PREPPING FOR WINTER ... A LITTLE LATE

Gosh, it's about time for a gardening post, don't you think?

I never really showed you some of what happens here in the winter when it comes to the garden. Winter brings a couple of serious challenges: protecting plants from the freeze/thaw cycle and protecting plants from hungry animals.

A lot of people think that it's the cold that is most harmful to plants, but really it's the continual cycle of freezing and thawing that does them in. If it would just freeze in late November, get a nice thick blanket of snow in December and then stay like that until it melted in March, most plants would be quite content. But that's rarely what happens, and it's even more rare these days when temperatures seem to fluctuate wildly. (It will be over 40 degrees tomorrow up here in southeastern Wisconsin, for instance.)

So some plants need some insulation, mostly at the roots. The best way to manage this is to give the root zone a good mounding of mulch (I love chopped up leaf mulch for this) very late in the season (like late November in our parts). But if you're like me, you might have brushed off that task when it got cold.

It's not too late to help your plants though. And even though the leaf mulch pile is pretty much frozen at this point, I happened to have just the right thing to use for insulation handy: the Christmas tree.

I cut most of the branches off our tree and stuffed/laid them around the more sensitive plants in the garden. In general, I only take extra steps at protecting plants that are either borderline hardy, relatively new (and therefore haven't had a chance to get as established as I would like) or really expensive/slow growing (because I don't want to have to replace them.)

I also often cage these plants to protect them both from wildlife and the local petlife. Our dogs have been trained to stay out of the garden and they don't dare step foot in it for most of the year, but all bets are off when it snows. I can't blame them too much as it's difficult for them to delineate the borders of the garden and honestly I don't worry about it too much once the ground is frozen, but the shoulder seasons are a bad time for big dogs to be tromping through the garden, stomping plants and compacting the soil. They also routinely bound through the garden, so I protect small or delicate plants with cages just to keep them from running them over.

I put the cage (just hardwire cloth bent around a few stakes) around the ginkgo (gingko biloba 'Gnome') in November, but I forgot to come back and stuff it with leaf mulch. So when I cut the Christmas tree apart, I just filled up the cage with soft branches. It won't work as good as the leaf mulch would have, but it will provide some insulation and a little wind protection too.

Along the path you can see a couple other things I did for winter. First of all, I put up stakes along the path so we'd know where it was when we are shoveling or snow blowing. It's been a long time since we've had a snowfall that was big enough to cover the entire garden, but when it does happen it can be very hard to figure out where the path is and where the plants are. It would be a disaster to run the snow blower over the garden accidentally. On the left you can see that I wrapped the new Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'Mikawa Yatsubusa') in burlap, held up by a square tomato cage. I really love that little tree but I'm worried about it because our zone can be borderline for Japanese maples and because with the crazy summer we had, it had set (and still has) huge leaf buds in October. I did this same thing with the 'Orangeola' Japanese maple for its first several years and it worked so well that it is now too big to cage. Although I had put some leaf mulch inside the burlapped cage, I also threw some pine tips in there for added insulation. 

On the right side of the path you can see another cage, which I just put up this weekend (whoops). That is to protect the dogwood (Cornus alternifolium 'Golden Shadows' ) that I replanted this spring. Unfortunately I got to it too late as all of the ends of the branches were nipped by deer. I will trim them back to a healthy bud or branch in late winter or early spring (usually March) and hopefully all will be well.

Some plants are left to fend for themselves. Picea englemannii 'Blue Magoo' (which is growing painfully slowly, considering it's supposed to end up at 8 feet tall) seems to have established itself well in the past two years, so other than throwing a small amount of leaf mulch around it, I didn't do anything special. I see from this picture that I need to loosen the twine holding the leader to the stake because the trunk is actually a little curved.

Most perennials in my garden are left standing through winter. Studies have shown that plants are more hardy when they are left standing through winter. The downside to this is that it's a lot of clean up to do in spring when you're already busy in the garden. I like to see something in the garden during winter so this clematis, which works its way to the front of the house every summer is allowed to stand. It's a group 3 so in early spring when I do my clean up I will cut it back to the first bud, usually about 6 inches above the ground.

A local commercial perennial grower told our master gardener group that he cuts everything back in fall but lets all the plant material lay where he cuts it to act as a natural mulch. I think that's a pretty clever idea if you're inclined to cut back your perennials in fall.

The one exception I make to the "Let it stand" rule is with free-seeding perennials like Rudbeckia. I make sure to cut those back and remove the plant material early in the process so they don't seed all over the place. Anyone want some Rudbeckia? Trust me, I have some for you!

I'm trying something new to protect the trunk of new trees this year. I put a foam pipe insulator around the trunk of the fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus).  It's not about keeping it warm, rather it will keep little critters from gnawing on the bark.

Here's what rabbits did to one of my Japanese maples (Acer japonicum acontifolium) a couple years ago when I left the trunk unprotected. The new fringe tree has such a piddly little trunk that a chewing rabbit could do a lot of damage.

One last comment on winter care of plants: It's almost always better to just let snow lay on plants rather than try to knock it off. This is Blue Mohawk soft rush—a great grass from Proven Winners that I really am loving—which will be cut back in early spring along with the rest of the grasses, but the same holds try for shrubs. You'll often do more damage to shrubs by trying to knock off or brush off snow than if you had just left it. There are some exceptions to really icy, heavy snow, but that's usually a last resort, where you have nothing to lose by trying to knock it off because the weight of the snow could bring it down on its own.

How did you prepare your garden for winter? Did you do a better job than I did actually taking care of it before winter was fully upon us? What creative use for your Christmas tree do you have?

Garden crash: Mid-century beach house

It's been awhile since I've done any garden crashing and this one is more of a mini crash but its still quite different from most gardens lurking around this area. I visited with my mom, who was writing about it for the home and garden section of the local newspaper.
The garden is THE feature at this house, a mid-century ranch. The garden envelopes the house to the point where you have to look for the structure from the entry side. It is located on a beautiful property on the shores of Lake Michigan, which can be a blessing and a curse for a gardener. That giant body of water (skeptical readers who live near the ocean will scoff at that adjective, but Lake Michigan is more of a mini ocean than a lake) dictates the weather, which means summer is slow to come as the water warms up and the growing season is extended in fall as the relatively warm water wards off frost.
My favorite garden on the property may actually be the one that borders the road. I love its simplicity and statement. When you see a garden like this before you even enter a property you know something good awaits.


The shady driveway is lined with beach stones. I imagine they would be a pain to weed around but it's such a charming look.

The front door is flanked by a large Bloodgood Japanes maple. This is view from the right of the front door. Clematis 'Sweet Autumn' crawls over the roof softening every hard edge.


I loved this classic combination of hackenachloa and Japanese painted ferns.





This is the view from the other side of the arbor that supports that clematis. It also supports a climbing hydrangea (it's a beefy structure).

Along the path that runs along the house to the arbor, the gardener kept it simple with just pachysandra and I think eunonymus, providing a nice resting space for the eye.



In the back the gardens are varied. According to the gardener, this will be the last year for a high-mainentance rose garden. Other areas feature native plants (that were looking a bit spent at the end of the season). But the real star of the show back here is the view. You can't go wrong with that.

A gardener's dream shopping spree

Thanks for your patience with the minimal amount of posts last week. When I'm writing at work I'm so engrossed in it that I have a really hard time writing about anything else simultaneously.

So I need to bring you up to date on what was maybe the best shopping trip ever. I've mentioned Klehm's Song Sparrow Nursery before as one of my favorite go-to mail order nurseries. It turns out that once a year they open up the nursery to garden clubs and groups for tours and, best of all, shopping.

My friend Linda over at Each Little World went a couple years ago and I've been envious of that trip ever since, so when the opportunity arose this year I knew I wouldn't miss it. We had a pretty large group from the local garden club amassed for the trip but it quickly dwindled to just three people after the rest of the group found out it was a two-hour drive each way and the forecast was for a beautiful day to be working in the garden. So in the end, just my mom, my sister-in-law and I went.

Before I go on, I should tell you that you really should read Linda's post about their trip to Klehm's because she was smart and had her talented husband Mark take pictures while she shopped. I had every intention to take lots of pictures but I was having way too much fun picking through the hoop houses and forgot to take many pictures.

It was so much fun digging through the hoop houses. We had all brought our list of things we wanted to pick up but as we suspected we would, we also all went off the list a bit too. They had such a nice set-up where they had big boxes in between the hoop houses that you put your plants in after writing your name on the box. Then when you were done they took the boxes up to the main building to check out.

A very nice Klehm's employee carting some of our boxes to the building.

A gorgeous pagoda dogwood that was in another person's box. That's my mom's hand fondling it. Now we know where my propensity for feeling up plants comes from.

I think we probably spent about two hours looking through everything and could have spent much more but I think we had all blown our budgets by that point.  It was amazing to peek in other people's boxes to see what treasures they had found.

Klehm's is known for its peonies and they had several hoop houses full of tree peonies that were absolutely huge. Much larger than the two I have been growing in my garden for the last three years or so. Alas, I wasn't in the market for a tree peony so they had to stay put.

Klehm's staff was stationed everywhere so they were always there to answer questions. It was funny to watch my mom ask a very helpful gentleman some questions about hostas. She had no idea she was talking to Roy Klehm, who is a well-known hosta breeder and certainly one of the country's experts on hostas.

Roy Klehm checking out some of the boxes.

We had to ask another employee (whose name escapes me now which is too bad because she was so sweet) about a shrub we found in one hoop house that none of us were familiar with. Orixa Japonica had beautifully shiny green leaves that smelled like lime when you crushed them. My sister-in-law who has the unfortunate circumstance to be destined to a life of gardening in the shade, had a little plantgasm when the helpful employee (Melissa? Melinda?) told us it grew in shade. All three of us added one to our boxes.

We checked out and piled all our purchases in the back of my car, which was no small feat even though I have a relatively big mini-SUV type thing. As we were making one last bathroom stop before we pulled out, my sister-in-law thanked Roy Klehm in a way I'm pretty sure no one else did: she gave him a cigarette as he eyed hers with a look of envy. As we pulled out, we saw him sneaking around the building to enjoy his treat in peace. It's OK, Roy, you earned it!

Here are a few of the things I picked up (I also grabbed two really cool geraniums that didn't make the photo reel):

Chamaecyparis 'Dainty Doll' (OK, it's itty bitty now, but it's SO cute, I couldn't resist.)

Acer palmatum 'Mikawa Yatsubusa' (Linda also has this Japanese maple so I must have been inspired by her.)

Acer palmatum 'Mikawa Yatsubusa'

 

Cornus alternifolium 'Golden Shadows' (I love this dogwood ... so much that this is my second one.)

Orixa japonica

Close-up of Orixa japonica

Cornus alternifolium 'Golden Shadows' (This is my second try on this one. I killed the first one when I tried to transplant it.)

When plants become a collection

Creating a garden starts out as an innocent pursuit. You just want a pretty patch of flower or vegetables that flows and looks beautiful at least three seasons out of four. But there is that one plant that outshines the others. It outperforms them by looking great or by being the big, bold bright spot that everyone comments on. And you start doing a little bit of research on what it really wants, because let's be honest, you got lucky by plunking it in the right place. And the next year it is even more beautiful. And you want more. More. More. More.

You are hooked.

This is how plant collections start. At least this is how mine have started and most of them have snuck up on me. I don't set out to have a "collection" of a specific plant, I just really like them and suddenly have a whole bunch of them (and often, a lot less money in my bank account).

My first plant collection was clematis. The very first clematis I planted was Mrs. N. Thompson and I didn't plant it right. But she defied the odds and was still a looker. The second one was Ken Donson and he was like the crack dealer on the corner: gave me just enough to get me totally hooked.

Mrs. N. Thompson was my first clematis.

 

Guernsey Cream is a favorite that does well for me in a good amount of shade (note the fern and hosta friends it has).

Ken Donson was the clematis that really sucked me in.

 

Once you decide you love a plant you start searching out different cultivars: the usual suspects you can find in your neighbor's garden just won't do. You search out specialty nurseries who will sell those unusual cultivars and, you hope, send you better plants than you can pick up at a local nursery. You're really in trouble when you start buying books on a specific plant and scope out plant-specific online forums.

Since Ken Donson came into my life I've added 12 more clematis. Fourteen plants is a drop in the bucket to collectors of some kinds of plants (talk to the host people who often have more than 1,000 cultivars growing in their yards) but I still think of clematis as my first real fascination. And oh yeah, I have five more ordered for delivery this spring.

The only thing that keeps me from seriously collecting Japanese maples is cost and the fact that many of them are marginally hardy here (see the sad tale of my lovely Kamagata maple). I only have two (Orangeola and Acontifolium), but that doesn't mean I don't scope them out every time I look.

Acer japonicum 'Acontifolium'

 

I probably have more different varieties of heucheras and heucherallas than any other plant, but that's probably more because I just really like trying new ones (and there are a lot available through the Yahoo co-op). I have a lot of hostas for the same reason, a handful of roses (which I should just give up on because I don't do roses well), and I've tried just about every new echinancea that comes on the market (with limited success, by the way; they just seem to lack longevity here).

Echinacea 'Summer Sky'

I might have gotten just a bit carried away with the hostas a few years ago when I had 50-some of them growing out in pots waiting to be planted in the garden.

 

I'm not sure hydrangeas qualify as a collection or fascination for me, but as you know, I do love them. Limelights are, of course, the star here, but I also love my climbing hydrangea, my new Little Limes, Incrediball and even my old-fashioned Annabelle. Oakleaf hydrangeas are stunning shrubs, but not one I've had a great deal of luck with. I also have a Nikko Blue which is a full-on zone 6 plant but she's bloomed for me in the past and I won't give up on her.

Nikko Blue hydrangea

 

I feel the pull of new collections, too. I've recently developed a fascination with tree peonies (again, a plant that requires a great deal of patience. What is with me?) The world of conifers is amazing, but it's one I feel I really need to study before delving into because in many cases it requires a healthy space requirement (and even on 1.3 acres space is a precious commodity). And the charming little Ginko 'Gnome' that I ordered on a whim last year got me totally excited about Gingkos as well. Plus, there's that whole toad lily thing that I learned last week I'm totally missing out on. We'll just have to wait and see where my wandering obsessions lead me to next.

Do you have any plant collections? How did you get started with them?

 

 

Savoring the waning fall color

It's been a wild and windy autumn here and as I write this we're on Day 2 of a northeaster cranking down Lake Michigan and showing all signs of blowing whatever color might be left on the trees onto the ground. So I thought it would be a good time to just take a quick look at some fall color (from shots I took last weekend). We have a couple more stops to make on the house tour but we'll get to that next week.

The cool temperatures are bring out the best in the ornamental kale.

Techically, Heuchera 'Pear Crisp' is this color all year, but it's a lovely shot of lime green in an increasingly browning garden and landscape.

 

The Oso Easy roses are still blooming and, even better, their foliage is looking great. Shabby looking foliage is my biggest rose pet peeve.

 

They are optimistic little plants. I'm all in favor of any plant that wants to keep pretending it's summer.

 

Japanese Maple 'Acontifolium' is getting a little rangy in its third year here, but it's trying its hardest to do a little showing off before it drops more leaves.

 

Still, it's nothing compared to what it looked like in 2009, which was one of the best years for fall color in recent history. I have great photos from that year, this one taken on October 24, 2009.

A great mail order day

I love mail order, particularly for gardening products, since our selection in the area is somewhat limited. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities. For most gardening companies, before I buy I consult the Garden Watchdog which has customer reviews of companies.

This time of the year, I order so many things that sometimes I forget what's due to come. So it was with great joy that I pulled into the driveway after work and saw a big box sitting on the patio. I knew immediately what it had to be: Acer japonicum aconitifolium! This baby came all the way from Oregon from a great tree nursery I discovered on the Garden Watchdog called Whitman Farms. Now, the "Dancing Peacock" Japanese maple, as it's sometimes called, is not that uncommon of a tree, but the Japanese maple selection at area nurseries consists mostly of Bloodgoods and occasionally a few other varieties. Plus, I bought a Kamagata Japanese maple from Whitman Farms last year and was so impressed I knew it was where I would go for another Japanese maple.

Lucile Whitman, is probably the sweetest person I've ever spoken with. When I bought the Kamagata last year she sent me a picture of it in an e-mail and said, "I think it will have a good home with you." It was a lot like talking to breeders when I was looking for my dogs.

Whitman farms grows their field grown trees (which is what I purchased) in root control bags, and it's a really interesting concept. As you can see, this tree is pretty big. At a local nursery it would have been in about a 5-gallon pot. The root control bags allow nutrients and water to get to the tree (which is sunk in the ground), but when it comes time to ship them, it's a lot less soil to pay to ship across the country. The root system is really healthy and not pot bound at all. When I pulled it out of the box I really couldn't believe how big it was. Sure, shipping ends up being about 33 percent of the cost of the tree, but it's still less than I would pay for a comparable tree at a local nursery, and I don't think I'd be able to find it anyway.

So the new tree went in the ground last night. We're due to get even more rain today and I didn't want it sitting around waiting to get planted. I'll post pictures of it in its new home when the sun comes out!


Also waiting for me yesterday was my Bahco pruners. I wasn't planning on buying new pruners, as I've been using a pair of Coronas for a couple years and have been mostly happy with them. Then I read the pruner showdown on northcoastgardening.com and decided maybe I needed a new one after all. What really appealed to me about the Bahco pruners is that they come in different sizes. This makes total sense to me. After all, there's no way the same pruners are going to be comfortable in my hand and the hand of a big, burly guy. I ordered the PS version in a small hand size with a medium blade. I've not used it to cut anything yet, but boy, this thing feels GOOD in your hand. I'm not pruning professionally so I don't really have to worry about hand fatigue, but I think these are going to make pruning a lot more fun.