The Woodies

I guess I am into the woodies right now, because these are the plants I can see in my yard right now.  What would we do without shrubs, our landscapes would certainly not be as interesting.  One of my favorite shrubs is right next to the walk as you approach the front door - Viburnum Carlesi Compactum.  It is small (about three feet) fragrant and attractive in the fall.  You can only prune it right after it flowers or you won't have blooms the following spring. 

As I look out my front door I see the dried flowers of Limelight Hydrangea which is the showstopper of late summer.  Cars stop, people with dogs stop because it is an unbeliveable specimen!  It grows about eight feet tall and six feet wide.  I cut it down to about three feet each March, feed it an acid fertilizer and it rewards me and most of my neighbors with gorgeous flowers in white, pale green, pink tinged and rose up until frost.  This hydrangea prefers sun!

Along the side of Limelight I am struggling with a grouping of four Itea Virginica Henry's Garnet.  They have been in the ground six years and never flowered.  I have given them one more year and then it is goodbye.  They get a few little flowers, so this year I cut them down, fed them with a systemic because it looked like some of the leaves were being eaten, and watched them revive to look more plush than I had ever seen.  I try to be as organic as possible, but when an "antibotic"is warranted, I go for it.  Well, we'll see come spring!

These are my woodies in the front of my house, we will move around the sides and back another day.  Can anyone give me some pointers on Henry's Garnet?

Trees We Love

I have always loved trees!  They not only frame your home, but they put their arms around a neighborhood.

I grew up with Chinese Elms that made my father want tear his hair out.  They had become completely entangled in our city lot sewer system.  I remember the diggers coming to tear up our front lawn to rod out the system.

In the second home I owned, we had 100 year old American Elms that made a canopy up and down our street.  They evoked such a peaceful feeling as we raised our children and lived our daily lives.  However, one by one over a period of years all of those beautiful elms disappeared due to Dutch Elm Disease.  We would stand outside in the springtime and watch a village person come through and mark a big red X on the trees they determined were infected.  It was the X of death, and no matter how much we argued with the X maker, the tree came down!

Thousands of the Elms are gone, and even though I have a different home now on a street with many century old homes, most of the trees are new.  Two months after moving in we lost two one hundred year old trees and now have trees not much taller than me planted in front of our home.  I look at my new trees, and I can actually see which branches need to go, something I could never have done with the century old trees.  This is the best time of year to shape your trees, either by a professional or by you if you are a careful pruner.

I have an Accolade Elm and a Maple in the front of my house on the parkway and a Chanticleer Pear closer to my house.  The Chanticleer is an improvement over the Bradford because it's branches are more upright and stable during a storm.  The Trinity Pear is lovely, but it does spread out more than the Chanticleer.  These pear trees have leaves that turn a deep red in the fall and are the last to disappear.  I forgot to tell you that it has beautiful white flowers in the spring.

I have a Pagoda Dogwood in the back because my yard is so small I could never have accomodated a shade tree.  It has taken me a couple years to get this tree in shape as it was hit heavily by the cicadas a few years ago.  They really liked this tree, lots of pruning!

Does anyone have trees that they really love?

Gardening With Children

I can't guarantee you that if you garden with your children they will become gardeners.  But I can assure you that if you do expose your children to gardening that the gardening gene within specific children will be awakened.  My gardening gene was awakened by my dear aunt.  So anyone can awaken that gene in a child, parents, grandparents, friends, teachers.

Each year I taught young children, I would pull out the planting cups, children would decorate, fill with soil, push their little finger down and plunk in a seed or two.  Some years we did vegetables, some flowers.  It was difficult to get a nice looking plant years ago because we did not have plant lights in the classroom.  No matter how weak some of them looked, we wrapped tissue around the cups, made beautiful Mothers Day Cards and wondered if they would ever survive the bus ride home.  It wasn't just a gift for their Mother, it was a gift of knowledge for that child.  They learned the basics of plant growth (soil, water, light) and the responsibility of taking care of what they had decided to grow. 

When I began working with children and gardens , we planted in outside gardens, digging through rock-like clay my first year.  Needless to say, the vegetables did not flourish.  The plastic pool seemed like a great idea until we arrived to see it tipped over and our plants strewn all over the playground.   We pulled ourselves up and moved on to the soil berm (couldn't be tipped over), however, the plants could be pulled out and they were!

We really did get very modern through the years, graduating to a double tiered planting greenhouse with lights, a root vue garden (where we could see the roots forming on radishes, carrots, onions) and a raised garden bed outside (behind the school) with our own child-sized shovels and garden gloves.

Gardening at home with my own children seemed to produce less than the desired results.  It was all excitement in the beginning, picking out the seeds, planting them and giving them that first drink of water.  It was a lot like getting the new puppy and guess who ends up taking care of him!  I put in a lot of  time caring for my children's gardens over the years and crossed it off as a lost cause.  But, lo and behold, as adults, they are both avid gardeners!

So, I didn't write about plants today, it's all about the "gardeners" of tomorrow!

Check out http://www.gardenrant.com/ and their article Caitlin Flanagan Demonstrates What A Deficient Education Will Do (In Defense Of School Gardens)

A Plant For All Seasons

In my early gardening days I never had a love affair with the "Daylily."  I thought any plant that produced a flower for only one day was not worth having in the garden!  Boy, was I wrong!  The daylily has become a welcome seasonal anchor in my garden.  My Oakes daylily catalog arrived today, and the first thing that entered my mind was where could I possibly fit another plant. 

I very rarely buy a potted or packaged daylily, mostly ordering from reputable firms over the internet.  The selection is endless finding plants that will never be offered at the garden center.  The daylily is a hardy character and is perfect for being ordered wrapped in newspaper with a rubberband around the scapes.  They do not look very viable when received, but oh what a pail of water can do overnight.  If you take off all packing material, remove the rubberbands and soak, they are ready for planting and wonderful growth even the first year.

There are daylilies that will bloom early, early middle, middle, middle late and late.  What this means is that you can have daylilies blooming throughout the growing season.  If you get excited about the notation that some are rebloomers, well don't, because if you live anywhere in zone 5 or below it is sporadic at best.
Stella D'Oro is the prime example of this, blooms great for the first flush, not much after that, plan on dividing this one often - finally gave all of mine away.  Ditto for Happy Returns - it doesn't return, but I kept this one.

I have finally come to the conclusion that I want a lot of bang for my buck!  It is my large, colorful daylilies that are spectacular in my summer garden.  Please do not think that I have ignored all of those beautiful, delicate or miniature daylilies, I have made some room for them also, but I call them my walk by daylilies not to look at from fifty feet away.

Picking off a mushie (dead flower) will not produce more daylilies on that plant.  It will make the plant look more attractive especially on the larger flowered daylilies.  However, cutting the whole stem to the ground on the professed rebloomers will give you some rebloom. 

Well, I am going to leaf through this great little catalog, thinking to myself I can always make room for a few more!   http://www.oakesdaylilies.com/  http://www.daylilies-hostas.com/ and http://www.seasidedaylily.com/  Martha's Vineyard (they are small and have an email on website).

Deadheading Brings New Life

Don't let anyone tell you differently, but deadheading is a job!  It seems like an endless job if you want to keep your garden in bloom throughout the summer.  We all know about cutting off the spent roses (however, with Knockout, you do not have to prune except for looks and size).  The salvias and nepetas need to be deadheaded if you want rebloom.  May Night is everywhere, and it seems that not many people know that it has to be cut back if you want it to bloom throughout the summer.  The rebloom on most plants will never equal the initial bloom.  I cut my May Night back about four times in a season.  I have several other low growing salvias that benefit from the same practice.  Nepeta, I deadhead less or more often depending upon the plant, Walker's Low once during the season, Six Hills Giant, once and Souvenir d'Andre Chaudron stem by stem.

Certain phlox will bloom most of the summer if deadheaded, one of the most prolific after pruning is Blue Paradise.  I have tried it with David (although my daughter has better luck with David reblooming profusely) Franz Schubert and Eva Cullum with less than spectacular results.  Deadheading Echinacea (coneflowers) is important if you want to extend the blooming time.  I went to a workshop some years ago where the speaker was Tracy DiSabato-Aust who wrote The Well-Tended Perennial Garden (planting and pruning techniques) great book for a beginning pruner as I was.  Some plants do not benefit from deadheading, most daylilies, lillies, asters and peonies are in this category, and I am sure there are many more.   My motto is, if in doubt, deadhead - it can't hurt and it will give you a neater looking plant.