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Editor’s Note: The following are bonus photos from a profile of the Greanya and Byler gardens featured in the May 2022 issue of Michigan Gardener. To read the full story, pick up a copy of Michigan Gardener in stores or see it in our Digital Edition, which you can read for free at MichiganGardener.com.
photos by Lisa Steinkopf
A unique garden design is a common goal. We all ask the same questions and then go our own ways with the answers. Here are the questions I hear most often, with no-frill answers that you can personalize.
Plant what will thrive in that spot. Avoid what will merely survive. Say no to what will only “tolerate” those conditions. Only when it thrives can a plant be all it can be and take care of itself.
Make the most of experts by taking a list of your site specifics (see the sidebar “Matching plant and site”) to your local garden center and asking for plant possibilities. Then sit down with books or at your computer, search for images and descriptions of those plants, and decide which you will like best. And, where possible, make sure to purchase the plants from the experts who helped you.
Choose only a few, because less is more when it comes to visual impact and low maintenance. Focus on the shrubs and low groundcovers, since plantings heavy on those two elements are the simplest to maintain. Do not make your choices based on flower color but on foliage—flowers last only weeks but gold, gray, maroon, white-edged, or blue-green leaves are there all season, even all year. After foliage, go for naturally crisp plant shapes and non-floral color such as bark or berries.
To make a great match, fill in the blanks or circle the appropriate terms to describe your site. Choose or keep only those plants that fit every category.
Sun: A plant there will cast a crisp shadow for ____ hours each day. More than 6 hours = full sun. Less than 4 = shade.
Soil: The soil is _________ (terms from below that apply)
Irrigation: Is _________ (terms from below that apply)
Exposure: ____ (yes/no) the plant may have a greater than average chance of having to deal with frost, strong wind, exhaust gases, pool splash, pet/child contact or destructive animal(s) including _________.
Resources that list plants by site or provide detailed site info:
Take care in what you ask for. There are good, fast trees (see the sidebar “Shade trees that grow quickly”) but even the best tend to be very large when fully grown, have weaker wood, and host more insects than trees that grow more slowly. Shading a table with an umbrella or covering a sitting area with a pergola or pavilion can give you shade while you wait for a slower species.
If you do plant for speed, give the tree lots of room. Think twice about using such a plant to shade areas where twig shedding and insect fall-out would reduce the tree’s worth. Where space is limited, planned obsolescence is a good strategy—plant one fast tree with a slower tree nearby, letting the speedy one serve for just 10 or 15 years while the other bulks up.
Spaciousness is what’s inviting, refreshing, most complementary of architecture around an entry, enduring—and most often missing in modern landscapes. So plan for equal amounts space and plants at an entry. Give every plant or group of like plants room so that even at maturity it will not touch its neighbors. You can “color” the space between plants with mulch or a very low groundcover.
Choose only what will thrive on the site and strive for calm combinations. A pleasing trio is plenty (see the sidebar “Making great combinations in the landscape”). To place a combination, look at your door as if you are a guest just pulling into the driveway or starting up the walk. Fill that person’s whole view with just one group of plants. If the walkway is long with nooks that are only revealed as a person walks toward the door, or your yard is large enough that you can turn your head to see another view that does not include the door, plant a second combination.
Within the landscape, repeat or give a nod to something in the architecture of the entry. For instance, if the door is painted an accent color, echo that in foliage or pottery. If there is a distinctive shape in windowpane, gable or trim, carry that out into a bench, trellis or sculpted plant.
Combine for natural shape, foliage color and texture. For example, fine-textured carpet juniper ‘Mother Lode,’ fine-mounded barberry, and coarse-textured, vase-shaped smoke bush. For more subtlety, downplay the contrast between elements—make it a ‘Gold Nugget’ barberry with ‘Mother Lode’ juniper and the green-leaf American smoke tree. For more drama, increase the contrast by using ‘Crimson Pygmy’ barberry or purple-leaf smoke tree.
Evaluate the seasons of special interest provided by a combination and begin additional groups with an eye toward filling seasonal gaps. The juniper-barberry-smoke tree combination provides winter interest, particularly vivid spring foliage effects, and July bloom. So a second group might include a June-blooming tree lilac, ornamental grass that turns red in fall and an attractive, winter-hardy planter that can showcase a summer-blooming annual.
Fences grow faster than hedges. Where traditional fencing is not allowed or doesn’t fit the overall picture, use individual sections of fencing or near-solid trellis, strategically placing them between the viewer in your landscape and intrusive elements outside your yard.
Stick with classic hedge material for screening. Those in that category are dense, look good even if sheared, and are dependable across a variety of growing conditions so that they maintain a uniform appearance even when stretched across a property. Privet, boxwood, yew, spirea, burning bush, arrowwood viburnum, barberry, hornbeam, and arborvitae are classics.
Do not crowd a hedge as you plant. Leave room between plants so that roots and new branches can develop in those spaces, or you will probably experience mid-hedge plant losses, uneven growth, and pest problems throughout the life of the hedge.
Be clear in your definition of “soften” when you ask a designer this question. If you mean to interrupt lines that seem too straight or unnatural when seen as part of a landscape, choose a plant with a naturally rounded or irregular form and place it where just part of that plant will overlap a segment of the offending line. Don’t crowd the building and don’t repeat or cover the entire line.
So if it is the vertical line of the house wall you wish to soften, you might position a small, round-topped crabapple such as Sargent, so that one side of its mature canopy will cover part of the wall’s edge. Place the tree so that a person in your primary viewing location will see the trunk as well away from the house—not lined up with that vertical wall edge. If the horizontal line where your house meets the ground is the part of the corner you want to moderate, plant a low, coarse groundcover such as perennial forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla) along one portion of that line but do not repeat the entire line with the groundcover.
Sometimes when a person says they wish to soften a corner, they mean to lead the eye less abruptly from an overly large house to the ground. That usually requires a horizontal space apparently as wide as the house wall is tall. This can be accomplished with a deep, wide bed extending from the house out into the yard, or with an island in the lawn. In either space, use plants of graduated size to create a skyline beginning at the height of the eaves and descending to the ground.
Usually, less is best in these spaces which were created by builders, not gardeners. Fill such a space with a mass of low groundcover or with long-interest perennials (see the sidebar “Long-interest, front-walk perennials”). Avoid filling it with shrubs, most of which will outgrow that space unless continually pruned—that means more work and less natural beauty.
If the area is large, punctuate the groundcover with something like a sculpture, a neat clump-forming perennial, a group of boulders, a sinuous and rocky dry stream bed, a lamp, or birdbath. Place the interruption(s) with care so they fit the feel of the overall landscape. A center placement or a line of equally-spaced, matching items works in a formal setting. One off-center item or three similar but unequal items placed to describe an unequal triangle will work better where informality and asymmetry are the rule.
Avoid confusing plantings in this area with “something for the front of that wall.” Do this by keeping your main viewer’s location in mind—if you are in the street, on the public walk, or looking in from the foot of the driveway, anything between you and the house will appear to be in front of the house. Plantings outside the front walk or in the lawn can fill that visual space more gracefully and without the increased work required to maintain plants in small spaces.
For high-profile places, mass perennials that look neat when not in bloom, have an attractive winter presence, and require minimal care. Examples:
Distract the viewer by providing something nice to look at along a different line, then incorporate the unfortunate element within plants or features that frame the more desirable feature. For instance, where a utility box begs attention, you might place a substantial birdbath or decorative scarecrow in the foreground to the left or right of the utility box, then plant a mass of low, dense shrubbery such as dwarf spirea or deutzia to embrace or surround your chosen whimsy. Let that frame swallow the utility box or cross between it and the viewer, obscuring it.
Alternatively, embrace and multiply the ugly feature. Where there is a wellhead that catches your eye, plan to cover it with a fiberglass boulder, but put that rock in a bed that has several clusters of equally or more impressive native stone. Be careful to avoid drawing the bed to center on the wellhead.
As another example of hiding something in plain view: If a square of concrete marks a septic tank cover and irritates your aesthetic sensibilities, give that concrete a crowd to blend into. Add flagstone or concrete stepping stones in a pleasing pattern across the lawn.
Gardens are least expensive and simplest to tend when they are close at hand, so if you want a flower garden, put it here. However, don’t plant it right along the edge of a deck or patio if you cannot see that area from your lounge chair. Narrow borders hidden from everyday view along the foot of a raised deck or patio should be filled with groundcover or simply mulched to reduce weeding and edging chores, and a separate garden placed far enough from the edge to be easily seen and enjoyed.
Use tall features carefully around a sitting area since large, dense objects can block breezes and light, creating an oppressive or claustrophobic atmosphere. Position shrubs or a trellis to block unsightly views but do not mass them or use species so massive that they must be kept sheared.
Cheap plants are not what you need! Look for the right plants in an affordable size at a garden center that produces healthy plants. Make a list of the plants you’ve decided to use—include the scientific name and variety—and take that to a local garden center.
Small, healthy plants grow more quickly than anyone expects. If you planned combinations for pleasing contrast and then tighten the spacing between plants of the same kind to leave a bit more space between groups than between plants of one kind, even small plants have immediate, pleasing impact.
Don’t rush as you landscape. It’s a long-term investment, so take one question and develop one lasting solution at a time.
Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.
by Nancy Szerlag
Slugs are the bane of many gardeners’ existence. In the dark of night these slimy characters chew away at the garden, leaving it in tatters by sunup. A mild winter combined with a cool, wet summer can send the dastardly slug population soaring. And a single slug will eat 30 to 40 times its weight in vegetation daily, so a handful of slugs can do a great deal of damage in a short period of time.
Ridding the garden of slugs is a hard fought battle for many gardeners. Commercial slug baits containing metaldehyde are not recommended because they are highly toxic to small animals, children and birds. Also, if used regularly, the slugs seem to build up immunity to the ingredients.
Beer traps (tin cans filled with fresh beer, or a solution of sugar, water and yeast) will lure the slugs to their demise by drowning, but they attract only those sliming around in close proximity to the slug saloon. If you have a large garden, to get any measure of control you have to set out a lot of traps and they need to be cleaned and refilled every few days.
Products with iron phosphate are both effective and easy to use for controlling slugs. Plus, some are organic products that will not harm pets and wildlife. Iron phosphate breaks down to become part of the soil, and is combined with an effective lure that slugs consider a tasty treat.
Because slugs feed mostly at night, it’s best to apply the iron phosphate products in the evening. Slugs like damp areas, so if the soil is dry, wet it before applying. While the granules will not dissolve in the rain, they must be reapplied as they are consumed. To be truly effective the product needs to be in place as the slug eggs hatch out, so it should be reapplied according to package directions throughout the summer. A very heavy infestation of slugs may take two years or more to control.
We are better able to combat slugs effectively, like any garden pest, if we become familiar with their feeding habits and life cycle. Unfortunately, slugs (like worms) are hermaphroditic, having both male and female sex organs, so every slug that reaches adulthood in the garden has the potential of procreating more slugs by laying anywhere from 20 to as many as 100 eggs once or possibly twice a year.
When digging in the dirt, should you come upon a cache of tiny translucent spheres that look like little plastic beads sitting in the soil, you have found a stash of slug eggs. I often find them in the soil under decorative stones and containers that sit in the garden. When I find a mass of eggs, I crush them between my gloved fingers or carefully scoop them up and dump them in the trash. In spring when the ground warms, the eggs hatch and the tiny slugs immediately become active feeders. Mature slugs are able to overwinter in the soil and are ready to feed as soon as tender shoots emerge from the soil in spring.
So, unlike the Integrated Pest Management strategy used for most garden insects, where products are not recommended for use until the insect damage becomes unsightly, if your garden suffered slug damage last year, you should begin control measures as soon as the hostas and other plants poke their noses through the soil in spring.
Using their rasp-like mouth parts, slugs bore through the leaves, fruit and flowers of many plants, leaving telltale round holes behind. Other signs that slugs are at work are the trails of shiny, silvery dried slime left on the surface of the soil. Slugs are particularly fond of hostas, petunias and delphiniums. The leaves of hostas under attack will soon look like Swiss cheese.
Slugs do most of their feeding at night, although they are also active on cool, overcast, rainy days. Because slugs seek shelter in soil cracks and under debris during the day, many gardeners never see them and mistakenly blame other insects for their damage. Treatment with a broad-spectrum pesticide is useless because these insecticides are ineffective for use on slugs, which are members of the mollusk family. However, insecticides unfortunately do kill off a slug’s natural predators, including rove beetles, daddy long legs spiders, centipedes, fire fly larvae and soldier beetles—this helps to increase the slug population. Thus, avoid this scenario.
To check for slugs, peruse the garden with a flashlight a couple of hours after sundown. Be sure to look at the undersides of leaves. Some gardeners enjoy hand-to-hand combat, and delight in hand-picking and dropping their prey in cans of soapy water. But hand-picking can be tedious and tiny hatchlings are easily missed in the dark of night.
It’s not always necessary to treat an entire garden for slug infestations because there are certain plants that are slug resistant. Artemisia, bleeding heart, coral bells, tickseed, goatsbeard, lamb’s ears, candytuft, foxglove, Jacob’s ladder, and most herbs seem to be immune. However, common slug targets include begonia, hollyhock, marigold, primrose, violets, bellflower, geranium, daylily, iris and snapdragon. Lettuce, cabbage and rhubarb are favorite foods of slugs, along with the fruits of strawberries and tomatoes. Ivy and succulents are also prime dining fare.
As a shade gardener and grower of hostas, I’ve battled slugs for a number of years and tried many organic controls including beer traps, organic dusts and repellents. They all work to a degree, but to be truly effective they need to be attended and monitored on almost a daily basis. I don’t have that kind of time. But the iron phosphate products have given me the time to stop and smell the roses. I am happy to say I am finally winning my war on slugs in an environmentally friendly manner.
Nancy Szerlag is a Master Gardener and Master Composter from Oakland County, MI.