From the monthly archives:
It’s a looong wait every year before we can finally feast our eyes on our prized late-season perennials and a real bummer to find them lying on the ground face down instead of standing at attention where we can see them. And the alternative of staking them up produces a result that just barely looks better because it spoils their natural form. But if we act fast - this week - we can avoid both results by simply hacking them back. The details are right here.
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I asked Renee Macalino Rutledge, editor of CalFinder (a free referral service for remodeling contractors) what information home gardeners should know about her industry, and got this handy lis
t of situations in which we should hire someone who knows more than we do, and these inspiring photos. Thanks, Renee!
1. Water features. This first example is one where people are tempted to do the work themselves, with mixed results, to say the least. I’ve watched neighbors take apart and totally redo their ponds because of leaks and know that it’s no fun. I made enough mistakes creating my dry streambed and it’s not nearly as complicated as ponds and waterfalls. Renee reminds us that it’s not just all that digging, but knowing what kind of liner to use (waterproof, with watertight seals), which filter to choose, and even which plants to put in the pond, an extra service of some pond-installers.
2. Gazebos. Construction? Clearly not a DIY option for most of us but man, wouldn’t we all love one of these? Wonder what that beauty on the left cost. But back to our potential contractor. I’m told that they can suggest different types and help us pick the right shape and size, and style. (I’d grab that portfoliio and start drooling at the options.) And someone who knows what they’re doing can add electricity for us, or plumbing for an outdoor kitchen.
3. Decks and patios. Again, no argument from me here, but Renee suggests finding someone who’s "just as passionate about decks as you are about gardens." Well, that’s a cool idea. "Laying the wood and putting together a sturdy, flawless structure takes patience and fine craftsmanship," Renee writes, and it reminds me of the high school science teacher who built my current deck and the beautiful work he did. He was SO proud of it, he made no bones of his displeasure at the vines I quickly attached along the edge - it was spoiling the view of his deck!
4. Stone pathways. Now here’s where I’d be tempted to do it myself - and have. But as she warns, "A walkway must withstand heavy foot traffic, machinery, and the wear and tear of the elements." I’m a big proponent of garden paths, even if they’re only mulch (though stone is awesome!) Paths are so inviting, and they let you get to your plants so you can tend them without harming plants you might otherwise step 
on. True, stone is expensive, but these days there are some less expensive alternatives that look great, and options include slip-resistance, interlocking pavers that can easily be replaced. and more. Then we get to choose from various patterns for different effects - herringbone or another classic pattern, or even a custom design.
5. Retaining walls. Another beautiful garden feature that I wouldn’t attempt myself, unless it’s 6 inches or shorter. Anything taller takes engineering, after all, to figure out what Renee calls the "mounting lateral pressure of backfill and possible hydrostatic pressure of water.:" Right, that stuff. But when they’re done well and especially with natural materials, man, do they add a lot to the garden. Wish more people had them. 
6. Outdoor sheds/studios. Ever seen those charming little buildings in garden magazines? They’re painted in cool colors, and art or hanging baskets give them a bit of personality (not like the plain-Jane one below). Of course Home Depot sells those kits for sheds and I suppose I could pay some handyman to put one together for me but how good could it look? It sounds so much better when Renee talks about custom-designed sheds, studios, even guest quarters. (A boon to guest-hostess relations, no doubt.) In my case I hired someone to turn my beat-up old metal garage into a tool shed/workshop. No heat, just good lighting and some colorful carpeting. Then I grabbed some paint in my favorite outdoor color - teal - and it turned out to be surprisingly…not-ugly.
7. Better-looking concrete. Renee tells me that concrete has "come a long way from the poured driveway. If you’ve got old concrete outside, it can be dressed up with paint or stain." And can I add that if you’ve got old concrete outside it probably looks horrible and DO check into having it resurfaced somehow, unless you’re getting rid of it altogether.
I have only a vague notion of how this can be done, so I asked for more details and got them. A very thin coat of a decorative, fine concrete can applied over the existing surface. These "overlays" come in various colors, and the texture is achieved during application. E.g., a broom can be used to achieve a non-slip finish, and trowels can create swirls and arcs. And concrete dyes can be used for all sorts of cool effects.
I asked about cost and learned that overlay kits are available from companies like Decorative Concrete Kits for $300.00 for 400 square feet. A concrete contractor would charge $2 to 7 per square foot, plus the cost of the concrete (which is cheap). Asked about a faux marble look, Renee says it’s done with the same stamped concrete method that’s also used to mimic fractured slate, aged stone, limestone, effects that are achieved at an "affordable cost."
Renee, one more question. Are there any affordable make-overs available for cinder block walls? Something that would disguise their essential (and ugly) blockiness?
Photo credits: Waterfall by LandPlan Landscaping. Gazebo via Flickr. Deck by BBC Construction. Stone path via Flickr. Retaining wall by Antigua Landscapes. Shed via Flickr.
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Did you know that: 
I learned all that from American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn by Ted Steinberg. Reviewers have aptly compared it to Fast Food Nation - it’s that well written and that important.
Who’s to blame for all this? The American love of lawns began with the upperclass emulating the landed gentry of England and spread to middle class neighborhoods after World War II, especially in new communities like Levittown, NY, where residents were encouraged to apply fertilizer a remarkable 5 to 6 times a year because super-green lawns "stamp inhabitants as good neighbors, desirable citizens". The invention of the power mower and advertising for perfect lawns by industry giant Scotts sealed the new ethic of the American lawn for decades to come. Proof of Scotts’ marketing power (and the malleability of the American consumer) is the fate of clover. Where previously it had been routinely included in grass seed mixes for its nitrogen-fixing properties, when it was discovered that the new wonder-herbicide 2,4-D killed clover along with crabgrass, Scotts turned on a dime and declared it to be an undesirable weed, and public opinion quickly followed.
Most worshipers at the Church of the Perfect Lawn are men, and Steinberg thinks it’s because compulsive lawn care gives them a feeling of control - a feeling so often missing on the job. So ad agencies write copy like: "Show the world who’s boss" and "You’re the boss when you buy a Lawn-Boy," pitches that appeal to notions of manliness, and it works all too well.
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Highlights from the latest newsletter.
never use hearing protection while mowing, and 12% said they throw back a few brews while pushing the mower. Wow, it’s dangerous out there - surveys also show that almost no one reads product directions. 
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May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
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All the media hoopla over Father’s Day reminds me of something I recently learned about my dad from a relative. .jpg)
What I already knew is that Dad and his 3 sisters were raised by a single mother in Richmond, Virginia, but spent summers visiting relatives in the country. And it was country stories that he loved to tell. Like the popular menfolk custom - and I’m not making this up - of friendly fart-making contests. Cane-bottom chairs with the cane removed somehow helped, I seem to remember. Oh, yeah, I come from high-class stock all right.
But what Dad never told me was the reason the kids spent every summer in the country with relatives, which is that his mother couldn’t afford to feed them. That would have seemed unimaginable during my lifetime except that just recently reports of food insecurity for untold Americans are reaching us, and it’s suddenly imaginable again.
But back to Dad. Other Greatest Generation dads might have told hard-luck stories about surviving the Depression, but not this one. What we heard about were his triumphs as a newspaper boy and about playing his violin for weddings and on the radio - for "good money". I knew that his "Ed Harris Dance Band" played all the fraternity parties and paid his way through college. And that scholarships made it possible to get a Ph.D. in psychology - way back in 1949 when it was a new and suspect field. And that he made sure his kids didn’t have to work their way through school.
Dad died a few years back at the age of 86, but I can still wish him a Happy Father’s Day, right?
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Here’s a very deliberate combination of beauties that bloom at the same time: 2 lacecap hydrangeas, spirea ‘Anthony Waterer,’ and an assortment of astilbes. There’s also closer-up photo of the hydrangea/astilbe combo over on GardenRant.
My other favorite scene right now has this oakleaf hydrangea as the centerpiece. It’s also gorgeous in the winter, thanks to exfoliating bark.
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed the garden porn as much as I have - and looking through dozens of photos was pretty trippy, I must say. But we’re trying to be informative here, so it’s time to talk turkey.
These lacecap hydrangeas gets nothing from me all year except supplemental water during periods of drought, and the removal of dead flowers - only. Other than that I spare them the Felcos because their spent flowers look good for months and I’d rather keep it around.
The spirea gets a lot less water - it’s a tough, adaptable plant. Pruning-wise, I’ll shear and shape in a week or two after these blooms are done, and be rewarded with a very nice rebloom.
Astilbes are reportedly both thirsty and hungry, which would make them one of the higher-maintenance perennials. But I grow a large variety that bloom just fine with no fertilizer except leafmold mulch every spring. I leave their spent flowers alone unless and until their foliage goes crispy later in the summer, at which point I shear them to the ground. That results in new foliage that looks fine for the season, but no reblooms. I do give astilbes some supplemental water, though not a lot.
In full shade, oakleaf hydrangeas are as close to literally sustainable as any plant in my garden, including the large oaks. It gets nada! It’s indigenous from the Carolinas southward, I believe.
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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?
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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Why? 
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This is the first installment of a new feature here - reporting the latest teachings of Paul James on "Gardening by the Yard," then discussing same and soliciting reader feedback. Why? Because he teaches my kind of gardening - sustainable, organic, all-around ecofriendly and always gardening-loving. I’ll just be reporting the highlights, though, because not every topic he covers is of interest to me or this site.
PAUL HEARTS FUNGI
To bring back to life a neighbor’s ailing tree, Paul drills holes all around it, then stuffs them full of compost that’s been injected with mycorrhizal fungi. Never shy to go out on a limb, Paul proclaims: "I’m convinced that Mycorrhizal fungi represent the future of gardening. They dramatically increases the roots’ ability to take up nutrients and fight disease." Their use leads to "improved growth, longer life, less need for fertilizer, and healthier plants" And he says using synthetic fertilizers is "treating your plant as though it’s some kind of botanical junkie." Contrasted with "the natural way" with these amazing fungi. I usually use a slightly different analogy when steering people away from synthetic fertilizers, calling them simply "steroids". Fair? How would you describe their effect on soils and the plants in them?
Here’s more about these fungi from the New York Botanical Garden, and the photo comes from that page.
LAWN
In a wide-ranging segment about turfgrasses, we learn that the warm season ones that Paul grows in Tulsa spread aggressively (the "I" word does spring to mind) and need to be contained somehow. This got me wondering about the cool season grasses that are grown here in Maryland. They do spread, but would we call them aggressive?
I swear, half of gardening is getting our plants to grow and the other half is working even harder to control all that growth.
Paul recommends giving lawns an inch of water once or twice every week, which seems like a lot to me. Is that because the warm weather grasses will die without it? I’ve always let me fescue go dormant and it’s always come back in the fall, so I don’t understand suggestions like these. Is it because the average viewer is just not ready to embrace brown grass?
As to feeding lawns, he recommends organic fertilizers - Paul’s been pushing organics for decades - in early spring and late fall. He says one test showed that doing that for one year reduced the crabgrass population by 75 percent. Good one! It’s why everyone’s telling us that the best way to deal with weeds is to have a nice thick lawn that’ll out-compete them. But it sure runs directly counter to the romantic belief that everything’s best in our landscapes when we leave it alone, not even add fertilizer to our unsustainable turfgrasses, and just let the whole garden "do its thing." Well, I’m one former hippie who’ll never forget the body odor that naturally results from that particular philosophy, as good as it may feel. Bottom line: if you don’t want your "lawn" to be increasingly splotchy and weed-dominated, feed it! Select almost any combination of grass clippings, clover, corn gluten meal, compost or any other organic fertilizer - your choice - as long as it’s getting sufficient nitrogen to keep it thriving.
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[Second of two Takoma Voice columns revealing what Jeff Gillman has to say in his The Truth about Organic Gardening
One look at the product shelves of local nurseries or even at Home Depot will tell you that green is in. We’re in the midst of a media blitz in service of "green" garden chemicals - and that’s a good thing. I think. At least they’ve noticed that we care, but is "green" always good? Caveat emptor, indeed, and the more we know about these products, the better. So last month I covered the weed-and-feed advice in Jeff Gillman’s much-talked-about new book, The Truth about Organic Gardening, because it’s environmental information that’s science-based, not slave to any marketing labels. This month let’s tackle the products with the potential to do the most harm - pesticides.
First, I like Gillman’s philosophy and follow this myself: "One of my favorite ways to deal with pests is by ignoring them and concentrating on getting plants to grow as vigorously as possible." And I’ll add: choosing the right ones. Organics aren’t very effective at killing insects, anyway, so it’s best to focus on prevention. He assures us that most plants can deal with the loss of about a third of their leaf area to insect damage, no problem. And hey, don’t we want to provide for wildlife anyway? Nature-loving gardeners these days understand how the plants they grow can contribute to wildlife, especially those songbirds we all love so much. So more and more of us don’t mind feeding the insects that will feed the birds, as long as our plants can survive the meal.
There are some seriously destructive critters out there, like Japanese beetles, and if they’re in such numbers as to threaten the survival of a plant or make it look butt-ugly (to you), the first tactic is to pick them by hand and bag them or dunk them in soapy water. Or try a good hard spray with the hose to wash them off. Traps for Japanese beetles don’t stand up well in tests, though; they end up attracting even more insects, resulting in more damage than if they weren’t used at all.
Beneficial insects, like ladybugs, eat the insects that damage our plants and you can buy 1,500 of them for about $20 online. The bad news is that they usually disperse as soon as they’re released. So the best way to have beneficial insects in your garden is to grow plants that attract them, and avoid the use of broad-spectrum insecticides, to which they’re very vulnerable. And if you do want to try introducing some, Gillman calls the lacewing a "little-known and underutilized predator" that’s a good choice for controlling aphids, mites, and other small soft-bodied insects. Unlike ladybugs, they’ll stay in your garden and eat the destructive insects there. Nematodes, little worms that eat insects from the inside out, are effective at killing Japanese beetles and can last in the soil for years, providing long-term control. Sometimes people with Japanese-beetle-plagued plants try to kill them with a bacterial disease called milky spore, but Gillman says it fails more often than it works, with beetles developing resistance to them over time. They’re most effective when applied to a larger area than just one yard.
[click to continue…]
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