Shrubs

Andrew Bunting has a long career in horticulture (for such a young guy) including 10 years as curator of the famous Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College.  He recently shared the story of his garden’s makeover - into the stunner you see here - and it just made me want to see it in person.  So next month I’ll be taking a little horticultural road trip, a two-day whirlwind tour of some major gardening destinations in Pennsylvania - Andrew’s own garden, the Scott Arboretum itself, the Rodale Institute headquarters and growing fields, and the growing and breeding fields of Knock Out roses.   Can’t wait.

Enjoy these shots of (top two)  his front garden and below, his back yard.  Click here for my notes of Andrew’s talk, and an amazing before-and-after pairing of his front garden.

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In observance of Earth Day and to promote the campaign Green the Grounds.org, here’s my report about a green governor’s mansion landscape in my own state, Maryland.

Back in 2004 a Maryland Master Gardener, eager to promote landscaping practices that protect our beloved Chesapeake Bay, wrote to Joseph Altemus, horticulturist at the governor’s mansion in Annapolis, to inquire about the landscaping practices there.  The upshot was a visit to the grounds by Master Gardeners of  Howard and Anne Arundel Counties to see how the landscape scored using Maryland’s excellent BayWise certification and turns out, it scored 68 points - far more than the 30 needed to be certified as BayWise.  We’re talking double!  Kudos to the governor’s horticulturist for his good stewardship.  In fact, we’d love to hear from him to learn more about this success story.

A recent interview with Georgia Eacker, Howard County Master Gardener Coordinator, revealed that five years later the landscape still looks great and still proudly displays the "Bay-Wise-Certified" sign.  She told me she has a photo of then-Governor Bob Ehrlich and horticulturist Altemus, both beaming with the Bay-Wise sign, and we’d love to get a copy  to display here on Green the Grounds.

This Just in - a Veg Garden Next

From a press release of April 21, 2009: First Lady Katie O’Malley will celebrate National Gardening Month and Maryland Grow it Eat it Month by planting a food garden at Government House.  First Lady O’Malley will be joined by beginner gardeners who will learn basic techniques of gardening from Maryland’s Master Gardener Coordinator, Jon Traunfeld. April is National Gardening Month, Earth Month, and Governor O’Malley has also declared April to be Maryland Grow it Eat it Month,” said First Lady O’Malley.  “In celebration, and together with the University of Maryland, I encourage all Maryland families to plant their own garden to save money, to eat healthy, and to protect our environment.” 

First Lady O’Malley has partnered with University of Maryland Cooperative Extension to promote their new campaign, “Grow It Eat It,” which encourages Maryland families to improve health and save money by growing fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs using sustainable practices.  The campaign hopes to encourage 1 million Marylanders to produce their own affordable, healthy food.  More information on the campaign and the University of Maryland’s Master Gardener program can be found at www.growit.umd.edu.  

Maryland will be one of the first states, if not the first state in the nation, to have a backyard food garden at the Governor’s home.  The vegetable garden will set a realistic example of what Maryland families can do in their own backyards.

More about Bay-Wise Landscaping

Here’s a brief overview, and here’s an even briefer one:

• Fertilize wisely
• Water efficiently
• Mow properly
• Control stormwater runoff
• Mulch appropriately
• Recycle yard waste
• Use Integrated Pest Management
• Plant wisely (with plants suited to your site)
• Encourage wildlife
• Protect the waterfront

They DO seem to have all the bases covered.  Great program!

Photo credit. 

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 Now as a long-time shrubarian myself, I read that story title and thought, "Says who?" Thinking I know best, ya know.  So let’s see what Fine Gardening recommends:

• ‘Ogon’ spirea, to 5′ by 6′, with apple-green foliage.  (Photo right.)
• Oakleaf hydrangea ‘Snowflake" - to 6′ tall and 8′ wide.  (Lower photo)
• Purple smoke bush to 15 feet tall and wide.
• ‘Emerald Gaiety’ Euonymus fortunei with variegated medium green and white evergreen foliage, 3′ tall, 5′ wide.
• Knock Out Roses, to 2-4′ tall and wide, with blooms into December in Zone 6 and warmer.
• Elegantissima redtwig dogwood to 10′ by 10′, has red stems and variegated foliage.
• Japanese skimmias, various grow 3-6′ by 3-6′, is evergreen and fragrant.
• ‘Blue Star’ juniper, another evergreen, is only16" tall with a spread of 3′, is consistently blue.

The kudos for ‘Ogon’ are even echoed in a second article in the same issue, with Chanticleer Garden’s Jonathan Wright suggesting it for cool mixes with purples (allium, Tropical smoke bush, etc).

My reaction?  Kinda feeling the love - because I grow and recommend most of these myself.  All, in fact, except the skimmia.  And I notice designers all going gaga over the ‘Ogon’, massing them up the wazoo.  I just have one, but it’s already in full bloom - nice and early. 

My other fave in the group if the oakleaf hydrangea, which I’ve noticed native-plant designers in this area recommending, also.  It may not be native to the D.C. area but native to South Carolina is close enough, I suppose, especially with climate change plant ranges northward, anyway. 

So what do YOU think of this list?

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Whenever I hear someone pining for a moss garden because it’s low-maintenance I wonder about the source of that tidbit of misinformation.  Coz I’ve seen too many photos of gardeners in Japanese moss gardens down on their hands and knees using tweezers to pry weeds out of the moss without damaging it.   And heard that mosses typically need even moisture and are rendered dead by periods of drought.  And so on. 

So I have a mixed reaction to this article about moss, which touts its success in creating "drama".  But here are some really useful highlights from it:

• There are about 1,200 species of moss native to North  America, some of which actually prefer sun and alkaline soil.
• In this area mosses generally prefer shade, acidic soil and most importantly, "moisture is the key to success".
• You can kill stuff if you aren’t really careful about applying all that aluminium sulfate needed to acidify your soil.
• And then there’s weeds.  "In the case of moss, getting rid of them is a painstaking process.  Count on plucking seedlings from the moss on a regular basis to maintain a rich carpet-like appearance."

I told ya!  The article recommends Oregon State for more info about this very cool-looking (though hardly sustainable) plant.

Photo credit.

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Are you one of those homeowners who never does ANY pruning?  Well, you have lots of company.  But really, it’s almost impossible to kill these plants by some pruning error and VERY likely you’ll improve its health and appearance, so give it a go!  These are all plants I grow myself, but I’ve researched the pruning advice just in case, and here’s the best I found online.

THE BASICS
I suggest reading The Basics of Pruning first; it’s by Lee Reich for Fine Gardening. He also has a video about Where to Cut, demonstrating the 1/2-1/4-inch-above-a-bud proper way to cut.

I take issue with only one bit of Lee’s advice and that’s about Spirea japonica, which he says to prune in late winter/early spring - but for most of them, that would remove this year’s blooms.  I suggest Googling the exact variety you have and the word "prune" to find out when to prune, or just do it soon after blooming, no matter which type you have (that’s always safer, anyway). 

Now’s the best time to prune deciduous trees and shrubs except those that flower in the spring.  If you like the size and shape just fine, at least remove these branches:

• dead ones
• diseased branches
• branches that cross other branches (literally touching, rubbing)
• branches that grow toward the center of the shrub, causing crowding
• branches that are thinner than a pencil or diseased
• suckers and water sprouts - that mess of shoots around the base of the shrub and the branches that shoot straight up at a 90-degree angle from a larger branch

[click to continue…]

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Junipers may just be the toughest, most sustainable and varied group of plants there is, bar none, and I particularly love the J. chinensis or "Hollywood" juniper, shown on the left in its first season (soon after I excitedly announced that I’d brought one home.)

So maybe I can be excused my expletive-filled reaction to the news that in the winter, deer apparently love junipers, too, as you can see from the after-deer photo on the right.  But what’s a gardener to do with the remains?

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I

I WANT THIS PLANT.  The Itea virginica ‘Little Henry’ is undeniably prettier than the ‘Henry’s Garnet’  I’ve been growing for so long, at least in the fall foliage department.  And the stars are clearly aligning for me to have it.

First there was Jeanette Ankoma-Sey, an actual horticulturist and garden designer who visited my garden recently, which prompted me to take shameless advantage of her by asking for plant recommendations for a part-sun border that got a lot wider after I got rid of the back-yard lawn.   We’d met when she attended the talk I gave to DC’s EcoWomen last summer.  Little did I know she has a hort degree and works for the largest design company in the U.S. (I’m pretty sure) - EDAW.

So, I tell her I want to fill the border with shrubs; what does she recommend?  Itea and fothergilla.  YES!   But which ones?

Then a week later I ran into a writer-gardener who invited me to see her ‘Little Henry’ in its fall glory and voila - I’m sold.  Now I just have to find a few.  Oh yeah, I’m massing ‘em, baby!

Here’s my page about Itea virginica, with a photo of ‘Henry’s Garnet’ flowering.

Thanks to Alison Gillespie for showing me her ‘Little Henry’.

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Over on Organic Gardener.com I’ve posted about two increasingly popular species of Hydrangeas - the paniculata and the quercifolia (oakleaf).  Here’s the link.

Top photo: Quercifolia ‘Snowflake’.  Bottom: Paniculata’Tardiva’.

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It’s what almost every garden needs and what almost no garden gets.  

RENEWAL PRUNING

Are there any full-grown azaleas, spireas, weigelas or snowball viburnums (V. macrophalem) in your garden?  Then there’s a 99 percent chance that they need renewal pruning and now’s the time to do it.  

First, remove any dead stems and branches.  But that’s just a warm-up.  The real fun is in removing one-third of all the stems all the way to the ground or close to it.  Ah, but which stems to remove?

• Stems that are growing where you don’t want them to grow, like hanging over a walkway or bullying a nearby shrub.
• Stems that are crossing other stems, especially the ones that begin on the outside and grow through the middle, crowding the whole interior of the plant.
• If those two types don’t add up to one-third of the stems, take out the oldest ones next.  Conveniently, these are often the tallest - too tall, in fact.  People are tempted to cut them back a foot or two at the top and the result is even more growth up there where it spoils the shape of the plant.  The plant becomes top-heavy, especially if it has large flowers to hold up, like this snowball-type viburnum.

Almost everyone who hires me has plants that need renewal, so I’ve explained this technique many, many times and people are totally unbelieving.  This type of pruning (the correct kind!) is SO counterintuitive, it takes a total leap of faith to actually try it.  I give my pep talk but after I drive away, who knows?

Readers, give it a try.  I’ll go out on a limb and promise that you can’t kill one of these plants by doing what I’ve suggested. 

HOW TO LEARN TO PRUNE

But what if you have some other shrub that’s not on the list above?  Or say your old azalea is part of a large crowded mess of shrubs and you have no idea how to tackle the problem.  No book or website can really provide the answer, and you’re thinking you might need someone to do it for you - or better yet, teach you how to do it.   Hiring an arborist (or a gardening coach)  to come to your garden, assess the situation, and teach you to take care of your shrubs and small trees for no more than you’d pay for a lawn treatment would be money awfully well spent.  Super-low-maintenance shrub gardens fill out and look great and really are low-maintenance, but not no-maintenance.  Without yearly pruning they become unruly jungles.   Keeping shrubs beautiful, healthy, and the right size for the landscape is SO damn easy, but very few homeowners will give it a try.

Here’s what might help - if just some of the TV segments about "How to create a container garden" were retired to the archives and demonstrations of "How to prune your azaleas" were shown instead.  Hey, I’d even wield the Felcos myself - for the cause.

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