Archive for the Janet’s Journal department

Janet’s Journal: How to improve your clay soil

April 20, 2014 • 1 Comment

Rejoice in clay, the choice of many fine plants. Roses and crabapples, plus rarer beauties like Rodgersia (above) thrive in a loose clay-based soil. — Rejoice in clay, the choice of many fine plants. Roses and crabapples, plus rarer beauties like *Rodgersia* (above) thrive in a loose clay-based soil.

By Janet Macunovich / Photos by Steven Nikkila

Ah, spring! The season of new life, warm earthy scents, and fresh starts on gardens!

Unfortunately, it’s also a season of miracle products—powders and potions claiming to “break up heavy soil,” “dissolve clay,” “ionize damaged soil,” etc.

Twenty-five years of gardening in soils throughout southeastern Michigan, around homes new and old, has taught me that only one ingredient can be added to hard soil to make any real difference in its garden potential. Air is that magic ingredient.

“Wait!” you may say. “I bought this stuff, mixed it in and it worked wonders…”

You’re right, for the wrong reasons. You feel that stuff made the difference, but I know that mixing was what worked wonders. The digging allowed air to flow through the soil.

Air brings water with it. Water doesn’t fall into soil, it’s pulled in by capillary action, a draw that exists only if there’s air moving freely in pore spaces in the soil.

Abundant, moist air fuels an explosion of life between the soil particles. Microorganisms and soil animals increase geometrically in aerated soil. These creatures’ chewings, manhandlings, regurgitations, excrements, and other life processes transform solid soil minerals into forms which can be imbibed by species restricted to liquid diets—plants.

Clay in soil is not terrible. When the tiny bits of mineral called clay are numerous, that soil offers far more nutrients and holds moisture far better than one that’s mainly sand. Compaction is what’s terrible – the state soil takes after pressure has been applied, usually by earthmoving and grading equipment. Even a farm’s best sandy loam can be packed down so hard that the average gardener will cry “clay!” and begin seeking wonder products.

Left: Don’t worry about planting among still-whole chunks of clay. Plant alongside them or break them in half and fit them, plus decaying mulch around the new root balls as backfill. Right: Use a garden fork to loosen the bed. — **Left:** Don’t worry about planting among still-whole chunks of clay. Plant alongside them or break them in half and fit them, plus decaying mulch around the new root balls as backfill. **Right:** Use a garden fork to loosen the bed.

In a compacted soil, air spaces have been squeezed closed. Crumbs of combined clay, sand and humus have been pulverized – crumbs that once gave the soil an airy, root-friendly structure. Separated by crumb-busting, the component particles settle into dense layers. They will not re-form into crumbs until treated with that mix of worm spit, fungal strands and bacterial residues called microbial glue.

Pressed down and airless, compacted soil can’t attract or support many worms, fungi or bacteria. Thirty years after being graded with heavy equipment, such a soil will still be dense and lifeless unless physically broken and aerated.

Worms should be considered a gift. They move into the cool, moist mulch and dine on the leafier organic matter. Between meals they burrow into the moist clay, dragging organic matter with them and depositing worm manure (casts) along the way.

So can anything be done with the miserable leavings called soil on your property? Certainly. However, there is no immediate fix unless you can afford wholesale excavation and replacement.

Here’s a much less expensive option that trades time for money.

This spring, start some soil-loosening by wetting the soil. Since pore size in hard-packed soil is small to non-existent, it takes a long time for water to infiltrate. So cover the soil with porous mulch to encourage water to “sit” and “stay.” Wood chip mulch is fine, but pine bark is best for reasons explained later. Layer the mulch with grass clippings if you can—more on that later, too.

Keep the area well watered throughout summer.

Boots...one of the best tools for the garden. A gardener in boots can accomplish far more when working with hard-packed soil than a gardener in tennis shoes. — Boots…one of the best tools for the garden. A gardener in boots can accomplish far more when working
with hard-packed soil than a gardener in tennis shoes.

In late summer or early fall rake off the mulch. Use a garden fork to loosen the bed. Insert the tines as far as you can, lean back on the handle and pop a chunk loose. No need to lift the chunk out of the bed, just pop it far enough that it doesn’t settle back level with the undisturbed soil.

Move over one fork’s width, insert the fork and pop again. Continue doing this row by row through the garden until the whole surface is lumpy.

Add one of those miracle products now if you’d like. Scatter or sprinkle it over the area and water it in well. Me? I’d rather use that money to add compost.

Re-cover the area with mulch. Add more grass clippings or leaves that are small or shredded. Water. Wait some more.

What’s going on while you wait is, well, life. Worms move into the cool, moist mulch and dine on the leafier parts. Between meals they burrow into the moist clay, dragging organic matter with them and depositing worm manure (casts) along the way. Other soil animals follow these trails, which is why worm burrows often contain a soil’s greatest diversity of species. After the first waiting period you were able to loosen previously-impenetrable soil to a depth of 8 or 9 inches because the worms led the way. Now the worms will go even deeper.

Many plants enjoy loose, clay-based soil, including roses.

During the waiting periods, some of the organic matter that is dragged into or falling down worm burrows is decaying bark. That’s good, especially if it’s pine bark with its high lignin content. Lignin, partially rotted, lasts a particularly long time in the soil and each bit becomes a nucleus for soil crumb formation.

After a year, in spring, the bed is ready for planting. Don’t worry about planting among still-whole chunks of clay. Don’t remove them, either. Just plant alongside them or break them in half and fit them, plus decaying, mulch around the new root balls as backfill. Roots will follow the crevices between clods, making fibrous nets over every moist, rich clay surface—nets which hasten clay’s crumb-ling.

Maintain a layer of leaf compost on this bed. In 4 to 5 years your visitors will exclaim “aren’t you lucky to have such good soil?!”

Here are three ways to take some of the labor out of this process.

One, drill rather than dig. Use a soil auger or rent a power posthole digger. Punch holes in the clay every 12 to 18 inches rather than loosen with a fork. Let drilled soil fall back in and around each hole. No need to backfill the holes with “good” soil because the drill adds the only necessary magic—air.

Two, if you have a heavy-duty lawn tractor or can hire a farm-grade tractor and operator, knife the soil rather than fork or drill it. A soil knife attachment slices the soil vertically, cutting about 18 inches deep. The soil doesn’t turn over, as with a plow, it just parts. Knife the soil in rows 18 inches apart. Go over the area twice, first in rows parallel to any slope, then up and down the slope.

Sorry—don’t try drilling or knifing if you have buried utility wires, pipes, or sprinkler lines in the area.

Your third out is to moisten the soil with watering and mulch, fork it lightly, then build a raised bed of imported soil on top of it. Don’t, however, skip the forking. Many raised beds over clay fail because there is no transition area between the two soil layers. Water pools there, unable to penetrate the clay as quickly as it ran through the top layer. Roots rot.

Finally, if your soil really is clay, be happy with that. Clay soil is the choice of many fine plants. Common species like roses, lilacs, iris and crabapples plus rarer beauties like Rodgersia and Ligularia thrive in the loose, clay-based soil.

Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: Big trees in the 21st century

March 1, 2014 • 10 Comments

To set a new standard for the 21st century, let each gardener adopt and nurture just one tree. It has to have space to grow like this sycamore in a relative's field. — To set a new standard for the 21st century, let each gardener adopt and nurture just one tree. It has to have space to grow like this sycamore in a relative’s field.

With a simple pledge, gardeners can replace unrealistic expectations for street trees with a new tree ethic and plenty of safe big trees for the 21st century.

“Have you seen those little holes they left in the new sidewalks downtown? For trees?! How do they expect a shade tree to grow in such a tiny space?”

It’s my turn to speak. My mind races through a lifetime of feelings about trees. What I see on that journey both surprises me and changes my position in a subtle and important way. Here’s a replay of that mental ride which begins back in my youth.

It’s great weather and I long to be outside, playing with my friends. We’re all under orders, however, to stay inside with all windows closed today. Standing at an upstairs window, I am still well under the canopy of a big elm at streetside. With the elms on each side and across the street it forms a solid ceiling.

I live in awe of the elms. Planted in the 19-teens, they are shading their third generation of hopscotch games and Sunday walks to church. Some are so big that the trunk fills the entire space from sidewalk to curb.

A truck unlike any I have seen proceeds along the street, a cannon on its back spraying fog into that high elm ceiling. I do not understand what is happening, but it has to do with the trees, so it interests me.

A gardener can be an advocate against threats to a tree, such as decking in the trunk, which will soon kill this linden, only 25 percent grown.

Next, I’m sitting on the front steps, in my pajamas. It’s nice that the elm in front of the house is gone because at dusk we can sit here and watch bats swoop and dart across the opening.

Then, I’m walking with friends, passing through alternating sections of light and shadow. We stop and kick at rings of mushrooms growing where those huge tree trunks once were. At a new ash, we take turns holding onto the trunk and pivoting around the tree. It’s such an odd thing, to be able to put one’s hands completely around a tree trunk.

Later, I’m a driver, taking in the neighborhood as a whole. What a shame that the big trees are gone. Some of the new ones snapped or stayed small, but some have begun to grow. Following belatedly in the path taken by adults of the neighborhood, I resign myself to waiting for the leafy ceiling to regrow.

As a young married, I shop for a house. To my husband and me, big trees are synonymous with a perfect home, but we buy a treeless house anyway. The seller tells us that the trees it had in front died a while back. There are trees on the neighbors’ lawns – not huge, but they do cast some shade. We plan to plant some of our own right away.

The gardener will not count as his or her tree for posterity any tree such as this tricolor beech…which has no chance to reach full size. (Purple beech, 50 feet).

A few years later we put cranky, over-tired children to sleep with slow car rides through the new, smoothly paved subdivisions that are all around. Expert now in landscaping—we’ve planted and killed three trees in our yard, but feel we now know enough to keep the fourth, fifth and sixth alive—we cluck our tongues over the dinky trees lining these roads. We’re that much more grateful for the big elm and maple next door, and the neighbors’ tolerance of small children. Those trees are child magnets—meeting places for the young of the neighborhood. We wonder if our own trees will someday support tree houses and a crowd of climbing kids, like the trees of our childhood.

At high school graduation parties for our children’s friends, we look at trees in these other neighborhoods. So many streets with rows of ash or linden, trees that are still only ornament. Yet where there are larger trees casting pools of car-parking shade, the setting is quite unlike what we knew as children. These trees have a weakness to them – battle-scarred trunks and patchy crowns. Are we noticing this because we have made trees and plants our profession, or are they truly stunted and embattled as the elms of the 1950s and 60s never were?

Driving to a baby shower for a friend’s first grandchild, we pass the latest construction projects. Road work, installation of a big new drain, traffic accidents, and development of properties alongside have taken their toll. What was a green belt of big trees is a fading memory.

The future is clear in this respect: Mature shade trees at streetside like this gingko will likely not be a part of the 21st century landscape.

Back to the present and the discussion of a city’s new street tree planters. I’m brought up short. I have suddenly realized that our resigned waiting has lasted more than 40 years but still the big trees are not back! In four decades the replacement maples and ashes should have reached 60 feet tall or more but only a small percentage have done that. In many cases the elm replacements have themselves been replaced two or more times, having succumbed to disease, accident or side effects of paving, utility digs and reconstruction coming at increasingly short intervals.

We lost our trees to elm disease, replanted and waited for the time when things would settle down and return to “normal.” While we’ve waited, the world has changed in many different ways, some of which we fail to see. One of those blind spots has swallowed our big trees.

From the perspective of an era of elm-lined streets, it’s criminal to put a tree into a small hole surrounded by concrete. To those who see the reality of modern living, it’s business as usual.

Given the proliferation of underground utilities and related work, plus the frequency of major road changes and commercial area make-overs, trees along main streets and even most side streets won’t grow undisturbed for more than a decade. They cannot ever attain their old stature, aren’t expected to, and would even be an inconvenience to routine if they did. Air conditioning units in every building and car have devalued tree shade. Trees are planted now out of habit, and/or are designed into new, instant landscapes because nothing else provides enough height and mass to offset the new buildings they front.

We pave too much, dig too often, drive too recklessly, wield too many mowing and trimming tools at too great a pace to have big trees along our streets anymore. This is not evil nor is it a temporary condition. Changing our ways to once again accommodate big trees along the roads would mean that too much of the life we pave, dig, drive and rush to enjoy would also have to change, which is simply not realistic.

It’s time for my generation to shake itself and see this. We have to begin lobbying not for larger planting holes where modern life makes such a thing impossible, but more frequent replacement of trees that have reached their limit in those holes. More important, we have to plant more wisely, and soon (in places not along streets!), or the grandeur, reassurance and pleasures that come from mature trees will not be a part of our children’s children’s lives. Many of our children have already missed that experience.

I hope each gardener will look around and find a place where a tree can be expected to grow to maturity. Whether that’s in a back yard, neighborhood park, or subdivision commons area, let’s each plant one appropriate new tree or adopt an existing tree with potential and protect that tree. We can research the species to determine how big it can grow and how quickly. We can project that mature canopy and root mass onto the existing landscape and find ways to give the tree room to grow to those limits, both above and below ground.

I’ll water my tree during droughts, and learn what insects and diseases to watch for and fend off if they come. I’ll be its advocate when human activities around it become threatening and pass its care on to my children, heirs or successors on the land. I won’t ask that they keep everything in the landscape as I had it, just that they continue the stewardship of one particular tree.

In this way we may preserve and continue to grow big trees. Better yet, we’ll maintain the connection between growing people and growing things, one of the most precious relationships of all times.

Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.

Web Extra: Pruning to make great evergreens

October 31, 2013 • Leave a Comment

To read the full article by Janet Macunovich on pruning evergreens, pick up a copy of the Nov/Dec, 2013 issue of Michigan Gardener in stores or find it in our digital edition.

Captions by Janet Macunovich / Photos by Steven Nikkila

Even a tiny branch (circled) has great potential. Once clipping changes its position from shaded interior to sunny outer edge, this wimpy twig can become a husky, densely feathered leader.

Evergreen pruning can be done at any time. I can even thin at one time, and cut back overall at a different time. I take advantage of that in winter when we need long branches for decorations. Look at all the great cuttings I've gathered just from thinning this boxwood (left) and these hollies (right). — Evergreen pruning can be done at any time. I can even thin at one time, and cut back overall at a different time. I take advantage of that in winter when we need long branches for decorations. Look at all the great cuttings I’ve gathered just from thinning this boxwood (left) and these hollies (right).

Work with the natural shape of the plant and you can do all the cutting at once, using pruners. Most stems are clipped by one year's growth. The thickest are cut by two years'. These shrubs were a matched set five minutes ago. They will be again in five more minutes once I've clipped the one on the left. — Work with the natural shape of the plant and you can do all the cutting at once, using pruners. Most stems are clipped by one year’s growth. The thickest are cut by two years’. These shrubs were a matched set five minutes ago. They will be again in five more minutes once I’ve clipped the one on the left.

If a shrub has become too big (photo 1), I wait until early spring to cut and thin. For instance, I cut and thinned these boxwoods shortly after budbreak (photo 2). At other times all this previously sheltered wood and foliage would have been suddenly exposed to summer heat or wintry cold. Such quick changes can kill leaves and make wood die back even further than it was cut. Recovery was well underway in August of that same year (photo 3).

Janet’s Journal: Fall is a Great Time for Moving Plants

August 10, 2013 • 1 Comment

September is a great time to move most shrubs. Oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) blooms wonderfully in half shade in moist, well-drained soil. If grown in other locations it’s a disappointment. — September is a great time to move most shrubs. Oakleaf hydrangea (*Hydrangea quercifolia*) blooms wonderfully in half shade in moist, well-drained soil. If grown in other locations it’s a disappointment.

September, the season of conflict, is upon us.

It’s a time of great opportunity. The nights are cool and fall stretches long ahead. Moving plants, divisions and new plantings will take quickly and have plenty of time to root in before winter.

The soft, rich colored needles of dwarf balsam fir drive the author to rip out perfectly good perennials that overshadow this conifer.

A season’s planning is done—in mental notes, journal entries, photographic records, and verbal promises, we’ve each made dozens of decisions regarding plants and gardens. That new plant is wonderful, but should be moved. Another has exhausted its grace period and is still lacking—it needs a quick trip to the compost pile. Long-time residents that have begun the downhill slide into decline need renewal or relocation.

There is no time like today to do these things.

Now it’s certain which plants are which and how we feel about each. In the spring we will have forgotten how overbearing the pink phloxes have become in that bed over near the crabapple. Even if we are able to distinguish the pinks from the whites six months from now, we may lack the resolve to oust them.

In late summer, with plant bodies at their fullest, it is clear which must be reduced and by how much to widen a path or allow neighboring plants a fair share of air space. In spring when emptiness is everywhere, the urge is to let the riot come, so long as the voids are filled and filled quickly.

Today, the sight and names of wonderful new plants are fresh in mind, and potted recruits are ready for us at garden centers, often at reduced prices. Planted now, given the fall to settle in and early spring to resume growth, they will be nearly one season larger than counterparts bought and planted next April or May.

Hand-in-hand with opportunity, though, comes mind-numbing, body-slowing reluctance. I’m parked in a chair, stupefied. My plea goes up to the gardening gods: Save me from late summer inertia! Grant me impetus, that I may take advantage of September’s gentle growing conditions.

When that divine nudge comes, I know to have my to-do list ready:

Sedum 'Vera Jameson' is pretty in bloom (above) and pretty in leaf (below), but it’s not aggressive. Left too long in one spot, it will be crowded by other plants or affected by depleted soil nutrients and begin to decline. — *Sedum* ‘Vera Jameson’ is pretty in bloom (above) and pretty in leaf (below), but it’s not aggressive. Left too long in one spot, it will be crowded by other plants or affected by depleted soil nutrients and begin to decline.

Every year I take aim and clear one area that has fallen to thugs—aggressive plants that spread and crowd out others. Everyone has a few, and I may have more than my share. Although I’d like to eradicate them all at once, I’ve learned that thoroughness in removal is the only sure cure. Since thoroughness takes so much time, I tackle only one thug per season.

This year’s target is spotted bellflower (Campanula punctata). It’s an easy place to start—though an aggressive plant can make up for its bad nature with a pretty face, this one is as homely as it is pesty.

The space left bare of bellflower will be a site for annuals or vegetables next year while I keep my eyes peeled for any bellflower resurgence from overlooked roots. I’ll have all next season to plan perennial replacements, though I already have in mind a combination of big betony (Stachys macrantha), Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ and Salvia azurea. I have some of each that need rescuing from worn-out ground.

Hydrangeas ‘Nikko Blue’ and ‘All Summer Beauty’ have got to go. Really, this time—no more second chances. For others blessed with sheltered microclimates these plants may be August delight, but here they are flowerless. Their branch tips are killed each winter, and though new ones grow, they lack the programming to generate flowers in that, their first season. Only at the end of a long season will more tips with blooming potential be produced—and winter cold will again nip that process in the bud.

Likewise, my ‘Arnold’s Dwarf’ forsythia belongs in the compost. Dwarf it is, but flowering it is not; its flower buds are too tender to survive any but the mildest winter.

On the subject of dwarf plants, dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii) is definitely worth keeping, but it needs a new home in my garden. It leapt to the catalog-promised height of three feet in its first year. After almost three years, it’s clear that endearing growth spurt was not a bonus earned by my gardening skills—the shrub slowed at four feet but didn’t stop until five. Even if it could be pruned without ruining the shape, who has time to prune another shrub in spring right after it blooms? Better to move it to a spot where a five-foot presence is needed.

The fothergilla will take the place of a superfluous purple bush clover (Lespedeza thunbergii), a die-back shrub 5 to 6 feet tall and as wide. I planted two bush clovers, but now see that one plant provides plenty of impact. Of the two I planted, one is variety ‘Gibraltar’ and is definitely the prettier for holding its pinkish-purple pea flowers in denser clusters. I’ll keep ‘Gibraltar’ and a friend will get the other—a treasure even if second to ‘Gibraltar.’ This October where there were two five-foot fountains of pink bloom there will be one fountain and one mass of deep orange fothergilla foliage.

Ah, fall foliage. Have I really decided that the oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) will go this year? It never lives up to its potential for bloom or fall color, not in the dry, lean soil and scant shade of my garden. Having seen it in the shade of high-pruned trees in rich, moist, well-drained soil, where each leaf may be nearly 12 inches by 12 inches, I have begun to pity more than enjoy mine. Its foliage is pale and half-sized, the flower clusters and the leaves burnt on the edges in summer, the foliage a washed out brown in fall, far from the rich maroon it could be.

Yes, that hydrangea will go. For that will free up more than a square yard of half-shade space, a perfect relocation site for four great plants now languishing in unsuitable, unseen places: fringe cups, tovara, large-flowered comfrey and toadlily.

Fringe cups (Tellima grandiflora) has been the object of more queries than almost any other plant in the dry, shady garden I designed and help tend at the Detroit Zoo. It has basal foliage like a furry coral bell and tiny flowers, pink-edged, ranged along leafless, wiry stems. Even better than good looks, it has long-term dependability and low maintenance requirements in dry shade.

Tovara (Tovara virginiana or Persicaria virginiana ‘Painter’s Palette’) adds height and colorful leaf to the shade. If I don’t move mine soon from under the encroaching viburnums, it will be only a memory.

Large-flowered comfrey (Symphytum grandiflorum) came into my garden as a groundcover trial. Big leaves, yellow flowers in May on short stalks, a dense, weed-smothering growth habit, and tolerance for drought commended it to me for a spot under the influence of my neighbor’s thirsty elm. It performed well where it was planted, and I promptly began to ignore it. Then a few divisions moved to a client’s garden because they are coarse, low, able to handle shade and are not liked by slugs. In that new site, I came to appreciate it more as a specimen than a groundcover.

When I planted my first toadlily (Tricyrtis hirta), its placement far from the beaten track and behind taller plants was determined solely by available space. Since then I’ve chanced upon that plant only by accident, but I’ve been more impressed each time with its form and the enchanting purple flowers in October. It’s high time it moved to center stage from unseen wings.

Unseen. That describes my dwarf balsam fir (Abies balsamea ‘Nana’). I haven’t seen it since the globe thistle overwhelmed it. That globe thistle definitely has to go. Fine plant though it is, I have its divisions in more suitable places. Far better to let the fir grow.

Now I’m wondering, when did I last see my golden hops (Humulus lupulus ‘Nugget’)? It was on my wish list for at least five years before I found it last spring. You’d think I could remember where I planted it…

I’ll enjoy my September, once I get moving. Accomplishment, mixed with surprise, is a great tonic for September reluctance.

Janet’s Journal: Simplify your garden Website Extra

June 28, 2013 • Leave a Comment

To read the entire article, pick up a copy of Michigan Gardener or check out our digital edition.

Irises and peonies in Wil Strickland's garden exemplify his advice, "Watch what does well. Plant a lot of that and let the plants fight it out. I call it choosing your weeds." — Irises and peonies in Wil Strickland’s garden exemplify his advice, “Watch what does well. Plant a lot of that and let the plants fight it out. I call it choosing your weeds.”

Cathy Connelly: Use non-plant material for color and interest: Statuary, garden flags, rocks, whimsical yard art, even attractive old birdbaths or bird feeders that you give yourself permission not to fill.

The Fiskars Power Gear loppers (top) are a great tool to amplify a gardener's own power. Many people who have used mine say, "Oh my, I want those!" Meanwhile, Burdette Chapman dreams of being gifted with the very lightweight, superbly balanced, sharp and easily sharpened ARS 25-inch professional hedge shears (bottom). — The Fiskars Power Gear loppers (top) are a great tool to amplify a gardener’s own power. Many people who have used mine say, “Oh my, I want those!” Meanwhile, Burdette Chapman dreams of being gifted with the very lightweight, superbly balanced, sharp and easily sharpened ARS 25-inch professional hedge shears (bottom).

Ginger Reichenbach does all the work herself on two acres of garden and wouldn't have it any other way. How does she do it? "Don't stop. Don't ever stop. If you are offered help, take it and have them do things you can't. Sometimes one of my grandsons will help me and I always think then about what my father told me: 'If you have one boy, you have one boy. If you have two boys, you have half a boy. If you have three boys, you have no boy.'" — Ginger Reichenbach does all the work herself on two acres of garden and wouldn’t have it any other way. How does she do it? “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. If you are offered help, take it and have them do things you can’t. Sometimes one of my grandsons will help me and I always think then about what my father told me: ‘If you have one boy, you have one boy. If you have two boys, you have half a boy. If you have three boys, you have no boy.'”

Website Extra: Janet’s Journal – Give your garden a raise

May 31, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Photos by Steven Nikkila

For the full article on raised garden beds by Janet Macunovich, pickup a copy of the June, 2013 issue of Michigan Gardener in stores or find it in our digital edition.

Most landscapes offer the possibility of building raised beds from recycled material. For example, we removed the raised beds constructed at this house as an accent edging 30 years ago. The pressure treated lumber was mostly intact. We couldn't pull out the spikes that held it together, so we sawed it into sections intending to haul it away. We reconsidered when we learned there would be an extra charge to dispose of it since it could not be accepted at the organic waste site. — Most landscapes offer the possibility of building raised beds from recycled material. For example, we removed the raised beds constructed at this house as an accent edging 30 years ago. The pressure treated lumber was mostly intact. We couldn’t pull out the spikes that held it together, so we sawed it into sections intending to haul it away. We reconsidered when we learned there would be an extra charge to dispose of it since it could not be accepted at the organic waste site.

In the back yard at the same house, a steeply sloping corner that ccalready begun filling the area with sod and soil cut out in other projects in the yard. The plan had been to retain this bed with straw bales now, replacing them with a fieldstone wall once funds were available. We revised that to reuse the lumber.

It was a puzzle to piece together the lumber we'd pulled out of the front beds in this new space, but simple math assured us there was enough to make the missing third edge of this triangular raised bed. So now, the earth holds two sides of the bed and we've retained the third with a wall that should last at least five years and probably much longer. No more mowing headaches—just a deep raised bed. — It was a puzzle to piece together the lumber we’d pulled out of the front beds in this new space, but simple math assured us there was enough to make the missing third edge of this triangular raised bed. So now, the earth holds two sides of the bed and we’ve retained the third with a wall that should last at least five years and probably much longer. No more mowing headaches—just a deep raised bed.

Mortared brick raised beds are worth considering if regular and varied pressure will affect the sides. That's often the case at botanical gardens where many people perch there regularly and wheeled vehicles frequently pass and occasionally bump the beds. — Mortared brick raised beds are worth considering if regular and varied pressure will affect the sides. That’s often the case at botanical gardens where many people perch there regularly and wheeled vehicles frequently pass and occasionally bump the beds.

As with wood, use some imagination and mixed stone can be recycled too. Karen and George Thompson made their steep slope into this large, safe garden by cleverly combining two sets of salvaged blocks plus a few bricks.

George works out a pattern... — George works out a pattern…

...and settles on this elegant solution. Note the brick and block combination on the lowest terrace. — …and settles on this elegant solution. Note the brick and block combination on the lowest terrace.

Janet’s Journal Website Extra: More edging photos and advice

May 1, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Continued from page 54 of the May 2013 issue.

Photos by Steven Nikkila

Practical and pretty: This raised brick edge keeps loose material in the beds, nudges feet aside, and looks great in this traditional herb garden at Cranbrook House and Gardens in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

There are no plants surrounding these beds at the Detroit Zoo so there’s no reason to install a root barrier. Yet there is need for a foot barrier in a place so heavily trafficked. Weathered logs and dead branches are used because it's readily available material that's in keeping with the overall landscape, where wood from pruning or tree removal is used in exhibits as animal enrichment. — There are no plants surrounding these beds at the Detroit Zoo so there’s no reason to install a root barrier. Yet there is need for a foot barrier in a place so heavily trafficked. Weathered logs and dead branches are used because it’s readily available material that’s in keeping with the overall landscape, where wood from pruning or tree removal is used in exhibits as animal enrichment.

Metal can be longer lasting than plastic edging but it is just as likely to be forced up out of the ground if not set in well to begin.

Enjoy the look but don't rely on small fence or edge sections to block weeds. Even if they are deep enough to thwart the adjacent lawn or groundcover, they'll need help at the seams. — Enjoy the look but don’t rely on small fence or edge sections to block weeds. Even if they are deep enough to thwart the adjacent lawn or groundcover, they’ll need help at the seams.

Janet’s Journal: Age Before Beauty?

May 1, 2013 • 3 Comments

Lovers of old gardens can grow the species that can’t be rushed. False indigo (Baptisia australis) is one long-lived perennial that has to be planted, given room, and nearly forgotten before it “takes,” surprising us one May with a spectacular show. — Lovers of old gardens can grow the species that can’t be rushed. False indigo (*Baptisia australis*) is one long-lived perennial that has to be planted, given room, and nearly forgotten before it “takes,” surprising us one May with a spectacular show.

By Janet Macunovich / photos by Steven Nikkila

As a garden grows, so grows the gardener.

I spent a summer in England, ostensibly as nanny to a four year old niece. There, the brothers Cameron changed my life. These men—I never knew their first names, addressing both as “Mr. Cameron”—were caretakers of a church in Shenley Church End, Buckinghamshire. A Cameron had been the church caretaker, lived in that home, and tended the walled cottage garden since the late 1600’s.

My first visit was in early June when the elder Cameron found me studying headstones in the church graveyard. He asked me into the garden for tea. I invited myself back to talk flowers, and returned throughout the summer to run wheelbarrow and dig for the two, then 70 and 80 years old.

Back home in Michigan that fall, I dug over the garden I’d left behind and planned to change it from rows of vegetables and annuals to perennials. It went fallow into the winter, insulated under a thick layer of leaves, ready for a grand metamorphosis. I spent that winter buried in catalogues, searching out the seeds of plants I’d coveted through the summer, unaware of how much I myself was changing.

Sweet alyssum and thyme sow themselves in this path and are selectively weeded.

Now, more than a quarter century has passed and with it the Camerons’ garden and even Shenley Church End—swallowed in a conglomerate community called Milton Keynes. The church is closed, lost in a hard-to-find siding off the new traffic flow. Looking into the walled yard attached to the deserted caretaker’s house, you see only the field grass and weeds that come to abandoned ground everywhere.

Yet the inspiration I took from that delightful garden still grows.

Initially, I mistook its nature.

I worked happily in my garden for years, thinking to reproduce the plants, the sitting areas, the gracefully trained vines of the Camerons’ retreat. I felt some regret as my palate expanded to include species that were probably never available to the Camerons—it seemed I would leave their garden behind. After several seasons more, I was surprised to see that the similarities between what had developed here in Waterford and what had been there in Buckinghamshire were still greater than the differences. I understood then that my real goal had been and still was to recreate the feeling of that English garden, not a replica of its beds.

Only time and the environment can weave such intricate, engaging patterns where one spreading plant meets another. Golden star (Chrysogonum virginianum) and ‘Emerald Gaiety’ Euonymus). — Only time and the environment can weave such intricate, engaging patterns where one spreading plant meets another. Golden star (Chrysogonum virginianum) and ‘Emerald Gaiety’ euonymus.

More recently, I doubted the value of pursuing that feeling. When I began gardening on others’ properties as much or more as I gardened on my own, the thrill of the new garden claimed me. Working in my own beds was not as much fun as creating a garden from non-garden. Stripping sod, outlining beds on a clean slate, watching a design move from paper to reality produced a creative high that was tough to find except in a new garden. To make anything truly new in an established garden, so much energy had to be expended in preparation, just to clear away existing plants and memories!

Established gardens began to seem more trouble than they were worth in other ways. Plants overgrew their bounds, sometimes in ugly or destructive ways only partially remedied with tedious pruning and awkward restraints. Weeds that sneaked in and became entrenched could sometimes be eradicated only through wholesale slaughter of, or painstaking lifting and cleaning of desirable plants. Pests sometimes claimed the upper hand, particularly as conditions changed around older plants. Looking at sections of garden left thin and raw for these and other reasons, I began to think it would be better to tear everything out and start new every five or six years, or move to a new gardening site entirely.

We see so many images of mature, full gardens. It’s no wonder instant landscapes are on many wish lists.

Golden stonecrop (Sedum kamtschaticum) and Ajuga repens. — Golden stonecrop (*Sedum kamtschaticum*) and *Ajuga repens*.

Creeping red thyme (Thymus coccineum) — Creeping red thyme (*Thymus coccineum*)

Today, I’m back on the Camerons’ track. I have identified the seed which germinated in me back then as love of Hortus venerablus—the old garden. Even with its limitations, its advantages are overwhelming. It’s now inextricably rooted in my heart.

To name just a few advantages, beyond the obvious ones of mature hedges and trees that cast shade…

In a garden tended over many years to discourage weeds, the seed bank in the soil shifts. Where it may once have had a high proportion of crabgrass seed—a species which can survive 20 years in the soil, waiting its chance to rise to the surface and sprout—it may eventually contain more daisy and coreopsis than dandelion, more globe thistle and coneflower than chickweed. Bare the soil in a new garden and stand ready to hoe lamb’s quarters, dock, pigweed and spurge. Pull the mulch back from a bit of old bed and prepare to thin volunteer candytuft, pimpernel, campion and cranesbill. Weeding the cracks between new paving stones is a chore. Weeding the same spaces in an older garden, the tedium is broken by discovery and decisions to leave that patch of sweet alyssum, step over that seedling sedum, and allow that pesky Perilla to stay and shade out any other comers.

No amount of skill in planting can duplicate the beautiful way that nature weaves roots and stems among stones (Irish moss, Arenaria caespitosa verna). — No amount of skill in planting can duplicate the beautiful way that nature weaves roots and stems among stones (Irish moss, *Arenaria caespitosa verna*).

Only over time do natural organisms of all sizes take hold and reach a balance with each other. Fungal and bacterial diseases seem to move in first, but if the gardener keeps a level head and avoids trying to make the environment antagonistic to all such, a far greater number of benign and helpful microorganisms soon take hold. Some of these decompose organic matter, replacing store-bought fertilizer. Others infect and kill pests. Some are known to muscle into spaces each spring before their disease-causing relatives can reach them, creating a no-room-in-the-inn squeeze play that suppresses the proliferation of the baddies.

Worms, insect-eating insects, amphibians, birds and small mammals move in as the organic matter and smaller organisms they feed on become plentiful enough to support families. No wonder my long-ago trial with a hummingbird feeder failed! We should try again, now that there is so much better habitat, more water, more insects, an absence of bad-tasting pesticides and a wealth of alternative food sources. But then, why bother? The hummingbirds are here!

Above and below: Making a new garden appear where there was no garden before is so thrilling, it can almost convince us to just start fresh every five or six years.

A client, relatively new to gardening, once wanted me to transplant a particular plant from my garden to hers, and took offense when I declined the work. She didn’t understand my explanation that the plant’s above ground appearance was a direct reflection of an extensive, old root system and an equally extensive network of life in the soil. Simple refusal would have been my best route because the to-your-bones understanding of that situation usually comes only with experience and years. She would have to learn for herself that no amount of skill with a spade can succeed in a lasting transfer of the essence of old.

The thrill of the new still exhilarates me—I count myself fortunate to be able to feel it in large doses in clients’ and friends’ yards. Yet as an admirer of age, I’m also happier in my older beds, as delighted watching things grow as I am at their maturity. The “routines” of maintenance are more enjoyable and the unrealistic expectation that things will ever be and stay “done” crops up less. I may even be learning to coach others in cultivating an appreciation of both aspects of gardening.

Oh, to sip tea with the Camerons today, and talk to them of these things. How we might laugh over what I said and did then as I plotted to transplant Hortus venerablus!

Janet’s Journal: Use these tips to help prepare your garden for visitors

April 30, 2013 • Leave a Comment

bare-space-better-than-clutter-may13 — Bare space is better than clutter, or fading, failing plants.

By Janet Macunovich / Photographs by Steven Nikkila

Are you having guests over to see the garden? Great! Let’s talk tactics.

Without losing sight of the glory of the moment, fast forward in your mind’s eye to the visit. Where are high points and holes going to be? Aim to spotlight the stars and mask fading players.

Difficulty seeing past whatever’s in bloom right now? Great stage managers use reference books on perennials to determine what will be in peak bloom for your visitors. A viewer’s eye will be drawn to full bloom, i.e. concentrations of color. That’s where garden statuary should be placed, companion annuals most carefully chosen, and where advance work with stakes and pest control will yield the highest pay-off.

Pick garden art to work well with the star. For a star that blooms white with hints of pink, recall that retired flamingo. A columnar plant playing the lead? Echo it with smaller columnar accents or contrast it behind a low, wide sculpture. Splashes of gold on the foliage? A golden gazing globe may be just the ticket.

Of supporting annuals, ask for more than color. Select them to complement the star’s color, form and texture. If that lead player has daisy shape flowers, use an annual with spiky blooms. Pair upright plants with low, spreading types and large foliage with ferny.

Think about supporting shaky stars now. Don’t be one who cries on visit day over storm-flattened delphiniums, and deludes herself that salvation can be found in bundling them up onto last minute stakes, crucifixion style.

As pretty as purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is, black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) is not it’s best companion, for the flower form is too similar. Spike-form blazing star (Liatris Spicata) are better matches for coneflowers, or tall wands of snakeroot (Cimicifuga racemosa). — As pretty as purple coneflower (*Echinacea purpurea*) is, black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) is not it’s best companion, for the flower form is too similar. Spike-form blazing star (Liatris Spicata) are better matches for coneflowers, or tall wands of snakeroot (Cimicifuga racemosa).

Review your garden journals or look up starring plants in a pest control book. To what problems are they prone? Keep a preventive eye peeled.

Back to the bit players who will not be at their best. Aim only to make them presentable. Edit the script carefully so they don’t have important lines.

If the plants in question will pass their peak bloom before show time, and if that’s before the end of June, they are fair game for hard cut-back, even before they finish bloom. They can be cut back to clean foliage, even to the base. Given three weeks and plenty of water, most will flush out with new foliage—presentable if not stellar. If they don’t come back in time for the tour, send in stand-ins. If they never come back at all…that’s rare, but it’s the price of show biz!

About those stand-ins. Remember that they shouldn’t upstage the stars. Better to place pots of neat foliage—houseplants, or perennials not yet in bloom—than call attention to the spot with bright flower color. Never spotlight such an area by underlining it or ringing it with annuals. Few things worse in theater than when all eyes turn to a player whose costume is awry or who can’t recall her lines.

Now for last-minute sleight of hand, à la Vita Sackville-West and her stick-on blooms.

Assess the scenery a week before the visit. If a star is failing, grab a wallet and go recruiting. Garden centers have large pots of annuals for such emergencies. Perennials can be cast last-minute, too.

Weeds drawing your eye and raising your blood pressure before the show? Seek a second opinion before you blow that artistic gasket. Some weeds are well known, but some may pass for planned acts. Ask your reviewer—weeds of the unusual type which are also happy and lush may actually pass muster as can’t-put-my-finger-on-it perennials. For weeds too type-cast to play the part of a good guy, or too spotty to appear planned, nip them off the day before the big event if you can’t dig them out properly. Or cover them with newspaper and mulch. Bare space is better than weedy space.

About mulch. Use just one type throughout the garden and make it dark and fine in texture. Cocoa hulls are great, but using them for a large garden can be costly. As an alternative I use composted woody fines or double shredded hardwood bark.

Turn the water on the night before the visit. A chorus line of dark mulch and clean, moist leaves can carry most any show.

For that worst emergency, where an area must be cleared and replanted shortly before a visit, plant simply. Go for elegance rather than splash. Don’t plant regimented rows but clusters of 3. For example, given room for 15 salvias on 6-inch centers, I plant 5 tight clusters of three instead, and give each cluster more space around it than I would give a single plant of its type. The individual plants will maintain glowing good health since they have space to root outward from their cluster, yet have more immediate visual appeal as triplets. Between different types of plants, leave bare space. So if you’re planting a bed with salvia, snapdragon and lantana, and cluster-planted salvia at eight inches between clumps, leave 20 inches of open space between the snapdragon area and the lantana area. Dark, mulched soil will outline each mass, accentuating its difference from the other.

Finally, enjoy the visit. Play your part. Allow yourself to be taken in by your own tricks. Don’t apologize for flaws—your guests probably won’t even notice them if you don’t point them out. Do gush over your successes!

Janet’s Journal: Shady Goings-on

April 5, 2013 • 2 Comments

Cool Shade: In high summer a shady spot seems even cooler and more refreshing when it's lush with greenery. — Cool Shade: In high summer a shady spot seems even cooler and more refreshing when it’s lush with greenery.

How to prepare shady beds under trees and select choice shade plants

By Janet Macunovich / Photographs by Steven Nikkila

Dark thoughts haunt me at high summer. As I tend sun-soaked beds, sweat-soaked myself, I find it hard to concentrate on what I’m doing. My mind wanders to shady corners and wooded lots, dappled clearings and deep, quiet, ferny retreats. It’s all I can do to keep my feet from following suit.

From the sunny side, all shade is mysterious. The details of the spot become clear only when you step within the dark. Drawn to a dark corner by the prospect of a cool retreat, I am sometimes disappointed to find shade but little refreshment. Barren ground can do that—hard-packed, lifeless soil can’t provide visual and mental refreshment to accompany the cooler air.

If you have a shaded spot that doesn’t measure up as a garden retreat, chances are that you can change the situation in three steps.

Few plants perform so well and add so much color to the shade as hosta. The key is to focus on foliage color and contrast.

All painted ferns are not equal. Some are whiter, greener, or more maroon than others.

The colorfully splashed leaves of Tovara ‘Painter’s Palette’ light up the shade. — The colorfully splashed leaves of *Tovara* ‘Painter’s Palette’ light up the shade.

Lungwort varieties with white splashes and splotches are hot items at garden centers.

Golden bleeding heart is a delightful edger for shade.

First, beef up the soil. Plants that grow under and around trees in nature do so in decades or centuries of fallen leaf litter. High in humus, it’s moisture retentive and returns to the soil almost all of what was removed to produce those leaves. Soil animals—worms, insects, and microscopic creatures—teem in the rich leaf mold, adding nitrogen and changing leaves into easily-absorbed nutrients.

Our overly-tidy ways lead us to remove fallen leaves and twigs. As a consequence, we create wastelands under trees. The first thing every really successful shade gardener does is add lots of compost—not soil, but compost with its higher organic matter content—and keep adding it every year. This means letting fallen leaves lie, or shredding them and putting them back down. At an older home with older trees, the soil may have been starved for decades, so I often start a new shade garden with a 6- to 8-inch depth of compost. Every year as the plants die back in the fall, I add 1 to 2 inches more. Just don’t stack this topdressing against the tree trunks and the trees will love it too.

Next, throw out your old concept of watering. To grow great plants in the shade you must water the trees first and then the garden. Since a large tree can consume a thousand gallons of water on a hot, breezy summer day, watering a shade garden can mean providing 3, 4, or 5 times as much water as you might in a sunny garden. Soaker hoses woven through the beds might have to run for 4 or 5 hours every second or third day to keep the gardens growing.

Finally, pick plants that love the shade. Stay away from “shade tolerant” plants, which are often lackluster, few-flowered and floppy in the shade. Here are some of my favorite perennials for shade. I group them by the design characteristics that are most important to shade—note that “flower” is not one of these. Blooms are more of a bonus in the shade than anything else. All of the plants on my list do bloom, but none of them has the stunning display of a daisy or a delphinium. Instead, they offer height, texture or foliage color.

For height:

Bugbanes (Cimicifuga species), or under the less-common name I prefer to use, fairy candles. Ferny foliage much like an astilbe, with tall wands of white flowers in June (C. racemosa), July or August (C. ramosa), or September (C. simplex). C. racemosa is tallest, at six feet. C. ramosa is 3 to 4 feet tall, and C. simplex usually between 2 and 3 feet. Varieties of C. ramosa with bronze or purple foliage are available. One of the glories of bugbanes is how sturdy and straight they stand in the shade, but be forewarned, if the light is very strong from one side and the shade very deep on the other, they will lean and may require staking.

Meadow rue, woodsy members of the genus Thalictrum. With their columbine-like foliage, they can be mistaken for this lesser plant in early spring, but not once they begin to tower. T. flavum subsp. glaucum is a personal favorite, 5 to 6 feet tall with ghostly blue green foliage and yellow green flowers in June. T. rochebruneanum puts on a show like a 5- to 6-foot mauve baby’s breath in July. Thalictrums often need staking in the shade. Be sure to stake them before they begin to fall, to make the work easier on you, easier on the plant, and more visually pleasing. Although this can be a tedious process, since each main stem will need its own stake, it’s worth it.

Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus). A true aristocrat. Straight, sturdy and reliably showy in June even in the deepest shade—it’s often mistaken for a five-foot shrub with white astilbe flowers. When grown in deep shade, it takes many years of growth for a plant to accumulate the energy to match the stature of its one-year-old sun-grown brethren. To get around this reality, I often grow the goatsbeard in sun for a year to give it some size, then move it into the shade.

Turtlehead (Chelone obliqua, C. lyonii). Three to four feet, straight stems topped with spikes of pink or white flowers in August. An individual floret on the spike of this snapdragon relative resembles a turtle’s head.

Japanese anemone (Anemone x hybrida). Not for everyone, this 3- to 4-foot plant is usually quite the spreader where it’s happy, and quick to disappear where it’s not. September-blooming (it blooms a month earlier in sunnier locations) flowers are white, pink or mauve, resemble single peonies, and varieties with double flowers are available.

For coarse texture to offset the fine foliage of astilbes, ferns, etc.

Hosta. Of course. Enough said!

Rodgers flower (Rodgersia species). Huge compound leaves may be as big around as a child’s saucer sled. Creamy white flowers cluster in spikes or one-sided clusters on stalks that rise to 3 or 4 feet in June. Grows best where it’s moist, maybe even too moist for other plants.

Variegated brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla varieties). Heart-shaped leaves 9 inches across. Blue forget-me-not flowers on 18 inch stems in May.

Variegated lungwort or Bethlehem sage (Pulmonaria varieties). Leaves streaked, edged or spotted with silver or white form 12-inch mounds. Blue, pink or white flowers on 18-inch stems in April-May.

Edging and filler

Golden bleeding heart (Corydalis lutea). Twelve-inch mounds of lacy, blue green leaves with butter yellow flowers from Memorial Day into July. Spreads readily by seed where it’s happy.

Dwarf goatsbeard (Aruncus aethusifolius). Like a tiny astilbe, with creamy white spikelets in May and June.

Tellima (Tellima grandiflora). A mound of slightly furry foliage reminiscent of coral bells. Much more reliable, longer-lived and fuller blooming in shade than a coral bell, though. Flowers are green-white to barely pink on 18-inch stems, in May-June.

Chinese astilbe (Astilbe chinensis). August blooming, and spreading by runners where conditions are good. 18 inches.

For foliage color

Tovara (may be listed as T. virginiana, Persicaria virginiana, or Polygonum virginiana ‘Painter’s Palette’). Long, pointed-oval leaves splashed with white and pink really add spark to shady corners. 18 inches. Flower is white, but not significant.

Golden satin grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’). A 15-inch fountain of gold-edged leaves; not really a grass, but who cares!

Hosta. Again, enough said!

Variegated Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’). Arching stems 18 inches tall, each leaf outlined in white. White bells dangle from the stems in April-May.

Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. ‘Pictum’). Silver and maroon marked foliage. Buy it for the color you see, because the variety is quite variable—the plant you buy that is more green than silver won’t become silver later. Loves the drier areas of a garden, once established.

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How to prepare shady beds under trees and select choice shade plants

For coarse texture to offset the fine foliage of astilbes, ferns, etc.

Edging and filler

For foliage color