Planting Fall Containers

Our summer gardening season begins to wind down in September. Come Labor Day, change in the air. That change is refreshing and energizing. Towards the end of the month, the watering on the summer containers becomes a full time job. All of the soil in the containers is shot through and thoroughly congested with roots. [...]

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I Found my Bird Feeder Bliss by Susan Harris

For decades in a former garden, my bird-watching consisted of standing on my deck and pointing the trusty binocs at the bird houses in the wooded valley below. I can’t you what birds actually filled them – I’m that bad at bird recognition – but anyway, my favorites were the flying squirrels that lived in the triple-story house shown here.

I would have added some bird feeders to create a closer-up venue for avian entertainment, but my lot was hilly and there was no spot for them that I could see from inside.

Then five years ago, after moving to an on-grade lot, I jumped at the chance to feed and then watch all day if it moved me. In my tiny front yard I hung a couple of feeders, added a bird bath and boy, did the flocks ever arrive. Bird meet-ups ensued.

My neighbors objected to the feeders because the flocks’ favorite meet-up spot was apparently on branches overhanging their cars, so bird poop on them was inevitable.

Another problem was the mess that the feeders created on the ground beneath, a petty concern I actually complained about right here. Excerpt: “I have to sweep the patio almost daily.” Really, who could endure that?

Something else I was doing at least daily was filling the damn things, and the suet cakes were costing me almost 2 bucks a pop.

Hummer-Curious

So….I replaced the seed-filled feeders with a hummingbird feeder, only to discover that I couldn’t handle the commitment of regular cleaning required to protect them from murder-by-feeder on my part. Who needs that kind of stress?

View from my favorite porch chair, through the screen

Just Thistle

My next attempt at bird feeding and watching – the winning one – was to provide thistle only (aka nyger), and to place the feeder just outside my screened-in porch where my cats and I live about half the year. Thistle-only works best in my small garden because:

• Squirrels ignore them! Sure, I could protect feeders from squirrels if I had enough space to hang them out of reach of these world-class gymnasts, but I don’t.
• No sprouting of seeds under the feeder, no resulting weedy patch.
• No flocks! My feeder attracts 1-4 small birds at a time, usually goldfinches. So pretty, so watchable.
• There’s still a bit of maintenance, but even following the best advice, it just amounts to shaking the feeder daily to prevent clumping and mold, and replacing the seed every 3-4 weeks if it’s not being actively eaten, which has yet to happen at mine.

Plants!

Just when you thought I was omitting the very best ways to attract birds – with plants and water – not to worry. I’ll always have purple coneflowers and leave ’em up ’til they’re crushed under snow. A water feature, however, will have to wait until my next garden – as if. We do what we can, right?

At Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Virginia

 

I Found my Bird Feeder Bliss originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 28, 2017.

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Solidago solidarity by Elizabeth Licata

Goldenrod and another wildflower by North/South Lakes in the Catskills

A recent post from my good friend, gardener and blogger, Gail Eichelberger, poses the question, “What’s wrong with goldenrod?” She then swiftly answers, “Nothing!”

I couldn’t agree more. Here is one of my favorite, if not THE favorite, late season plants. I rejoice when it spreads to cover entire neglected lots. I love how it pops up in inhospitable back alleys and inbetween houses. I also adore seeing it where it is welcomed: in state and national parks, along trails and around lakes and ponds. I rarely see it cultivated in gardens, and that’s too bad. There are a couple reasons for that, as Gail points out.

First people think it causes hayfever/allergic reactions. It doesn’t; that’s ragweed, which is out at the same time.

Here is another lovely stand of it in Buffalo, along Lake Erie.

Second, it is undoubtedly aggressive. I have the same philosophy as Gail on this; she notes, “I have a love affair with rough and tumble, take care of themselves, colonizing wildflowers. If you stop by my garden today, you’ll see tall goldenrod/Solidago altissima duking it out with New England ex-aster/Symphyotrichum novae-angliae in the sunnier parts of the garden.”

Same here: I have tall rudbeckia jousting with tall eutrochium, common white eupatorium pushing against aruncus, and colinsonia shouldering its way through anything it can. That’s fine by me, but I realize not everybody likes such an unruly garden aesthetic.

That’s why there are five gazillion types of solidago—slight exaggeration, ok, but there really are plenty of hybrids, some of them very well-behaved. If you need evidence, here’s a great video entitled “So Many Goldenrods, So Little Time,” from Good Gardening Videos.

Long live goldenrod! (Not that it seems to need our help.)

Solidago solidarity originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 28, 2017.

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Dennis the Menace by Allen Bush

 

Louisville’s Olmsted Parks Conservancy photo.

I drove to Cherokee Park’s Big Rock Pavilion, adjacent to Beargrass Creek, on Friday afternoon, anticipating a profusion of white bonesets, blue dayflowers and lingering yellow wingstems. I wasn’t disappointed.

But there was more.

A hundred yards downstream, I could make out rock sculptures—dozens of them. They looked, from a distance, like cairns—unmortared rock piles. I wandered down a slippery slope toward Big Rock.

A modest, young man explained what he was doing. “Piling up rocks,” he said. His stacks were fascinating, but I wondered if he realized the next heavy rainstorm was going to knock all of his work back to the Silurian streambed, if kids or the park authorities didn’t topple them first.

He wasn’t concerned. His palette of creek and fieldstones was laid down 435 million years ago, so why should he be worried what might happen over the weekend or the next millennium?

The young man introduced himself as Dennis (“like the Menace,” he said). Dennis, a 24-year-old apprentice pipe organ refurbisher, wasn’t noticeably menacing, unless you find either rock piles or the Beatles annoying. The Beatles were singing Love me Do, from a large boombox. The sound quality was terrific. Eight Days a Week soon bounced off the steep and massive limestone outcrop. Dennis took a big gulp from a Bud Light Tall Boy. It was a sweltering late afternoon.

I asked if he’d ever heard of Andy Goldsworthy, the English sculptor and installation artist who works with found, natural pieces. Dennis had never heard of Goldsworthy but promised he’d look him up.

Dennis had never stacked rocks until this past May. Whenever time allowed this summer, he returned to Big Rock. He had assembled 110 rock towers by late July.

Rocks come and they go.

Fifty sculptures were flattened by heavy rainfall in August.

Dennis stayed at Big Rock on Friday night well past dark. He kept company with hoot howls, crickets and frogs. “I love the solitude,” he said.

Young kids, splashing in Beargrass Creek, knocked down several more sculptures on Saturday. He didn’t scold them. They were having fun; Dennis was, too.

Sixty sculptures survived the kids and the Planet X apocalypse over the weekend, but they may not survive this week.

Some park visitors complain that Dennis is creating an eyesore. His “towers” alter the scenic nature of Beargrass Creek, they argue.

There is a growing art vs. nature argument about built rock piles. Critics worry that streambeds, beaches and trails could become cluttered with such piles. Biologists worry that moving rocks along streams create a disturbance to invertebrates that hide under the creek stones.

Louisville’s 120 Metro Parks, including Cherokee Park, suffer occasionally from too much love, and a chronic lack of sufficient funding for maintenance and enforcement. Bathrooms get vandalized; rocks, buildings and benches get tagged with graffiti.

Park users jump curbs and park their cars off road in the shade of large trees. Cars compact the soil, preventing aeration to the roots. Trees suffer.

And there is never a weekend that goes by that Louisville’s parks don’t get littered with trash.

Dennis and his pal John picked up the mess left behind by the mindless and the lazy. Their adopted sanctuary, within one of Louisville’s 18, historic, Olmsted-designed parks, was as clean as any park anywhere this past Friday and Saturday.

 

Dennis has quickly developed a talent for building rock sculptures. Again, he built his first one just four months ago. He can’t imagine that anyone would view his rock towers as a threat to nature. He means no harm.

Dennis will move on eventually. He’s more talented than he realizes; he’s learning.

He’s no menace. And there’s certainly no worldwide scarcity of rocks.

 

Allen Bush is an Honorary Trustee of Louisville’s Olmsted Parks Conservancy.

 

 

Dennis the Menace originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 27, 2017.

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The Clarion Call of Brugmansia by Bob Hill

October is peeking its nose up over the horizon now, shortening the days, painting the landscape, dredging up reluctant thoughts of the leaf blower and raggedy sweaters.

And yet it’s been 90 degrees here in Southern Indiana, even as the rest of the world deals with snow, torrential rains, earthquakes, forest fires, a toilet in Switzerland stuffed with 500-Euro bills and the threat of nuclear extinction.

But I am happy to report there is no frost yet on our pumpkin, and, as a result, our brugmansia is hanging out a full flush of huge, pale-orange-yellow flowers for the fourth or fifth glorious time this year. A brassy section of Angels Trumpets about eight feet tall and five feet wide.

Yes, at a time when the gardener’s mind usually runs to mums, asters, beautyberry, winterberry and next year, the most noticeable thing in our yard is a zone 9-11 tropical with dangling fragrant flowers, the living personification of a cavalry charge.

Right here in zone 5-6 Indiana.

Up until this year I mostly considered the brugmansia a freak show, a morbid relative of the lethal, white-hooded Datura. They hang around here, too, but mostly on their own, reemerging in odd places where it seems they’ve earned the right to, well, live.

For years our brugmansia – and we only have the one from a long-forgotten source – would just fitfully bloom a few times, and not seem all that happy about it. And for space and size reasons, I would dutifully whack it back in fall, then stuff the ugly, butchered, tightly-potted remnants into our moderately-heated winter greenhouse.

As is often the case with gardeners, my happy ignorance apparently led to our brugmansia’ s success. A little research has indicated it can take three to five years for a brugmansia root mass to thicken up to the point where it’s willing to crank out repeated blooms. The other thing is those roots like a tight space, and the fact that I never cared enough about it to move it to a larger pot worked in my, and the plant’s, favor.

Tight roots – happy shoots.

Here’s another thing I learned about brugmansia from a website named Trumpet Flowers: Brugmansia, at least in the Midwest, need to be whacked back to thrive.

More specifically, brugmansia need a Y-shape in their trunks before they will bloom. An “F”, “L” or “T” won’t get it. My previous year’s fall hacking had inadvertently created enough “Ys” to grow a trumpet section in our tightly-knit pot.

It’s only after the needy brugmansia gets its Y that it will it branch out, with each node creating a peduncle containing a covered flower bloom.

At first the flower or calyx will point upward, but as the flower grows and genetic predisposition and gravity check in, the flower hangs down in that familiar trumpet shape.

Here’s one final brugmansia factoid that’s been pretty much kept a plant secret, particularly for Hoosiers who see the whole brugmansia thing as a lark: When the plant is getting ready to create its first “Y” – and machete-wielding gardeners are not necessary for that to happen – the new leaf just below it will be a little shorter on one side than the other.

Even the folks at Trumpet Flowers have no idea what that’s all about, merely saying that “for some unknown reason, the sub-equal-leaf” – their words, not mine – “brings the promise of branching out, and thus flowers.”

That seems a little nuts, doesn’t it?  The leaf with the missing part is just a traffic sign that a “Y” branch and flowers are coming. What’s up with that – and why?

What I already did know – and mostly ignored – is that brugmansia need lot of water and fertilizing. This year we took that knowledge to heart. We watered with a five-gallon bucket two and three times a week. We relentlessly watered. We assiduously watered. We recklessly watered anytime any leaf – sub-equal or not – showed the slightest sign of slouch.

We fertilized with the same parochial enthusiasm using a 20-20-20 water-soluble mix, that powdery-blue stuff spooned into a five-gallon bucket of water, careful instructions and subsequent warnings that too much phosphate will hurt the plant be damned.

Shazam: Four or five monster, show-stopping flowerings beginning in our early summer sunshine and pushing on out into football season. Pride of ownership. Guests totally ignoring all other flora to take in their dangling beauty, which do seem to fade in color over the season.

Yeah, sure, that’s our baby.

Her shows didn’t last long; maybe a week to 10 days. Then the brown-edged blossoms would all fall off, littering the ground, as our plant, apparently on orders from some sub-equal leaf, would begin cranking up another show.

There are, of course, a few million brugmansia cultivars on the market in about that many colors. It’s also apparent from my experience that you could grow them in pots outdoors in Minnesota – albeit with a lot less flowering between snowball fights.

I’m just sticking with ours –  Ms. Sunshine. She’s been faithful. She’s taught me a few things. In bloom, she owns the place. She’s even added a new edge to an old adage: “Bloom where you’re potted.”

The Clarion Call of Brugmansia originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 25, 2017.

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The Best Of The Last

I am most pleased to report that a good many of the clients for whom I plant containers in all four seasons are telling me they are in no hurry for fall pots. I am sure our late summer heatwave plays no small part in this. Nonetheless, when I see summer containers continuing to thrive [...]

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The Quackery of Jerry Baker Lives On by Susan Harris

Jerry Baker, the self-styled “America’s Master Gardener” and highly successful huckster for home-remedy books and products, died in March of this year at the age of 85. I was curious to see how the gardening world would note his passing, especially those who attacked his teachings, some repeatedly.

I myself started attacking Baker’s advice on my first garden blog in a rant that caught the attention of my future GardenRant partners Amy Stewart and Michele Owens and resulted in their inviting me to join them. I reposted the rant here and most commenters agreed that Baker was more “quack” than master gardener. I was pleased to see that for at least a year, my rant ranked #1 on Google for searches of “Jerry Baker Master Gardener.” It’s since slipped to #5 but another page 1 Google result, on Houzz, also asks if he’s a quack.

Another frequent critic of Baker’s “tonics” and other bad gardening information was Dr. Jeff Gillman, a co-founder of the Garden Professors Blog, where a quick search for “Baker” in the group’s discussion archives yields a rich harvest of rants. And Gillman’s guest rant here titled “When Gurus Go Bad” listed Baker as the second worst.

Since Baker’s passing, I’ve seen dry reports of it, without commentary on the quality of his advice.

For my part, as the blogger who owes her 11 fun years at GardenRant to the god-awful gardening advice I heard Baker give on my local PBS station, I just wonder if the god-awfulness ends with his death or will go on. And the apparent answer is that there will be no end to Baker’s quackery because the website is still up and selling-selling-selling. His “What’s Growing On” blog still shows him actively posting! Only recently did they the “About Jerry” page even mention his death.

Confirmation that nothing will change can be found in his obituary:

Today, Jerry Baker’s wit, wisdom, know how and “grow-how” continues through a business and website by the same name.

Oy! So while certainly I sympathize with friends and family who mourn him, I’m saddened that the gardening world won’t be seeing his bizarre gardening “tips and tricks” finally put to rest.

The Quackery of Jerry Baker Lives On originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 22, 2017.

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How Long Will It Last?

How long will it last? This question applies to no end of various and not necessarily garden related situations. To follow are just a few of those topics. How long will these things last? A moss basket, a new refrigerator, a manicure, a bad cold, the flowers on the hellebores, a fancy bar of soap, [...]

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Famously secret spaces by Elizabeth Licata

What do Jeremy Irons and Ozzy Osbourne have in common? We know they’re Brits, so the answer shouldn’t be that hard: both own and maintain beautiful countryside gardens in England. So do Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rupert Everett, and Sting. And if you want something completely different, visit Terry and Maggie Gilliam’s London retreat.

From The Secret Gardeners: the Osbourne property

Chances are none of us will ever be able to see any of these private estates, so it’s a good thing writer Victoria Summerley and photographer Hugo Rittson Thomas have collaborated on a book that describes and depicts them—lavishly. (Many of you know Victoria from her attendance at the annual Garden Bloggers Flings; she was at the DC-area event last June). The book is called The Secret Gardeners: Britain’s Creatives Reveal Their Private Sanctuaries, published this year by Frances Lincoln. I have been enjoying many of the Frances Lincoln titles; they are often hefty coffee-table fodder, but the content is usually just as compelling as the photography, with well-researched biographical and historical info. I’ve previously enjoyed books on gardens connected with belief systems, important women of English garden design, and British gardens in their historical context. There are plenty of horticentric titles as well.

Anish Kapoor’s Oxforshire estate (Kapoor is the a famous public sculptor, whose work includes the “bean” in Chicago)

Many of the “creatives” are unfamiliar to this American reader, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting. I was particularly taken by the eclectic landscape belonging to London Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev, who hired the marchioness of Salisbury to design his gardens, which contain minimal, formal areas, riotous borders, and natural meadows, among other elements. As for some of the more recognizable names, we learn that the Osbournes regularly receive boxes of décor from LA, which they disperse throughout the garden (or not), that Jeremy Irons has hosted the Watlington flower show, and that Sting walks his labyrinth whenever he is home.

I admit that I have only dipped into this collection of gardens, but it’s very enjoyable so far—and too stratospheric to provoke much envy.

Famously secret spaces originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 20, 2017.

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Gardening Podcast Update by Susan Harris

I’m thrilled to report that since 2010, when I complained about there being only two gardening podcasts on my little iPod, there are now many more and their quality is amazing! Here’s what I’m listening to now.

Jennifer Jewell’s “Cultivating Place”

Cultivating Place by Jennifer Jewell originates on National Public Radio, so its high production values are no surprise. That’s why I predicted that it would win the gold GWA Media Award for excellence in TV, radio, podcasts and special projects like my own.

Yep, I was one of the silver award-winners losing to Jennifer at the awards banquet in Buffalo, but no hard feelings! In fact, I’m happy it got Cultivating Place on my radar and on my iPhone because I’m thoroughly enjoying it, especially the episode with my pal Mary Ann Newcomer. (Her knowledge of the Inter-Mountain West is amazing and makes me want to see Idaho asap. I was listening carefully for her signature “Boy howdy!” and was not disappointed.)

Debra Prinzing’s “Slow Flowers”

A specialty podcast that’s impressive to the point of intimidating is Debra Prinzing’s “Slow Flowers,” with “news and insights of the American Grown flower movement.”

“Plantrama” with Ellen Zachos and C.L. Fornari’

New this year is Plantrama from the knowledgeable and obscenely articulate duo of Ellen Zachos and C.L. Fornari. And just look at them – can you resist hearing what they’ve come up with? Didn’t think so.

Joe Lampl’s “joe gardener”

Joe Lamp’ls joegardener podcasts are filling my podcast app (Overcast) with super-useful and scientifically up-to-date information that I’m recommending to beginners especially. TV-watchers can glean the same information from his PBS show “Growing a Greener World,” but with his podcast we can now learn while driving, working out and gardening.

Margaret Roach’s “A Way to Garden”

Notice in the graphic from Joe’s podcast page that he recently interviewed Margaret Roach? Her A Way to Garden was the first gardening podcast I started following, and I’ve never stopped. Her recent interview with Dan Hinkley on the topic of hydrangeas was enlightening for me, as are all the episodes about birds.

Jennifer Ebeling’s “Still Growing”

Jennifer Ebeling’s Still Growing is a recent discovery and I learned a lot about podcasting from interviewing Jennifer for this profile here on GardenRant.

Who Else? And Why?

With podcasts hotter than ever, I won’t be surprised to see even more of my garden communicator friends hitting the microphone soon. But to what end, I wonder. Can gardening podcasts attract enough sponsor income on their own, or is the goal to sell more books and book more talks?

Off-Topic 

I was curious to read in my 2010 post the list of nongardening podcasts I was listening to back then and discovered four that are still mainstays of my listening: Fresh Air, On the Media, Slate Culture Gabfest, and Studio 360. They’ve since been joined by The Axe Files, Leonard Lopate, The New Yorker, On Point, WTF, 1A, How to Be Amazing, and Savage Lovecast.

As a podcast-listening addict, I’m grateful to all these great talkers for their work but especially the articulate gardeners who’ve joined them. Keep those episodes coming!

Gardening Podcast Update originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 15, 2017.

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The Garden And Plant Show At Kasteel Hex

Rob is part way through his annual sojourn to Europe, shopping for the spring of 2018. He does all of the buying for Detroit Garden Works. He does an incredible job of making our shop the place for serious gardeners to shop for whatever they need, or might fall for. He shops and procures ornament, [...]

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Keep Your Commercial Property Safe and Friendly

We all know that safety is a top concern for many Atlanta commercial property managers. The need for employees, tenants and visitors to be secure while on their facility is crucial. 

Unfortunately, if trees, shrubs, or sidewalks are left neglected they can create hazards on a commercial property, particularly when they are near roadways, pathways and entryways.

No matter how low or high the traffic is on your property, eventually you will experience some sort of pedestrian safety issues. These issues can result in serious liability matters, and liability can be an expensive word. 

 

 

Let's do a quick walk through of your property to see if it is time to address liability concerns. 

• Do you have sidewalk joints that are buckled and uneven?
• Experiencing shrubs scratching buildings or blocking windows or emergency exits?
• Do you have trees with trunk damage, bare branches, or damaged roots?
• Experiencing areas of poor soil compaction?

If you are observing any of these concerns then now is the time to address your issues with a landscape professional that can recommend proper steps for improving safety.

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In Praise of a Plant That Needs Your Love by Allen Bush

 

Diarrhena americana. The Latin name doesn’t inspire lustful desire does it? What a pity. It’s better than its name.

I remember the moment I first came across this native grass.

I had no idea what its name was when I was introduced. But Rick Lewandowski knew the name right off the bat. Diarrhena must be the only plant that you could argue has a name that implies intestinal fortitude for anyone who would dare grow it. The common name, American beak grass, doesn’t move the meter on the hit parade either.

The momentous September day of discovery in 2005 was hot and humid—a common, and soul sapping, late-summer condition in the Ohio Valley.

Rick pointed out a small clump of Diarrhena on the woodland edge along one of the gravel fire roads at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, KY. There wasn’t anything special about it. I wouldn’t have paid any mind to it all, but I was playing with the pros that afternoon. They notice features I would overlook. Plant geekdom doesn’t begin to describe the botanic universe where Rick Lewandowski and Paul Cappiello reside. I was happy they let me tag along. Paul and Rick’s talents far exceed my plant expertise. They have the genius to notice the subtleties that I would overlook. “Oh, yeah,” I would respond, not having a clue what they saw.

Rick Lewandowski is now the Director of the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Orange, TX. Previously, he had been the Director at Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, DE. Paul is the Director at Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in Crestwood, KY, but previously had been the horticulturist at Bernheim. Paul knew the woodland hot spots.

I collected a few seeds. OK, I confess. I stole a pinch of seeds. I can’t justify my common thievery. I left plenty for the next foraging wild critter. (I wondered later if the dozens of chigger bites might have been punishment for my indiscretion.)

I sowed seeds directly into a shady patch in my home garden. I stuck a tag in the soil nearby. Plastic tags often get stepped on and broken or heave out of the ground during a winter thaw. Golf tees make a helpful backup. At least the golf tees stake the territory, even if the tag vanishes.

The seeds germinated the next spring. For three years I found nothing to write home about. It took another half-dozen years before I found Diarrhena’s rightful garden resting place.

My friend Bruce Carnahan, a multi-talented artist and landscape architect, designed and built a dry creek bed and retention pond that doubled as rain garden.

We live in an old house. The storm water tiles had collapsed long ago, or had been obstructed by tree roots. Louisville’s storm water, in big rain events (a more common occurrence in the last 20 years), occasionally reaches overflow. Storm water and raw sewage end up in the Ohio River. A Federal Consent Decree mandated improvements that are currently underway to help prevent the overflow. We are forbidden from reconnecting to the storm water system, so our little rain garden helps mitigate some of our excess rainwater from the gutters’ downspout reaching Beargrass Creek—just a few hundred feet from our house. Beargrass Creek flows into the Ohio River a few miles downstream. Diarrhena is planted along the edges of the dry creek bed and slows the overflow during “rain events.”

I love this plant. I don’t care if wholesale growers laugh at me when I beg them to try the native grass. “Are you kidding me?” they say. I tease them for pimping blowsy blooms the size of a prom corsage.

Diarrhena has non-descript flowers in midsummer and mature dull, gray-brown seeds by late September; the foliage looks like a buffalo slept on it.

I know this description won’t stir patriotic passion, but the bottom line is this: My plants have been a weed-thwarting, bulletproof groundcover in Louisville’s shade for 15 years.

Got a problem?

Does Diarrhena deserve to be ignored by nurseries and gardeners because of a pinheaded, heartless taxonomist? What about other helpless American outcasts like Stuckenia vaginata, Ilex vomitoria and Lobelia siphilitica?

None deserves love more than the forsaken American beak grass.

Diarrhena is your grass, America.

 

In Praise of a Plant That Needs Your Love originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 13, 2017.

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From green to brown in the Caribbean by Elizabeth Licata

A view of St. Lucia, which wasn’t in the path.

If you want to get a dramatic sense of hurricane Irma’s worst devastation, visit this site, which offers before/after satellite images of the Caribbean islands that were in her path. It’s not just the debris, flattened infrastructure, and—most terrible—deaths. These islands seem to have lost the lush green landscapes that provide a reason why many flock to them, especially in winter. Many have been—from appearances and reports—fully or partially defoliated. In one story, a tourist visiting St. Maarten said, “It’s like someone with a lawn mower from the sky has gone over the island.”

It’s probably that this damage will be among the last to be repaired, aside from downed trees being carted away to be chopped up. There are more urgent priorities. But it is a grim reality that a storm many feel is one result of human-prompted climate change continues the deadly trend by stripping these islands (and much of SW Florida) of their carbon-sequestering trees.

During our Caribbean visits—to Barbados and St. Lucia, which do not seem to have been terribly affected—we’ve always marveled at the large areas away from tourist centers that seem completely covered in green, including swaths of plants that I’d only seen as summer or holiday annuals in Buffalo. It’s beyond sad to think of this beauty—and habitat—replaced by sandy devastation.

Thinking of my friends and gardeners in Florida and points south today.

From green to brown in the Caribbean originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 12, 2017.

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Lay In Some Lavender

Our early September has been surprisingly chilly. As in 48 degrees early this morning. My tropical plants in containers look insulted by the turn of events-both at home, and at the shop. I am not especially ready to give up my summer containers. I regret any face off with nature, as 100 percent of the [...]

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HGTV Stars – Where are They Now? by Susan Harris

I learned to garden lo these many years ago from two sources – good magazines and good shows on HGTV, back when it had them.

(Gardeners love to complain about the missing G from the channel and this year that’s truer than ever, judging from their new shows and episodes where house-hunting and lifestyle porn abound and gardening has gone missing altogether. But that’s enough complaining for this post, except to add that it’s not a problem just with gardening, as one blogger explains in “HGTV – Bring Back the Decorating Shows.” )

About the HGTV stars who taught us to garden, I recently came across the site Home Sweet HGTV, where the unnamed author (I hate that!) lists some long-gone gardening shows and got me wondering what their hosts are doing today.

Gardening by the Yard with Paul James

Following Paul’s progress in his own Oklahoma garden probably taught me more about creating and maintaining my own garden than any other source. The show ran from 1996 to 2009 and since then, according to Wiki, Paul has “shied from the spotlight in recent years, shutting down his website and neglecting his Facebook page.” He has made public appearances in recent years as spokesman for American Public Gardens Day.

Paul can be found these days at Southwood Garden Center in Tulsa, for whom he blogs and does the occasional video, like this one about succulents.

Fourteen episodes of Gardening by the Yard are available for viewing here on the HGTV site.

Rebecca’s Garden

I also learned a lot from Rebecca Kolls, who now owns a farm store in the Twin Cities, according to this article in a local newspaper. I’ve found just six episodes of her old show online – on the Land of Flora YouTube channel, where I also found Monty Don’s “Around  the World in 80 Gardens.”

A Gardener’s Diary with Erica Glasener

I loved this show for the tours of interesting gardens and often even more interesting gardeners who created them, like Pearl Fryer, the now-famous topiary gardener in rural South Carolina. According to Erica’s website, she’s still dispensing horticultural wisdom through writing and speaking.

A Gardener’s Journal with Kathy Renwald

The only information I could find about Kathy’s life today is her blog about art, but her old shows are now available on the paid subscription show HortusTV. She was interviewed about the move in this story and had this to say about the demise of gardening on HGTV:

Most gardening shows disappeared from TV in 2002. My two long-running programs on HGTV — “Calling All Gardeners” and “Gardener’s Journal” — were both cancelled along with anything with a plant or a pot in it.

“Reality TV is here and it’s here to stay,” an HGTV executive told me.

There’s more from Kathy about the change and her move to HortusTV in this video.

PBS’s Victory Garden

Though Victory Garden wasn’t an HGTV production, let’s catch up with host Roger Swaim anyway. From his home in Southern New Hampshire, he’s apparently still dispensing wisdom. In that story he’s asked if he still teaches and laughingly replies, “On street corners, picnic tables.”

And I love this from the Cape Cod Times story:

“When asked what you should do in the garden, I say, ‘Use nature as a model,’” said Swain, who has a doctorate in ecology.

And all these years I assumed he was an agronomist.

HGTV Stars – Where are They Now? originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 7, 2017.

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Milllennials love houseplants? Yay! by Elizabeth Licata

And it’s interesting, because I’m learning this just as I’ve begun to feel kind of blasé about my houseplants. I still have plenty, but I maintain them without as much interest as I used to—I get much more excited about my indoor bulb forcing projects, which fill the house in winter and dissipate with the coming of spring.

According to Washington Post style writer Lavanya Ramanathan, twenty-and-thirty-somethings are using houseplants to fill the “void in their hearts.” Her youthful interviewees have as many as 50–180 plants filling their urban jungles. What our moms might have called “decorating,” the writer notes, these hipsters are terming “urban wilding” for their “jungalows.” It’s a hilarious but heartening report on the joy and despair inherent to interior plant care. Like finding plants covered in yellowing or browning leaves when they were healthy and happy just a few days previous. Like dealing with infestations when you hate using sprays. Like finally giving up and having to toss plants you’ve had for decades.

It’s all very familiar to me, and I’m thrilled if this is a real trend. Houseplants still get a bad rap, in spite of the efforts of  Tovah Martin (and other advocates). I wonder if these guys would like to try bulb forcing?

If you want to learn (and see) more, follow interviewee Hilton Carter’s Instagram account or look for the hashtags #urbanjungle or #plantgang.

Milllennials love houseplants? Yay! originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 7, 2017.

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The Last On The Limelight Hydrangeas

Given that close to 7000 gardeners have read my last post on hydrangeas in the past few days, I am encouraged to write again.  I went back out last night to rephotograph my hydrangeas with a specific purpose in mind. How do I site them in the landscape, and how do I take care of [...]

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Apple Hunting Season by Thomas Christopher

This is the time of year when I start scouting for apple trees.  Neglected, venerable trees full of fruit that nobody wants.  Not shiny, red, and flawless, ready to be popped into a lunch box.  Nor even the big, sweet fruits bred for baking.  The apples I want can be rough-coated, gnarled, and even a little scabby.  They’re tart and tannic, puckering your mouth at the first bite.  Powerfully flavorful.  Perfect, in other words, for making hard cider.

That – hard cider making – used to be a tradition in my part of the world, southern New England.  From Virginia north, but especially in the northeastern states, hard cider was the vin de pays, the local drink with a definite regional character.  In part that was a reflection of the regional nature of apple growing.  Virginia, for example, was ‘Hewe’s Crab’ country when it came to cider making; in New Jersey, the apples of choice were ‘Winesap’ and ‘Harrison’.   New England boasted many fine cider apples; the standards included ‘Roxbury Russet,’ ‘Golden Russet’ and also ‘Baldwin’.

I had heard mentions in passing of hard cider from my father, a Connecticut native who associated it with haying time on relatives’ farms.  But my first real encounter with it came in the library of the New York Botanical Garden.  One day, while prowling the stacks, I came on a book published in 1911:  The cider makers’ hand book : a complete guide for making and keeping pure cider by J.M. Trowbridge.  This volume not only told the reader every detail of how to make hard cider, it made clear why you should want to:

“A pure article of cider, skillfully made from select fruit in perfect condition, should have perfect limpidity and brightness, even to sparkling in the glass… It should be fragrant so that when a bottle is freshly opened and poured into glasses an agreeable, fruity perfume will arise and diffuse itself though the apartment… It should have mild pungency, and feel warming and grateful to the stomach, the glow diffusing itself gradually and agreeably throughout the whole system, and communicating itself to the spirits…and it should leave in the mouth an abiding agreeable flavor of some considerable duration, as of rare fruits and flowers.”

I began collecting apples, and with an antique cider press rescued from a friend’s barn,  I pressed my first batch, fermenting it down to dryness in glass carboys.  I siphoned it into bottles and corked them.  Six months later the cider was straw golden, clear, sparkling, and smelling and tasting of the apples’ very essence.

I’ve since updated my equipment, purchasing an electric-powered, Italian fruit crusher which I share with a farmer in western Massachusetts.  The farmer, in return, allows me to use his hydraulic cider press.  With these devices, I get far more juice from a bushel of fruit, which is good because appropriate fruit is harder and harder to find as the old trees die off and are replaced by less intensely flavored modern cultivars. Every year I have to travel farther afield to find my fruit.  What better excuse, though, for exploring back roads while enjoying the fall foliage?

 

Apple Hunting Season originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 4, 2017.

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Benefits of Burlap Covers, Dormant Pruning, & Vapor Guarding Your Landscape For Winter

As fall approaches in the Northeast it means two things for your outdoor living space and landscape: First, you only have a handful of days to take advantage of being outside in the comfortable weather, and second, you need to start preparing your landscape so it can survive the dreadful winter. Remember, having an attractive … Read MoreBenefits of Burlap Covers, Dormant Pruning, & Vapor Guarding Your Landscape For Winter

The post Benefits of Burlap Covers, Dormant Pruning, & Vapor Guarding Your Landscape For Winter appeared first on Neave Landscaping.

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Robert Frost Needed Better Neighbors by Bob Hill

At Hidden Hill Nursery

So maybe it was Robert Frost. That whole “Mending Wall’ thing:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

I read that poem 1,000 times as a kid. It could have even led to my writing career. Problem with that theory being I love walls. Stone walls. Stone walls of every type, size and texture.

Stone walls. We have then all over our nursery. I’ve been bringing stones home for 40 years. It began almost 40 years ago when a neighbor sold me the spilled stones of an old wall at the back edge of his centennial family farm for $100. My son and I filled our old pickup truck with 14 loads of those stones, stacked them in amateurish fashion along the edge of our property, with gravity the ultimate arbiter of our success.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Water-carved stones

A few years after that I was driving along a newly constructed road and saw a couple immense water-carved stones along its edge. Each was about five feet tall and wonderfully carved by time and erosion. Each weighed several tons.

Stone lust consumed me. I stopped the truck and spoke to the construction guy standing next to the stones. He said I could have them – but better get on it.  Those stones were going back underground the next day, hidden from view for another few million years.

I drove home in deep despair; how was a guy in a beat-up pickup truck going to get several tons of water-carved rock home? The answer was right before me. The owner of a big stone quarry was standing alongside the road, working on a sign. I barely knew the man. I hadn’t spoken to him in years, when, incidentally he’d delivered a big stone to our house in the bucket of a tractor.

I stopped and explained my problem. Nothing major – just a couple of immense stones that needed moving in next 12 hours. He was a stone guy. He understood. He agreed to take his monstrous backhoe up to my stones the next morning, load them onto a garage-sized rock hauler, and drop them off in my field. He did exactly that.

Good neighbors make good fences.

The story didn’t end there. How was I going to place those rocks in my tiny woods, right there next to where I wanted my pond, my fern garden, my hellebores.

Another nearby resident I barely knew owned a tow-truck service. I called him up, explained my story. The guy was funny. He said he was getting tired of hauling dead cars around. He needed a challenge. He perfectly placed my immense rocks in the tiny woods. Pond to follow.

Good tow-truck owners make good neighbors.

A few years after that I was lusting for some old cobble stones, those hand-fashioned rectangular stones that once paved the streets of nearby Louisville.

I heard of some for sale on the far side of town. I went to look. The few cobblestones were there, but right next to them was a sprawling pile of carved stones – stones that looked like they were anxious to become a stone wall again.

The guy said he would sell the whole pile for $1,000 – delivered. A day later two huge dump trucks unloaded my next stone wall with a thunderous clatter at the edge of my meadow. Assembly was not included.

That problem was soon solved when Juan Bacilio, a talented wall builder, came to work for us. He, and a couple of relatives, built that stone wall in three days.

Good help makes good walls.

Last fall, while at an event in Louisville raising funds for the city’s soon-to-be Waterfront Botanic Garden, I found a seat next to a woman I did not know. It did not matter. We were soon talking about her need to have a stone wall on her farm rebuilt – and another built from scratch.

She already had all the stones required on her farm. All she needed was Juan.

As part of the deal, she mentioned she had some creek stones I might want – those wonderful, water-carved, limestone rock that are flat on the upper side but carved into incredible, fluted, ridges and swirls on the bottom where the water ran below the surface.

We all went to her farm. Juan got the job. I got my water-carved rock. Incredible, fluted, ridged and swirled rock something on the order of dinosaur teeth. We brought them home the same day. My thoughts are to create a special rock garden with ridged and fluted edges – and then place two more of those rocks in the middle to plant around.

I’m thinking fairly low, elegant and green garden; spring bulbs, corydalis, bergenia, toad lilies, Jack-in-the-pulpit, epimedium, hellebores, small ferns and such. None of them will be allowed anywhere near my ridged and fluted stones. Not even close. It’s their garden. The plants will only add character and color.

Oh yeah, about the same time we were unloading my newest stones a guy came by with a load of old brick he didn’t need; all of them from the grounds and gardens of a nearby, almost 200-year-old house. They will be recycled in other gardens. He traded them all for an old book of newspaper columns I wrote titled “Stone Walls and River Music.”

Good neighbors are just good people.

Robert Frost Needed Better Neighbors originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 1, 2017.

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