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Your plants survived winter—only to be snuffed by spring?

March 21, 2022 • Leave a Comment

How to help your plants make it through the frosty weeks of April

by Janet Macunovich
Photographs by Steven Nikkila

Plants are most susceptible to cold after they begin to wake up in spring. Buds, bark and roots that were hardened to the point of being able to weather minus 20 degrees in January become irreversibly soft by late March or early April. Then they may be seriously damaged at 25 degrees and killed outright at 10 degrees. Sudden, large drops in temperature hurt them most, and that’s what April frosts usually are—frigid packets of air that drop from clear skies after a balmy, slightly breezy day goes still at sunset.

A magnolia hardens its tissues in late fall and winters its flowers under fuzzy bud caps capable of withstanding minus 15 degrees. Yet once the sap begins to flow in the tree and the bud caps split open, the flowers may be damaged by frost. It’s not practical for home gardeners to protect trees from frost, but this article has tips on how to help other plants past this most treacherous of times.

**Frost damaged some petals on this saucer magnolia (*Magnolia x soulangiana*). The damage won’t hurt the tree, but it can spoil its show.**

Consequences of spring freezes may take days or even weeks to develop and are often lumped in with “winter kill.” We may even fail to recognize them as cold damage because they appear long after we’ve forgotten the frost. Then we see leaf drop, bud blast, aborted flowers, splitting bark, scorched foliage, freeze-dried twigs, stunted growth, susceptibility to disease, and failure to flower or flourish.

We often spend hours in late fall putting special plants to bed with wilt-stop coatings, burlap screens, elaborate mulch blankets and one last watering before the ground freezes. Those measures may have made a difference—that marginally hardy rosemary may have survived in its protected alcove and the rhododendrons and boxwoods stayed moist enough to bring their leaves into April unscathed. Yet what’s alive right now may be relegated to the compost pile and labeled “not hardy” if we let down our guard during this last leg of the journey.

Here are ideas to help your plants pass without harm through these next few, most risky weeks.

**Oakleaf hydrangea (*H. quercifolia*) is another plant that must carry its tip buds from one summer right into the next in order to bloom.**

Once that densely coated bud cover opens, I try to protect the emerging hydrangea shoot from freezes. If that bud dies, I’ll certainly see the plant’s pretty foliage this year but probably won’t see any bloom.

Moist soil makes a warm night.

You can fight frost with water, but you’ll have to aim the hose at the plants’ roots, not up at the leaves and stems.

An inclination to sprinkle at-risk foliage is understandable if you have seen nursery stock or an orchard protected from spring frost in rather dramatic fashion, by sprinklers that run all night to coat the plants with ice and all morning to ease the ice’s passage. However, this technique is one that warrants a “don’t try this at home” caption. That’s because it’s the creation of ice, not its simple presence, that works the magic. Plants benefit from the heat given off by each new drop of water as it enters an icy state. Standard oscillating and rotating sprinklers can’t deliver the amount of water or relentless coverage needed to foster continual ice formation.

What you can do with water is to stoke the radiator below each plant. Keep an eye on the three-day forecast so you can tend your plants the day before a frost is due. Soak the soil—avoid splashing the branches and foliage. Moist soil absorbs more heat from the air by day and radiates it longer and more steadily into the night than dry soil. That’s one reason that frost is always more likely over sandy ground than clay.

Don’t over-do. If your garden is very well-drained, you may be able to water with abandon but if there’s any chance the soil will become waterlogged, quit. Soggy roots are more trouble to a plant than frosted tips.

Everything’s warmer under a tent.

Everyone knows that heat rises but many are surprised to know just how much warmth can radiate from the soil. Soil temperature in the Midwest in late winter and early spring may be in the 20s or perhaps 30 degrees from ground level to two feet deep. Below that the ground remains at about 50 degrees. If the soil is loose and airy, that heat rises steadily through and out of the soil. It can preserve plants and plant parts close to the ground during a frost.

Cover a plant with something that seals its connection with this radiator. Within that tent the air may be 5 degrees warmer than in the open.

Fiber makes a great frost blanket.

Don’t use plastic to cover plants, or if you do, place props to hold it well up off the leaves and twigs so it can trap ground-warmed air around all parts of the plant. Since plastic is such a poor insulator, any bit of plant touching the plastic is essentially in contact with the frosty air and likely to freeze as if unprotected.

The better choice for frost protection is cloth, replete with tiny air pockets. You can use old linens and blankets if they’re light enough to cover without crushing delicate foliage. To use heavier materials, first place props to bear the weight.

Lightweight fabrics developed specifically for plant protection are called floating row cover, frost blanket, frost cloth, plant cover, and spun-bond polypropylene—all with various brand names. These products are light enough in most cases to be supported by the plant itself and come in sections or rolls wide enough to cover a shrub or a whole bed of flowers or vegetables. Permeable to light and water, they can be left in place even on cold days without smothering the plant they’re protecting. They are made in a range of weights from about one-half to several ounces per square yard. In general, the heavier the cloth the more light it blocks, but the more heat it can hold—the lightest promise just 2 or 3 degrees of frost protection while the heaviest claim eight.

Floating row cover protects newly planted bear’s breeches (*Acanthus mollis*) during a frost. Lenten roses (*Helleborus x orientalis*) in the foreground require no protection from this frost because they’ve developed in place and are in sync with normal weather. The newcomer has just come from a greenhouse and is beyond the stage of growth it would be if it had grown on-site.

**Frost protection should be removed once danger of frost has passed, to avoid overheating covered plants.**

It’s a cloche call.

The traditional cloche is simply a large glass jar that can be inverted over a plant. More recently, sections of glass or plastic clipped together to make tents over individual plants or rows have been included under this term.

Plastic tunnels covering rows of plants are sometimes called cloches, too. They’re made by bending heavy wire into big U shapes, sticking them upside down into the ground, and then covering them with plastic from a roll. Glass is better than plastic in terms of the light, warmth and humidity it affords a plant, but shatterproof plastic is safer for garden use. Plastic cloches can provide protection from hail as well as frost.

Plastic milk jugs and soft drink bottles can be pressed into service as cloches. Cut off the bottom of the jug or bottle and press it firmly into place as you cover the plant so its cut edges sit securely in the soil. If days are warm, remove the bottle cap to vent excess heat.

A modern twist on the traditional cloche are season extenders like the Wall O’ Water. A plant is encircled by this cylinder of compartmented plastic—basically a double sheet of heavy plastic seamed to form pockets that can be filled with water. The water absorbs radiant energy by day and at night releases it to the plant in its embrace.

If you have special small plants and an abundance of two-liter soft drink bottles, you can make your own wall of water. Cut the bottom off one bottle and circle that container with six intact bottles. Use duct tape to hold the group together. Slip the center bottle over a plant. Remove that bottle cap if days are warm, to prevent heat build-up. Fill the surrounding bottles with water.

Gracious sakes, come in outta that wind.

Our mothers, grandmas and aunties were right—one can catch one’s death in a wind. Cold that wouldn’t otherwise harm a plant can kill if drying winds accompany it. Wind is even more damaging to plants during early spring cold spells than it is during the depths of winter. So keep that burlap screen or snow fencing in its place several feet to the windward side of your broadleaf evergreens.

One reason spring wind is so devastating is that air temperatures during the day are warm enough that a holly, rhododendron, boxwood, pieris or grapeholly leaf can sustain photosynthesis. Those leaves lose water through their pores during that process. Yet a cold snap can freeze the top inch of soil where these plants have many fine roots. The next day, the plant sits in the sun losing water through its leaves but the water the roots need to replace it is locked in ice. When water runs short, the losers are the aerial parts furthest out—tips and emerging buds—as well as leaf edges that have “softened” as they quit the devices that added up to seasonal hardiness. We often don’t see the damage until May, but the scorched tips and leaf margins we see at that time began in that April freeze.

If you wonder whether you should protect plants from wind, look around your neighborhood for trees that stand alone, away from the protection of a grove or any buildings. Are those trees symmetrical or distorted? Distortion on one side can indicate severity and direction of the prevailing winds that dry and kill in late spring.

Cover those feet.

Mulch is a another strategy that’s important to understory species with shallow roots, such as rhododendron, holly, Japanese maple and magnolia. A study in Wisconsin put a number on the value of mulch. That is, when air temperature falls to 1 degree, the soil there drops to 16 degrees if it has a three-inch mulch blanket, but can stay at about 22 degrees given six inches of cover.

If you begin to rake off special plants’ extra mulch on warm spring days, don’t be too quick to cart it away. A friend has recently recommended sawdust as a material that can be easily peeled back yet replaced in a hurry. I intend to keep some on hand to rectify the silliness of Japanese wax bell (Kirengeshoma palmata), which is forever leaping up too soon and being cut down by frost.

What gardeners do best: Improvise.

I don’t have many things that I keep on hand especially for frost protection. Like most gardeners, I improvise. Upended plastic garbage pails, five gallon buckets, milk crates, old draperies and cardboard boxes are all in my April bag of tricks. I’ve also grinned over the use of beach umbrellas in one friend’s garden and discussed with another how we might use a hunter’s open-bottom ground blind to protect shrubs and even small trees.

Thank heaven for plants that just take what Nature hands them and keep on chugging. These Red and Yellow Emperor tulips have reckoned with snow and frosts for 20 years, even freezing solid in a late April snow.

Here they are just one day after appearing in the previous, snowy scene. So long as I don’t walk on them while they’re frozen—an abuse resented by all plants from lawn grass to wisteria vines—they come back with gusto.

Dream of ideal plants and places.

Every spring I vow to eliminate all plants that cause me extra work. Every summer at least a few of them convince me anew that they’re worth the effort. Thank goodness for the existence of perfect plants—species that can handle whatever “normal” happens to be each spring. I’m grateful, too, for ideal places, such as that wind-protected spot about ten feet southeast of my neighbor’s six-foot hedge. It is ground that happens to slope to the southeast so it sheds cold air downhill and catches warming sun early in the year. It’s sandy, well-drained soil there, so it conducts ground warmth well and doesn’t add oxygen deprivation to a root’s winter woes. I can’t ask for more protection.

But I can ask why the spot’s not bigger. I’d like to put my whole garden into it.

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

Janet’s Journal: Picking a size: Buy plants big or start them small?

May 2, 2020 • 2 Comments

Once, we felt fortunate to find the type of plant we wanted. Now, what was unusual is common and the problem is deciding which size to buy. How to choose between pots of varying sizes, divisions, cells or even balled and burlapped? Here’s some help.

Here we are at the garden center, wrestling once again with that essential question: When picking a size, is it better to pay more, for immediate satisfaction, by buying the largest specimen? Or is a smaller plant the wiser investment?

The answer is a classic: It depends. But current research is providing objective, specific and sometimes surprising information that may weigh in your decision.

While growing in the field, this river birch had a root mass in balance with its branch spread, 6 feet wide or more. Its garden center root ball may seem large and is certainly heavy, yet it’s not 6 feet but 2-1/2 feet across and contains just 5 to 18 percent of the fine roots the tree had in the field. (Estimate per Gary Watson, Morton Arboretum, in Extension bulletins issued by several Midwest States and in his book *Principles and Practices of Planting Trees and Shrubs*.)

General buying guideline: Roots rule and water pays the bills

No matter what plant you’re buying, choose the package that delivers more roots in a wider formation, and plan to water attentively until the plant resumes growing as well as it did in its production field.

All plant parts begin as soft growth—as leaf, shoot or root tip. 95 percent of that growth is water, which enters the equation as a puddle sinking into the soil, pushing into soft root tips and being drawn up by photosynthesis to the leafy part of the plant. The winner in any growing contest will be the plant with enough roots to serve its whole top, spread to cover a wider surface that “catches” a bigger puddle.

Roots develop only when leaves produce more sugar and starch—energy—than they need to sustain themselves and woody parts nearby. As the root system expands, more water can enter a plant, which can then support more leaves. So leaves and roots grow in balance, equal in mass and in width of spread.

These viburnum shrubs are being grown in the flat pan method, for minimal root loss at transplant time. They’re given a relatively shallow but very wide circle of loose soil in which to grow. At sale time, each is lifted with roots intact, weighing much less than if it had been dug to make a traditionally-configured root ball.

When a plant must be dug from one place to be planted in another, root loss is inevitable. When the plant is grown in a container that prevents roots from spreading as wide as the branches, it can’t make use of natural, wide puddles but becomes reliant on a near-constant flow of water through its small area of ground, via frequent watering or trickle irrigation.

It may be a year or more before a transplant’s leaves manufacture significant spare energy and roots begin to recoup their loss. As long as the roots remain “behind,” the plant will grow fewer new leaves each spring than it should. In such a year, total root growth can’t measure up to potential, either. A few or many years can pass during which the top remains the same size or even shrinks and the roots slowly increase, until balance and normal growth resumes.

If you have your choice in seedling trees, choose the largest root collar diameter—girth at the base of the stem. This measure is regarded by producers of seedlings for reforestation as the best single predictor of the tree’s survival and growth in the field.

Trees: Smaller is often better

When instant gratification is an operative factor, you can’t persuade yourself or anyone else to buy small. But if you think putting a larger tree in the ground is a jump start toward a shaded yard or the glory of a full-sized ornamental tree, think again. Small trees often catch up to larger trees planted at the same time and may keep growing faster for decades.

Tree roots grow out, not down. So to stay balanced in mass and spread with the top, they spread wider than the branches. Even small trees have wide root systems. If a conventional pot or root ball was cut wide enough to encompass all of a substantial tree’s roots, it would be an unmanageable package for grower, garden center employee and you. Thus all trees sold at a garden center are unbalanced with the possible exception of bare root trees, seedlings or “whips,” and those grown in the unfortunately-uncommon flat-pan method.

The larger the top of the tree, the more out of balance its for-sale root ball. So the largest trees take the longest to regain balance and resume growth.

We buy trees rated according to their trunk diameter: “one-inch caliper,” “two-inch caliper,” etc. Studies show there is a direct relationship between this trunk size and root re-establishment time. For every inch in trunk diameter, a properly-sited, well-watered tree will take at least one year and possibly longer to recoup its losses. Smaller trees recover faster than larger trees—one year for a one-inch tree, five years or more for a four-inch tree.

That means a one-inch tree may shake off its shock and resume growing roots at a normal rate even during its transplant year. For most tree species, it’s normal to lengthen each root about 18 inches during a typical, zone 4-5 growing season. With that much new root, the tree is able to produce leaves and extend its branches to full potential the following spring—18 inches or more for fast-growing species like silver maple or river birch, 12 to 18 inches for moderate growers such as red oak and katsura, and 6 to 12 inches for slow-growing American hornbeam or bur oak.

Meanwhile, a four-inch caliper tree will take five years to return to this norm. It may extend its roots and its branches only an inch or two in year one, and continue to creep in growth over the next four years.

Exception: In seedling trees, pick the largest

So where you want one or a few trees, the fastest possible growth, shortest term of critical care and healthiest trees in the long run, buy small rather than large.

However, if your aim is to replant a forest or start your own grove of trees, seedlings or unbranched young trees called “whips” are usually the way to go. In that case, bigger is better. Given a choice of many whips, choose those which are thickest at their stem base. If all have the same size stem base but some are taller, choose the taller.

Pacific Regeneration Technologies, a network of reforestation nurseries in Canada and the U.S., has compared survival and growth rates of smaller and larger seedlings in the field. Although there are many variables that can affect these plantings, PRT’s findings are persuasive—thicker and taller seedlings have higher survival and growth rates. In one study of Douglas fir, the differences in survival and height remained almost unchanged even 21 years after planting.

Shrubs: Hedging changes the bet

Shrubs and trees are the same in many ways, including best planting size. The wider the roots and the closer they are to being balanced with the top, the more quickly that shrub will “take” and the better its long-term prospects.

Shrubs to be used as hedging are exceptions. Smaller shrubs, even seedlings, almost always outgrow larger plants when planted in close rows. A hedge begun with smaller plants is ultimately fuller, healthier and requires less care. Even most important, the hedge grown from seedlings or small shrubs is less likely to suffer middle-of-the-row losses as it ages.

Competition for water is why large-plant hedges fall short in speed and fullness, compared to hedges begun with smaller plants. Larger plants have larger root balls and once planted, each one has proportionately less root-growing space.

When roots are in direct competition with other roots, they grow slowly, if at all. It makes no difference that competing roots are from a related plant and the two sets of roots, if growing vigorously, could graft and become a single system. A line of large plants with root balls tucked one against the next is a line of plants with only half its roots free to grow. At best, those plants can grow at half capacity.

In addition, smaller plants have been sheared fewer times, so they’re less dense and cast less shade on other plants’ bases. A hedge grown from whips becomes and remains full at the bottom. Larger shrubs, pruned repeatedly for fullness before being sold to the hedge planter, thin out at the base and rarely regain density as they grow together.

A hedge that began with crowded roots remains weak. The weakest individuals are in the center, where competition was most fierce, side roots atrophied and each plant’s root mass remained small. Years and even decades later the hedge crowded at planting is most likely to be affected by drought, severe winters or seasons of high insect or disease occurrence. The plant in that hedge most likely to die is one in the middle.

Every perennial is divisible. Making one from many gives each division a faster start and better long-term outlook. The peony division on the right could grow roots freely from only one side when snugged up to its sister shoots. Separated, it can grow to all sides. Within the mother clump, it might have initiated two shoots, and stored energy to make four the next year. Alone, it might form three or four shoots this year and create enough stored energy to break ground with five or six stems next spring.

Perennials: Buy what you can afford, but give them rooting space

Trees, shrubs, vines and bulbs are perennials, as are those plants in the group most commonly called perennial—herbaceous flowering species from anemone to zebra grass. I hope you’ll keep in mind that every perennial is alike in a way that should influence your choice in plant size. That is, they all store energy this year for next year’s growth.

So buy perennials for the roots. Select the biggest, widest root system.

Avoid root-bound plants of any kind. Plants absorb most water and grow new roots primarily from root tips. Since this plant’s roots turned at pot edge and grew down, all of those tips are now crowded at the bottom, a very small area, but now it’s all the plant has from which to draw water. Since roots will drain that spot more quickly than water from surrounding soil can move in, the plant may dry out even if the soil around the root ball is moist. Also, new roots erupting from that tiny spot will each be in close competition with the others. The process of expanding its root system will be slow. (Although it’s a setback to the plant, my best bet is to cut the roots to create new root ends in more areas.)

As far as the roots spread by the fall of one year, that’s as much area as the plant’s top will cover the following year. So do everything you can to encourage roots to spread during their first year.

If you buy perennials of any type for immediate impact, you will probably also plant them close together. That’s fine, if this year’s show is all that counts. However, to make the most of those plants over the long run, understand that crowded roots won’t grow as much this year as they could, so next year’s top growth will be less and plants will be weaker overall. If you must crowd for immediate show, enjoy the display then dig and replant the component parts farther apart.

To cover the most ground for the least money, buy smaller perennials. (But not too small—see the notes about annuals and vegetables, below.) If the plant you want is available only in large pots, buy those and divide them as you plant.

Annuals and vegetables: Pay-off’s in the larger cell

For healthy, lush annuals and vegetables, space them as directed. That is, if the pot tag says “space plants 12 inches apart,” give every one its own square foot. A flat of 48 plants can cover 48 square feet—a 4-foot by 12-foot bed.

Want a more spectacular show, sooner? Do what botanical gardens do—keep the spacing the same but start with bigger plants. The higher cost per square foot pays off in immediate display.

Since most studies are on vegetables, we need to apply that data to annuals—there are enough parallels to make the comparison worthwhile. For instance, vegetables that flower earlier go to market sooner. Those that are healthier bear larger fruit and have fewer pests, so more of the fruit is cosmetically perfect and sells for a higher price. We value early flowering and health in bedding plants, too.

Trials run in Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri, Georgia and Minnesota on tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, pepper and watermelon planted from various size cells, showed that the largest transplants yielded earlier and/or more. From larger sets the first picking of tomatoes and peppers was up to twice as great. The broccoli crop was 25 percent more, cabbages 16 percent heavier and watermelon harvest 7 percent higher. We flower growers may not be big on math, but we can still see that sometimes it can be worth spending 50 percent more for the chance at doubling the show!

Parting shot: Small plants more foolproof

Still not sure what to do? In such cases, I buy small. It pays off, especially when I’m not sure what the plant can do or where it will grow best.

Big, bushy plants can fool me by looking big and bushy even as they lose ground—who notices ten leaves gone when there were 200 to start?

A plant that comes to me with just ten leaves tells me clearly, week by week, how things are going. If it’s thriving, its leaf count increases and the new foliage matches the old in size and color. If it begins to lose ground, that’s also quickly apparent. If it seems a move is in order to correct the situation, that’s simpler with a small plant too!

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

ALSO… How Much are the trees in your yard worth?

ELSEWHERE: Planting a tree successfully requires the correct planting depth

Plants can tell time even without a brain

August 20, 2019 • Leave a Comment

Yahoo News:

Anyone who has travelled across multiple time zones and suffered jet lag will understand just how powerful our biological clocks are. In fact, every cell in the human body has its own molecular clock, which is capable of generating a daily rise and fall in the number of many proteins the body produces over a 24-hour cycle. The brain contains a master clock that keeps the rest of the body in sync, using light signals from the eyes to keep in time with environment.

Plants have similar circadian rhythms that help them tell the time of day, preparing plants for photosynthesis prior to dawn, turning on heat-protection mechanisms before the hottest part of the day, and producing nectar when pollinators are most likely to visit. And just like in humans, every cell in the plant appears to have its own clock.

But unlike humans, plants don’t have a brain to keep their clocks synchronised. So how do plants coordinate their cellular rhythms? Our new research shows that all the cells in the plant coordinate partly through something called local self-organisation. This is effectively the plant cells communicating their timing with neighbouring cells, in a similar way to how schools of fish and flocks of birds coordinate their movements by interacting with their neighbours.

Read the rest of the story…

Choosing plants for hedges

June 22, 2019 • Leave a Comment

I would like to create a formal English garden look, where “squared-off” hedges line the garden perimeter. Can you recommend hedge plant options (other than yews) that grow at least 4 to 8 feet tall, look thick and full (like a solid wall), and grow in sun and shade?

You have several restrictions in your plant request that limit your choices. Your height requirement creates a problem for boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), a favorite of formal English hedges, because they are a rather slow grower. However, they hold the geometric pruning well, are sun and shade tolerant, and form a dense thicket of glossy leaves. Boxwoods are the choice for knot gardens, parterres and topiaries because they are evergreen and hold a crisp line when pruned.

Privet (Ligustrum amurense) grows quickly, is easily sheared to shape and can reach your desired height. It is also tolerant of light and soil variations. Unfortunately, in zones 3 to 7, it is considered deciduous, even though its dense twiggy nature is a screening element in itself.

Since the perimeter of the garden is the designated planting zone, you might consider Japanese holly (Ilex crenata), which is very shearable and has a medium growth rate. Their leaves are spiny but lustrous. They will tolerate full to part sun, but need somewhat acid (low pH) soil and good drainage with sustained moisture. The downside is that they need protection from drought and wind.

There are few if any pines or spruces that meet your criteria. However, the workhorse of the residential landscape, the columnar American arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), may suit them all. The varieties ‘Emerald’ and ‘Techny’ both meet your height requirement of 4 to 8 feet. They hold their color in winter, and have considerable heat and light tolerance. Shearing and pruning them before spring growth will keep them full and dense. They have a natural pyramidal tendency, but can be nicely shaped to be wider at the base, to give the “squared-off” hedge look you are striving for. Keeping them slightly wider at the base allows light to reach the interior of the shrub, allowing active new growth and preventing thinning of the interior.

Janet’s Journal: The plant whisperer – What do you say, what do you hear?

May 16, 2019 • 4 Comments

What can it hurt to talk to your plants? Maybe it does nothing for the plants, but it makes you a better, more observant, attentive and cheerful gardener

In the 1960s a corn plant (Dracaena) stuck its leaf into a polygraph and started the world talking about plant-speak. Lie detector expert Cleve Backster lectured and gave interviews about the experience although the scientific world dropped the topic after having a good laugh. — In the 1960s a corn plant (*Dracaena*) stuck its leaf into a polygraph and started the world talking about plant-speak. Lie detector expert Cleve Backster lectured and gave interviews about the experience although the scientific world dropped the topic after having a good laugh.

Luther Burbank, by all measures a genius for more than 800 plant introductions, including the classic Shasta daisy, readily admitted to talking to his plants. He wrote that plants are telepathically capable of understanding speech. — Luther Burbank, by all measures a genius for more than 800 plant introductions, including the classic Shasta daisy, readily admitted to talking to his plants.

You’ve heard of whisperers. Most well-known are horse whisperers, people gifted in working with frightened, neglected, aggressive, hard-to-handle horses with behavioral problems. These healers came out of the woodwork when Robert Redford added his famous smile to the considerable mystique of horse whispering, yet one group is notably quiet. Plant whisperers remain in the shed, so to speak.

Why is there virtually no coverage in the press and no scientific attention to plant whisperers? When so many do it, when there are high-profile champions of the cause such as Prince Charles (‘Of course I speak to plants’), when slightly wacky lie detector expert Cleve Backster hooked his houseplants to a polygraph, and Alfred Hitchcock story collections featured men going mad once they could hear the voices of grass being cut and vegetables plucked? The conspiracy of silence stretches back even to 1848 when Dr. Gustav Theodor Fechner’s theory of emotive greenery, published in Soul-Life of Plants, sent only a short-lived riffle through the scientific community.

My goal is not an appeal for proof that plants hear us and respond. My point in amplifying the subject of plant whispering is to look at what it does for us, the whisperers. It’s irrelevant whether you believe the plants respond or not. What matters is that you see how good this practice is for those who do the talking.

The author whispers assurances to the weeping pine as it’s wheeled to its new home. It’s just part of the job, keeping the plants informed of the whole situation.

Nine years later, never forsaken by the gardeners who voiced aloud their promises to help it through recovery, it’s still going strong. If it could speak, would it chide us or thank us for putting it into a place of prominence?

Better learning when we hear as well as see

People who study human learning claim that we remember significantly more of what we see and hear than we do of things we heard but didn’t see, or saw without accompanying sound. In that case, we are bound to learn more if we speak to a plant, reinforcing thought with sound.

In addition, researchers have proven that we retain a great deal more information when we move as we learn, matching muscle use to spoken word. Since few can speak to a plant without also stroking a leaf, straightening a stem or gesturing in some way, we are also scribing into our muscles what would otherwise be only a mental and aural memory.

So it makes sense that the gardener who stops to chat is more likely to remember which of his or her charges need water the most, which limbs need staking, or where the bugs hang out. It’s a good bet that person will remember the promises and observations made aloud and then act on that knowledge in ways that improve the garden.

I pay attention when I’m talking

Talking is also a means of focusing attention, and that’s a basic tenet of the whisperers’ craft. Buck Brannaman, famous horse whisperer and consultant on the movie of that name, tells his students to get the horse’s attention first, that if you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter what you do next.

In the case of plants, the benefit doesn’t come from capturing the plant’s attention. It comes when the plant wins your undivided attention.

In talking to a plant, I’m compelled to look for specifics to include in my dialogue. It’s not like the wordless, soothing crooning or repeated generalities like “It’ll be all right” that I might use with a nervous cat in a car. I’m talking to myself as much as to the plant so I’m more likely to be analytical in my plant whisperings. I look for something worthwhile to say, perhaps, “You’re looking greener today” or “How’re those tips, have we finally ousted those pesky mealybugs?” Even if I’m taking a hard line with a plant the conversation is going to focus on particulars, such as, “I warned you that we’d have to cut that branch if you don’t start adding a bit more leaf on the other side!” Because I decide to talk, I look more closely and attend to the details.

An old saying sums it up, “The best fertilizer is the farmer’s footprint.” Attention makes the world greener while lack of attention leads to garden failures. We all know that plants rarely fold up and die overnight, that there are usually early-stage symptoms that an observant person can use to make a diagnosis. It’s also pretty commonly accepted that ministrations in the initial phases of a plant’s decline tend to be more successful than last-ditch efforts applied to the near-dead. Yet ask anyone who works at a garden center about the story given by people who return dead plants, and you’ll hear that it is most often, “I don’t know. It was fine and then it just died.” Such terse individuals are probably not plant whisperers. They didn’t talk and by keeping their mouths closed they failed to open their eyes.

Who can say whether this weeping hemlock survived its ordeal because we chatted it up? From the minute the author tied back its branches for surgery and started to dig, she began talking.

Here it is being trundled to a new spot out of the way of construction workers building a new wing on the house.

While alone in its new spot, the author and other gardeners kept the plant company, whispering regularly to it. Certainly the water they brought it and the intercessions they made to keep construction workers from piling things on its roots made a difference.

Most recently, five years settled and joined by other plants, it has become happy enough to have earned the warning, “I know we said that if you’d hang on and make this move we’d never bother you again but if you keep up growing like that we’re going to have to start pruning you!” — Most recently, five years settled and joined by other plants, the hemlock has become happy enough to have earned the warning, “I know we said that if you’d hang on and make this move we’d never bother you again but if you keep growing like that we’re going to have to start pruning you!”

Synergy from involving others in the conversation

We capture the notice of others when we talk to plants. Not just the bemused neighbor or passerby but important others, people who have something to contribute but might not think to share information except that you piped up first.

As an example, take Pat the gardener and Pat’s handy, loving, but horticulturally-clueless spouse. Pat, leaning close over a small shrub and commiserating: “Oh, that’s not good. Here I thought you were all taken care of but that big old brute lilac is blocking the sprinkler from reaching here, isn’t it? I’ll just have to water you by hand until I can figure a way to move that sprinkler. Maybe you’d like a trickle irrigation line, wouldn’t that be good?”

Pat’s spouse, sitting unnoticed on the far side of the lilac on the patio, thinks: “Ah ha. That would be a perfect thing for a birthday present. I’ll have to ask Pat’s buddy Kim what the heck trickle irrigation is.”

It’s not just something that happens in the family. People of different disciplines do meet and take steps forward for the greater good when the thoughts of one are out there where both can examine them. Claus Mattheck was a mechanical engineer when something, perhaps one of those belt-wearing, saw-wielding plant whisperers known as arborists, made him take a look at trees as structures. Now Mattheck’s book “The Body Language of Trees,” is revolutionizing arboriculture by explaining specific signs that tell of impending breakage and fall.

Talk softly and carry a big smile

Maybe the biggest benefit to the whisperer comes from the quiet, calm nature of whispering. This low level of sound probably applies more naturally and consistently to a plantsperson’s work than to any other whisperers’ job. Animal whisperers embrace non-violent ways, but don’t you suspect that even the best of them has raised his or her voice to a subject, if only to be heard above the crashing of hooves against a stall or baying at an imagined threat? That kind of racket just doesn’t happen with plants. Even when we’re upset with a plant so that we feel it needs rebuke, we don’t stand back, stamp our foot and holler. We practice reason or at least learn to accept events with grace, two strategies that become routine and thus are there as a natural fall-back attitude in stressful non-garden situations.

Are you laughing at yourself or a plant whisperer you know? That’s another benefit of this practice. Who hasn’t pulled up in spring an item they planted in fall, mistaking it for a weed? We recognize the error at sight of the potting mix on the root ball, or when we see that there are three of the supposed weed, regularly spaced in a triangle as weeds never are. Perhaps it’s good for the plant to hear “Oh you poor thing, I’m sorry!” but the grin at your own expense is worth far more.

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

Scientists inquire: Will the eclipse make crops and animals flip out?

August 18, 2017 • Leave a Comment

NPR:

On Aug. 21, a 70-mile-wide ribbon from Oregon to South Carolina called the “path of totality” will experience a total solar eclipse. Large swaths of farmland in the Great Plains and Midwest will be plunged into darkness for 2 1/2 minutes, and temperatures will drop about 10 degrees in the middle of the day.

But as millions of people look up at the sky, many Midwest scientists will turn their eyes and cameras toward the plants and animals on the ground. And they’re not sure what will happen.

“It’s never really been studied systematically,” says Angela Speck, director of astronomy at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Speck says different parts of the Earth experience a total eclipse about once a year, and that makes tracking changes in animal and plant behavior challenging.

Read the rest of the story here…

How to choose plants that promote pollinators in the garden

February 13, 2016 • Leave a Comment

MSU Extension:

Pollinators are looking for nectar and pollen when foraging in your garden. This is their food, the carbohydrates and protein they need to thrive and produce offspring. Native bees will widely feed on many different types of flowering plants in your landscape and garden.

Think about “serving” up a menu of blooms in early spring through fall. Choose a wide range of flowering plants including annuals, herbaceous perennials and native plants, bulbs, trees and shrubs that are known to support pollinator health. Early blooming plants such as spring bulbs or Pachysandra, or very late bloomers such as Sedum or Anemone are often the most needed food sources for pollinators since there are fewer floral resources available during those times.

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Gardening seminar coming to Shelby Township

February 10, 2015 • 1 Comment

The Outdoor Living Extravaganza, presented by Proven Winners, is coming to Cherry Creek Golf Club in Shelby Township on Saturday, March 21, 8:30am – 4pm.

This educational gardening seminar will inspire you with new plants, design ideas and more along with an opportunity to purchase plants and other gardening goods. All participants will receive a complimentary gift bag and plant along with a host of ideas to put to use right away in your garden.

Speakers will include P. Allen Smith, Award Winning Garden Designer, Author and TV Host; Kerry Mendez, Garden Expert and Author; and John Gaydos, Director of Product Development and Promotion for Proven Winners.

For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Plant experts present the 2014 Plants of Distinction seminar

January 20, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Gardeners love to include new plants in their gardens. Plant research and global exploration influence the number and types of plants available. However, “new” is not always “best” for our landscapes. With more and more gardeners turning their attention to sustainability and green practices, the question of maintenance arises. On Monday, February 3, 2014 (Grand Rapids) and Tuesday, February 4 (Novi), the MSU Extension gathers renowned plant experts to enrich your knowledge of widely sought-after plant material while remembering the message of “right plant, right place.”

Irvin Etienne, Horticulture Display Coordinator from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, will present “Carmen Miranda in the Midwest,” which will help you bring eye-popping color and texture to your garden. He will also explore some of the best tough plants for Midwest gardens in “When Pretty Ain’t Enough!”

Joseph Tychonievich, Author and Manager at Arrowhead Alpines Nursery in Fowlerville, Michigan, will present “Great, Non-Wimpy Plants You Haven’t Heard Of.” This talk will inspire you with beautiful, tough, and reliable plants that, for one reason or another, you probably have not seen before.

Dr. Tom Fernandez, Michigan State University Professor of Horticulture, will present “Something Old, Something New: Trees and Shrubs for Michigan.” More and more new trees and shrubs are being released every year with improved garden performance. Learn which ones are right for you.

Please note the registration deadline is January 27, 2014, and registration at the door is not available. For more info, click here.

Light up your life with glow-in-the-dark plants

January 15, 2014 • Leave a Comment

The plant in regular light, left, and in darkness, right.
(Credit: Bioglow)

CNET:

When it comes to living things that illuminate, a plant is probably your best bet for a low-maintenance conversation piece to have in your home. It’s much easier to deal with than a jellyfish, or even a glow-in-the-dark cat. Bioglow is preparing to offer its bioengineered Starlight Avatar autoluminescent ornamental houseplants to the public.

Competing companies have popped up, but Bioglow has been leading the movement ever since molecular biologist Alexander Krichevsky created what the company calls the first light-producing plants and published his findings in 2010.

Read the full story here…

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