More native musings

Grasses that stand up in winter

Another voice in the native debate

Sweet Home Arizona – Horticultural Happiness on the Road

Pretty in Snow

Keep Your friends Close, Keep Your Anemones Closer

Will Ivy Kill My Tree?

Will ivy kill my tree?

We all see ivy growing up trees from the ground cover below.  You’ve undoubtedly seen it growing up the sides of buildings, too.  Clients often ask “will ivy growing up a tree kill it?”

Structural Damage

The short answer is yes, eventually.

Ivy damages the bark as it climbs.  Ivy will eventually overtake even a mature tree.  As ivy climbs, it weakens branches through its weight and prevents light from penetrating to the leaves. Weakened plants and trees are more susceptible to problems like pests or disease.

Think about it this way; trees are adapted to certain conditions.  They’re able to handle stresses from drought, wind, snow – you get the picture.  When you add a lot of extra weight to those very precisely adapted branches, and then it snows, the tree is unprepared.  Also, the ivy steals nutrients and that the tree would have been able to use. Lastly, the ivy can root into the tree and steal the vital carbohydrates and moisture that pass up and down through the tree.

What do I do about it?

A particularly tricky thing to do is to remove ivy from trees. It is best to remove the ivy from the tree and keep it away from the trunk of the tree. Ideally you want get it about 3 to 4 feet away to prevent it climbing up the tree again. If it has a head start or is considerably up the tree, remove as much as you can without harming the bark. Once you have created a tree ring at least 3-4 feet, this is a good time to create a mulch ring.  This allows you to see the ivy growing over the mulch, making it manageable. I would refrain from spraying non-selective herbicides around the base of the tree, as you can get uptake and harm the tree.

Start with a pair or loppers, hand pruners or a hand saw depending on the thickness of the vine.  Cut it, and start gently pulling it off the tree. Most often, any ivy up the tree will die off in dry weather.  If the roots are firmly hooked into the bark and pulling the plant off will also remove some of the bark, stop! You may damage the tree, so it’s time for “Plan B.”

Starting at the base of the tree, cut an inch or two section out of the ivy stem and remove it. Carefully paint the cuts on the still attached stem with full strength Round-Up. Repeat the process every few feet up the stem of the ivy as high as you can reach. You may need to repeat this a few times before you fully kill the ivy.

 

Once the ivy has died, you can then take the stems off the tree as the roots will break away rather than cling to the tree.  If you would rather not mess with the herbicides please Call Us and we can help you with this process.

 

 

The post Will Ivy Kill My Tree? appeared first on Tomlinson Bomberger.

from Tomlinson Bomberger http://bit.ly/2TVKbeq

History of Landscapes Starts with Stonehenge. Really.

Farfugium as a houseplant

Still and serene

You’ve just seen beautiful color images of Buffalo gardens in July. Western New York doesn’t quite look like that now. Color is not the first thing I think of when I do that initial glance out the window, to see what it’s like out and check whether the plow guy got to our back alley.

When I review the many, many images I have of WNY in winter, I am struck by the pure beauty of white, black, and gray, with occasional flashes of silver. Often, on the way to work, I want to pull over and somehow capture an acceptable image of the sparkling white tree canopy that lines the street I usually take. I don’t, because none of the pictures I get really do the job and it will make me late.

Comparing these photos to the busy color and floral incident of a summer image, I kind of have to prefer the winter scenes. As images. These views give me all I could ever want or need in terms of “winter interest,” so much so that I don’t worry about planning for such interest in my own garden.

These are a rest for the eyes, just like the rest we’re getting from our usual spring–fall garden schedules.

Images in these posts were taken at various times over the past few winters in WNY, including Niagara Falls.

Still and serene originally appeared on GardenRant on February 12, 2019.

from GardenRant http://bit.ly/2GFvb0I

Buffalo Garden Book Give-Away and My Best Buffalo Shots

It had to happen – a book about the Buffalo-Style Gardens that have become the talk of the gardening world, especially among garden writers.

And it had to be the work of Buffalo’s most vocal promoters of Buffalo gardens – the writer Sally Cunningham and the writer/photographer Jim Charlier, published by St. Lynn’s Press in Pittsburgh.

To Enter the Give-away

Just leave a comment here or on GardenRant’s Facebook page about:

• Buffalo. Have you visited lately? Have you been to Garden Walk Buffalo?
• The gardens where YOU live. Is there anything distinctive about them or are you jealous that Buffalo has its own style and your city doesn’t?
• Or whatever you’d like to say.

Comment until close of business next Friday (2/15). I’ll pick one at random a week from today and email the winner.

I’ve browsed Buffalo-Style Gardens enough to see a few familiar gardens and even some familiar faces, which just made me want to see more.

Buffalo Memories

My times in Buffalo begin when the the four original or almost original GardenRanters had our first meet-up there, having decided to all attend and promote the 2007 Garden Walk that’s we’d loved reading about in Elizabeth’s posts. In fact it was her writing about the Walk that prompted us to ask her to join us just six months after the blog launched.

I love the photo above with, from left, Amy Stewart, Elizabeth Licata, me, and Michele Owens in Elizabeth’s garden but as for details about the partying that went on that weekend, what happens in Buffalo should probably stay in Buffalo. 

On a more professional note, we hired a real photographer – K.C. Kratt – to do some official group portraits. This one ran on the site for a long time and illustrated an article in a Washington Post called “Feisty Women Win Raves for Their Rants.” (Good times!)

Now for some of my favorite Buffalo garden shots from my three visits to Buffalo, all in mid- to late summer. Yes, I returned every chance I got to hang out with gardeners there – for the garden Blogger Fling in 2010 and the Garden Writers Association’s big annual conference in 2017.

Above, one of the most photographed gardens in the city, in the heart of the Cottage District.

I’ve used this photo countless times to illustrate the mid-summer glories of Russian sage, Rudbeckia and groundcover sedum.

This view of Jim Charlier’s garden is almost as famous as his shed, which in the forward to this book he claims to love almost as much as he loves his daughter (but don’t ask by how much).

 Above and below, the garden at a hospice facility, if memory serves.Having seen it in 2007, during the 2010 Fling I dragged my friend Gail Eichelberger and another blogger whose name I can’t locate to the garden, cocktails in hand. They loved it, too.

Above and below, it’s hard to believe these gardens are in the middle of a city.

My favorite thing about Buffalo gardens? They’re jam-packed with plants, water features and spots for socializing.

As I remember it, this garden has a bar, Tiki torches and protection from sun and rain. So despite summer showers, the partying goes on. That’s Jim Charlier in the very center, cocktail in hand.

Lordy, these photos are making me long for summer and for the garden parties that Buffaloans do best.

Buffalo Garden Book Give-Away and My Best Buffalo Shots originally appeared on GardenRant on February 6, 2019.

from GardenRant http://bit.ly/2UUafXJ

How to grow oats for cats

Fill Your Hands with Mud

 

Mary Oliver is my comfort this gray winter. I have been reading and rereading her poem “Rice”since her death last month.

I don’t want you just to sit down at the table.
I don’t want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with mud, like a blessing. 

I am not ready to fill my hands with cold mud.

My alarm clock does not go off in the morning with a cheerful benediction that I will be handed an extra two minutes and 16 seconds of sunshine today.

I am thankful for any sunny, winter day, but most days are cloudy. Some are bone-chilling 2F, whipsawed to the mid-60s  a few days later.

Back and forth.

Winters were gray and rainy in Kentucky long before Noah set sail.

I push off, hand on the rudder.

I troll for things brown—bark, foliage, seedpods, prairie grasses and mud.

Many of you will say, thank god for witch hazels, winter aconites,  hellebores and snowdrops. I love them, as well, though calling them spring harbingers sounds too much like a come-on—a one-day Black Friday deal at the outlet mall.

Early-blooming plants are an irresistible tease—road signs for the next round of cold and gray. Still, shades of brown govern Kentucky winters, mile after mile, until we reach a few weeks past the vernal equinox.

One day in April—I’m never sure which glorious day it will be— spring beauties and Virginia bluebells will come into bloom again.

Yellow buckeyes will unfurl their compound, palmate leaves from their fat, winter buds—one leaflet at a time.

Put your boots on.

Be patient.

Take the slow lane from darkness to light.

It will warm up.

When it does…

“Fill your hands with mud, like a blessing.”

 

Listen to Krista Trippett’s 2015 interview with Mary Oliver:

Mary Oliver — Listening to the World

Fill Your Hands with Mud originally appeared on GardenRant on February 6, 2019.

from GardenRant http://bit.ly/2MQj2XC

For the birds

Smart Lawns

I’m a Landscape Architecture Student!

I may have mentioned that I’ve gone back to college, taking classes at the University of Maryland campus near me, tuition-free.

I got my feet wet last semester with an art history course recommended by a friend. It was pure fun – learning things I’ll never need to know or will ever write about from a very lively and opinionated teacher.

But this week I began my first class in the building I’m supposed to be in – Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture – taking a course that might have been designed to appeal just to me – the History of Landscape – and I’m so psyched!

The teacher is Dr. Caren Yglesias, who worked in private practice before turning exclusively to teaching, most recently at Berkeley, and writing. Her books include ones about Steve Martino and Andrew Jackson Downing and a well-used text on materials and construction.

So here’s what I loved about her before I even knew all that – she has a career’s worth of knowledge and experience, assets typical of the growing ranks of adjunct professors. (The treatment of adjuncts is a hot topic, but not for this blog. Moving on.)

Also, I may pick up some fashion ideas from her; I aspire to her level of stylishness. Grandmothers rule!

Our one required textbook is The Course of Landscape Architecture by a European author, and all 13 of the sites it focuses on are from somewhere else. Not the U.S.

Caren (she insists) loves this book so I have high hopes (despite the boring cover, which seems to be mandatory for textbooks).

From our first reading I suspect that there may be more to it than exotic (to me) landscapes and hundreds of great photos – maybe a bit of ranting. I spotted this in the introduction:

“We ought to question the dominant moralistic posture behind the ecological and sustainable, and allow ourselves to demystify this version of nature critically, while acknowledging the reality of new necessities.” I’ll let you know. Who knows? I may be blogging the whole course.

I’m also curious to see how classes that prepare students to practice an actual profession are taught differently than the typical liberal arts classes I took in college. For example, instead of taking exams and writing papers, these students will research and present projects.

Tomorrow’s Landscape Architects
So what I’m looking forward to even more than the text are the students’ 10-minute presentations of their research projects about interesting landscapes, mostly in the DC area, many that I know well and have photographed throughout the season.

Most of all, I look forward to getting to know this diverse bunch of landscape architecture students, hearing about their reasons for entering the field and their various paths to it, like one young woman who, I learned, came to the plant world via military service. And another who already has his own business creating and maintaining organic edible gardens.

I’m a Landscape Architecture Student! originally appeared on GardenRant on February 1, 2019.

from GardenRant http://bit.ly/2RwkejJ