Hydrangea Time

I am somewhat embarrassed about how many posts I have devoted to hydrangeas over the past 8 years. Probably too many. The varieties, the care, the pruning-I have covered this shrub as if I were a preteen age groupie. I am embarrassed about my love for the whole lot of them, but so be it.  [...]

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The Pin Oak vs. Statues of Dead White Men by Allen Bush

Mike Hayman photo

Since the tragic weekend in Charlottesville, I have wondered why so few people have paid so little attention to trees. Much attention has been given to the argument about whether statues of Confederate soldiers should remain, be removed or re-located. A fallen tree here, another tree removed there. So what?

We at least were not burdened with statues of British generals.

Does anyone know of any American statues of British General Charles Cornwallis? Great Britain had its colonial supporters. Was there no desire to hearken back to the halcyon days of early British settlement in the New World?

An old oak tree was removed in Louisville a few weeks before the Charlottesville protests. It stood adjacent to St. Matthews Hardware. The small, independent hardware store was beloved, but the owner was ready to retire. The future odds were stacked in favor of big box stores for nuts and bolts. The property was sold. The store and the oak were taken down to make room for a bank.

The pin oak was somewhere between 75 and 100 years old. It looks older, but pin oaks are fast growers. A lot of pin oaks in Louisville were in decline, due to stress and disease, but this one had the makings of a survivor. Strong, resilient and adaptable to passing traffic spewing toxins into the Ohio Valley.

Louisville needs more trees, not fewer. It’s hard to plant them fast enough. The city has small cadres of tree activists, city employees and committed non-profits—plus nursery folks, neighborhood associations, developers and homeowners—who plant an estimated 10,000 trees a year. Their work is noble and good.

The effort puts a small dent in the overall need. (The city is losing an estimated 50,000 trees per year.) Tree planting goes unnoticed. There is little fanfare for trees or sorrow when they are lost. Louisville’s mayor could change that direction, but it’s a hard sell. Trees offer little political cover.

European settlers in North America pursued a cut and burn approach to trees. The frontier needed to be shaped for early white settlements. Crops had to be planted. Great Britain needed ship masts and timber from the new world.

Anyone interested in pursuing tree planting on a large scale today might be thrown into a marginalized Johnny Appleseed category—a spectrum from why-bother to crackpot.

Only in the last few weeks has it become curious to me—why there is there so little interest in living trees and so much interest in trying to save statues to preserve a culture of dead, white men?

Why not replace every Confederate with 3 trees?

The Pin Oak vs. Statues of Dead White Men originally appeared on Garden Rant on August 30, 2017.

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Monty Don’s 80 Plant Cultures of the World by Susan Harris

Monty Don has been getting an unusual amount of attention lately in the U.S., thanks to his provocative article “There’s no point trying to convince millennials to garden. Nobody wants to hear that but I suspect he’s right.

So who IS this guy? Here’s a quick bio on BBC 2’s website for their show “Gardener’s World.” 

Interesting guy, right? Here’s more.

He loves hedges, woodland, topiary, vegetables, fruit and all plants that capture a season, mood or spirit of place. He loathes houseplants, begonias and horticultural pedantry. His favourite gardeners are Derek Jarman, Juan Grimm, Jacques Wirtz, Fernando Caruncho and his wife Sarah. His favourite garden jobs are planting and cutting anything from grass to logs.

Just reading that, I want to look up all those gardeners his loves and then find out where I can watch Monty in action, which coincidentally I did a couple of months ago while browsing YouTube.

I discovered his 10-episode show “Around the World in 80 Gardens,” which is MUCH more interesting than that title had me expecting. Instead of seeing 80 famous gardens, viewers see and hear his interesting takes on plant cultures around the world, both ancient and present-day.

Episode 1 here covers Mexico – its wide range of flora, marigolds in the Day of the Dead festivals, how Aztecs gardened, floating gardens, planting in mud, plus spectacular gardens there today. In Monty’s words, the show is about people’s relationships to plants and it’s “challenging my idea of what a garden is.”

Contrasting Mexican gardens

Monty’s a terrific guide, thoughtful and enthusiastic but not afraid to criticize occasionally. (In one garden he’s upset by the “kitsch”).

I also watched Episode 5 here about the U.S., as I was dying to see how he tackled it. Curiously, I’d say. He visits a grand garden on Long Island, a New York City community garden, Central Park, a park in Queens, the Maryland garden of James van Sweden, Monticello, the Kansas prairie, California’s Huntington Garden and some over-the-top private gardens in Hollywood.

Beyond North America there’s lots more of the world – and Monty – available online. I’m saving these episodes for a cold night in January.

2: Australia and New Zealand.

3: India.

4: South America.

6: Japan and China.

7: The Mediterranean region

8: South Africa.

9: Northern Europe.

10: Southeast Asia.

Monty Don’s 80 Plant Cultures of the World originally appeared on Garden Rant on August 23, 2017.

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Hands off the hydrangeas by Elizabeth Licata

Arborescens (Annabelle?) hedge in Lake Placid

Thanks to plentiful rain and other friendly conditions, this is the summer of the Hydrangea in the Northeast, at least as far as I’ve observed. Huge stands of paniculata, macrophylla, and arborescens varieties are blooming profusely. My neighbor’s pink macrophylla blooms are easily a foot in circumference; it’s amazing they’re not pulling down the whole shrub. My macrophylla ‘Alpenglow’ doesn’t have huge blooms, but they are profuse and a rich, deep pink (changing now to deep rose-brown).

Macrophylla ‘Alpenglow’

Inevitably, during Garden Walk, this hydrangea attracts attention and questions. Many visitors seem to think there’s some kind of secret potion I’m pouring into the soil. Gardeners are routinely told by many nurseries that they must adjust the pH of the soil in order to achieve the hydrangea colors they desire. This is something I’ve never done, and all my surviving hydrangeas have remained exactly the same color promised on their labels when I bought them. Either I have the perfect soil for each shrub (seems unlikely) or the predisposition of the hybrids is maintaining consistent bloom color (seems likely).

Paniculata ‘Limelight’ earlier this season

It’s not color that people should worry about, especially with bigleafs. Many of the gardeners who visit me also complain that they never get blooms. I think this probably has to do more with weather and the natural urge of neatnik gardeners to cut back shrubs every chance they get. With macrophyllas, the buds form in late summer and must survive the winter and—even more dangerous—spring clean-up efforts. Basically, the first rule is do no harm. Some winter protection is often necessary, but that’s all I ever do. (I do prune my  paniculata and arborescens in very early spring.)

I went to my favorite source to learn about color change in hydrangeas, the Garden Professors Facebook page, and I found this statement by Linda Chalker-Scott: Genetics plays a large role in color and it’s not necessarily overcome by soil pH. In her article here, it’s clear how complex hydrangea coloration can be. What I got from it is that it might be best to leave such manipulation to the scientists, and buy strong, reliably colored hybrids.

And hope we get another year like this one.

Hands off the hydrangeas originally appeared on Garden Rant on August 22, 2017.

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The Garden In August

I have a hot mess of a perennial garden at home. I have tinkered with it for 20 years, and it still is a hot mess. Not that I mind the mess. Minding a garden is an ongoing experience like no other. The moves I have made towards a reasonably good design are as follows. [...]

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GWA/Buffalo Take-Aways by Susan Harris

Buffalo!

Time for a debrief after attending the Garden Writers annual shindig held in Buffalo this year – to the delight of anyone who’s been there in the last decade or so and the apprehension of anyone who hasn’t. Yeah, Buffalo had lots of doubters, but boy did that city shut them up!

As a Buffalo booster myself, I’m was not surprised but so pleased to hear the raves for the city’s beauty, architecture, liveliness, private gardens and wild enthusiasm for gardening. For pure garden-viewing, everyone’s favorite seemed to be Buffalo’s famous Cottage District. Attendees are now flooding the Internet with images like these from one of my earlier visits.

But I heard at least as many raves for the Darwin Martin House Complex by Frank Lloyd Wright, possibly the best Prairie House of his in the U.S. One Facebook commenter called it “jaw-dropping” and that it was. So thanks to the organizers for including it our otherwise garden-focused visits around town. Its Tree of Life windows alone quality it for any garden tour. (We couldn’t take photos inside but this video includes the interior.)

 

 

Another attraction for us and something new since my last visit to Buffalo in 2010 is the lively Canalside development, where I played hooky one morning to stroll the boardwalk and be awed by the confluence of so many bodies of water in one spot. (Lake Erie, the Buffalo and Niagara Rivers and the canal itself.)

Awards Night!

The highlight of the symposium for me was the awards banquet, for which we all dressed up – somewhat, given that gardeners are a decidedly wardrobe-challenged cohort.

I got to see my Seattle pal Linda Chalker-Scott receive GWA’s first award for science-writing, an award suggested by Carol Michel, who’s shown here with Linda. (Go, science!!) Another first-ever award was for sustainability, which went to Paul Tukey. Both are great additions to the awards roster because they promote important values for us as a profession.

And that’s me in hot pink with out-going GWA president Kirk Brown and the head of a buffalo. I was included in the photo line-up because my video-curating campaign won an award and boy, did that make the evening fun for me! I’d never felt so included or so enthusiastic about GWA. (Go, awards!)

How to Survive a Conference

After years of gardening conferences I think I’ve finally figured out how to get the most out of one while being me – an introvert with short bursts of sociability.

• The just-right duration for me is four days/three nights.
• It’s okay to go rogue and wander off alone to see the city.
• It’s also okay to sit alone on a bus, which frees you up to talk to everyone around you or, as the day wears on, no one.
• Having no dinner plans one night, I cruised the hotel lobby for dinner companions and the result was seven new acquaintances, at least. It just took getting over the social awkwardness of saying “Can I join you?” to strangers.
• And carefully studying the agenda paid off for me. I heard the smartest people on topics of most interest to me and learned a lot. (Shout-out to Debra Prinzing and Nan Sterman, proven geniuses at creating communities online.)

Kudos!

The reviews are in and confirm my own impression that GWA/Buffalo was fabulous! Credit goes to too many people to name but at the top of the list are these folks.

Sally Cunningham, Buffalo’s gardening maven and simply wonderful person, headed up the local organizing team. Kirk Brown’s stewardship of GWA this past year has been outstanding. And the pink ladies now managing GWA are great at their jobs. Indeed, GWA’s new management team has more than lived up to my hopes for them when I wrote “Why I Rejoined Garden Writers” back in January of 2016.

GWA’s on a roll, folks, and with leadership like this for the coming year, I have no doubt the roll will continue. We got a hint of it when incoming president Becky Heath spoke, sang, and energized the crowd at the end of the awards banquet.

And next year, Chicago! I’ll be there.

GWA/Buffalo Take-Aways originally appeared on Garden Rant on August 18, 2017.

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Rant from the road: resort horticulture by Elizabeth Licata

Mirbeau

Vacations are always busmens’ holidays for gardeners. Whether it’s a tropical paradise, a stateside resort, or a European capital, gardeners can’t help but notice what’s planted, where it’s planted, and how well it’s designed. We don’t actually work on the gardens where we stay, but we’re doing it in our heads.

Over the past week, I’ve been on holiday in New York state: Skaneateles, Clayton (1000 Islands), Lake Placid, Saratoga Springs, and Geneva, on a more-or-less circular itinerary. And what a beautiful set of localities they are. We’ve visited a few of these places before, and I have to say the plantings (and other amenities) just get better and better.

Number #1 is the Mirbeau property in Skaneateles. The buildings (meant to resemble French country architecture and succeeding remarkably well) surround a large lily pond, filled with koi. All of the areas between the buildings and the pond are thickly planted. Though the inspiration is (loosely) Monet’s gardens, hence all the waterlilies, the surrounding perennials are mostly native plants, including Rudbeckia, Echinacea, Eutrochium, and (my favorite) magnificent stands of Vernonia (ironweed). There were other natives, as well as hosta, hellebore, and hemerocallis. The thing I love most is that very little effort seems to have been made to maintain the ordered beds one usually sees at resorts, such as those found at a later stop in Lake Placid, the Inn at Mirror Lake. At Mirbeau, the plants run riot, as one of the gardeners we spoke to readily admitted, with some compunction. (There are about 4 maintaining the roughly 2.5 acre property.)

Ironweed

Elsewhere we saw goofy heart-shaped beds of annuals (at the creepy but magnificent) Boldt Castle, wild native lilies (along the roadside) and everywhere, gigantic hydrangea. This is the biggest hydrangea season I’ve seen in many years. And I don’t want to diss ordered beds: Mirror Lake does a great job on theirs. With a gorgeous lake right there, surrounded by mountains, it’s not necessary to compete too strenuously.

Inn at Mirror Lake

New York state has been looking pretty good to me these days.

Rant from the road: resort horticulture originally appeared on Garden Rant on August 17, 2017.

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