made from a full-grown Pfitzer juniper is worth the effort.

Ural false spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia). 8 to 10 feet tall with arching canes. I like it for leafing out very early, blooming with white sprays in midsummer that repeat if kept deadheaded, and having an overall lacy look. It is a non-stop suckerer, though, so the task of removing new sprouts from the base never ends.

Witchhazel (Hamamelis species and hybrids). 10 feet. The spring-blooming types have fragrant yellow or red-orange flowers in early spring and incredible fall color. Their branching is so clean they don’t even need pruning to look like a small tree.

Yew (Taxus varieties). Graceful, wide-spreading and feathery even in deep shade. The bark can be outstanding, like burnished cherry.

Part of the fun of growing common plants in uncommon ways is being able to answer, when asked about something that catches the eye, “Oh, that! It’s just an arborvitae!”
Part of the fun of growing common plants in uncommon ways is being able to answer, when asked about something that catches the eye, “Oh, that! It’s just an arborvitae!”

Trees as shrubs

Why turn a tree into a shrub? Usually because trees can be purchased large for immediate effect or offer fast growth that shrubs can’t match.

A tree that will ultimately grow to 35 feet, such as Eastern arborvitae, tends to have a faster growth rate than a shrub that will remain shorter, such as boxwood or Hicks yew. So arbs are widely available as tall plants at garden centers. Someone who wants an immediate, evergreen hedge is likely to buy and plant five-foot-tall arbs, then keep them clipped to size. This tree-as-shrub use is so common I won’t even list plants that can be used this way – just look for them in garden books under “hedges.”

Trees such as arborvitae, falsecypress and juniper are also frequently used to make fanciful topiary shapes.

The trees I want to call your attention to are some you wouldn’t normally think to hedge. Even as I list them you may gasp and say, “Oh, how could you put in such a gorgeous plant and then cut it!” To which I would answer, “If you don’t have room for it as a tree, why not have its leaf color or pretty bloom in a smaller space?”

Leaf color is why tricolor beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Roseomarginata’) and red leaf Japanese maples make a beautiful hedge, rivaling barberry’s color without the thorns. They grow more quickly than you imagine, too. Of course, they can’t handle the wind and extreme temperatures that barberry can, so site such hedges carefully.

Fall color or bloom is another feature worth hedging for. I’ve kept a franklin tree (Franklinia alatamaha) cut to shrub size for four years now, just to have its camellia-like white flowers in September, without having to commit a tree-sized space to the effort. It often is still blooming in October when the leaves take on their outstanding red to purple fall color. Amur maple (Acer ginnala) and sassafras (watch out for its suckering, though!) can also be kept as hedges and light up the fall scene with their red-orange leaf color.

Then there are the trees that offer winter leaf color, and I don’t mean evergreens. English oak (Quercus robur), beech (Fagus species) and hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) grow faster than many evergreen hedge plants and hang onto their juvenile foliage through winter. Kept clipped as a hedge, they tend to have even more than the usual amount of juvenile foliage, which turns parchment color in late fall. The result is a solid, subtly colored hedge, even in winter.

Stay tuned for part 2 coming in late April.

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

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