Sustainable Gardening Blog

It’s what almost every garden needs and what almost no garden gets.  

RENEWAL PRUNING

Are there any full-grown azaleas, spireas, weigelas or snowball viburnums (V. macrophalem) in your garden?  Then there’s a 99 percent chance that they need renewal pruning and now’s the time to do it.  

First, remove any dead stems and branches.  But that’s just a warm-up.  The real fun is in removing one-third of all the stems all the way to the ground or close to it.  Ah, but which stems to remove?

• Stems that are growing where you don’t want them to grow, like hanging over a walkway or bullying a nearby shrub.
• Stems that are crossing other stems, especially the ones that begin on the outside and grow through the middle, crowding the whole interior of the plant.
• If those two types don’t add up to one-third of the stems, take out the oldest ones next.  Conveniently, these are often the tallest - too tall, in fact.  People are tempted to cut them back a foot or two at the top and the result is even more growth up there where it spoils the shape of the plant.  The plant becomes top-heavy, especially if it has large flowers to hold up, like this snowball-type viburnum.

Almost everyone who hires me has plants that need renewal, so I’ve explained this technique many, many times and people are totally unbelieving.  This type of pruning (the correct kind!) is SO counterintuitive, it takes a total leap of faith to actually try it.  I give my pep talk but after I drive away, who knows?

Readers, give it a try.  I’ll go out on a limb and promise that you can’t kill one of these plants by doing what I’ve suggested. 

HOW TO LEARN TO PRUNE

But what if you have some other shrub that’s not on the list above?  Or say your old azalea is part of a large crowded mess of shrubs and you have no idea how to tackle the problem.  No book or website can really provide the answer, and you’re thinking you might need someone to do it for you - or better yet, teach you how to do it.   Hiring an arborist (or a gardening coach)  to come to your garden, assess the situation, and teach you to take care of your shrubs and small trees for no more than you’d pay for a lawn treatment would be money awfully well spent.  Super-low-maintenance shrub gardens fill out and look great and really are low-maintenance, but not no-maintenance.  Without yearly pruning they become unruly jungles.   Keeping shrubs beautiful, healthy, and the right size for the landscape is SO damn easy, but very few homeowners will give it a try.

Here’s what might help - if just some of the TV segments about "How to create a container garden" were retired to the archives and demonstrations of "How to prune your azaleas" were shown instead.  Hey, I’d even wield the Felcos myself - for the cause.

This rash of publicity for garden coaching is creating a whole new bunch of coachees, and one of them is my new favorite.  Not just because his professionally designed garden was so damn gorgeous, which it was.  But because he decided the estimate he’d gotten for maintaining it - $11,000 a year - seemed outrageous, and he wondered if he could do it himself, with a little coaching.  And because he took careful notes as I explained how to prune each of his shrubs and by the end of the walk-through he was visibly excited and exclaimed, "I feel so empowered!"  God, I love that shit. 

It seems that this surgeon-gardener had read many books about pruning and was still afraid to take action - it’s all so confusing!  Yeah, I hear ya.  That’s why teaching pruning one-on-one, in the garden, is so much better than books, videos, PowerPoints and all the rest.  Coaching rules!

Open Register is taking on the Coaching Challenge with some great ideas for their members, the indie nurseries.

And here in the DC area, writer/editor Kathy Jentz covered the coaching phenomenon in her gardening column in the Washington Examiner Newspaper.  Great article, Kath!  (But who are those people in the photos, anyway??)

Here it is in PDF: Download GardenCoach9-14-07.pdf

First there was garden coaching, and now that it’s been discovered, for me it’s morphed into coaching garden coaches.  Mentoring, if you will.  It means compiling information about everyone for the Directory, answering emails and even some phone calls.  One very nice gardener in Montana called and asked some great questions, including: What do you take with you to see a new client?  This was my answer.

PRUNING TOOLS
I take with me my three main pruning tools.  That would be the Felco number 2s, (on the left in this photo), some loppers, and a folding pruning saw.  SO many people need instruction in pruning, and you just never know what tools they’ll have.  More often than not if they have any pruning tool it’s the dreaded shearers. 

MARKING PAINT
Oh, I made fun of this product once - remember the "marking paint" that turned out to be clear?  Well, I know now to look for not just the words "marking paint" but a can top that’s an actual color, preferably a bright one.  But the point is to quickly draw some suggested new borders, and this stuff does the trick.  If people need assurance that the paint won’t last forever I tell ‘em 2 weeks, max.

BUSINESS CARDS
I’ve changed my business cards so many times over the last couple of years, it’s a good thing they’re free at Vista Print, just $5 for shipping.  The only catch is that there’s a tiny advertisement for the Vista Print Company on the back of each card, but no one’s ever seemed to notice it.  (Here’s the design I chose.)

THE PLANT LIST BOOK 
This is such a fabulous idea - the New York/Mid-Atlantic Gardener’s Book of Lists - and it was recommended to me by a garden designer, so I ordered it.  And the plant lists may be mostly correct, but I’ve crossed out some that I know perform really badly in my area, like rhododendrons and leucothoes.  And missing from the list of "Problem-Free Shrubs" are spirea, weigela, aucuba and nandina, beautybush and cherry laurels - literally the 6 easiest shrubs in my whole garden.  Yet the relatively thirsty hydrangea macrophylla IS on the list.  Oh, and guess what other list those hydranageas are on - deer-resistant plants.  Uh, not hardly! Still, after I marked up the lists to reflect reality, they’re actually helpful.  And I think people like the assurance of something in print, don’t you?

And through the recitation of these tricks of the trade, the Montana coach hung on every word, I tell ya, and was mighty appreciative.  I encouraged her to "return the favor" by writing a little story someday about her adventures as a gardening coach.  I might even nag her for that report.

I’ve encouraged people to take up garden coaching and - yay! - they’ve responded.  My Worldwide Directory of Gardening Coaches now lists 23 coaches.  But before you quit the day job, here’s a reality check.

It’s hard enough for anyone to make a living in the gardening field generally but at least landscape architects and really successful designers get hired for BIG jobs, usually for a cut of the whole project. (And someone correct me if they’re paid a flat fee.)  But coaches are hired on an hourly basis - and for very few hours, at that - so it’s not like a lifetime of Freudian analysis.  Most of my clients need one or two hours and I never hear from them again.  If I reminded them of my gardening brilliance regularly, as my friends suggest, it might result in more call-backs but really, most of them are on their way and don’t need regular visits.

So even at my recently increased fee of $75 an hour, how much money can there possibly be in it? Remember that the appointments have to be when the client is home on the weekends, and naturally during the gardening season.  And the kiss of death to career aspirations?  While the universe of people who need it is HUGE, the people who know such a service exists, seek it out and make it happen is tiny, tiny, tiny, even with all the recent publicity.

Despite the pitiful financial returns, here’s why it’s still a good idea for some people:

• The need is there and it’s really fun to help people in this way.   Plus, the folks who hire garden coaches are a damn nice bunch. 
• Gardenwriters can use coaching to learn a lot and beef up their resumes, while earning some extra cash. 
• Landscape architects and designers can add coaching as one of the services they offer.
• Retirees and Master Gardeners?  Go for it!

But if you were thinking that coaching would ever pay your mortgage, sorry about bursting that bubble.

IS IT TOO LATE TO COACH SOMETHING ELSE?
Just the other day a DVD arrived from CBS of the personal coaching segment on "Sunday Morning" and I was surprised to see that the wardrobe or "image" consultant featured in the segment is someone I actually know - cool! Then I listened and heard Rita Braver say that this other kind of coach charges $250 an hour.  Crikey!  Where does she find clients who can pay that kind of money?  I’m afraid the answer is that she’s rich and probably knows most of the rich people in D.C. (Her brother is Dan Glickman and their family seems to have made a fortune in scrap metal.)  So that $250 fee is another case of the rich getting richer, I’m afraid.

I learned a thing or two from this story in today’s Free Press:

• The original New York Times article on the subject reported on the "growing demand for people who work as garden coaches."  Hell, yeah!
• There’s such a thing as the Michigan School of Gardening, started in 1996, with 1,600 students and counting.  I noticed there’s a class called GardenWalk but it’s nothing like the Buffalo and Chicago Walks; it’s about walking your own garden and learning from it.  Yet another great definition of the term.
• The enterprising owners of that school also created the Practical Gardening Institute to dispense even more good gardening information.  Looks like they’re doing lots of things right in Michigan.
• My ambitiously named WorldWide Directory of Gardening Coaches might just be having an impact.  It got these fine Michigan gardeners a little publicity, after all.

Great story, Marty, and thanks for the link to GardenRant.

I’ve watched and loved this show since its debut over 20 years ago, so when a message appeared in my In Box with the all-caps subject "CBS SUNDAY MORNING CALLING" I was psyched. Would my client and I like to appear with Rita Braver in a segment about personal coaching?  You bet your Felcos we would!

And lucky me, the taping would be done at my client’s garden so SHE’D have to make her garden perfect and clean the house.  Good deal! Except that after we’d finished up in her garden Rita says "Hey, let’s all go shoot Susan’s garden!"  Imagine if you will having your garden on national TV on the spur of the moment, having Rita and her crew descend on your home with no warning.  "But my house is dirty," I lamely protested, because Martha Stewart I’m SO NOT. 

But for all my kvetching, here’s the result - Rita sitting on MY FRONT PORCH giving the show’s opening come-on: "Coming up on CBS Sunday Morning, personal coaching is blooming."  I loved it! And the fact that before Rita could sit on my porch the crew had to remove my discarded toilet (charming!) only added a soupcon of cringe to this happy scene.  (Because she’s a pro and SO NICE, she told me her own discarded-toilet-in-public-view story and I felt much better.)  I’m just glad it wasn’t until later that day that I read in her bio about the many hugely famous people she’s interviewed during her illustrious career, or my cringe level could have been crippling.

Many thanks to Kay Meek, who’s been so generous with her garden and her time.  And thanks to the Sunday Morning team for a wonderful experience and for making me look not-terrible in the actual broadcast.  (Kay and I particularly enjoyed being miked by the charming storyteller kneeling in the photo, but enough said about that.) My only regret?  The story aired sooner than we expected and nobody saw it - well, not the hoards of family, friends and readers I’d planned on alerting.  I’m hoping their lawyers will consent to at least a snippet appearing on this humble blog.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE
Good news - a commenter on GardenRant gave us the video - thanks!  It’s
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3108384n

Group photo by CatAnders Photography.

Yes, but a quickie. Here’s a fascinating story about kitchen garden coaches in the Seattle area, via Ed Bruske on DC Urban Gardener News.  Great idea.  Now I wonder if they’d just stick around to coach me in cooking.

And thanks to all the coaches who’ve contacted me about being included in my Worldwide Directory of Garden Coaches.  The list continues to grow.

Here’s my call to experienced gardeners everywhere to hang out their shingle and get listed as gardening coaches.  I mention it here so it’ll be included in my "Coaching" category for researchers of the garden coaching phenomenon (oh, yeah, we’re thinking big).

And here’s a coaching story:  "The Making of a Gardener."

Could garden coaching be going mainstream?  Check out this story about us in today’s Times, on page 1 of their Escapes section.  I like that, the notion of escaping to the garden. 

Two months after I was first interviewed and long after I’d thought the editor had nixed the whole idea, the article appears and I get to meet some of my competition - coaches in New York and Seattle.  I’m hoping the publicity will turn others on to the idea of garden coaching, either to become one or hire one because MAN, is it ever needed.

On page 2 of the story I’m quoted as saying this about an old grape holly:  "You don’t like it.  It doesn’t look good there.  Take it out."  Tough love, folks.  That’s what coaches are for.

Now for a few behind-the-scenes thoughts.

• The status of that particular paper is such that the mere mention of being interviewed or photographed by the Times seems to fill people with awe and predictions of great things to come. (We’ll see about that.)
• The client with whom I was photographed and who is also quoted in the story is the charming Kay Meek of Silver Spring, MD.  I’d been asked to recommend a few "advanced gardeners" among my clients, and she totally fit the bill.  I’m only sorry the photo chosen doesn’t show more of her fabulous garden, which I showed in this post.
• The very nice photographer got us to do the damnest things - some very cheesy, almost cheek-to-cheek shots, some weird arms-folded shots - and I’m just glad the editor chose a photo that needs no ’splaining.  And if you mouse over it you’ll see it’s titled "Gardenwomen" which has a nice sisterhood feel to it.
• My brazen attempt to get my coaching site’s URL used resulted in a big no-show - and after I’d added a Coach Near You page and everything.  But I like the page; I like spreading the coaching thing because I’m seeing how much people can be helped by hiring an experienced gardener for even an hour or two. 

Photo by the very nice, very persuasive Jamie Rose for the New York Times.