Search Continues For Foundation Plantings

2 April, 2013 Reply
I think this might be the winner. It grows only 3' tall and wide, and it has a little bit of a golden cast to it, which would contrast nicely with all the dark glossy green leaves.

I think this might be the winner. It’s only 3′ tall and wide, and it has a little bit of a golden cast to it, which would contrast with all the dark glossy green leaves.

I’ve been spending some time looking online for plants to use as foundation plantings. Originally I thought I wanted yews across the front, but in my research I’ve found that they won’t do well in the location I was considering, especially when I just read that winter winds can turn the tips brown. We have vicious winter winds here and they blast in right on the side of the house they’d be located. Oh, well. Onward.

Evergreen Choices

I’m really looking for something evergreen, or at least semi-evergreen. I absolutely don’t want either holly or boxwood, as they are so overused and so unexciting. I’d also prefer that it bloom, although having some fir type evergreen, like an arborvitae is appealing too.

I’ve come up with a short list of some contenders, as the winter cold and blustery winds have invaded us again, so I’m back to dreaming by the fireplace (really, I am by the fireplace, just no fire, that’s where my chaise is). So far I’ve found:

  • Gardenia jasminoides ‘Frost Proof’
  • Eastern Arborvitae ‘Mr. Bowling Ball’
  • Eastern Arborvitae ‘Hetz Midget’
  • Dwarf Mugo Pine
  • Dwarf Fothergilla
  • False cypress
  • Glossy abelia
  • Weigela

I want to balance what I already have with some new introductions. They will be going underneath windows, where I planted what was supposed to be a low growing euonymous, but it ended up being more of a creeping plant, and after six years is not even one foot tall, so it needs to be moved where it can work more like a ground cover. Unfortunately I have six of them and five of them have to be moves. One of them did what the tag said it would and it looks nice where it is. The others look pitiful, like they’re trying to wear their big sister’s clothes.

In considering what I’m going to plant I also have to keep in mind that we’re going to be putting in a porch on the front of the house, eventually, so I need to plant as if it is already there. I didn’t do that before, so that means a couple of the plants I need to move will not have to be replaced, as they are located where the porch or patio will be.

Here's what I have now. Not too bad, but could use some cohesiveness.

Here’s what I have now. Not too bad, but could use some cohesiveness.

Here’s a picture of what I have not, which is a horrible hodge-podge. It got planted this way, because I didn’t have any garden areas ready except this one, and I went on a huge shopping spree right after we moved in. I learned my lesson there and am not buying anything I don’t have a home for anymore.

Numbers 1-8 are plants that are going to stay.

  1. Camellia
  2. Hydrangea
  3. 2 Azaleas
  4. Azalea
  5. Azalea
  6. Camellia
  7. Euonymous (the one that grew properly)
  8. Caryopteris

A, B, and C are where I need foundation plants.

After looking at what I have, I realize that I have a lot of flowering plants with glossy green leaves. So, I think that I would like to have evergreens in the other three places. I decided to look further at the arborvitae and I’ve found many that don’t get over 3’. So, unless I find something more enticing, I’m going to go with arborvitae for the three foundation plants. Then across the front of the patio, where we’ll really be able to smell them, I’ll put the hardy gardenias.

Any Ideas?

Sometimes you just have to sit down and look and the solution becomes obvious. However, I’d love your input on which plants you think would look good in spaces A,B, and C.

Which plant do you like best?

Let me know which plant you think would look best in my foundation garden.

Gardenia

         

Arborvitae

         

Dwarf Pine

         

Dwarf Fathergilla

         

Glossy Abelia

         

Weigela

         
Show me the results

It’s Trimming Time

5 March, 2013 Reply

Amazingly enough I’ve got almost all the vegetable beds ready. Only one big one and one small one to go. I should have them all cleaned out and amended in time to start planting my early spring crops next week, as we’re supposed to have a pleasant warm weekend, without rain, coming up.

Trimming trees so that they'll grow for better crop production is important.

Trimming trees so that they’ll grow for better crop production is important.

One task that many of us need to be about right now is trimming back some of our fruits. Now that the killing frost are quickly becoming a thing of the past grapes, strawberries, and fruit trees need trimming.

The fruit trees will also get their first neem treatment to kill viruses and bacteria that might have overwintered on them. I can use the neem to keep invaders at bay until the weather gets warmer. Then I’m going to switch to a product call Surround. I have to make the switch because we get too hot here to continue to use the neem. If it gets hot, humid, with intense sun, neem will scald the fruits and burn the leaves.

Surround is clay based and is supposed to keep diseases and pests from fruit trees, while still allowing them to grow. I bought apples from a farm, when we were visiting Virginia a number of years ago, that had the clay on them. It’s easy to remove and they swore by its efficacy. After my fruit trees have been devastated by disease and pests for the past few years I finally found a source of Surround and bought a bag. It’s setting ready, waiting for the warmer weather.

I’ll wait until the middle of March to trim back the perennials, especially the roses, because by then if we’re going to have any really nasty weather it’s usually happened. They are predicting possible snow for tomorrow, but it’s only supposed to be an inch at most. It will melt off by later in the day, as the roads and soil have already started to warm up.

So, if you have fruit or nut trees, grapes, or berry bushes on your property check to make sure when you should trim them back. It will vary by zone and your local agricultural extension should be able to tell you the best dates for your area.

Procrastination Is A Four Letter Word

14 November, 2012 Reply

Procrastination Doesn’t Pay

Front entry with monster bush in front

It doesn’t look very foreboding in this picture from a couple years ago, but the bush in the center of the picture grew to enormous size and pricked everyone who tried to enter the house!

Well, at least it ought to be! Yesterday my procrastination caught up with me. Seven years ago we moved into our house, just a few days before Thanksgiving. At that time I transplanted a tiny little autumn olive from the property we moved from. It was probably about 12” tall. Yesterday, after seven years of being planted in a temporary home, that was only supposed to be there until the next spring, we moved the “tiny” autumn olive. It is now taller than me and the trunk is bigger around then my upper arm.

For the past several years I’ve been singing the song of not buying plants until you have a place for them, because of my tendency to fall in love with something before I even think about where I’m going to put it. I stopped that practice totally this year, because I had lost several beautiful plants, due to not having a plan. Oh, I have a generalized plan, but not specific. I know about where I want all the gardens, but not what’s going in them or when I want to do the work.

A place to grow tall and wide!

Now our “tiny” tree has a place to grow to it’s heart’s content, and we can smell it from the back deck each fall. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it makes it through the move.

My dear, sweet husband, who is no muscle man, grunted and pushed and shoved from around 11:30 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. to get “tiny” out. Finally, after rigging a pulley system we managed to get the plant to let go so we could move her.

Hopefully I will never, ever make that mistake again. It was exhausting. Every muscle and joint in my body ached, I had scratches all over (they have honker thorns), and the poor plant had itself ripped from a nice cozy home, only to have to start all over.

We did pick a really nice spot for it. Out of the way of the underground power and septic, but enough at the corner of the house that, should it survive, it will bless us with it’s intoxicating fragrance when we sit outside on the back porch. That’s where it should have been all along, but I never had a complete plan.

Preparation Does

So, this winter I’m going to get a complete plan put together. Oh, I might not know exactly which perennials are going where, but I will certainly know where trees and shrubs are going to be placed. No more temporary homes. It’s just plain too hard on me, my unsuspecting husband, and my dear plants.

You can see the front door and windows now!

The house looks shockingly open, now that the monster bush has been relocated.

One thing Feng Shui talks about is the flow of energy. Well poor “tiny” was definitely not in the right place. She would grow so much every summer that her thorny branches would stick out right into the path up to the front door. Not very friendly, and not very auspicious for us. The front of the house looks startlingly open now. Hmmm, wonder if things will open up for us as well!

One other thing I realized is that I haven’t taken pictures of the property since Christmas 2010. So, next spring when everything is starting to green up. I’ll certainly be out there, and every spring thereafter. It’s really the only way to have a “journal” of the changes.

Have you ever made a planting error? If you did, how did you correct it? Were you able to save the plant? Share your landscape horrors with us.

Trimming Or Butchering?

24 October, 2012 Reply

Bad Haircut Versus Bad Tree Trimming

How many of you have had a bad haircut? I think almost everyone has. With a bad haircut it grows back without any affect on you, but a bad trimming on a tree can stunt it for life, or even worse, kill it. We’ve all seen trees butchered like the picture shown here. As a matter of fact, just down the street from me there are a couple people who regularly trim all the main branches off their trees and are left with just a long trunk, having to hope that next spring the tree will have enough stored energy to come back. The trees always do, but they look ridiculous, like lollipops with a small poof of leaves on the top of a huge big trunk.

Trees butchered because of power lines.

Is this even slightly attractive? When planting trees look up and make sure they are far from power lines.

You can always tell the hackers. They arrive with a bucket truck and chain saw and a big chipper truck. They are usually called tree trimmers. A real arborist may use these tools also, but they’ll be more intimate with the tree, being very selective about which branches are removed for the health of the tree and the safety of your house and power lines. They’ll have a lot more climbing gear, such as tree climbing spikes, hand saws, ropes and pulleys, etc. They’ll meet with you and tell you what they propose to do and how it will affect the tree.

Unfortunately there is not a lot you can do if the city you live in has a tree trimming program, that regularly comes around and clears branches around power lines without any thought but to protect your electrical availability. This is somewhat understandable, because winter storms cause major problems in cities around the world from downed limbs and trees. The cost of repairing those lines is staggering. So, if they can keep trees from causing damage it saves them a lot of money, and you stay nice and warm, and well fed.

Work With Your Local Government To Change Trimming Policies

There’s a new idea gaining popularity around the US. It’s call pruning trees that are near power lines, instead of butchering them. In Knoxville, TN the mayor finally woke up and took notice when his 100+ year old tulip poplar was about to be butchered. They’re now rethinking their trimming policies with the idea of protecting as much of the tree as possible.

Rule #1 – Place Trees Properly

To have healthy trees that don’t impair power lines the first rule is to not plant them anywhere near them. Second, is to be a steward of the ones that either were planted improperly to begin with or where power lines came in after the fact and interfere with their natural growth process. You can start by learning some about how to trim trees yourself and care for the tree while it’s young. Once the tree is older then contacting a true arborist is the way to go. Ask for references and locations of trees that have recently been trimmed, as well as those that were trimmed several years prior and make sure you like the results. Trees are an investment. They provide us with oxygen; shade our houses in the heat of the summer, reducing our energy costs; provide shelter and habitat for birds and small animals; and sometimes even provide us food. Start right, look up before you plant and know how big the little 3’ tree your planting is going to be when it is fully mature. Then make sure it will never reach any above ground lines.

 

What’s the Heat Zone Index?

18 September, 2012 Reply

I was looking through my old posts and found that I had never talked about the heat index. I can’t believe I would leave out such important information! Please excuse my omission.

Horticultural Zone Information

Almost anybody that does even a small amount of gardening knows about the horticultural zone index, but many don’t know about, or are not familiar with, the heat zone index. Just because a plant will grow in a certain zone, does not mean it will thrive.

If you look at the horticultural zone map you’ll see that zone 8 stretches from the maritime northwest, down to Texas, and over to the the mid-Atlantic states. What this means is that all these areas have approximately the same first/last frost date. If you think about it just a little you’ll realize that the climates in these areas are totally different.

I’ve lived in all three of the areas mentioned and they are as different as could be imagined.

Seattle is a very mild climate with very few hot or cold days. It is sort of in the middle. It is comfortably humid.

Texas, at least the parts I lived in had mild winters, hot summers. It was an arid climate.

I live in the mid-Atlantic now. The area I’m in has very variable weather. It doesn’t usually get extremely cold, but it does once in awhile, it does get quite hot in the summer. It is a humid climate year-round.

Even in Texas alone you have various climates in the same zone. Some part of Texas are very dry, while others, near the coast, can be quite humid.

Heat Zone Index Information

Beautiful 'Silver Mound'

This plant was magnificent in a dry climate, a pile of mush in a humid one. Artemisia schmidtiana ‘Silver Mound’
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

What the heat zone index tells you is whether a plant can take the weather conditions that are prevalent in your area. I’ll give you an example. When I lived in the desert southwest I fell in love with Artemisia schmidtiana ‘Nana’ or ‘Silver Mound’. These plants have downy leaves and are very drought tolerant. When I planted the same thing in the mid-Atlantic, because its downy leaves keeps moisture on the leaf for most of the day, it rotted in one season. Although it showed it would grow in both horticultural zones, if you look at the heat zone it shows it doesn’t do well in high humidity.

Not all plants are tagged with this information, although more and more trees and shrubs are. Perennials are still a mix and annuals are not considered important enough to bother (I guess).

If we look at the heat zone index for these three areas we see that Seattle is a HI=3, Texas HI=9, and where I live now HI=7. Knowing this can help you make fewer mistakes when planting, especially for larger plant purchases.

What Do You Think?

Have you used the heat zone index? If so, did it help you make a better decision in your plant choices?

2012 What Did Well & What Didn’t

13 September, 2012 Reply

So, I’m looking at the overall success of my gardens this year, and there were some definite winners and losers.

Hot pink carnation

Carnation ‘Chabaud’ did great this year. It was worth the wait!

A Look At The Winners

Last year I started a seed packet of carnation ‘Chabaud Mix’ and ended up with 36 plants. I planted them in the garden last fall and quite a few of them made it through the first winter. These guys produced an abundance of frangrant flowers up until August when the heat finally stopped them. Now that it’s cooling down it looks like they’re getting ready for another round. Next year I’ll need to have some props for them, as they are floppy, but worth it, what a heavenly scent!

Anise hyssop is another one I started from seed last year. Planted the babies in the fall and this year was rewarded with 3’ tall plants covered in blossoms that were constantly being visited by bees, butterflies, and goldfinch! It does die down in the middle of the hot spell, but is again getting ready to do a whole round of blooming now that it’s cooler.

It looks like all the fruit trees we put in this spring are going to make it. It’s still a little touch and go for the prune plum, but it’s trying hard to put on at least a few leaves to gather some nourishment before frost puts it to sleep. So, now we have all but one fruit tree planted and will be able to start harvesting within a couple years.

All the perennials that I moved to the woodland garden are still hanging in there and most have started to sprout new leaves, so we got a good start there.

My herb garden is a smashing success. The herbs absolutely love the deep mulch we planted them in and they have doubled or tripled in size over last year.

The deck roof is the number one winner in the non-plant category. We can finally sit outside without being baked. I’m finishing up the painting this week, while the weather cooperates. Getting that done has been problematic with our frequent severe thunderstorms in August.

Onto The Losers

The biggest loser in the whole garden where the deep purple petunias I planted this spring. They never did much of anything and when the heat hit they died. I’ve not been much of a petunia lover (except the wave and million bells), but it was so beautiful I decided to try it. Hopefully I’ve learned my lessons. I just don’t care for regular petunias and they don’t seem to like the heat here.

Planting annuals in the middle of the summer. I had some annuals get eaten by the resident bunny and when I found some available for the ridiculous price of 25 cents for a 4-pack I indulged. However, they never even got off the ground and are still just little sticks with a tiny blossom on the end. They might end up looking nice by the time it frosts, but that garden definitely looks terrible right now.

Covering my summer squash with frost barrier didn’t work very well. Next year I’m going to try using window screening. There just wasn’t enough airflow, and all kinds of diseases and small pests (aphids) took over. I hardly got anything from the vines, but what I got was wonderful. Also, need a place where they can wander without covering the lawn.

My melons and winter squash were a bust, too. I got tons of small melons, all tasteless. The watermelons only got about as big as a softball and never ripened properly. The winter squash just never put on any female blossoms. So, I need to figure out what it is they want. I even tried hills this year, to no avail…

I wrote earlier about my fiasco with the tomatoes. They did produce some, but not nearly as well as they would have if they hadn’t been swallowed alive by the beans and then infected with early blight.

As the season winds down I’ll continue to write about what I’ve learned from my garden this year. Would love it if you’d share your thoughts, too!

Choosing Plants For A Woodland Garden

14 June, 2012 Reply

Recently I showed you the beginnings of a woodland garden. All I had done was to move some plants from the front yard, which I thought was going to be shady when we moved in in the winter, but it wasn’t. Now I’m looking at plants I want to include in the garden as it grows and evolves.

So far I have hostas and ferns, but that is just the tip of the iceberg for beautiful woodland plants.

Dainty foamflower blooming along a woodland trail.

Foamflower (Tiarella) photographed on a woodland trail nearby. It is so dainty and fairly-like it will fit into my woodland fairyland garden perfectly.

One for sure is Tiarella, commonly called foamflower because of its very soft spikes of flowers that look like they are made out of ocean foam. It is actually a native plant here. I fell in love with this plant when I worked at a garden center. I was in charge of ordering all the perennials. I didn’t know much about shade gardens at that point, as I was a sun loving girl. However, over the 2.5 years I worked there I learned that there are plenty of flowering plants that like the shade and have beautiful colorations and interesting shapes to their leaves when they aren’t flowering.

Another will be Heuchera (coralbells), as they now come with all different types of coloration in their leaves from near white, to mottled, to deep purple, to bright lime green with red veins, etc. I knew one nurseryman who wanted to test how much light a heuchera needed. He stuck it in a closet, came bace a few months later and it was blooming it’s little heart out!

Lady’s Mantle (alchemilla mollis) is another I’d like to try. The leaves are really pretty, but absolutely spectacular after a rain when they look like they have 1000 diamonds on them.

Of course it wouldn’t be a woodland garden with bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) and Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium caeruleum), also I’ll try some native types of columbine (Aquilegia), as I saw them growing deep in a forest when I lived in New Mexico (yes they have true forests in parts of New Mexico, complete with bellowing elk!).

I would like to put a few woody plants in too, including rhododendron and azalea. There’s one other that I truly love, but at the moment my mind is a complete blank. I can see the plant, but it’s name must be filed elsewhere!

So, don’t think that because you have a shady yard you’re doomed to only growing impatiens every year, there are dozens of woodland plants that will bloom at all different times of the year, you just need to know what you’re looking for.

What’s your favorite woodland plant? Would you share a picture of it growing in your yard with us? I love to get ideas from what other people have done.

Labeling Fruit Trees

15 May, 2012 Reply
Stamped copper plant marking tag

If you want to mark important trees and shrubs, copper labels last forever, and are easy to make.

How To Make Copper Plant Labels

I’m very excited. Last night I made copper labels for all of our fruit trees. All it took was; some 1” labels, which you can buy, but I won them at a gardening event; metal stamping set; wood scrap; and a hammer.

To do the stamping -

  1. Pick out the letters needed from the stamping kit.
  2. Place label on scrap wood.
  3. Align stamp for placement on the label.
  4. Hit lightly with the hammer.
One tip: You can put the stamp closer to the previous letter than you think you can. It will look like it’s almost on top of the other stamp. That will give you fairly even spacing. Of course leave more space between words.

On the top row I stamped the type of fruit, such as, apple, pear, etc. On the second row I stamped the variety. For instance, I have one new apple tree. I stamped the top row with the word APPLE, and the second row with, PINK LADY, which is the variety.

That way, ten years from now I won’t have to guess at which tree is which. Of course some varieties, like the plums are different colors, so that helps, but when I pick three different varieties of cherries it becomes a little more difficult.

The next step, which I’ll do today if the rain stays at bay, is to put them on the trees. They came with copper ties. Since the trees are tiny I’ll put them around the main trunk, so that there are many branches to hold them in place. I need to remember to check them several times throughout the season, though, as little trees grow fast and I don’t want to girdle the trunk. As the tree gets bigger and has branches that will hold it better I’ll move it there. Once the tree gets a little mature with stronger bark I may just nail them vertically to the actual trunk. Otherwise I’ll have to keep moving the labels periodically. That’s gets old and can easily be forgotten when trees get covered in leaves.

Not Just For Fruit Trees

You can use this method to mark any trees and shrubs you want to remember the name of, whether common or botanical. It does take a little practice to get the letters lined up well. My first markers don’t look as nice as the last ones I did, but they all work beautiful or not.

Share Your Labeling Methods

What labeling methods do you use for plants you want to remember. I’m especially interested in non-woody plants that you can’t tie or nail a label to.

My Favorite Time Of Spring

8 May, 2012 Reply
Blue hydrangea

First hydrangea blossoms opening right now.

Perfect Weather

This last week has been fantastic. The weather is warm enough to work outside and the humidity is still low. The gardens are bursting into bloom. I have snapdragons, carnations, dianthus, pansies, and petunias already in bloom. The hydrangeas first blossoms opened yesterday. My lilies have buds all over them.

Cornucopia In The Making

The trees have leafed out. The berry bushes are making berries. The grapes have buds on them. Best of all one of the peach trees we planted two years ago is covered in little peaches. We even have on plum on one plum tree, with a nest full of birds to boot.

In the veggie garden the peas have buds one them; the brassicas are finally getting large enough to think they might actually produce something; the spinach is taking off. Seeds are sprouting everywhere: summer squash, cucumbers, yard long beans, and melons.

Yellow Pansy from my yard

Pansies are blooming like crazy.

The seedlings are getting rangy and need to be hardened off, but the weather has been cloudy and grey so they’re still waiting for a real challenge.

I’m continuing the yard cleanup. I’ll tell you, I learned my lesson. I’ll not pass on doing the fall cleanup this coming season, that’s for sure.

My husband and I got together a couple days ago and put together a project list for the yard, so now I have some extra help in getting the bigger things completed.

Pink Dianthus from my yard

Dianthus are nearly perennials here.

RIP Little Mower

The only downside is that our aging push mower, which my husband has spent three days getting everything working to weld the broken handle, blew something this morning and lives no more, RIP. It did a valiant job. We found it by the side of the road, someone moving had left it there for the trash and it mowed for us for 11 years, not bad.

So, besides the fact that the weeds are now knee high, everything is springing forth gloriously.

The Overwhelm List

22 March, 2012 Reply

Preparing for the New Season

About a week ago I walked around the property and made note of anything that needed to be done. I came in with a staggering 42 projects that need completing. In looking through the list only a few are attainable in a single day and some could take several weeks to complete. Egad, I just thought of another one!

I love gardening. It’s in my blood and when I don’t do anything for awhile I start to get cranky. Since we bought this property, though, I’ve been in overwhelm mode almost since the start.

The Situation

We have one acre of land. About ¼ of it is in natural woods, ¼ in managed woods (well at least we’re trying), the other half is in yard. You’d think that ½ acre wouldn’t be that big a deal, but it is amazing how much work it is to just keep up with the weeds.

At move in time I was excited because I had an almost blank canvas to work with. There were only two bushes and one tree in the yard. Unfortunately I’ve been painting and painting and the canvas still looks like a mess! When I drive up to my house I don’t feel like I’m coming home to the garden of Eden like I’d hoped. I have a yard full of weeds. Plants that just got stuck in the ground, because it was taking to long to get the space ready for them, and weather that controls just how much I can get done in a given week.

The Ideal

I can see the yard I dream of in my mind’s eye, but don’t know if it will ever come to pass. At least this year I managed to get the fruit orchard almost complete. We’ve had some trees in for three years not, but no pollinators for them, so no fruit!

Today one very daunting and urgent item got crossed off. We had  maple tree sprout near the house. I didn’t have the heart to dig it out. It was very cute and well formed. Last year was a banner year for the tree. It was in a garden that gets watered regularly so it grew to almost as big as the three that’s been out in the yard for 5 years!

One Small Step Forward

Leafed Out Maple Sapling

My little tree will look like this in a week or so. Hopefully it will survive the move!

I kept mentioning to my husband all winter that we needed to move the tree, but he was always too busy. Yesterday he noticed that it was starting to leaf out. This morning he greeted me in works clothes, ready to move the tree. We got a good root ball on it, so I’m pretty confident that it will make it. I just have to be regular about watering it this summer.

So, crossed one off, thought of another. At least the list isn’t growing! And I have the relief of knowing the maple tree will have a chance to grow and shade our house during the hot summers, instead of having to be chopped down because it got too big to move.

Please Share

I’d love to hear about how you conquered some aspect of landscaping that seemed unattainable, how you organize your projects, or your own trials at creating your own Green Avalon.

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