A Holiday Color Scheme

Client’s routinely ask me for things I would never think of. That is just one of a hundred reasons why I like having clients. People know what they like, and they will tell you, if you ask the right questions.  This client is hosting a holiday event tomorrow. She called me well in advance to [...]

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Why isn’t gardening included in exercise tech? by Elizabeth Licata

My husband and I were early adopters of Apple watches when they were first introduced in 2015. I now have a series 3, which can act independently of the iPhone, (solving what had always been a drawback). One of the basic ways I use the watch is as an activity tracker, which it does very well, including the stylish graphics you would expect from Apple. But—like other activity trackers—the watch does not acknowledge gardening as a physical activity. If you look under “other,” you can choose a wide variety of activities that are well off the mainstream, including cricket, archery, and water polo. No gardening, though it will, of course, track general exercise measurements while you’re working outside. Other devices have been known to categorize heavy gardening as “sport,” and “outdoor bike.”

Nobody reading this blog needs to be told what kind of physical work gardening is. And there are peer-reviewed university studies that have measured the bulk of gardening activity as equal to brisk walking, i.e., moderate–strenuous, which is exactly the type of activity recommended most.

Gardening is exercise! It would be easy enough to add it to the lists on devices, maybe even as modestly as two categories, taken from one of the studies. One could be digging/hand mowing and the other could be planting/trimming. Or something like that. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that more people in the US—and yes, maybe even in the UK—engage in those activities than in cricket.

And a rave

Did you notice that the Google Doodle acknowledged the 174^th anniversary of Gertrude Jekyll’s birth yesterday? When I think of the typical English garden, I think of the work by Jekyll (with Edwin Lutyens) that I saw at Hestercombe (above) in 2004. I would love to revisit it. Actually, 2004 is looking pretty good overall.

Why isn’t gardening included in exercise tech? originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 30, 2017.

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Perennial Royalty: It’s Inbred by Allen Bush

Jack Schultz, News-Herald photo.

There are few families in American horticulture with four generations of successful nursery crops. There are even fewer nursery legends with a story so well remembered as that of Jack Schultz, the 88-year-old Schultz family patriarch and founder of Springbrook Gardens, wholesale perennials growers, in Mentor, Ohio.

Jack’s dad, Elmer, started Wayside Gardens in 1916 as a road stand.  Sales were good.  J.J. Grullemans became a partner in 1920. Grullemans focused on sales while Elmer Schultz preferred production. In the beginning the business was principally wholesale. The partners shuttled back and forth between production fields in Perry and Mentor, Ohio.

Jack started pulling weeds for Wayside Gardens as an 11-year-old in 1939. He liked the work. By the age of 13 he was running a crew of 20 kids. Jack said, “ Dad told me I could get more work out of them than any man could.”

In the early days, an estimated 60% of the Wayside wholesale production was shrubs. Schultz and Grullemans had a large contract with C.W. Stewart of New York for “20,000 of this AND 20,000 of that.” They grew 500-600 varieties of woody plants and perennials.

Wayside Gardens stayed afloat during the Depression.  “They went into the red one year,” Jack said. And that required cutting wood and doing anything to keep the crew working.

Elmer Schultz sold his share of Wayside Gardens to J.J. Grullemans in 1945 for $100,000. Son Jack stayed on. He loved nursery life. One day he was working with a crew, and his dad came along and said, “What are you working so hard for?”

Jack said. “Holy Christ, you never told me that before. It’s my job.”  His dad wanted him to quit, but Jack was happy with the work. “I was making 75 cents an hour.” When his dad sold his Wayside shares, Jack said, “I went to Grullemans and said, ‘I want a buck an hour.’ And they gave it to me real quick.”

Elmer, determined to get his son out of the nursery business, packed Jack off to the Greenbrier Military School in Lewisburg, West Virginia in 1945. Jack was 16.  While he was away his dad started growing plants around the house in Mentor, which became the start for Springbrook Gardens. “I only went to Greenbrier one year. I couldn’t stand it. I liked the military; I hated school,” Jack said.

Jack came home. He and his dad incorporated Springbrook Gardens in 1946. The property in Mentor grew to 20 acres and eventually to 53 acres. The land was bountiful. Elmer Schultz drilled Delphinium hybrid seed into the fertile soil. “We cut 10,000 flowering stems off that patch!” Jack said proudly. And mysteriously, “I could never do it again,” Jack added. “I don’t know why.”

The one—and only—bumper crop of Delphinium cut flowers in 1947 was wonderful in another important sense. Jack Schultz met his bride-to-be while he was peddling the flowers to local florists. Castello’s Florist became a favorite stop. “There she was. She came out of the office, wearing a plaid shirt that was tied in front of her. A picture of beauty,” Jack recalls. Mary Jane Castello was 19; Jack Schultz was 19. He was smitten. “That’s my wife,” he said. They courted for three years and were married in 1950.

Jim Wosley (L) and Jack Schultz (R) at Springbrook Gardens 1946.

Springbrook Gardens, including the 3rd generation of Schultz boys—John, Jim and Dave— began to grow their family business in the 1970s. The family stayed connected with Wayside Gardens. They contract grew for Wayside and also picked up Spring Hill and White Flower Farm. “We were doing a million poppies for Spring Hill every year,” Jack said.  “When we were shipping poppies it was 80 or 90 hours of work a week,” Dave said.

“We also signed a contract with Wayside for somewhere between $60,000-75,000 a year,” his dad added. “That was a lot of money back then.”

Wayside Gardens eventually became the largest retail, mail-order nursery in the country.  By 1960, the catalog stretched to 252 pages.  Wayside Gardens was sold to George W. Park Seed Company in Greenwood, South Carolina, in 1975.  The original flagship Wayside Gardens in Ohio had nurtured young nurserymen who later started their own nurseries— Bluestone Perennials, Bentley Nursery, Antioch Farm and Beardslee Nursery.  Over the years between the 1980s into the late 1990s, notable horticulturalists including John Elsley, Viki Ferreniea, Bill Funkhouser and Chris Hansen contributed their expertise to Geo. W. Park-owned Wayside Gardens in Greenwood, South Carolina.

Schultz family vacations were sometimes spent traveling to Litchfield, Connecticut, to see Bill Harris, the founder of White Flower Farm. Harris wrote the company catalog under the pseudonym Amos Petingill. Harris was an eccentric, but he liked Jack Schultz. Harris invited the Schultz family to stay at his home at White Flower Farm. “Nobody believed I was going to stay in his house. He was a crazy nut,” Jack said.

Harris told the kids that there wasn’t anything wrong with pot. “Mr. Harris, please,” the protective dad said.

The family turned in for the evening and was shortly awakened when they heard a whistle blowing outside.  “This is what they do in New York if you’re in trouble,” Jack explained. He looked out the window and saw Harris dressed in a nightgown and cap, holding a butcher’s knife. The next morning they learned he was sharpening a knife to make breakfast. “I thought he was coming to kill us,” Dave said.

The Springbrook business grew steadily. The original nursery rows were 30” wide. Son Dave remembers when they’d mark rows with a string and plant 200’-500’ rows—by hand. “And then I’d move the string,” Dave said. Row after row. Eventually, the rows were tightened to 20” spacing and finally to beds with 10” spacing between the rows. Son Jim developed a tractor-drawn, five-row planter. Bare root crops were dug with a bed digger.

In the 1980s, Jack installed a geothermal heat pump in the greenhouse. “We were the first ones,” Jack said. The annual cost for propane had been running around $18,000-20,000 per year. “And we didn’t heat very warm.” The new geothermal unit brought the heating bill down to $3,000. Springbrook recovered the cost of the geothermal investment in “one year and three months,” Jack Schultz remembers.

It was quality that mattered most. Dave remembers they would be packing an order for 25 bare-root perennials of one variety and he’d get a radio call, “’Bring me one more.’ Everything had to be done right.”

Dave Schultz left the family business in 1998 to run Kurt Bluemel’s Florida growing operation. Disney World’s Animal Kingdom needed ornamental grasses—lots of them. Millions of grasses were planted. Then the hippos and elephants were turned into their new African savannah and quickly started grazing on the new plantings. No problem. There were plenty more ornamental grasses where they came from—Floraland Farms.

Floraland Nursery, St. Cloud, Florida.

Dave Schultz bought Floraland Farms in 2016. Disney remains a big customer. The Schultzes grow 100 different plants. Ornamental grasses top the nursery’s inventory items. They don’t do any flashy sales gimmicks. (Neither did Springbrook.) We’re going to always keep up quality. We’ll let the plants do the talking,” Dave said.

“I give Dave all the credit in the world for coming down here and running Bluemel’s Florida operation and eventually buying Floraland,” Jack said.

Hurricane Irma damage.

The Springbrook Gardens property was sold in 2014. The farm had become encircled by development. The City of Mentor bought the place with plans to turn it into a park.

That’s a very happy ending for one chapter of the Schultz nursery story, but it isn’t the end. Another generation has come along. Dave son’s Jason has been working at Floraland for ten years.

Jason, Jack and Dave Schultz 2017.

Hurricane Irma paid an unwelcome visit this past September. Trees were downed and buildings badly damaged. Plants were tossed around.

The nursery still waits on FEMA financing approval to rebuild barns, but the plants and nursery have survived.

The Schultzes don’t quit. “It’s inbred,” Dave said.

Perennial Royalty: It’s Inbred originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 29, 2017.

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Amo, Amas, Amat in the Garden by Bob Hill

Zanthoxylum clava-herculis

The further I get into this horticulture life the more I realize how little I know, especially of its outer edges; all that Latin derivation and categorization stuff.

That used to bother me. People forever mistake me for an expert. I’m about over it. I’m in my Old Guy Mode. Sure, it’s important that somebody somewhere in a dim, dark library put the Zanthoxylum clava-herculis in its proper referential and botanical place. I am not a willful idiot about such. I will use all nine syllables as absolutely needed.

So, let’s hear it for Carl Linnaeus, the very-interesting binomial nomenclature inventor, if not Miss Rader, my petrified high school Latin teacher, who would cringe and shake her head “No” as the jock in the back of her class tossed paper airplanes out an open window.

At my current age, however, I’d just rather someone else work out the Latin derivation. My fun now is in randomly coming across Zanthoxylum clava-herculis on page 1310 of Mike Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants and moving on from there to learn the more interesting stuff about it. Like the tree’s somewhat less foreign names are “Hercules’ Club,” “Prickly Ash,” or “Pepperwood.”

Beyond that, the early pioneers and Native American locals called it the “Toothache Tree” or “Tingle-Tongue Tree” because chewing on its leaves, twigs or needle-pin thorns caused the mouth, tongue and gums to go numb when the nearest dentist was back in Philadelphia.

Or that the Toothache Tree’s American relatives grow wild across warmer sections of our country, and its Asian cousins have bright red berries that when dried and roasted are used in Sichuan seasoning.

I had no idea. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one.

‘Black and Blue’ Salvia

Much the same rigorous botanical exploration took place after happily digging up my ‘Black and Blue’ salvia (Okay Salvia guaranitica) to save for next year.

The South American native is one of my favorite plants. Its cobalt-blue flowers lead the way to my walk to the mailbox all summer, its anise-like fragrance is stunning and, thumbing its nose at its zone 8-10 horticulture designation, it will often come back on its own in my zone 6-7 garden in that fabled sheltered site. But I don’t always want to risk that renewal – and I love the digging-up part.

And, yeah, the “salvia” part comes from a healing salve, and ‘guaranitica,’ as it turns out, comes from Guara Brazil – population 20,210. But my learning curve peaked upward with the revelation that its nickname is “Hummingbird Sage.”

You’d think a garden expert would have known that.

But my best, up-from-ignorance moment this year came after walking out of the house following our first hard frost and seeing a deep circle of yellow ginkgo leaves on the ground – all having fallen in one evening from the now naked limbs above my head.

I had once borne witness to this. Indeed, one of my favorite all-time garden remembrances is standing beneath our ginkgo tree one frozen autumn morning as those golden leaves rained down on my head and softly bathed our ceramic garden art, stone owl and handsome blue mailman; my arms outstretched to mimic those naked limbs.

Fallen Gingko biloba leaves

As we all know, of course, the Ginkgo biloba checks in at about 270 million continuous years on earth, and its female fruit smells like a pile of dead skunks. And yes, “Ginkgo” comes from the Chinese yin-hing  for “silver apricot” and ‘biloba’  from that two-lobed leaf.

But what’s with that over-night leaf drop – the fabled “Ginkgo Rain.”

Rigorous research took me to the truth. The stems of leaves on deciduous trees are known as petioles – from the Latin peciolus or “Little Foot.”

Because Mother Nature is a lot smarter than any of her children, these petioles, on most trees, slowly create a protective layer of cells that work like a scar to keep out disease as the leaves randomly fall to the ground.

Once there, they are collected by eager, hopeful parents and resentful children armed with plastic, non-biodegradable rakes, and stuffed in paper bags for environmentally-pure disposal in a landfill of some sort or another.

Truly hopeful parents might even try composting, which is a step or two up from burning them, but I sure miss that smoky, drifting, autumnal fragrance. Maybe each American town should be allowed a one-hour leaf-burn a year just so the kids will know.

Ginkgo trees, with the collective wisdom of 270 million years, form that protective layer of scar tissue all at once. Then, come the first hard frost, they all tumble down at once.

On the good years, right into my waiting arms.

Mirabile dictu.

Photo credits: Salvia by Aaron Carlson. Zanthoxylum clava-herculis  via Wikipedia. Gingko by the author.

Amo, Amas, Amat in the Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 27, 2017.

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The Details

Better than twenty years ago, before a cell phone had been invented or a world wide web established, I would drive Rob to the airport for a buying trip to Europe. In those days we could have a cocktail in the lounge, and I could accompany him all the way to the boarding chute for [...]

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Bulb-Planting Rules I Break by Susan Harris

Who doesn’t love spring-blooming bulbs? I love all of them (well, except for hyacinths) and used to plant a large assortment every fall. Above are shots from my former garden, where I planted tulips, yanked them out after the blooms faded and had the fun of trying new ones in the same spot the next year.

But no more. Now I ONLY plant bulbs that come back year after year and aren’t eaten by squirrels or deer. (Hooray for daffodils!)

And I’ve entirely changed how I arrange them and plant them. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but when I was a gardening newbie I planted a couple hundred full-sized daffodils (my fave was Ice Follies), one bulb per hole and spaced evenly throughout the garden. It looked ridiculous. So over the years I gradually rearranged them into clumps, masses and sweeps – which we all know look better than one-offs.

Planting bulbs too close together

And I gradually switched to planting bunches of 5-10 bulbs in each hole because I like the look and it’s SO much easier than digging holes for each bulb. This old photo shows the right way to do it. Nowadays I dig smaller holes and plant the bulbs closer together – too close, far closer than the recommended 2-bulb-width apart. Yet, they bloom.

Planting bulbs too shallow

Planting bulbs 3 times the depth of their height is fine for tiny bulbs but when it comes to large daffodils, forget about it. I don’t think I’ve ever planted them as deep as 6″.  Too much work! And yet, those shallow-planted daffodils bloom.

Feeding bulbs

Never done it. Yet they bloom.

Deadheading bulbs

Ditto.

Tying up the daffodil leaves

Yes, I even do this, the tidying chore we’re told will reduce future flowering, though we’re never told by how much. Those Ice Follies I planted decades ago continued to bloom like crazy year after year, despite having their leaves tied up. Sure, they may have bloomed a bit more if I’d followed the rules, but I’d rather get them off the emerging perennials.

Rules I follow, more or less

Helpful advice for some situations is to keep records of what bulbs have been planted and where, which I did recently in the really badly drawing above. As long as I can read it, right?

Or, in beds with bulbs with existing bulbs but where I want to plant more the next fall, it’s easier to just take photos of the current spring’s blooms in context. It’s not precise, but close enough.

And I more or less follow the recommendations about planting in late fall, at least by the end of December (here in Zone 7). I know some rule-breakers brag about planting bulbs as late as February to no ill effect, but that much rule-breaking is too much for even me.

Bulb-Planting Rules I Break originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 24, 2017.

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Goodbye, and thanks for your service by Elizabeth Licata

In (somewhat) better days

Trees are suffering. First, there are the pests; among the most current are the emerald ash borer, the mountain pine beetle, and the wooly aldegid. Then there are the ravages of fires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters; it was awful to see the defoliation in the Caribbean earlier this year (though growing conditions there should promote faster replacement than we’d see in Buffalo). And then there are the always-ongoing threats of bad planting and bad maintenance.

One of only two trees on our actual property—we are surrounded by trees we don’t own—was just cut down last week, the last in a series of must-do pre-winter tasks. A big sugar maple, it had been weakening over the past five years, and now posed a serious threat to neighboring structures. We think it’s many decades old, but aren’t sure of the exact age. During garden tours, visitors have always been surprised to be seeing such a large tree in an urban courtyard garden; it grew directly against an even older Victorian carriage house.

Tree replacement has been a big thing in Buffalo since a 2006 freak October snowstorm that many called Arborgeddon, and now my friends are losing their ash trees. But I don’t think I’ll replace this one—it was not a very generous spot for a mature tree ever, and I have enough structure from the largish stump that remains, not to mention the wall behind it. I’m sure I can figure something out and make this work. In any case, after having seen what it took to get the thing down, I’d never want to have to risk making anyone go through that again. Fences were sawn apart and heavy machinery made a mud pit out of a nicely planted shade bed. The possibility of people losing power and cable service was raised.

A really old sycamore nearby (winter shot)

As much as I love an urban canopy, trees in densely built areas like mine are never problem-free. Still, they persist. A 320-year-old American sycamore is surviving just a few blocks away. It’s currently battling a bout of anthracnose, but it survived the burning of Buffalo in 1812, so I have high hopes.

Goodbye, and thanks for your service originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 21, 2017.

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Brighten Up Your Winter with Bulbs

Winter can be a drag for some, but for HighGrove it's an opportunity for creativity with a pop of color. With the change of seasons comes a fresh batch of hues to dress up your commercial landscape. Sure, winter temperatures will reduce your choices for bold landscape color, but the important thing to remember is you still have choices – and you might be surprised by how many. Here are a few that will surely make a statement to your commercial property. 

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Winter Red

Our second winter/holiday project comes with a story, just like our first. If you were to ask how I schedule all the work, I am sure I would hesitate before I answered. There are many factors, some involving the availability of materials and other logistical issues. But personal issues for clients play a big part [...]

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Video: Best-Performing Native Plants in my Garden by Susan Harris

These days we’re all paying more attention to beneficial wildlife in our gardens, and to that end, looking for good native plants to grow. But which ones? Those official lists of state or regional natives don’t really help the aspiring eco-gardener make their choices. Instead, I always recommend asking experienced gardeners.

Gardeners like me, for instance. In this short video I gush about the 10 best-performing native plants I’ve ever grown, and by that I mean they look great and are easy-care. No fertilizers or fungicides needed. And except for the Oakleaf Hydrangea, no regular watering after the plants are established.

They are: Black-Eyed Susans, Coreopsis, Purple Coneflower, Spiderwort, Joe Pye Weed, Golden Groundsel, Amsonia, Oakleaf Hydrangea, Crossvine, and Redbud. And in the video description on YouTube I add three “bonus plants” that aren’t in the video for lack of decent photos of them: Ninebark, Penstemon and Little Bluestem.

Books and articles about the benefits of native plants are important but photos of plants fully grown and looking great in a garden setting are what’s needed for me to spend my actual money on plants that don’t look like much in the nursery or in catalogs. And I’m not the only one, by far. Even eco-gardeners respond to beauty, after all.

Video: Best-Performing Native Plants in my Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 17, 2017.

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The Beginning of the Winter Season

Our winter/holiday season began the moment that our cut greens arrived. Why so early? The daughter of a long standing client is to be married this Saturday the 18th. Lots of family and friends from places far away will be attending.  I promised that her winter pots would be done before the first of their [...]

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Top 5 Fall Landscape Maintenance Tips to Prepare for Winter

It’s finally here! Leaves are changing color, temperatures are dropping, there’s pumpkin-spice flavoring in everything, and stores are putting out their Christmas displays! It must be fall!

But what do you need to do, as a homeowner, to prepare your property for the coming winter? When is the right time to do it? Where do you start? Here’s the list of the top 5 things you should do for your landscape maintenance to prepare for winter:

Five Fall Maintenance Tips

1. Shrub trimming and perennial/ornamental grass cutbacks

Many of the plants in your landscape will benefit from you taking the time to make sure they’re trimmed properly before winter hits. All of your perennials and tall ornamental grasses (like Karl Foerster grass) can be cut back pretty dramatically. Even your smaller ornamental grasses and perennials (like dwarf fountain grass or liriope) can be cut back this time of year. This healthy pruning, done properly, allows these landscape plants to retain their shape when they push new growth the following spring.

NOTE: There are certain plants that should NOT be cut back in the fall. Specifically, shrubs that bloom in spring, such as lilac, forsythia, azaleas, rhododendrons, and some viburnum. These plants should be trimmed immediately after bloom (think early June here in Central PA), so their flowers aren’t accidentally pruned off.

2. Winter Protects

Winter Protection treatments should be done after your shrub trimming in the fall. These are also called “anti-desiccant” sprays. What happens to many of your landscape plants in the winter is they lose moisture more quickly than they can take in new moisture from the root system (called “transpiration”). When this happens, much of the leaf tissue of your landscape plants is irreparably damaged. When this happens, over the course of several winters, it can affect plant healthy by causing the loss of leaf tissue that is vital for photosynthesis.

Winter Protection treatments are a series of sprays done for your landscape plants to protect them from damage that cold weather does to them (hence the name, “Winter Protect”). Generally, three are recommended through late fall and early winter for best coverage. The number of winter protective sprays done on your landscape will be dependent on the weather; if temperatures in your area start to freeze much earlier in the season than is typical, you may only get one or two sprays completed. This is NOT a fool-proof way to prevent winter damage, but for lots of landscape plants (azaleas, boxwoods, holly, rhododendrons, laurels, arborvitae, juniper, cedar and pine, to name a few), a winter protect can improve the long-term health of your plants.

You might also want to consider a physical barrier in some areas (burlap barrier as an example), like those particularly prone to gusty or consistent winds, to prevent these winds from causing additional stress and winter damage.

3. Clean Up Leaves

Recognizing that this one seems really obvious, you’d be surprised at the number of clients who don’t realize the impact that this can have on the health of your landscape. There’s even a whole argument from natural gardeners who will tell you that leaf litter is valuable compost material, and to “leave it” (see what we did there?) right where it lays.

From the standpoint of a professional landscaping company who treats many landscape plants for diseases throughout the year, we’d disagree at least in part. Leaves make a great addition to a compost pile somewhere away from your beds. However, when piled too high in your landscape beds, leaf litter can simply foster a whole host of disease issues. In winter months, when sunlight, airflow, and regular moisture are lower than spring and fall, your plants are already under stress. Why increase the risk of stress by adding too much leaf litter to the base of your plants?

Besides the concern for your beds, there are considerations for your lawn. Leaves laying on the lawn, and overwintering, are preventing sunlight from getting to that section of turf, which can kill it. And although sandy soils are more susceptible, repeatedly allowing leaves to break down can begin to affect the pH of the soil, making it more acidic.

Lastly, your neighbors will complain so just clean up your leaves already!

4. Tree and Shrub Fertilization

We all know those stories about nature preparing for the freezing cold of winter. When we think about this, our minds instantly conjure up images of ants laboring all summer to stock up, or woodland creatures storing up food (which is why we actually call hiding stuff “squirreling it away”) to get them through the tundra until the first signs of spring life present themselves.

What we don’t normally think about is the plants that are doing the same thing. They need to store up energy reserves and carbohydrates for the winter, too. They need to have enough nutrition to survive throughout the cold and freezing temperatures that are quickly descending upon us. Fertilizing late in the season, after trees and shrubs are done growing for the season, truly helps sustain them through the winter and encourages healthy new growth the following spring. Don’t skip this important step in caring for your landscape.

5. Tree Pruning

Tree pruning late in the season, or even over the winter itself, is a much better idea than most people realize. There are a few good reasons for this…

First, winter weather itself. Heavy snow falls and ice storms throughout the winter accumulate on the plant. The more branches and stems throughout the plant means more places for precipitation to accumulate. More accumulation means more weight pressure pulling down on branches and stems. When that weight gets to a certain point, you get stems that snap and branches that break. Having this breaking and tearing is a lot less healthy for your plants than a clean cut would be, and adds stress to the plant when it’s not actively growing and trying to repair itself.

Secondly, it can cost you less money. Less leaf tissue to haul away means less weight for your tree pruning company to carry away, which may reduce your cost. Less leaf tissue to clean up can mean less on-site clean-up, which can reduce the man-hours invested in your pruning job.  Less debris, less clean-up, and fewer man-hours can translate into lower pruning costs for you, the customer.

Lastly, there’s a really good cultural reason for pruning late in the year. Late season and dormant pruning, for certain species of tree, prevents the spread of diseases. In particular, you should really consider having your oaks and elms pruned very late in the season or while dormant to avoid or slow the spread of Oak Wilt and Dutch Elm Disease.

Getting your trees pruned later in the season is good for the health of your plants and potentially for your budget. Don’t overlook this important part of preparing your landscape for the winter.

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BONUS:LAWN CARE TIPS FOR LATE FALL!

Okay, since you’ve made it this far, we’re going to give you a couple of bonus tips for your lawn as well!

Do a late fall fertilization for your lawn. Your turf is made up of thousands of individual plants. The reasoning is the same for your lawn as for your landscape plants – the plants are storing up nutrients so they can overwinter. Make sure you feed the lawn late in the season, one last time, with a slow-release fertilizer (often, this is called a “winterizer”).

Secondly, make sure you core aerate. This one takes a little more explanation. Soils in North America generally fall into 3 types: sandy soils (like in Florida) that are very loose; clay soils (like here in Central Pennsylvania) that are very dense; and loamy soils, which are the happy middle ground between sandy and clay soils.

Clay soils (which is what we have locally) get very compacted and hard over time. Just normal wear-and-tear from mowing, walking, and even rainfall push this already dense soil closer to together. It just keeps getting harder and harder over time.

Your landscape plants (trees and shrubs) have thick, “woody” roots that can sort of “muscle” through the dense clay without as much of a problem. Your turf, on the other hand, has a very fine, “hairy” kind of root structure. The soil eventually gets to the point where the roots can’t push their way through anymore, and the turf will decline. This compacted soil can also prevent water from flowing through properly, causing a shallow root structure and fostering diseases at the crown of the plant (where the grass plant actually emerges from the soil).

Using a piece of equipment to regularly pull out plugs of this soil allows water and air flow to the root level. This adding of oxygen to the soil (hence the term “aerating”) breaks up it up a little bit, making it softer, and allowing the roots to spread and water to flow through the soil properly, creating a deeper growing root.

One of the more common objections we get from clients about this service is that “It makes a mess of my lawn,” which is true. Often it does make the lawn muddy and messy for a week or two until the cores that were pulled break down. However, it’s a lot less muddy than when you lose turf coverage because the roots are dead and you have large bare spots. Also, having the lawn aerated regularly is usually cheaper than a major lawn renovation, which will eventually be needed if you ignore an aeration.

If you have additional question about any of these services, we’d be thrilled to speak with you! Contact our office to request a free consultation.

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About the Author: Jay Worth

Jay has been in our industry since 2009. His passion for beautiful lawns and landscapes along with his great customer service skills made Jay a great addition to our sales team when he joined is in 2015. Jay enjoys meeting new potential clients as he develops business for our company in nearby communities. His attention to detail and cheerful demeanor helps him to easily assist our clients in reviewing current services and finding new ways our organization can assist them with maintaining their properties.

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Too late to plant tulips?

The post Too late to plant tulips? appeared first on Miss Smarty Plants.

In a word, No!

Now is a great time to get out there and plant tulips before the ground freezes. Until recently the weather was really warm and although the calendar said it was a good time to get these planted, my shorts and t-shirt indicated it was a little early. Well that has certainly changed and the time to plant tulips can’t be put off much longer.

When to plant tulips?

When your elephant ear bulbs quit looking like this…

And instead start looking like this:

My bulbs from Colorblends arrived in mid September but the warm weather was keeping all of my tropical plants looking great. I tell myself that they actually do better with a hard freeze to knock down the growth, but that may also be because I just don’t have it in me to remove these really great looking plants. More on removing and storing tropical plants in our next post!

With the alocasias and colocasias removed it was the perfect time to work the soil. Using a long spade, the soil was deeply tilled and turned over to incorporate some of the leaf litter on top and also to make it easier to plant.

Once the prep was done, I decided the best way to plant tulips in here was to divide my 100 bulbs among the two beds to help get an even amount in each. I ordered the Colorblends Pink Cubed mix and I know from experience that I am a little heavy handed on the planting! This blend includes three varieties of tulips with varying bloom times which should help extend the color display until its warm enough to return the elephant ears to their place of prominence in front of the house.

The instructions for this blend say to plant tulips 5″ deep with 7-8 per square foot.  To keep it simple, I tossed them onto the bed, adjusted a few to help even out and started planting right there. The soil in these beds is very light so it was easy to plant deep enough with a hand trowel. I considered removing all of the needed soil, laying out the bulbs and then refilling, but that seemed like unnecessary work.

Each tulip bulb was set upright as it was placed in its new home.

 

The total planting time for these 100 tulip bulbs was about 30 minutes. I’ve heard it said that gardeners are the world’s most optimistic people. It might be starting to get cold out, but rest assured, it is not too late to plant tulips in your garden. When spring comes you will be so glad that you did!

The post Too late to plant tulips? appeared first on Miss Smarty Plants.

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The Holiday Preview 2017

I am chagrined, but not surprised that I have not managed to put up a post in the past 10 days. I have been racing against a November 9th deadline to transform Detroit Garden Works from the fall to the holiday winter season. No one disputes that signs of the winter and holiday in late [...]

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Can these Junipers be Saved? by Susan Harris

My latest gardening obsession is making over the landscape in front of my housing co-op offices, where the top priority is to do something about the overgrown junipers. Planted too close to the sidewalk and doors, they’d been sheared back, which caused much unsightly needle-browning.

The problem wasn’t just that they were encroaching onto sidewalks, either. Their looming presence over the doors made the female staffers feel less than safe as they exited, especially at night. Something had to be done, and right away.

So the team of staff and volunteers working on this decided to have the junipers closest to the sidewalk removed, and it was super-gratifying to watch those bad boys being yanked out of the ground by a Bobcat excavator.

Unfortunately, this exposed even more dieback and browning in the adjacent junipers (above). So ugly.

But man, I live for pruning projects like this! Oh, the mountain of dead juniper branches I gleefully (obsessively) compiled, ignoring the dozen or so cuts on my arms, blood and all. Who notices these things when they’re absorbed in the job? (And with industrial-grade loppers, too!)

These next two photos show the junipers after I’d removed all the dead parts. Kinda sculptural, right? And I’ve been telling everyone that when spring comes, these bare trunks will “green up” and look new.

Except apparently they won’t. I went back to Google to double-check on that bit, homing in on a source I trust – Bert Cregg, an actual “Garden Professor,” in Fine Gardening Magazine. The relevant text and photos from his article “How to Prune Conifers”:

I’ll be writing to the good Professor Cregg about the “few exceptions,” in hopes that our junipers quality.

A bit more research yields more bad news, though, this time from SFGate’s Home Guide on the subject:

When trimming junipers, not cutting down to bare stems is crucial: always leave some green foliage, because bare wood will not grow foliage.

Cut down overgrown junipers if pruning will result in mostly bare wood. It is easier to replace such junipers with new, smaller shrubs than to try to rejuvenate old, nearly bare wood shrubs.

Crap! Our only hope may be to cover those bare trunks with the fast-growing flowering shrubs we’re planting in front of them – Ninebarks and Spireas – and going all in on turning those junipers into sculptures.

SF Gate’s guide went on to criticize the shearing of junipers, but with an even curiouser qualifier:

Shearing is not recommended for junipers, although it is often practiced for pyramidal junipers when a formal look is desired. Shearing causes dense outer growth, which shades the interior of the shrub and makes it more susceptible to needle browning and branch dieback caused by drying winds.

That bit in italics makes me wonder why shearing of pyramidal junipers wouldn’t also result in the dreaded needle browning and branch dieback. But if true, it explains how this landscape contractor somewhere in the Balkans can do this with impunity:

Can these Junipers be Saved? originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 10, 2017.

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A Glimpse of a Lunatic’s Garden by Allen Bush

Jamie Dockery, wizard of farm and garden. August 12, 2017.

I don’t know anyone on this planet, or galaxy, with more runaway enthusiasm for gardening than Jamie Dockery. And that’s not all. Besides his rabid determination to grow anything with chlorophyll, Jamie also raises little cows, little goats, chickens, ducks, donkeys, and tends an aviary with finches and canaries—all of this on his ten-acre farm in Salvisa, KY, not far from the Kentucky River.

Ansel, the newborn, black and white calf. March 26, 2017.

“I’m a full blown nut job,” Jamie confessed during a lecture he gave early last spring called: “A Glimpse of a Lunatic’s Garden.”

This was one of nearly 50 talks Jamie presents each year as part of his day job as the Fayette County Extension Agent for Horticulture Education. Jamie’s first love, after his livestock, is perennials, but he is no one-trick pony. He’s extremely knowledgeable on trees, shrubs, and fruits and vegetables, too.

The little cows in early May.

Jamie trials many new plants and vegetable seed items in Salvisa. At his recommendation, I have planted two disease-resistant apple varieties ‘Liberty and Enterprise’. And Jamie told Rose recently about the thornless Prime-Ark Freedom® Primocane blackberry variety that produce a second crop later in the season, on new growth.

Jamie tours the vegetable garden with Tay Breene and Rose Cooper in mid-May.

Jamie muscled through 200 slides in an hour and 40-minutes. There was not a dull moment.

“You’re going to kill plants. Don’t worry,” he advised.

“I avoid pastel colors; I prefer crayon box colors,” he said.

The celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) has “glow-in-the-dark yellow sap.”

The popcorn plant, Senna (Cassia didymobotrya) “smells like popcorn for a few seconds before it begins to smell like stinky jimson weed.”

Jamie and Rose Cooper with the popcorn plant, Senna (Cassia) didympbotrya in early October.

There was a slide with a “cacophony” of bright flowering daylilies including ‘Rainbow Towers’, ‘Lemon Madeline’, ‘Heavenly Dragonfly’ with Echinacea purpurea and Chrysanthemum ‘Becky’.

Effie (L) and Diesel (R) along the summer border summer. Dockery photo.

Jamie keeps a sharp eye open for old, passalong plants. He has several old bearded Iris, about which he is philosophical: “They persist.”

Summer Sorbaria sorbifolia. Dockery photo.

Jamie also got excited (he’s easily excited) about the false spiraea, Sorbaria sorbifolia, with one caveat that momentarily knocked the shrub off stride for me: it is “vigorous” (meaning, suckering like crazy).

I perked up again when Jamie said, “This hardy shrub will take any abuse you can throw at it.”

Good advice, but that was only a teaser.

Jamie uncorked the closer.

“It has ginormous astilbe-like flowers for two or three months and is disastrously beautiful,” he said.

Jamie dares timid gardeners to be cautious of fads but not to be shy about trying new plants. Be patient; be bold. Cross the threshold to garden discovery.

Sit a spell.

Rose and I met Jamie through mutual friends who garden and swap plants. Jamie spends free time in Salvisa. (He lives in Lexington during the week with his partner Gerry.)

Washtub tower of succulents.

Jamie initially built a run-in shed in Salvisa for his goats, cattle and donkeys so they could be protected in inclement weather. He liked the animal shelter so much that he added a modified run in—a simple house (1500 sq. ft.) with a wood stove. There is no electricity.

Summer daylilies—’Rainbow Towers’, ‘Lemon Madeline’, and ‘Heavenly Dragonfire’ with Chrysanthemum (Leucanthemum) ‘Becky’ and Echinacea. Dockery photo.

 

Animal farm and garden.

The Salvisa farm and garden originated from a child’s dream of kittens, puppies and memories of the refrain, “No, you can’t keep that until you get older.” His patch of soil and sentiment is a walk back in time to a childhood of canned vegetables, medicinal herbs, no running water and big snowball bushes (Viburnum macrocephalum). His farm and garden are homage to the self-sufficient lifestyle his maternal grandparents lived in rural Russell County, in South Central Kentucky, near Lake Cumberland.

Potted carnivorous plants in mid-summer.

Jamie grows a keepsake flameleaf sumac shrub, Rhus copallinum, harvested from from root stolons dug from his grandmother’s garden. The orange-red fall leaf color and bright-red seed heads are stunning. He soaks up inspiration wherever he goes. “I have taken hostages from everyone I met along the way, ” Jamie said.

The buzzard has feathers made from bean pods of a honey locust. Osage orange tree in the background.

He invited friends—more hostages—out to the farm the weekend before Halloween. It was a raw, wet-cold evening. The vegetable garden was winding down. Light frost had already nipped the lablab beans. Jamie set up several fire stations to keep everyone warm. The gardening maestro’s luscious, lunatic garden was a backdrop for the season’s closing event.

Jamie’s newly completed seasonal sculptures made their debut.

Halloween ghoul with $10 bucks worth of Walmart fabric, burlap sack and nimblewill hair. Dockery photo.

Now he is preparing for cold weather. Jamie never stops. Tender plants go to Lexington and spend the winter under grow lights in the basement of his Lexington home. His canaries and finches go to town, too.

Our 2016 gift of Christmas greenery from Jamie.

Christmas decorations will get underway soon. Jamie will start with sprigs of boxwood, Magnolia D.D. Blanchard, Nandina and red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) If he is lucky, he might add the beautiful pheasant back mushroom—if he finds one on a decaying log. And who knows what else.

“I make the decorations for my friends,” he said.

Little Dude, the noble donkey. He guards the livestock from coyotes.

 

Plenty of Osage oranges to go around. Crocus speciosus in foreground.

There is no need to call ground control when you’re held friendly hostage in the swirling orbit of Jamie Dockery’s lunatic garden.

It’s all fun.

As any garden should be.

A Glimpse of a Lunatic’s Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on November 8, 2017.

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