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Archive for the Janet Macunovich tag
Janet's Journal: Double Your Perennials, Double Your Fun
June 5, 2018 • Leave a Comment
Pair perennials properly to create superb companion plantings
Crocus, a spring-blooming lark, has an additional qualification for doubling up: It has a shallow root and so can be paired with tap-rooted myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites).
Quamash (Camassia leichtlinii) is a lark, a spring-blooming bulb of wet places. When it fades into dormancy, it can be covered by a late rising, moisture-loving owl: boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum; foliage in the foreground). Boneset is a relative of another, better known owl, Joe Pye weed.
Doubling up on perennials. It's the designer's color-hungry attempt to copy and even improve on nature. Nature, which blankets the ground below trees with spring ephemerals and populates a prairie with low-growing vernal species among taller, later-blooming types. In both instances two perennial groups co-exist harmoniously. The spring species live fast and finish their business as the summer crowd takes over. The summer species graciously shed their leaves or topple to the ground at year's end, letting in light to fuel the next cycle.
The designer who doubles up perennials will plant two species where one might be expected to fit, pairing them in one of several ways:
A) Larks with owls: One species that starts and finishes early in the season with another that comes on later. Larks often have a summer dormancy, or don't suffer when the gardener cuts them back hard early, to make room for the owl.
B) Layered species: One wide, ground floor occupant below a narrow high-riser.
C) Equitable competitors: A shallow root scrambler with a deep or tap root, each drawing on different levels for water and nutrients, and the scrambler able to move out of the way as the other grows.
The concept is simple. Yet it is an attempt to copy natural elegance so it requires observation, patient trial and a certain ingenuity in execution. I coined the phrase "doubling up" for my garden design classes. So here are some successful doubles and the most important practical lessons I've learned along the way.
Perennial alyssum, left, is not only a tap root plant but a ground floor specialist. Thus it doubles-up well with a shallow-rooted high riser such as Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum, right).
Be a matchmaker.
In the accompanying chart are species for doubling up, each with its qualifications listed – lark, owl, ground floor, high riser, tap root or shallow-rooted scrambler. Any species that rates a check in the "lark" column (A1) is a suitable candidate for pairing with an "owl" (A2). High risers (B1) can double up with any ground floor specialist (B2). Tap roots (C1) are right to be teamed up with shallow root scramblers (C2).
Always plan for "Right Plant, Right Place."
In making these pairings, I leave it to you to familiarize yourself with a species' cultural requirements—amount of sun, moisture needs and soil preference. I trust you've already learned the lesson that it only pays to plant where you know the species will thrive, so you'll pair off plants only if you know they both suit the site, or you'll modify the site. For instance, oriental poppy, a lark, can share space beautifully with the owl, hardy hibiscus, but only if you can meet the former's need for deep, well-drained soil, plus keep that soil moist enough to satisfy hibiscus, a native of damp pond edges.
Aim for more than one qualifier.
Plants get along in crowded quarters even better if they have compatible adaptive characteristics from two or even three of the categories. For example, balloon flower as a high riser does well with ground floor rock cress. You will learn to recognize the match is more sure when you see that it also pairs a tap-rooted owl (balloon flower) with a shallow-rooted free ranging species that does its growing in late winter (evergreens have that advantage!) and early spring.
I might also pair balloon flower with hybrid pinks for the high rise/ground floor match, but I'd be less confident of success. Neither is shallow-rooted so they will compete with each other more than is good. Also, because the pinks can't scramble—i.e. move readily by surface-rooting stems into better space when conditions such as shade from a growing partner becomes greater in one spot than another—it will be a bit slow to react to openings in the balloon flower's "canopy," suffer more thin spots, and be less vigorous overall.
Lark and owl: The lark, Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica, left), is a great match for the owl, Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum, right), because both are at home in the shade.
Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is another late-rising owl, excellent for covering the departure of larks such as tulips and daffodils.
Wait to see who wins.
Yet you should keep an open mind as you pair the plants and avoid making snap judgments once you're growing the doubled-up combination. Some pairings will test your determination, requiring the patient trial I mentioned earlier. I call this period "see who wins" even though what I always hope for is a long-term balance of power.
When one plant is slower growing than the other, but persistent enough to endure, it's all a matter of time. Tap-rooted, high riser gas plant increases so slowly that it may be years before it's a visually wonderful match with shallow-rooted, ground floor sedum 'Vera Jameson,' but that day is almost sure to come.
However, when the paired plants are both vigorous growers, it's best during the wait and see period to adopt the laissez-faire of a really good kindergarten teacher. Watch and tolerate rambunctious individuals so they have leeway to grow, and step in only when one's assertiveness becomes a threat to another's growth. Stepping in between plants may involve judicious cutting back during the season, yearly thinning, or staking the lark to allow the owl to emerge with straight stems.
Consider once more the oriental poppy/hardy hibiscus double up. Through a wait-and-see strategy, I learned that a slow-growing pink cultivar of oriental poppy may coexist peacefully with hibiscus, but the rampant red-orange standard doesn't play nice and will abuse a well-mannered partner if I turn my back. One year, I planted both types of poppy, each with a hibiscus companion. The pink poppy and its hibiscus are still happy campers seven years later, without any interference from me. The red-orange beast, however, acts like a red tide and would reduce its hibiscus partner to a tired swimmer trying to keep her nose up to that crimson surface, except that I act as referee.
So I wade into my red-orange poppy every June as the flower petals fall to remove that foliage before its time. I grasp each cluster of poppy leaves and stalks, then give a sharp tug to break it off below soil level. I learned that this does not kill the poppy, just slows its spread. It does free the emerging hibiscus shoots from the poppy's shade. I can almost hear the hibiscus gulp in air as I pull the poppy out of the way.
Tap root and shallow. The category "tap root" doesn't always mean a single, straight root but a root that is deep. Hybrid lily, left, has a deeper root than perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum a.k.a. Conoclinium coelestinum, right), so the two can co-exist harmoniously.
Accommodate the staggered start.
Some pairings involve plants that are best planted in a certain season—bulbs in fall, the first sowing of a self-seeding annual in spring. Yet you may want to plant their double up counterpart earlier or later. Or you may decide to try doubling up beginning with an established plant in your garden. The challenge is to insert the second plant and insure its good start but cause minimal disturbance to the first.
It can be a puzzle to do this with bulbs, especially the big ones. The plants they double so well with are often in full, glorious bloom at bulb-planting time. Perhaps tiny bulbs can be shoehorned in with a narrow trowel, but the gardener can't bear to insert a spade and ruin that show. The best answer I've found is to wait until November to add the bulbs. Then the new additions still have time to get established before their debut, yet I'm less hesitant to plant in the other plant's midst.
The reverse of that situation, planting an owl companion in spring among already established larks, is also difficult. Digging to place a one-gallon container of Japanese anemone among bulbs is likely to destroy or at least set the bulbs way back. When working among spring bloomers, it's more do-able to trowel in several three-inch pots, small divisions of a late riser perennial, or the smallest available cell packs of an annual, or simply sow seeds between the established plants.
Sometimes you do have space at ground level for digging, but the air space is full of stems of established plants. You have to be a terrific lightfoot to avoid bending or snapping stalks as you work in that already tight place. I find elastic tarp straps helpful for cinching in existing plants, temporarily reducing their girth while I plant between them.
Have fun but don't go broke!
Which brings me to one final, practical aspect of doubling up—the cost. It's more costly than conventional planting because you plant two for one and there is always the chance that a pairing will fail. That consideration, along with the knowledge that small plugs make better double ups, keeps me always on the look-out for small starts at garden centers and plants that can be divided to plant as double ups. You can also do some begging of perennial divisions from fellow gardeners. Since you'll request only very small divisions, perhaps your friends will be more likely to say yes. Then you can cut your costs even as you double your perennial show!
Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: companion planting, Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal, perennials
Janet's Journal: The Value of a Garden
May 17, 2018 • 1 Comment
This "rain garden" full of wetland plants was installed to catch run-off water and let it be filtered by soil and roots rather than sluiced directly into the storm drains with its full load of road-collected pollutants.
Standing in my garden where she'd come to see a plant and size it up for inclusion in her own collection, my client spread her arms to encompass the whole yard and said, "Let's have it all. What would it cost to do all this at my place?"
Given the size and basic composition of a garden—mostly perennials, perennials and annuals, shrubs and perennials, etc.—I can answer with a dollar figure. Yet I hate to, as it puts such a definitive edge on a garden. With a price tag neatly tied to one corner, a garden seems comparable to any other item that can be bought and sold.
Call me a gardening addict, all mixed up by too long an association with landscape architect Thomas Church's proclamation, "The only limits to a garden are at the edges of your imagination." For I think putting a dollar figure on a garden is too simplistic, that the other strings attached are more important and make it a far more complex consideration.
For my client, under the impression that a checkbook could transplant my garden to her property, I would say, "It's not just the money, it could change your life, and your family, fundamentally, in many ways we should talk about."
What is it worth toward family harmony that there is an outdoor room where people made memories together?
Diversity is a great mental stimulator, and attraction to life in general. The more species diversity there is in a landscape, the more interesting will be the life forms that gather there. A garden has far more diversity than basic lawn and shrubs, so it can support butterflies and their predators as well, like the praying mantis shown here.
How much value can be assigned to the health of the gardener, who is drawn to go outside and putter. It's been estimated that gardening and jogging burn an equivalent amount of calories, but gardening uses more muscle groups and imparts less forceful impact on the knees!
Shouldn't the garden get credit when a child steps into an exciting, influential career in life sciences?
Hidden value to the person and the family
What is it worth, after all, that families stay together through shared memories because they have an outdoor room to enjoy and recall as stage and backdrop for important events?
Health is priceless, but poor health's costs are harshly defined in drugstore and doctor bills. Should we begrudge the money spent on a garden whose upkeep brings us physical well being? It gives us better muscle tone through bending and stretching, strengthens our respiratory and circulatory systems by providing regular opportunities to rake and wheelbarrow, and when we're ill, helps us recover more quickly. (Studies in hospitals have linked shorter stays and lower use of pain-killers to the view from a patient's room—those in rooms with a view to greenery left sooner, having taken less medication, than those with windows looking out onto other buildings or hardscapes.) Should we simply use our gardening money for a health club membership instead? Or invest it wisely since eventual health care costs will be exponentially greater?
What about the value of stress relief, mental health and imagination? Just looking at greenery has been proven to slow the heart rate and increase the alpha brain waves associated with relaxation, creative thinking and problem solving. Being in direct physical contact with plants is even more powerful, as any mental health care practitioner will tell you who uses horticulture as therapy for patients.
Let's add something for that one child who lives in or visits that garden and takes an important mental leap after a gardener explains something like the fact that a seedling plant may not be just like its parent. When that first peek into the field is the child's stepping stone to a career as a top level genetic researcher, why not credit his or her lifetime salary and awards to our garden's output?
Connectivity and resources for the community
Influence is worth something, and gardens are notably influential in a neighborhood. Eventually most gardeners see it, how their use of flowers or attention to lawn and shrubs catches on in nearby properties. Even in the most dilapidated neighborhood, it's the home with the neat yard that garners respect and gradually raises the standards for everyone. The existence of a garden is both incentive and deterrent—studies in urban Los Angeles indicate that graffiti and other building defacement happens less where there are diverse, tended plantings.
Communication is more lively and there's more camaraderie in neighborhoods where people are seen in the yard and lean on the fence to exchange news. The gardener who is outdoors regularly is likely to be an essential link in passing the word during emergencies small and large, from lost dogs to missing children. That person is more likely to notice and sound an alarm when things look wrong. Little things like a nod and a greeting, more important ones like acknowledging big changes in one's life from the birth of children to loss of loved ones—these are the vital links that bind us, activities more likely to involve gardeners than people shuttered with their home entertainment systems.
To save time and money you can change front yard gardens (above) back into sod (below) but what will you lose in mental stimulation, wildlife habitat and eye-relief by reducing the species diversity?
Cleaner environment
Gardeners tend to reach out and spread the green. Every year, garden clubs, Master Gardeners, volunteer foresters and informal teams in southeast Michigan are responsible for hundreds of new trees and acres of colorful displays, planted free or at a very low cost. These plantings open minds at libraries, heighten the image at civic centers, increase enjoyment and learning at zoos, parks and museums, and help ease the pain at hospitals and convalescent centers.
Where diverse plantings are, there are more birds. Proven by federal studies to be highly effective weed-seed eaters and bug catchers, they're also heart-lifting singers of song who just can't survive on grass alone.
Cleaner air is one of the benefits we all reap from gardens. The gas-scrubbing powers of green growing things has been proven many times over, but the garden's effect on air quality goes beyond that. Every square foot of garden is one foot that might be tended without the use of power mowers and string trimmers, machines that are dirtier than cars in terms of emissions—and noisy to boot.
Gardens purify water, too. At a conservative estimate, every 100 square feet of garden in Michigan can absorb and filter 720 gallons of water per year that would have run rapidly off of hardpan sod or paved surfaces. As run-off, that water would have sluiced away into storm drains loaded with pollutants such as oil drips from vehicles and animal feces. As we've learned through increasingly common notices of beach closings, what goes into storm drains often flows directly into streams and lakes, and sometimes finds its way back into the drinking water supply. Absorbed into the loose, receptive soil in a garden, that water will not run but fall gently through a cleansing filter of soil particles and roots to have all or most of its pollutants stripped away before it returns to groundwater, wells, streams or lakes.
Every day in one way or another, a garden increases in value.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: exercise, health, Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal, price, value of a garden
Janet's Journal: An Introduction to Green Roofs
Left, Liatris, butterfly weed and 148 other drought- and heat-tolerant species cover 20,000 square feet atop Chicago City Hall. Green roofs fight smog by cooling the buildings under them and the city as a whole.
Here's what I've learned about green roofs for you and me.
Going green does cut heat, thus reducing smog and its attendant miseries. Tests in Toronto, Chicago, Seattle and other cities prove this cooling effect. Chicago City Hall went green in 2001 while the county building, a mirror image twin next door, still cooks under asphalt. Air temperature, humidity and the intensity of solar radiation are monitored on both roofs, but I was there and did not have to look at a thermometer to know I was 50 to 55 degrees cooler on City Hall. In Evanston, Illinois, the difference between the leaf-topped Optima Building roof and its neighbors' has been almost 100 degrees on occasion. In Toronto, a billion square feet of roof absorbs and radiates enough heat to keep the city 7 to 18 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. Readings from test buildings there have fueled computer models that show there could be 3 degrees of cooling if just 6 percent of the roofs went green.
The conventional asphalt roof on Cook County Building is now in stark contrast to Chicago City Hall, its mirror image twin next door. Temperature, humidity and stormwater runoff figures collected from building pairs like this provide the proof that green roofs can make a big improvement in air quality.
Green roofs have direct payoffs, too. The building beneath stays cooler so air conditioning costs drop. The thick top is good insulation, so heating bills may be less. It insulates against sound, too—airport neighbors, take note.
A planted roof lasts longer since the planted layer buffers wind, sun and fast temperature swings. Flat and minimally-pitched roofs, the best candidates for green systems, may last twice as long as conventional caps. In Germany, where green roofs have been in place over thirty years, 14 percent of new buildings in this style are going green. Building owners no longer plan to reroof every 15 years, but expect upper crusts to remain sound for 30 years.
All these numbers are good, but don't come cheap. A green roof costs $9 to $18 per square foot—excluding soil mix and plants. All told, topping a building this way is a 30 to 60 percent bigger investment than conventional roofing. Just look at the construction details to see why.
More conventional rooftop gardens, like this one designed by the author, are also valuable in reducing air temperatures, purifying the air and improving the view and attitude of the neighbors. In every green roof, 50 percent or more of the water that falls on planted surfaces is taken up by the plants, reducing the strain on overloaded, contamination-troubled storm drains.
In the north Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, a retail store named The Garden Room is roofed with an intensive planting system, meaning it has deeper planting areas than those with extensive systems. Its 18-inch depth of soil mix can support trees, shrubs and perennials.
A green roof consists of up to ten layers. First, a protective mat goes down on the roof itself—not to protect the roof but to prevent punctures to the second layer, a waterproof membrane. Over the waterproof membrane is another protective mat, then a root barrier, perhaps some insulation, a drainage layer of gravel or waffle-like panels, and a filter pad to keep fine particles of soil out of the drainage layer. Then there's the planting medium—usually soilless and 3 to 18 inches deep. Last come plants and a woven mulch blanket to keep the planting medium from blowing away until the plants cover it completely.
There are two kinds of green roof. Extensive systems consist solely of shallow rooted plants like sedum. Ford Motor Company's huge building in the Rouge Complex has an extensive system. An intensive system has deeper planting spaces able to support many kinds of plants, even small trees.
I'd like to walk on and dabble in my own roof plantings, so the roof must be engineered to hold more weight. I once computed the weight of a roof garden I designed, which meant estimating saturated weights of soil mixes, root balls, perennials, trees, mulch, planter boxes and statuary. An engineer from the architectural firm added my garden's weight to snow load and other factors, and designed for a "dead load" of 250 pounds per square foot. That's twice what some roofs are designed to hold and it's all reflected in construction costs.
The Garden Room's roof is a sales area, where decorative pots, plants, art and furniture can be displayed among more permanent plantings chosen for drought and heat tolerance. Community groups are also encouraged to make use of sitting areas on the roof for meetings.
Yet I still think this idea is worth pursuing. I'll be proud to do more toward water purity, by living beneath plants that will use half or more of the water that falls on the roof. Every drop they use is that much less water cascading through downspouts and into storm sewers. Less water running that route means fewer pollutants swept into rivers and lakes.
Maintenance details are still elusive. Roof owners and industry promoters I've interviewed admit that care is required – weeding out undesirable plants, for instance. Since weed trees sprout even in our gutters, it's no surprise to hear they'll grow on a green roof. What no one seems yet willing to describe are the tactical details. Does killing a weed up there mean spraying it with a herbicide—not my bag!—because pulling it would disturb the soil mix? If I pull weeds do I have to keep carting replacement soil mix up to the roof?
There's plant replacement, too. Even the most drought-tolerant plants above the most clever water-reserving drainage system may fail and need replacing. I'm still seeking figures, which may just mean waiting a year or so. Chicago's very helpful, education-oriented project began with 150 species and the project managers intend to publish performance evaluations on all of them.
That leaves only the roof repair angle. What if the membrane springs a leak? It's vulnerable at the same places my old roof is—where chimney and roof meet, for instance. Will calling someone to make repairs be like trying to find someone to fix our solar panel? A solar panel fixer's as rare as a blue poppy, even though solar technology was supported by government incentives in the 1970s. America's green roof industry is light years behind Germany's where 43 percent of cities offer incentives to build them.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: environment, green, green roof, Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal, sustainability
Janet's Journal: Troubled times for the white pine, Michigan's state tree
April 3, 2018 • 5 Comments
It is important to differentiate between white pine decline, and normal fall color, shown here.
A healthy white pine is full and dark green.
Many people in Michigan have noticed the yellowing and thin appearance of white pines that have stood sentinel and provided shade for decades. Some who didn't recognize those earlier symptoms will see the first sign of this region-wide white pine problem as a dead tree.
What horticultural professionals have noticed in the Midwest, including southern lower Michigan and some areas further north on the mitten, is best described as white pine decline.
Decline is reduced vigor, below-normal functioning and slower growth in a tree when those symptoms can't be attributed to a specific disease or insect. Trees in decline may fall prey to insect or disease problems because they are weak, but those are additional complications rather than causes of decline.
A tree may decline for many years. If its situation doesn't improve, it may exhaust its lifetime starch reserves and begin to exhibit dieback—which looks just like it sounds and often ends in death.
I first noticed white pine decline in the mid 1990s. Many white pines yellowed suddenly, alarmingly and at least one 40-year-old tree on a property I garden died. Based on the positions of the most afflicted trees relative to northwest winds and open ground, and a severe winter that had just passed, I attributed the problems to cold-related root damage. Others came to the same conclusion and experience since then seems to support this.
When placed side by side, braches from stressed and unstressed pines exhibit noticeable differences.
Advanced dieback has occurred on this white pine tree.
Do you remember February, 1996? The white pines do! On the night of February 2-3, temperatures from the Great Plains to New England dropped to lows never seen before or not seen for 40 years. That week, the outbreak of Arctic air set nearly 400 record daily minimums and at least 15 all-time lows in the eastern U.S. Wind chills of -50 and -100 degrees were common.
In southeast Michigan, the mercury plummeted 15 to 20 degrees in just a few hours on a night when there was not even a trace of snow to insulate the soil. Branches and trunks of some plants died, and the frost knifing suddenly and deeply into the unprotected soil killed roots even on hardy, established plants.
This healthy branch shows the normal retention of needles for three years.
By spring, gardeners would be mourning the loss or severe damage of thousands of decades-old Japanese maples, and finding privet hedges, rose of Sharon shrubs and even stalwarts such as old junipers dead or killed to the ground. Plants hurt but not killed would begin the slow process of regenerating roots and limbs only to be socked with drought years, one after another.
Shallow-rooted plants like white pine may have been worst hit. Left with fewer roots than they should have, they were not likely to take up enough water and nutrients to fuel regrowth. They were in trouble even if drought had not begun to compound the loss.
Six years later, my tally sheet of all the white pines I see regularly in my travels and those I tend reads this way: Some of the first-affected died and many are still struggling. Some which did not initially show symptoms developed them during subsequent drought years. Only a few recovered. Very few escaped all damage.
This white pine, next to the spruce on the right, is yellow and thin—signs of decline.
In its bulletin, "Decline of White Pine in Indiana," Purdue University Cooperative Extension reported, "white pine decline… has been a problem for many landscapes in Indiana. …Declining trees usually look a pale green, or even yellowish, compared to healthy trees. Needles are often shorter than normal; sometimes the tips of needles turn brown. Needles from a previous season often drop prematurely, giving the tree a tufted appearance.
"With loss of needles, the tree has a reduced ability to produce the energy it needs to survive…
"With severe or compounding stress factors, the tree may gradually decline and eventually die. Decline may be gradual or rapid, depending on the number and severity of stress factors."
University of Missouri Extension made similar reports like this one from August, 1999: "We have received many white pine samples into the Extension Plant Diagnostic Clinic this year… from mature white pines, about 20 to 30 years old that are in a state of decline. …Other Midwestern clinics have also seen (this) and have been unable to explain most cases of decline…"
"We therefore believe… that the problems we are seeing with white pine may be related to environmental factors and site conditions… such as heat, stress, drought, flooding and sudden extremes in temperature and moisture."
Note that experts don't lay full blame on the cold but on a combination of causes. Ironically, reliable cold and snowier winters may have worked in some trees' favor.
Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and the southeasternmost part of Michigan, which have all seen many white pine problems since the 1996 freeze and subsequent droughts, are south of white pine's native range. Since a species' native range is delineated at least in part by climate, we know that something about the weather in our area is probably not optimal for white pine. A record-breaking warm-up that came after the 1996 cold snap may be one of the climatological events these trees can't handle. Two weeks after the freeze, all across the area affected by decline, temperatures jumped into the 70s, 80s and 90s. For the most part, white pines growing where there was the usual reliable snow-cover or where the warmest air didn't reach, fared better.
What happened to the white pines was outside current experience, on a scale so broad that few had the perspective to be able to recognize it. Now that we look back and know how long a tree has been declining which we just noticed this year, we can wish we knew more earlier, but it won't get us anywhere.
So if you have a troubled white pine, have it inspected by an arborist. Rule out disease and insect problems. Give it the help it needs to fight any secondary problems. Do what you can to alleviate underlying stresses.
Establish a regular watering routine and fertilize the tree in early spring to see if it responds. Aerate the soil if it's compacted. Be pleased if the tree reacts positively, but be realistic about its chances and your needs. Many of these trees are years past their point of no return. Even those which respond positively to treatment may take many years to recover.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: decline, Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal, Michigan, Southeast, White Pine
Janet's Journal: Gardening and Growing Older Gracefully
July 5, 2017 • 9 Comments
High-maintenance perennial beds can be changed over to, or allowed to become, groundcover and shrub areas. These at the Laudenslager residence contribute foliage color, texture and other benefits, yet require far less care than typical flower gardens.
Virginia Smith poses sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) as an example of an acceptable weed that succeeds on many levels. It fills in bare spaces, cohabiting agreeably here with blue-blooming Ajuga repens, and also offers features the older gardener learns to appreciate. "It's so pretty in shape, foliage color and texture; it's not just a bloom thing."
When I was just five years old, Mrs. Kissinger's age was as definite to me as my own. She was old. Grandparent old. Hair in a bun, crinkly-eye old. I can still hear the quaver in that voice that coached me to recognize weeds, and see the wrinkles on the fingers that pinched an apron into a sling for picking peas. The gold seal on the certificate of age I fashioned for her was that she could call my Dad "Johnny" and "son."
She always seemed to be smiling when she was in the garden. Recently that memory has become a stand-out, a marked contrast to some of what I've been seeing in myself and my friends as we acquire age.
I see fretting ("This is just too much work anymore") and hear worry ("That bed's gotten totally out of control"). I've commiserated with others over keeping up with the over-ambitious creations of our own youth. Worst, in contemplative moments I've recognized in my own negative thoughts the same whines and crying I've heard from and disdained in others.
Nigella (Nigella damescena) is one of the plants that Virginia Smith and Wil Strickland call an acceptable weed. It has redeeming physical features and will seed itself into bare spaces before weedier species can do that.
This is not a new phenomenon, this reconciliation of garden and gardener over time. Gardeners have made this life passage before. Some, like Mrs. Kissinger, smiled as they went and their gardens reflected that contentment and calm. She found a way to accept the realities, anticipate the challenges, make the changes, and grow old gracefully.
It's been my good fortune as a professional gardener to work with many people and to see many approaches to this phase of gardening. I've bailed out gardeners who made commitments beyond their physical means or who fell temporarily behind because of an illness or injury. I've worked regularly with individuals who need help on certain tasks but not others. I've even drawn and executed designs aimed specifically at reducing work for older or less able hands. Most important to me, I've had the privilege of working once again for the smiling older gardener and the wise gardener approaching age. I can understand the need and their advice. Here is what they say.
Judith Mueller's life philosophy helps her to garden as gracefully now as she did 30 years ago. She views gardening as a continual choice, made each year. How she gardens each year changes with her own situation that year.
Judith Mueller: Making Choices, Keeping Fit
Judith Mueller doesn't have a grand plan to garden forever, even though she thinks she will. She takes one season at a time.
Even before she became an empty nester and grandparent, certain of her friends would come over, look at her extensive gardens and say, "You're crazy! How do you keep this up?"
Her response has always been, "It's what I choose to do with my time."
"I know that a garden doesn't all have to be done today. It's an ongoing process and it's not over until I say it's over.
"So I looked at what shape the gardens were in and decided what I could do myself, what I needed to get help for, and what I can let go of and let someone else do. This year that meant I looked around and got help edging and mulching. Someday I might have to cut back, maybe on the size of my beds. Or maybe I'll have to ask for more help. But I don't think about that now because for this year I can handle it.
Just one of the reasons Mueller feels gardening is important is that, "It keeps us mentally alert and healthier." Her career in a medical profession makes her especially aware of how much good her hobby does her. "I don't get aches and pains like I know some people do. And people ask me things like 'How did you lift that?' So I know I must be strong and healthy for my age."
Mueller advises that gardeners who want to keep going, keep fit all year. "Don't rely on gardening alone to keep you in shape through the off season. I'd rather not have to work out, but gardening, especially spring work, can be really overwhelming as you get older, if you're not in some kind of shape."
Recuperating from a heart attack forced Wil Strickland to take a step back and assess not only his garden but his place in it. "I flit from job to job more now," he says. "I don't try to weed a whole bed at once, just to fill one bucket with weeds. People who come to your garden will forgive your weeds."
Wil Strickland: Forced to Look
Wil Strickland, whose garden and face are well known in Ann Arbor, laughed when I asked for his input. "It's ironic you should ask me about how I cope with gardening now that I've had a heart attack. Because right now I have never felt better and may be healthier than I've ever been in my life. But you're right, I have had to look at things differently, and I have made some changes."
He makes four recommendations.
One: Choose your weeds. Pick willing spreaders that you can easily identify and don't mind having in your garden, and let those go ahead and take over. Something like forget-me-nots will merrily fill in bare spaces, choking out what would be less welcome weeds.
Two: Mulch. You can't ever do enough of it. As you approach the golden years, beef up your garden, too, so there is less space between plants, less room for weeds to get started.
Three: Start eliminating high-maintenance plants any time. Those plants that need the most work—dividing or pruning or fending off pests—are the ones you should let go. Switch to lower-care plants, such as shrubs and groundcover combinations. You don't want to be in that situation Strickland cites, "with a garden full of plants you love but can't possibly maintain anymore. There are so many plants you can try that you might surprise yourself and find out roses or irises aren't the only things that can make you happy."
Four: Garden in big pots. "It's the ultimate answer," says Strickland. "You can do floral arrangements, or grow vegetables or anything you want. Perhaps you'll need to have someone help you set them out, but they can be set anywhere without worrying about whether the mower can get around them, they don't need edging and they're a wonderful height!"
"I don't kneel any more, I bend, says Virginia Smith. I keep an open mind about what I can do even though I can't do it the same way I once did."
Virginia Smith: Happy to Work
Mueller and Strickland are both starting down a path that Virginia Smith found years ago. "Attitude is the most important thing you need to keep gardening gracefully, which is what I like to think I'm doing. It's one of those things you have to accept. I think of so many things I did so easily a few years ago that I wouldn't even attempt now. But rather than railing about what I can't do, I say look at all I can do."
Smith gets help a couple of times a year, with big seasonal jobs like mulching and pruning. But most things she keeps doing herself, making little changes all the time in how she does the work. "I can't get on my knees anymore, so I bend over to plant. After a period of time my back gets tired so then I go do some pruning, which uses a different set of muscles and a different mindset."
Make paths wider and easier to walk, like this one at the Sapelak residence. Youthful greediness leads to narrow paths, as we covet every square foot for yet another plant. Wide paths are wiser, and more generous. They are low care and make navigation easier for both wheelbarrow and wheelchair.
Changes in the garden itself have also allowed Smith to keep gardening. "I use a lot more annuals than I used to, and I've designated some spots that are just for annuals, spots that are not too big but just the right size. They're always ready for me to plant. As soon as the weather lets me plant annuals, I can fill those spots. It's very gratifying, right away. I also do more annuals in containers, pots I can fill with lighter weight styrofoam and potting soil so they're light enough for me to move around to just where I need them."
An altered perspective on what must be done on any one day is helpful, says Smith. "I don't set deadlines anymore—I just do what I feel like doing. Then I rest a while and if I feel like doing more, I do."
On the other hand, with its passage, time has become more valuable. "I'm less reluctant to move something if I don't like it where it is. I've either gotten more brave or more foolish!"
Having to decide what one can and can't accomplish and determine what you most want to do with your time has also changed Smith's outlook on some plants, even weeds. "I'm more patient with plants I used to pull out because they were too aggressive, things like sweet woodruff that take over. I used to pull them to keep them under control. Now I just keep them from choking plants I really like, and enjoy them wherever they're pretty enough to just put up with.
"I enjoy gardening more every year," says Smith, and she smiles.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: aging, gardening, growing older, Janet, Janet Macunovich, smarter
Janet's Journal: Fertilizing Tips
Simple suggestions for wiser fertilizer use
Exotic species such as rhododendron and azalea that wouldn't normally be found growing in Michigan's alkaline soils need special fertilization every week or two from early May until late July. Use a water-soluble fertilizer that includes micronutrients. Products range from seaweed solutions to acid-loving plant powders that dissolve in water. Spray the solution onto the plant's foliage, so some nutrients can be absorbed directly into the leaves.
The basic idea of fertilization is to supplement the soil rather than the plant. Just because the label says "Lawn Fertilizer" or "Rose Food," it doesn't mean that fertilizer must be used exclusively on that plant, or that plant must have its namesake fertilizer. Specialty fertilizers in general were formulated to meet greenhouse growers' needs, providing enough nutrients in the right proportions for the named plants when those are growing in soilless peat-bark mixes. A Michigan State University Extension soil test is a better guide for choosing fertilizer for field-grown plants. It pinpoints nutrients present and lacking in a soil. You may correctly use lawn fertilizer on roses and vegetable formulas on trees if those products most closely match the nutrient ratios prescribed by the MSU soil test result.
An excess of any nutrient can be wasteful, or even harmful, to plants or the wider environment. Avoid "bloom builder" fertilizers with an extremely high middle number (10-30-20 and 5-30-5 formulations are two examples) unless you know your soil is deficient in what that middle number measures, phosphorus.
Learn to recognize needy plants by diminishing leaf size, paleness or washed-out bloom color. Use water soluble products as mid-season supplements for these plants – kelp and fish emulsion sprays or water soluble powders.
Accept the fact that some plants are so far removed from their forebears that they need more nutrients than nature can supply. Varieties of rose, delphinium, clematis, dahlia, tomato and corn bred for enormous flowers or fruits won't live up to their catalog descriptions without fertilizer supplements.
Likewise, plants that you plant in soil that is very different than their native habitat will probably need special attention. Rhododendrons, azaleas, pieris, mountain laurel and heather cannot obtain essential nutrients from alkaline soil and so require "acid-loving plant" fertilizers that supply micronutrients in water soluble form.
Use MSU Extension's soil testing lab to learn what nutrients your soil really needs. (Contact your county's MSU Extension office for a soil testing kit and instructions.) You may be surprised. Some soils have everything a plant needs except nitrogen, so the fertilizer recommendation from MSU's soil lab may call for a simple nitrogen source such as 20-0-0 lawn fertilizer.
Don't use it if you don't want to. Keep your soil's organic matter content high by continual sheet composting – layering nutrient-rich plant matter such as fallen leaves and kitchen parings over the soil. Organic matter decomposes into nitrogen and other nutrients. One percent of organic matter in the soil yields nitrogen at a rate comparable to fertilizing with one pound of actual nitrogen per thousand square feet. It takes 3 pounds of 33-0-0 or 100 pounds of 1-0-0 fertilizer to do the same for that 1,000 square feet.
Microorganisms and other soil-dwelling creatures must digest slow-release organic fertilizers such as cottonseed meal and feather meal before the nutrients in these products become soluble and available to plant roots. So apply such fertilizers a month or two before you expect the plants in that area to begin rapid growth.
"Organic" and "inorganic" (manufactured) fertilizers often look very similar and other distinctions between them are also fuzzy. A plant can't use either type of fertilizer until it has been dissolved in water. Most "organics" must be broken down by fungi and soil-dwelling creatures before they dissolve, while many "inorganic" fertilizers dissolve immediately. Yet fish emulsion, kelp and compost tea are organic and water soluble.
Flower color may be deeper in some species when the plant is given supplemental fertilizer. But fertilizer isn't necessary if the flowers and colors in your garden measure up on the yardstick that counts most—your own appreciative eye.
The queen of vines, large-flowered clematis, has a reputation for loving alkaline soils. Although this myth has been dispelled by experts, many gardeners continue to spread agricultural lime or gypsum at the feet of their clematis. In Michigan's naturally-alkaline soils, this repeated liming can be counterproductive, blocking other nutrients from reaching the plant.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: Fertilizer, fertilizing, Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal
Janet's Journal: A Veggie Smart Perspective
May 2, 2017 • Leave a Comment
Harvest time at Ernie Bergeron's—beautiful as well as tasty and fragrant.
One man's successful transition of backyard lawn to vegetable garden
Rainwater can be collected for irrigation. Bergeron's downspouts fill rain barrels. The barrels are elevated on blocks so they can be tapped to supply the garden.
Being laid off from your job can certainly change your perspective. In the early 1970's, trucker Ernie Bergeron received a lay-off notice. Perhaps it was because the future wasn't looking too bright that a new, dim view of lawn overtook him one day. He recalls standing in his backyard and wondering, "What am I growing all this grass for? I can't eat grass!"
So he started digging, and planted a vegetable garden. 30 years later, retired but still digging, he improves his techniques every year. The vegetable "bed" now fills every inch of his 750 square foot backyard. It lives up to Bergeron's description—"my country garden in the city," partly because it's completely walled off from the neighbors by lush, bird-planted grape vines and black raspberry bushes that grow along the enclosing fences.
It's as self-contained as any farm, too. It includes some perennial crops as well as the more standard annual vegetables. There's a compost area, rainwater collectors and a gravity-fed irrigation system, storage for equipment, plus many practically ingenious and whimsically inspired inventions. A salvaged 55-gallon drum is the main element in an elevated, rotating compost bin, which he turns daily to reap a steady supply of crumbly dark compost. His latest project was once a truck cap. It sits on a cinder block frame now, its black sides absorbing heat and windows oriented to admit light. Bergeron's fitted it with shelves and is nearly ready to put it to use as a greenhouse.
Vegetable gardening isn't so popular as flower gardening, but you wonder why, when you stand in Bergeron's domain and sample the produce. One bite of a fresh-picked cuke or whiff of a warm, ripe pepper and I'm ready to redesign some flower beds to make room for potatoes, corn and beans. It's like trading one sense for two or three—less visually exciting, perhaps, but heavenly in scent and taste, and much more likely to draw me in to touch and fondle.
And as for the possibilities – the sky's the limit in this oldest of gardening pursuits. In the 6,000 years that beans have been cultivated, gardeners were not sitting still but selecting and passing on their favorite varieties. Although commercial farmers in North America now restrict themselves to just six potato cultivars, hundreds of types still exist, legacy of ancient New World gardens that provided a range of potato-y flavors from nutty to tart.
It would be a shame, on many levels, to let that legacy pass. European explorers of the 18th century found far better gardens in the Americas than they had known back home. Native Americans grew more species and varieties than most Europeans had ever seen, and in many cases used more advanced techniques. It's likely that Bergeron, keen on treading lightly on the Earth by growing organically, would have enjoyed comparing notes with those gardeners. They would both know from experience that thorough soil preparation and the plant's own health are the best defense against any pest.
Bergeron worked hard on his soil preparation at first, but now he works smarter and less hard. "What I found when I first started digging was that this lot was used once for a dumping site. A manufacturing plant that was near here seems to have just dumped truckloads of scraps. It was disgusting. I knew I had to do something to make the soil better.
"Now I cover the whole yard with 10 to 12 inches of leaves in the fall. I wait until it dries in spring then sometime in May I turn the leaves and till them in. Maybe I'll till them twice if they weren't all the way dry the first time. Then I level it all and make my raised beds.
"I use string to outline my paths and then dig down, taking soil from the paths, throwing it on the rows and leveling it off. I usually make the rows no more than four feet wide so I can work in them without stepping in them. I can work two feet into the row from either side without stepping on it. It's important to stay off the rows because the plants grow so much better in loose soil.
"I don't start seed in the house, usually. The plants are too spindly when I grow from seed in the house. I buy my plants already started, although this year I'll try out my new greenhouse. Some things I sow directly, of course—beets and carrots, for instance. I make my little rows and start the seed right there.
"I cut some rhubarb and horseradish in May. How do I manage to work around perennials like horseradish and rhubarb when I till in the leaves? I just till right over the horseradish – small pieces come up all over; enough for me to use if I watch for them. The rhubarb grows along the edge with the raspberries and the grape vines on the fence, where I don't till.
"I don't do much to the fruit. I prune the raspberries when I have time. I cut the dead canes out and throw a shovel of compost over their roots once in a while. I actually don't dare go right in with them because I'd be sure to cry and because of what I'd look like—a guy trying to wrestle a wildcat!
"I grow way more than I can eat—here, have some of this cabbage, and some cucumbers. And I eat things other people might not think to try—here, taste this," he says, pointing to the weed purslane that covers a bare area. "Really high in vitamin C, and tasty!"
"Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers – it's free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one!," says Bergeron.
Ernie Bergeron's suggestions for the vegetable gardener:
Don't plant too early. "I usually wait until the latter part of May to plant. I'd rather be late than early."
"Learn how to make compost instead of using those chemical fertilizers—it's free. Who fertilizes the forest? No one! I shovel compost onto the beds, and also make compost tea. And not only do my plants grow, but they grow well, even though I've been growing the same things in the same places all these years. No rotating—there's really not room to rotate in a yard this small, anyway. It's the compost and all the leaves I add that does it. If I have to buy fertilizer, I use fish emulsion and use it sparingly, maybe one or two times a season if the plants look a little pale."
"Get away from chemicals. You don't need them if the soil is in good shape. And encourage birds—a bird feeder I made from a metal trash can lid brings lots of birds in here. My friends the sparrows eat lots of bad bugs!"
"Keep weeds down by mulching with grass clippings or with leaves. You can store the leaves in bags from the previous fall. Just put the leaves in trash bags then cover the bags with a tarp so moisture doesn't get in."
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal, vegetables
Janet's Journal – A Drought Diary
August 30, 2016 • 1 Comment
Some gardening seasons are better than others. Don't look and learn only during the best years, but also when disasters such as drought strike. There's a lot to be learned, such as the fact that butterfly bushes, sedum and grasses not only survive drought and heat that wipe out astilbe and daylilies, but also look good under those conditions.
Plants that armor themselves against future droughts
After one of the hottest, driest summers in recent memory, we realized that quite a few species were not crispy critters, but actually seemed to be reveling in the heat and drought.
So I began noting plants in my own garden and others that rely almost entirely on rain, and made the following list. It's hardly exhaustive—it's heavy on perennials since that's my gardening specialty, but even that list could be longer—but it'll be useful for designing dry, gravelly beds or hot places where the hose won't reach.
Hawthorns provide pleasant bloom in June, fruit for the birds, and respectable fall color. What a delight to know they also perform well in hot, dry places.
Don't call it a list of drought-tolerant plants. Tolerance isn't what you should settle for, because it's not always pretty.
Joe Pye weed is a good example. They showed me their burned-back foliage, their drought defense mechanism. They simply hang on until late June, ugly though they may be with leaves so wilted you can pass your arm between stems without touching foliage, because then they can set buds for next spring. Even if they die back without flowering, those buds survive, insulated below the soil. It's an effective survival technique, but hardly handsome.
So, some plants perfectly capable of outlasting a drought aren't listed here. I sought and found plants that fare well in a drought and remain attractive too.
What makes these winners, when other plants shrivel or duck out in a hot, dry season? I've noticed a number of common characteristics that probably helped them survive. I'll describe them so you can be on the lookout for other plants like them. Even without witnessing a plant's performance under fire, you can probably bet on it if it has one or more of these attributes.
Plants with skinny foliage
The fewer and smaller its leaves, the less water a plant loses through transpiration on hot days. This was important this year, since some plants that might have weathered simple drought couldn't handle the heat—they couldn't take up water fast enough on the hottest days to replace what the leaves transpired.
Missing from the list are some plants with tiny leaves but a preference for dry air. Cosmos and annual bachelor button, for instance, are drought tolerant. Both are also susceptible to mildew when they're under stress, as in a drought. Our high relative humidity insures that spores and chances of infection abound, so we see their lower leaves begin to brown and curl, victims of mildew.
Leaves held vertically
A leaf that stands upright escapes the full impact of midday sun. Bearded iris is a perfect example. It's a plant that may never be as happy as when it's planted in that hot, dry strip between driveway or sidewalk and brick house foundation. Yuccas and many ornamental grasses employ the same tactic.
Even large leaves can get by in a drought if vertically arranged. Prairie dock and its relative, compass plant, have huge leaves that stand straight up like canoe paddles stuck butt first into a sandy beach. Both plants impress me most in dry years, standing taller and producing sturdier flowering stems in a dry summer than wet (although prairie dock, a native of seasonally wet meadows, loves being wet at least through spring).
By comparison, and in explanation of some sad losses this year, pity the poor understory species often planted in the sun—flowering dogwoods, Japanese maples, redbuds, hydrangeas, etc. These plants' leaves are held parallel to the ground, better to catch every photon of light that filters through the forest canopy. The only way for those leaves to protect themselves from full sun is to hang down—to wilt. In a wilted state they can't photosynthesize, so the plant can starve in the process.
Leaves with a furry coat
The hair that makes a leaf look gray or silver also acts as insulation. Water released from "breathing holes"—the stomata—isn't whisked away directly by the wind but remains trapped in the hairs as a high-humidity buffer zone.
Even a little bit of hair makes a difference—the downy foliage of a Tellima or the bristles on prairie dock and annual sunflower are examples. Excessive hair doesn't seem to be the problem for plants that overdressing can be to people, however. Blue mist spirea and Russian sage, two of the best species for hot dry beds, have a coating not only on their leaves but the twigs too.
Leaves can fail to develop their rightful downiness if grown in cool, moist shade. Blue globe thistle and dusty miller are cases in point. They become almost green in the shade and apt to sag at the first taste of drought.
Waxy coatings on leaves
Here's another means to slow water loss. Myrtle euphorbia's (Euphorbia myrsinites) wax coating protects it even through winter's freeze-drying, so I'm not surprised this plant looked blue, cool and comfortable all summer. And although giant crambes burned or were set back, their waxy blue cousin, sea crambe, never looked better than it did in this drought.
Tap roots
Plants that pull water from deep down can grow for weeks and even months after other plants have curled up and blown away. Tap roots are probes that can extend many feet into the subsoil.
Many plants have more than one defense mechanism. Waxy myrtle euphorbia has a tap root. Yucca and yucca-leaf sea holly (Eryngium yuccifolium) have vertically-arranged leaves as well as tap roots.
Butterfly bush may hang its leaves on the hottest dry days, but it comes through with flower even so. Now, if we could only help it stay ahead of the spider mites that also like hot, dry conditions!
Wide-reaching roots
Far-flung, stringy roots carry junipers, butterfly bushes and hawthorns through a drought. These plants aren't limited to drawing water from only that relatively small area right outside their own driplines.
Sedum 'Autumn Joy' has become the plant I love to hate, because it's too perfect. Is it fair that a plant with good foliage all summer, great color all fall, plus winter interest should also handle drought and heat without faltering?!
Succulent foliage
You probably know that cacti take up water during the brief desert rainy season and can retain and use it slowly, even over years. Michigan native prickly pear cactus and many sedums can also make use of water that was imbibed weeks before.
Bulbous plants and others with avoidance syndrome
Listen hard, and you can probably hear tulips, daffodils and foxtail lilies humming with delight right about now. These plants developed "grow fast, then hide" traits to deal with bone-dry summers. In fact, Michigan's normally-moist summers may account for problems we have with these plants as perennials—namely, that they won't come back. If the bulbs (tulip and daffodil) or roots (foxtail lily) remain cool and moist all summer, they don't ripen. As a result, they may not set flowers or might not develop a proper protective tunic, which may mean they'll rot during winter.
Catmint is happy here next to a stone patio in 95 degree heat, even without irrigation.
Beats me what gives them an edge
Then there are the plants who survive by some facility I can't figure. Yet even though I can't guess why 'Gold Standard' and 'Sugar and Cream' hostas keep going when other hostas are toasted or prostrated by the heat, I can't deny my notes—they did stand tall. Tovara, Solomon's seal and goatsbeard stump me as well, as does siebold viburnum—this last has hairy leaves and twigs, but so do other viburnums that scorched and drooped this summer!
Most of these enigmas are shade-loving plants, and as such are not likely to withstand drought and heat if moved out of their element. However, I'm convinced that shade alone did not save them. Many were survivors in shade gardens among dozens of other shade-loving species that wimped out.
One last thing. If you choose to grow a perennial or hardy woody plant from this list, don't simply set it out in a dry bed and expect it to thrive. If it was produced in a nursery or an irrigated bed, even if it belongs to the most drought-tolerant species in the world, it will need time to reconfigure its root system from a dense, watered-every-day ball to something wide, deep or both. If it's a species shielded by furry foliage or a thick, waxy coating, it may come to you less hairy or thinner-skinned than it should be. Once established, things are different, since the plant's leaves will form in hotter, drier conditions. So provide water during dry spells for at least the first year if you want to see your drought-tolerant plants shine the next time rains fail.
Half the world may feel that yuccas are appropriately named, but even those detractors must admit they shine during a drought.
Drought-thriving plants
Dusty miller (Senecio cineraria)
Licorice plant (Helichrysum species
and varieties)
Red fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum')
Sunflowers (Helianthus varieties)
Allium (Allium species)
Amsonia (Amsonia tabernaemontana and A. hubrichtii)*
Baby's breath (Gypsophila paniculata)
Barrenwort (Epimedium species)*
Bearded iris (Iris germanica hybrids)
Blue globe thistle (Echinops ritro)
Blue lyme grass (Elymus arenarius, Lymus arenarius). Beware: it's not a clump-former but a runner extraordinaire.
Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii and its hybrids)
Catmint (Nepeta mussinii and hybrids)
Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum)
Daffodil (Narcissus species and hybrids)
Dianthus 'Bath's Pink' and other perennial carnations having D. gratianopolitanus in their genes.
Fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides)
Foxtail lily (Eremurus himalaicus)
Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus)*
Goldenrod (Solidago species and hybrids). Note: it's not an allergen and there are excellent clump-forming hybrids such as 'Goldenmosa' available.
Hosta 'Gold Standard'*
Hosta 'Sugar and Cream'*
Lavender mist meadow rue (Thalictrum rochebruneanum)*
Leatherwood fern (Dryopteris marginalis)*
Michigan lily (Lilium michiganense)*
Myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites)
Perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum)*
Prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum)
Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa)
Rose mallow (Lavatera cachemiriana and Malva alcea)
Sea crambe, sea kale (Crambe maritima)
Showy stonecrop (Sedum spectabile and hybrids such as 'Autumn Joy')
Solomon's seal (Polygonatum species)*
Starry false Solomon's seal (Smilacina stellata)*
Tellima (Tellima grandiflora)*
Tovara (Tovara virginiana, Persicaria virginiana)*
Tulip (Tulipa species and hybrids)
Yucca (Yucca filamentosa)
Yucca-leaf sea holly (Eryngium yuccifolium)
Barberry (Berberis thunbergii)
Blue mist spirea (Caryopteris x clandonensis, gray-leaf forms)
Juniper (Juniperus species)
Siebold viburnum (V. sieboldii). Caution: fragrant in bloom, but not in a nice way.*
Hawthorn (Crataegus species)
Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos)
* Should be grown in shade or half shade.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: Butterfly bush, catmint, drought, hawthorne, Janet Macunovich, sedum, yucca
After the Fall: Late-Season Plant Staking
June 28, 2016 • 2 Comments
Many of the players in this scene owe their upright stance to the gardener who took a few minutes in May to position a grow-through support above the plant.
Save grace and flower with these restorative plant staking techniques
This article is not about proper plant staking, that pre-meditated placing of supports. It's about staking after a plant falls or when a plant flop is imminent.
Surely you're familiar with the situation: it takes place in high summer. It involves a perennial whose progress you've been following with pleasure—by its fullness and vigor it has made it clear that this year's bloom is going to be the best ever. The action begins as you step outside to look over your garden and find it, the promising star, leaning drunkenly against a neighboring plant or sprawled flat like a worn out puppy on a hot day.
The next time you find yourself playing this scene, resist the urge to grab all the stems, stuff them together in a string girdle and tether them to a stake. Few things look more ridiculous than bunched, crooked-tip stems with foliage turned inside-out, torn or flattened by the encasing cord. Not only are your efforts sure to produce a visual disaster, chances are you'll crack stems or flower stalks in the process.
Before you take that route, try one of the following methods of restorative staking.
Left: a grow-through support is a simple, effective device—if it's used in May. Right: the globe thistle (Echinops ritro) stands tall and straight in July. If you look closely you can see the edge of the support that was placed in May and keeps the plant in line.
Stakes and crutches
First, gather a dozen or more stakes that are just as tall as or a bit taller than the plant was before it fell. Round up a small hammer. Put your pruners in your pocket, along with a roll of string or wide, soft ties—I prefer to use green- or straw-colored hemp. Often you will need some crutches as well, so take out your loppers and prune a shrub or two to get a half dozen sticks that are at least half the height of the fallen plant and have forked tops.
This globe thistle was not staked in May. By July 1, it's leaning drastically, inches from a full fall.
Now, lift a stem of the fallen plant you'll be staking. Raise it gently toward vertical to see how far back you can push it without cracking it. Lay the stem back down again.
Insert 4 or 5 bamboo canes, straight sticks or hooked-end metal rods in the center of the plant's air space. Imagine a spot about six inches underground, directly below the center of the plant's crown. Insert the stakes as if they would meet at that point below the plant. Angle them so they are not straight up and down, but lean outward slightly to match what your test lift said the stems can bear.
Insert 6 or 8 more stakes to make a ring around the first. Lean these stakes outward to match the angle of the inner ring. An important note: You must be happy with the stakes' positions before you start to work with the stems. The stakes should cover space evenly and gracefully—I aim to make them look like the spray of a fountain. I have learned that if I am not pleased with the stakes alone, I will not be happy with the finished staking either.
Tap the stakes into the ground with a hammer. I've found that if I use my weight to force them in, it's too likely that I'll lose my balance at least once and end up stepping or falling into the plant's prostrate stems.
Set the stakes just deep enough to be steady. They don't have to be driven to China, because each one is only going to support one or perhaps two stems.
To position the stakes well, you may drive them right through the crown of the plant. Don't worry too much about this. Most of the time, the stakes will go through without serious damage. Once in a while a stake will pierce an important root or stem base, in which case the stem will tell you by wilting the next day and you'll just cut it out then.
All of the fallen stems will be tied to or contained within the stakes you see here. You should be happy with the arrangement of the stakes before tying stems to them.
Next, take a look at the fallen stems. Picture the crown of the plant as a bull's eye target and pick 4 or 5 stems that emanate from the bull's eye at the center. Raise them gently, one by one, to meet in the middle of the inner ring of stakes. This often requires patience to separate the stems from the heap and guide them past the stakes without breaking them or tearing foliage.
Tie these central stems together, loosely. Let them lean against an inner-ring stake. This is only a temporary arrangement, so it doesn't have to be pretty.
From stems still on the ground, select some that arise from the first ring around the bull's eye. Tie one to each inner-ring stake.
Each of the inner-ring stakes has a stem tied to it now, and several stems stand free in the center. Here, for demonstration purposes, the inner ring of stakes has been temporarily marked with orange sleeves.
After the inner ring of stakes is full, release the string that holds the central stems together. Usually these will not fall but will rest against each other or the stakes. However, if it seems like they may slip through and fall to the ground again, take one turn of string around the inner stakes to corral the loose stems within.
Use a figure-eight tie to prevent crushing the stem and to allow it necessary swaying leeway in winds and storms. That is, cross the two ends of your tying string in between the stem and the stake.
Now raise a stem and tie it to each outer-ring stake. Clip out weak and flowerless stems.
Cut off the tip of any stake that shows above the plant.
You can obtain crutches by cutting branches from many common landscape plants, including burning bush, crabapple and spruce. All foliage is removed and soft twigs clipped off to turn this 36-inch piece of burning bush into a crutch.
Use crutches to support the outermost stems of the fallen perennial. These outside stems are often least flexible and most crooked since they were the first to fall. Raise the outer stems one at a time, push a crutch into the ground to support it, then let the stem rest there. Sometimes one crutch has enough forks to support several stems. If so, drop stems one at a time into the crutch—don't bunch them.
Raise the fallen stem. Push a crutch firmly into the ground so its fork is beneath the stem, then let the stem rest on the crutch.
Here's the globe thistle, arrested from its fall and restored to nearly full glory.
If raised before its flowers are open, a stem's tip will turn up to vertical again. Here's the plant, proud and tall two days after being staked, its crooked tips already straightening.
Crutches alone
Sometimes when a plant is only beginning to fall or when it has very few stems, it can be returned to grace with just a few well-placed crutches.
Left: This milky bellflower (Campanula lactiflora 'Loddon Anna') wouldn't normally need staking, but it is growing away from the shade of big trees 25 feet to the west. Its stems are likely to descend further unless staked. Crutches are all that will be needed to bring the plant back up from its fall. Right: Each stem was lifted and a crutch pushed into the ground to hold it nearer to vertical. For crutches with multiple forks, additional stems were then lifted and guided into the crutch.
Lasso it, then crutch it
Throwing a lasso and cinching it around a plant is not attractive or even effective—the whole bale can still slump to one side or the other. However, I do sometimes cinch stems temporarily to pull a plant together while I set crutches.
Crutches are often simpler to place than late-season stakes and are much less visible than any kind of corral or police line you could construct around the outside of the plant with stakes and string.
Left: This culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum) was beginning to topple. Although it looks ridiculous in its string girdle, it's only a temporary measure—a way to make the plant "suck it in" while crutches are placed. Right: While it's tied up, I can set crutches around the base of the plant. They're sleeved with orange so you can see them better.
Left: I'm releasing the plant from its string girdle now, and the stems are relaxing against the crutches. Right: Don't you think using crutches allows the plant to retain its grace? Just compare it to the strung-up culver's root in photo number 1.
Another reason to temporarily tie up a plant is to work on a fallen neighbor:
Left: This yellow daylily and blue balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) make a great combination when they bloom together, but the daylily has overgrown its neighbor. The daylily can be divided in fall or spring to reduce its size. For now, I'll stake the balloon flower. Right: It helps to tie the daylily out of the way while I work on the balloon flower.
Left: I've placed the stakes and am raising and tying the fallen balloon flower stems. An alternative would be to leave the fallen stems on the ground and use short stakes to keep the tips vertical. I decided against that option since I prefer to have the blue balloon flowers open at the same height as the daylilies. Right: Once the balloon flower was staked, I released the daylily from its bonds. I also clipped back some of the daylily's leaves to make it less overwhelming.
Wrap-up: a time consuming thing
Staking after the fall takes considerably more time and skill than preventive staking. As an example, staking the blue globe thistle after its fall, including the time required to cut branches and make crutches, took about an hour. Placing the grow-through grid over the globe thistle pictured at the beginning of this article took less than five minutes in May. As my Dad always said, "If you do a thing right at the start, even if it seems like a lot of work, it will still save time in the long run."
On the other hand, Mom must have told me a million times, "Don't cry over it! Use your head and come up with a way to fix it."
Out in the garden in July and August, I smile every time I stake after a fall. I'm not only salvaging a pretty plant, I'm proving my parents' wisdom.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal, plant staking
An Expert Perspective: Making the Most of Garden Walks
June 1, 2016 • 4 Comments
You can ask for the names of the plants that thrill you as you tour a garden. But what if you were seeing those plants through the eyes of someone involved with breeding them? What would that expert see?
Live my life in the garden, that's what I do. Work in others' gardens. Teach in gardens. Write about gardens. With all the time I spend there, it seems like my great revelation about making the most of garden walks would have come to me there.
Nope. It came on a horse.
My daughter wanted to go riding, but none of her friends could go. So I went. It was a pretty fall day, but a weekday. The stables were nearly deserted, and the same man who took our money and collected our insurance waivers saddled our horses and one for himself. We'd take his favorite path, he told us, the one he'd first cut through the woods ten years before.
It can be fun, mind-expanding or even shocking to hear what someone else is thinking as they look where you do. When you wonder about how long it took to plant it, they may be pondering what kind of finish those non-plant materials need to be weather-resistant.
What do you see? Pretty plant combinations that you wonder if you can grow? Intriguing garden art the source for which you'd like to know? Are those the same things someone else would see? You never know, and therein lies one of the greatest values of taking garden walks!
Single file behind him, we rode into those woods. Quietly at first, enjoying the colors and the sush of hooves on fallen leaves.
Then my daughter pointed out a clump of baneberry just off the trail, turning in her saddle to be sure I looked where she pointed. I saw, and we made some just-to-talk guesses about what else we'd find growing there, if we waded in.
Our guide had not even turned to look, but my daughter, ever the sociable gatekeeper in conversation, called to him. "Don't worry. We aren't really going to stop. Way too much poison ivy in there!"
Then, he did stop. Reined right in. "You know what poison ivy looks like?" he asked us.
"Uh, huh," we both said. I looked at the vines scrambling over brush and along the ground, some shed of foliage, others with a red leaf or two still clinging. Vines on tree trunks alongside the path were presenting their leaves so close that our horses were surely carrying some of the oil on their coats. How could someone who rode this path every day, who dealt with the effects of poison ivy all the time—as he was now proceeding to tell us—how could he NOT know what it looked like?
So we pointed out the vines, the leaves, and some telltale characteristics of both. Pulling a gallon baggie from my jeans pocket—as a dog owner and a cutting-snitcher, I'm rarely ever without one—I covered my hand, reached out and broke off a bit of leafy vine. "Here," I said, reversing the bag on itself, to seal vine and oil inside. "We can hang this on your bulletin board. It'll be safe enough in the bag, and people will know exactly what to watch out for."
You'd probably be encouraged to take home not just the name of the plants, but the tonnage of stone and details of construction if your 70-year-old tour companion said, on seeing this stonework, "You know, Bonnie and I built our stone wall last year by ourselves and it was easier than it looks."
What a nice smile he gave us! So I dared to ask the burning question.
"I wonder," I said. "I look into the woods here and the poison ivy jumps out at me. You've been scanning the woods as we ride, too, but you weren't registering those vines until just now. What is it YOU see alongside this path?"
So, for an hour or so one afternoon, I looked into those woods through a horse-savvy, outdoorsman's eyes. There was so much there I would have missed.
The butt of a large tree, sawed off nearly at ground level wouldn't have interested me, but it made our guide chuckle. "Had to cut through that old tree twice. Once when it first cracked and leaned over the path. A second time when the horses kept shying and wouldn't walk past the stump I left behind!"
Some tumbled rocks held another story. "I always take a good look around those big rocks because once there was a fox den up there. Those foxes, they sure take care of the mice around the barns."
On a garden walk, there are so many eyes, and each pair sees something different.
That eye-opener of a ride changed what I do before going on a garden tour.
I still make my standard preparations. That starts with admitting that no matter how impressive a plant or garden feature is when I see it, I will NOT recall its name, where someone said it came from, or even why it impressed me without a memory aid. So I round up a pencil, a pocket notebook and sometimes a camera, too. I don't bother with pens anymore, having learned that pencils work even in the rain and graphite scribbles are legible even after something unfortunate like a dip in a water garden.
Then, I take a stroll through my own yard a day or so before the garden walk. The objective is to note my current stars—what's in bloom or has other appeal such as great form, attractive seed pods or sweet smell. Why? Because my pre-tour perceptions will help me sift through all the beautiful things on the tour to develop a truly practical "must have right now" list.
On the tour, I consider each potential "must have" against that mental snapshot of my own yard. I don't concentrate hard to do this, just let the visual stimulation switch on what every gardener has: great visual sense. Very quickly, the mind's eye can tuck the item under consideration into a hundred different real spots, and critique it.
Fun garden art? Lush groundcover? Multi-stemmed tree trunk? A beautiful trellis/vine combination? For each viewer, it may be something different.
This process flags for me the things I can buy right away, even on the way home, because they can be added without rearranging a whole garden. I star those in my notes as "must have's." The runners-up are noted as well but not starred. I won't make the mistake of hauling home a bunch of plants that may languish and perhaps die in their pots while I get around to moving a fence or adding a walk (those little details that can delay a planting).
Finally, I recruit a companion for these treks to peek into private gardens. Who? Anyone who would enjoy a pleasant walk who also sees differently than I do. She or he might not even be a gardener and that's fine because what I hope they'll bring with them, and give me a look through, is a perspective on gardens and plants flavored by a background in some field I don't know. It might be that they travel a lot, practice embroidery, admire calligraphy, know how to jet ski or once studied astronomy. Whatever we don't have in common, that's what will make the day most interesting. Together, we'll see more than we would have.
Filed Under: Janet's Journal Tagged With: garden walks, Janet Macunovich, Janet's Journal


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text:
Protest in EU capital prompts security scare at US embassy
Anti-austerity and anti-globalisation protesters caused a security scare when some people threw stones and firecrackers (Photo: Maebh McMahon)
By Andrew Rettman
Brussels, 4. Apr 2014, 18:33
Stone-throwing protesters prompted a "lock-down" at the US embassy to the EU in Brussels on Friday (4 April), as the US ambassador briefed press on the merits of free trade.
The rally saw between 25,000 and 50,000 people, mostly from Belgian trade unions, march past the US mission toward the EU district, where leaders gave speeches before the crowd melted away.
Michael Froman, US trade chief (l), Gardner, and EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton in Brussels last week (Photo: ec.europa.eu)
Protesters aired a mixed bag of grievances. One man told EUobserver he is against "austerity." A second one said he is against "wage dumping".
People also voiced anger at multinationals and globalisation. Some placards said: "Europe: owned by wolves, governed by dogs." Others said: "EU yes, TTIP no" - referring to the acronym of a draft EU-US free trade treaty.
A few people threw stones and firecrackers at the US embassy as they passed by. They also threw stones at the EU external relations building and a perfume shop.
Belgian police used water cannons, while security staff at the US mission ordered staff to stay inside and to keep away from windows in what they called a "lock-down."
It was the first time they did it since anti-Iraq war protests in 2003, despite the small scale of the violence.
The scare came toward the end of a press briefing by the new US ambassador to the EU, Anthony Luzzatto Gardner, the former director of a London-based private equity firm, Palamon Capital Partners.
Gardner had called in the media to highlight his priorities after taking up the post on 18 March.
He said his main task will be to shepherd progress on TTIP.
As the protesters approached, he said: "I am worried about some of the narratives that are gaining ground in some [EU] member states, many of which are based on misinformation."
He said he has a "stack" of studies on his desk which say TTIP will promote jobs and economic growth. He listed as fallacies claims that big business will reap all the benefits, that TTIP will undermine consumer protection, and that the negotiations are unduly secretive.
He also promised to play an active public role.
"I'm looking forward to meeting people like Mr Bove … I am not going to be on the back foot. I'm looking forward to this," he said, referring to Jose Bove, a French MEP and anti-globalisation activist, shortly before security staff ushered the US ambassador upstairs.
Gardner also noted he will be "spending a lot of time" in the European Parliament, which must ratify the free-trade deal.
With pollsters predicting gains for far-right and far-left populists in the May elections, he added: "One thing that gives me hope is that the fringe groups have very little in common and I don't think they'll be that effective."
He said his other priority will be US-EU diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis.
Repeating the message of last week's US-EU summit, he noted that EU sanctions on Russian officials complement US measures. "It's the beginning of the story [the crisis], but so far we are satisfied with the extent of [EU] co-operation we have seen."
He accused Russian gas firm Gazprom of exerting undue pressure on Ukraine and on EU states. "Let's be clear: Gazprom has been using energy as a weapon," he said.
He also said the US is willing to share technological and regulatory know-how on shale gas to help EU countries reduce Russian dependence.
In a personal insight, he told an anecdote about his wedding to explain how he will operate in EU circles.
He said he and his wife had wanted to marry in a deconsecrated former synagogue and church in the Spanish town of Toledo, but the archbishop said No.
Gardner tried to use contacts at the US embassy in Spain to talk to Spanish authorities and even to the royal family. But none of it worked. The breakthrough came when someone overheard him at a party and said he knew the archbishop's dentist. Wheels were set in motion, and following the prelate's next dental appointment, he changed is mind.
"It's not always how far up the chain you go, it's knowing the right people who, at the right time, can get the right result," Gardner said.
"I want to know the dentists in Brussels. I want to know the influencers," he added.
EU drills into corporate protection clause in US trade deal
EU 'will not compromise' on food safety in US trade pact
EU and US pledge solidarity in face of Russia
The European Commission has launched a public consultation on controversial rules for payment of compensation to investors when laws change in society.
A top EU official has sought to allay German fears about the US being able to export bleached chicken and hormone beef to Europe under a future free trade pact.
Obama and top EU officials have described America and Europe as a fortress of justice, but indicated Ukraine is on the other side of the wall.
Vietnam jails journalist critical of EU trade deal
7. Jan, 07:06
A journalist who had demanded the EU postpone its trade deal with Vietnam until human rights improved has been sentenced to 15 years in jail. The EU Commission says it first needs to conduct a detailed analysis before responding.
EU edges closer to China investment deal, irking US
Talks had been stuck for years, but tensions between a Trump-led US and China may have helped change the Chinese position.
Warsaw and Budapest seek EU funds despite national veto
A senior EU diplomat said Poland and Hungary should lift their veto or give a signal they are willing to do by Tuesday - otherwise there will be alternative plans for a recovery fund with the other 25 member states.
California's new 'gig worker' law - why EU must say No
Should Big Tech and gig platforms push for a policy similar to Proposition 22 in Europe, workers' rights could quickly become a ceiling rather than a floor.
Budget deal struck, with Hungary threat still hanging
Ultimately, the European Parliament managed to squeeze an extra €16bn in total - which will be financed with competition fines the EU Commission hands out over the next seven years, plus reallocations within the budget.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Cornwall magician appears in court accused of murdering teacher and attempting to kill neighbour
Martyn Smith from Redruth is accused of several crimes relating to incidents near Buckingham in 2015 and 2017
Rick Goodman
Aerial view of Manor Park in Maids Moreton, near Buckingham, Buckinghamshire of the former homes of Peter Farquhar (left) and Ann Moore-Martin (right). Police have launched a murder investigation into the deaths of two elderly residents, Farquhar and Moore-Martin, from the village who died more than a year-and-a-half apart (Image: Steve Parsons/PA Wire)
A magician and a churchwarden have appeared in court accused of murdering a teacher and attempting to kill his elderly neighbour.
Martyn Smith and Benjamin Field are also accused of fraud and of stealing a number of rifles.
Thames Valley Police launched a double murder inquiry in January, more than two years after the death of Peter Farquhar, 69, a guest lecturer at the University of Buckingham, and seven months after the death of retired headmistress Ann Moore-Martin, 83.
Mr Farquhar died on October 26, 2015, and Ms Moore-Martin, who lived three doors down from him in the village of Maids Moreton, near Buckingham, died on May 12, 2017.
Field, 28, a church warden, and 32-year-old Smith, a magician, appeared at High Wycombe Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.
A picture of Martyn Smith believed to be around eight years old
Field, of Wellingborough Road, Olney, is charged with two counts of conspiracy to murder Ms Moore-Martin and Mr Farquhar, one count of murder of Mr Farquhar, one count of attempted murder of Ms Moore-Martin, two counts of fraud and three counts of burglary.
Smith, of Penhalvean, Redruth, Cornwall, is charged with two counts of conspiracy to murder Ms Moore-Martin and Mr Farquhar, one count of murder of Mr Farquhar, one count of attempted murder of Ms Moore-Martin, one count of fraud, and two counts of burglary.
Saltash Mayor John Brady rapped because he still hasn't said sorry for 'abusive' email
Both men are accused of stealing a French carbine rifle, an African long gun and a Martini-Henry rifle in April 2016, the court heard.
Peter Farquhar
They are alleged to have committed fraud in 2016 by falsely claiming another man, Thomas Field, had kidney problems and needed a dialysis machine worth more than £26,000.
And Ben Field, who appeared in court with a cropped beard and a white fleece top, faces a charge of stealing a cardigan and a bottle of Drambuie.
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Smith and Field were remanded in custody and are due to face Oxford Crown Court on Thursday morning.
A 22-year-old Olney man, who was also arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit fraud by false representation and other charges, and has been released under investigation.