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Archive for the Janet’s Journal tag

Janet’s Journal: When Tolerance is Not a Virtue

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Rather than placing plants where they only “tolerate” a space, plant them where they are actually happy

For the best garden, avoid the word “tolerate” as you select plants. Use what will thrive on a site, not just survive. Barberry, German statice, lavender, dianthus and iris can all thrive in the dry soil.
For the best garden, avoid the word “tolerate” as you select plants. Use what will thrive on a site, not just survive. Barberry, German statice, lavender, dianthus and iris can all thrive in the dry soil.

Why do we deliberately plant species that only “tolerate” our gardens? Perhaps it’s because “shade tolerance,” “heat tolerant,” “tolerant of a wide range of conditions” and similar phrases are basic to horticulture. It’s so common in books that we skip right over this important word as we read.

Maybe we just don’t recognize body language in plants as well as we do in people. A plant’s message may reach us on a subconscious level and trigger vague disquiet, but for most it doesn’t process beyond that point.

Are you in tune, or are you living in a garden full of sullen, sniveling, grumbling malcontents? Here’s a primer, a listing of some of the signals I’ve learned to read as “I’d rather not be here but if you insist I’ll stay and make us both miserable.”

Rodger’s flower (Rodgersia sambucifolia) is far less tolerant of drought than lamium, and unable to stand the full sun, crying out with scorched leaves.
Rodger’s flower (Rodgersia sambucifolia) is far less tolerant of drought than lamium, and unable to stand the full sun, crying out with scorched leaves.

There may be fine line divisions in your garden between tolerable an intolerable sites. Sweet Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’) is a stalwart performer here where the lilac shades it all afternoon, yet would fall prey to pests and disease in the full sun and heat just a few feet to the left.
There may be fine line divisions in your garden between tolerable an intolerable sites. Sweet Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’) is a stalwart performer here where the lilac shades it all afternoon, yet would fall prey to pests and disease in the full sun and heat just a few feet to the left.

Astilbe is a tough plant all around, so long as it doesn’t have to go dry. Given constantly moist soil, it can put on a show even while putting up with singed leaves in full sun.
Astilbe is a tough plant all around, so long as it doesn’t have to go dry. Given constantly moist soil, it can put on a show even while putting up with singed leaves in full sun.

Clematis suffers from its reputation as “tolerant of shade.” Here, it’s tolerating shade as it always has, by escaping over the fence to bloom in the sun, in the yard outside the gardener’s view!
Clematis suffers from its reputation as “tolerant of shade.” Here, it’s tolerating shade as it always has, by escaping over the fence to bloom in the sun, in the yard outside the gardener’s view!

Subsisting in Shade

A key to recognizing tolerance is knowing what a plant could look like. Until you see a member of a species being all it can be, you may not register your flora’s resentment of the conditions you force it to endure. You may never hear the mumbled curses shared between pallid plants who view you as the stingy human who’s consigned them to, in this first case, chronic light deficiency.

Perhaps the plant that opens your eyes is one of your own that escaped by seed or runner into a brighter place, to stun you with its transformation. Although I’ve also seen this happen where the gardener does not even recognize the original and its progeny as the same species. Maybe your enlightenment comes when you see a division of your plant in better circumstances, strutting its stuff in someone else’s sun garden. The differences, minor or major, and the chance for comparison might escape you except the resident gardener is there, thanking you for the gift of (name of plant here) and bragging on its performance.

What a shade-tolerant plant does is become thin, developing more stem and fewer leaves. The stalks may be weak so the plant dips and sags. Its yearning for sun may make it lean or even crawl toward the light on prostrate stems. The foliage lacks substance and is paler than it should be. In the case of variegated foliage that longs for the sun, golds may become dull green, maroons a muddy pink, and gray loses its silvering fuzz to reveal ordinary green.

Flowers, too, are paler. Worse, they’re fewer in number despite all you spend on “bloom builder” fertilizers.

Some shade tolerant species whose discontent becomes obvious in midsummer:

Daylilies – come on, count the flowers per stem and then try to tell yourself it’s happy compared to sun-grown siblings!

Purple coneflower – snip a flower from your shade-grown echinacea and put it in a vase with one cut from the sun garden.

Balloon flower – this sturdy creature shouldn’t require staking but it will fall when it’s starving for light.

Sullen in the Sun

Their foliage wilts on hot days and has a hang-dog droop even when it’s only pleasantly warm—these plants are begging you for a place with at least midday shade. A leaf’s edges may be scorched, while the blade is pale and chlorotic, its color-producing chemicals destroyed by light as surely as sun fades a drapery. Singed, washed out foliage may be concentrated at the top of the plant or on its sunniest side, that outer rank of leaves taking the brunt of the abuse. Flowers may be abundant but short-lived. The whole plant may opt for a shorter season, in the case of woodland and forest-edge species able to escape into dormancy.

Hostas are troopers, making only the smallest unhappy noises in the sun. Not so, flowering dogwoods and rodgersias, who moan and wail for cool shadow. Lucky bleeding heart and mayapple can fold their foliage early and depart the scene by midsummer.

Whining in the Wind

Holding shredded, tattered flower petals or snapped flower stalks out for you to see, your “wind tolerant” plants can’t believe you fail to notice their plight. Some are less stoic, simply refusing to flower or, if woody, holding back growth on their exposed faces until the windward side is all stunted, twiggy limbs. Other shrubs and trees thrust dead branches in your face, hoping you’ll understand that constant rocking in the wind is costing them roots.

A more subtle sign is foliage that’s been rattled and rubbed against itself until it’s bruised, creased, abraded and wide open to every leaf spot fungus that ever took a liking to that kind of plant.

Serviceberry is wind tolerant, but don’t ask it to endure too much if you expect to enjoy its fragrance or cut a pristine flowering stem for a vase. Poplars stand up to any gale but try not to look at their spotted leaves and cankered twigs, and don’t hold it against them when those twigs grow into easily broken limbs. Great Plains gardeners know lilacs as dependable windbreaks, but don’t send a photo of your symmetrical shrub to your gardening cousin in Kansas, if you want him to remain deaf to his deformed lilac’s moans. And certainly don’t cut a bunch of big, rich-colored blooms from your shrub and drive them out to him, unless you want him to learn to cry over his plant’s paltry showing.

Hostile in the Heat

Plants that don’t love heat, only tolerate it, cry out in singed spots, especially on wide, horizontally oriented leaves. They wilt on the worst days and even on the best days curl their foliage under like so many clenched fists. With every stab from their ever-present mites, they hurl silent curses at the gardener. If all else fails, the herbaceous ones will develop crown rot, tender young buds drying and dying as they emerge, and the plant will bow out.

Many people ask their plants to tolerate heat without knowing it. Away at the office, you may not notice the midday sun or superheated 3 p.m. air that oppresses your Hydrangea, pounds your Pulmonaria, and cooks your Caladium.

Dreadful in Dry Places

Brief bloom, slow growth, increased susceptibility to fungus and sucking insects, tip dieback—these are all the price we ask a plant to pay when it must tolerate drought.

Just because it puts up with the shade, don’t ask it to take the drought, too, or Astilbe will simply retract its developing flower buds in crisped disappointment. Spirea is a dogged player, even where it’s dry—just don’t expect it to put on any but the briefest floral show. Misunderstood Monarda, grown dry for fear of wetting its mildew-prone leaves, will powder up even sooner than otherwise. Given constant moisture the same plant may show not a spot of gray.

Pests can tell a plant that’s being tolerant, even if we can’t see any difference. Above, this butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) growing in compacted soil at roadside may look fine at first glance...but it regularly falls prey to aphids (below) that never touch its sister plants growing 10 feet away in deeper, better drained soil.
Pests can tell a plant that’s being tolerant, even if we can’t see any difference. Above, this butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) growing in compacted soil at roadside may look fine at first glance…but it regularly falls prey to aphids (below) that never touch its sister plants growing 10 feet away in deeper, better drained soil.

butterfly-weed-attacked-by-aphids-0718

Muttering in the Mud

Listen early in the year for the voices of plants who want out of the wet soil. They give themselves pep talks and start into growth, then gasp as stems are bitten by crown rot and fall. Surviving stems bear pale and discolored leaves, deprived of nutrients available only in warmer or better-aerated soils. Leaf spot and mildew plague them, especially at high summer.

Burning bushes and yews must be the most tolerant plants of all time, for all the places they’re asked to grow. But watch them to be the first to tell you when it’s too wet, with pale foliage that yellows or develops fall color early. Redtwig dogwood, a native to wet places where soil water is constantly refreshed, is often relegated to stagnant mud where its beautiful foliage assumes a tortured, pocked look.

Don’t scoff at intolerance of confinement. Look closely at the bee balm (Monarda ‘Violet Queen’) in the center of this picture. See the brown, thin, stunted, bloomed-out stems to the right? That’s her mother plant, the only difference between the two being that the daughter is a division, set into fresh soil renewed with compost.
Don’t scoff at intolerance of confinement. Look closely at the bee balm (Monarda ‘Violet Queen’) in the center of this picture. See the brown, thin, stunted, bloomed-out stems to the right? That’s her mother plant, the only difference between the two being that the daughter is a division, set into fresh soil renewed with compost.

Crabby in Confinement

Some aspects of a plant’s environment are quite natural, others almost entirely manmade. Confinement, for instance: forcing a plant that wants to spread to stay put, or restricting a woody plant that wants to stretch its roots to a small pot.

We must confine plants to be able to grow trees in openings in the sidewalk or perennial gardens in patio containers. That’s all copasetic so long as we understand the unavoidable consequence of limited space: premature aging. Wood ages and dies sooner, herbaceous stems become more crowded more quickly, leaf size diminishes on older limbs and crowns, and diseases multiply as blooms decrease.

So star magnolia and callery pear will perform acceptably where their root space is limited, but to keep them flowering well, prune regularly to stimulate fresh young growth. Mint makes a great container plant, lush and fragrant even on a hot patio, but where one in the garden might need dividing every two or three years, divide the potted one each and every spring.

If I were a plant, I would probably tolerate much in exchange for compliments and the satisfaction of persisting against all odds. Yet I doubt that I could handle confinement with anything approaching grace, for there as here I would always want a little more space!

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

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

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Pair perennials properly to create superb companion plantings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be a matchmaker.

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

Always plan for “Right Plant, Right Place.”

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

Aim for more than one qualifier.

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

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

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

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

Wait to see who wins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accommodate the staggered start.

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

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

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

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

Have fun but don’t go broke!

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

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

Janet’s Journal: The Value of a Garden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hidden value to the person and the family

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

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

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

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

Connectivity and resources for the community

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

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

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

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

Cleaner environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janet’s Journal: An Introduction to Green Roofs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janet’s Journal: 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.

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.

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