Sustainable Gardening Blog

 THE most commented-upon plant in my whole garden is not one of my prize hydrangeas or the euphorbia amygdaloides I rave about to any and all visitors, or the great white oaks.  No, the single most noticed plant by visitors (including Adrian Higgins of the Washington Post) is the hardy kiwi (Actinidia) that softens the look of my super-sized deck. 

After "What IS that?" the next question is "Does it produce those ugly brown fruit we buy in the store?"  And the answer is no - that kiwi plant isn’t cold-hardy.  Hardy kiwis ARE supposed to produce berry-sized fruit, though, and I’m still waiting.  Flowers appeared after 5 or so years and one would think that fruit would follow, right?  The problem is that it grows like KUDZU and I hack it back several times before those berries have a chance of forming.  Oh, well.

So I usually warn visitors that hardy kiwi will eat your house if you’re not diligent about cutting it back, and I hope this last photo illustrates that point.   It shows about a week’s worth of growth protruding out from the railing.  I kid you not - this thing grows about 25 feet a year, at least a foot a week, and the total clippings from each prune-job fill up 2 large trash cans. 

Care instructions for hardy kiwi typically suggest cutting back severely in early spring and I’d say that’s a fine idea.   And don’t stop cutting it back til the leaves drop. 

It’s a looong wait every year before we can finally feast our eyes on our prized late-season perennials and a real bummer to find them lying on the ground face down instead of standing at attention where we can see them.   And the alternative of staking them up produces a result that just barely looks better because it spoils their natural form.  But if we act fast - this week - we can avoid both results by simply hacking them back.  The details are right here.

Why?

• Because they’re the most problematic plant group in the landscape.  Ground must be covered, but there are few easy solutions, sometimes none.   If they spread and fill out, they just keep on spreading.

• Because for the last year I’ve spent untold hours removing my groundcover mistakes, the worst of which was not knowing the difference between creeping and clumping liriope.  Then there’s the dominance of the delicate-looking Bishop’s weed in part of my front garden, a removal task that’s on my list of things to do - when it’s not 98 degrees.  Before-and-after photos coming soon.

• And because I’ve recently researched and written 12 new plant profiles and an intro page about ground covers, so I need a break.  And frankly,  I haven’t covered English ivy yet and there’s no way that’ll be fun.

Tomorrow is Gardenblogger Bloom Day and this month there’s plenty to show, but let’s examine what these plants require to keep on blooming like this.

SALVIA X SUPERBA ‘MAY NIGHT’
On the left is a perennial that’s popular because it’s a DOER, blooming like crazy all summer with little or no help from the gardener.  So yes, I’d call it pretty near sustainable, as perennials go.  Its neighbors are lamb’s ears, creeping sedum groundcover, and on the right, the foliage of an ‘Oron’ spirea.

TRADESCANTIA VIRGINIANA (SPIDERWORT)
Next, on the right, is a wildflower around these parts, and recently the subject of much Yahoo group discussion - what’s this weed?  And it appeared here as a weed, too, or to be kinder, a volunteer.  Its foliage looks notoriously crapping after blooming, however, so I hack it back, which results in much better looking new growth and a bit of reblooming.  So I’ve made my peace with spiderwort and it can stay where it is in my garden.  Others are using the "I" word - invasive - and complaining that’s hard to get rid of, especially in gardens farther south than here.

RHODODENDRONS AND AZALEAS - WITH HEMLOCK 
Okay, I live in the heart of Azalea Belt so I’ve gotta have a few, and I do.  Just a few.  NOT a whole garden of them, but that’s another post.  And I can’t even tell you which one this is but I do know the name of the rhodie in the foreground - the English Roseum type.  That’s all I know, plus the discouraging information that it’s sold as one that does especially well in this area and STILL they’re dying off in my garden, one by one. My guess is that, like mountain laurels, they’re happier at higher elevations.  But whatever the reason, I routinely advice against them.

What I like most in this woodland tableau is the new foliage on my Canadian hemlock - one of my favorite trees.  Yes, it’s under siege by a deadly invading insect but to me, hemlocks are worth a little coddling, if required, to keep them alive.  I keep an eye out for the telltale tiny cotton ball signs of wooly adelgid and am ready to buy a product!

‘RAINBOW‘ KNOCKOUT ROSES
Now I know that Knockout roses are proliferating in gardens at such a rate that I may eventually be just as sick of them as I am of azaleas, but for now I’m promoting ‘em - big-time.  That’s because unlike azaleas, they contribute to the garden for months.  In this area from May through November - seriously. With perfect foliage, and no fertilizer required. 

Shown here on the right are three Knockouts of the ‘Rainbow’ variety that I planted last June.  I’ve never fed them and they bloomed very happily right up until the first hard frost.  They’re on their way to becoming 4 or 5 feet tall and wide and making a nice big contribution to the garden.  I say God love ‘em.

Also blooming are the snowball viburnum, Mexican evening primrose, all the weigelas, a glorious Renaissance spirea, and some Johnson’s geraniums.

One of my new favorite people in the gardening world is Carol of May Dreams Gardens.  Voted "Gardenblogger I’d most like to have as a neighbor," she also created some of the coolest stuff in our world - her book club and, of course, Bloom Day.  Gardeners sharing the beauty of their plants and gardens with the world — what’s not to like.  And I spent some time with Carol recently in Austin and again I ask:  What’s not to like?"

So on the top photo shows not just the daffodils and tulips in the background but - ta-da! - the new creeping sedum that’s replacing the turfgrass in my back garden.  There’s also a bunch of cool plants from Stepables, plus the creeping Jenny and mazus that neighbors have given me - plant reviews coming soon.  But because I’m one of those gardeners "on a budget" (love the euphemism!) and won’t be buying 100s of anything, creeping sedum is what’s mostly growing here.  It came to my garden as a weed and decided to spread like crazy. 

Above are some ‘Pink Diamond’ single late tulips with the gorgeous Euphorbia x martinii.  Too bad two out of three of them have chosen to die on me.  Performing MUCH better is the shade-loving Euphorbia amygdaloides on the left.  It’s happily filling out whole borders in my woodland garden.  And it looks great all year, ya know.  That foliage is evergreen and even the blooms looks good after they’ve dried on the stems.

Here’s a solution to a typically ugly spot - between your driveway and your neighbor’s garage.  This happens to be my garage, or former garage since I’ve had it converted into a toolshed (eat your heart out you, toolies!) and it’s what my neighbors would be seeing as they park their Prius if it weren’t for all this gorgeousness instead.  And this photo shows it at its worst - in February.  

From left to right you see:

• American holly
• Japanese acuba
• Foster hollies
• Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’
• And at their feet is an assortment of hostas, now invisible

Seems that I’m on my soapbox for evergreens again, and for BIG STUFF like shrubs and trees and huge grasses.  So before I step down, can we examine what labor and other resources are required to keep this looking so great?  Hacking the grass back in early spring, for sure.  Picking up the dead hostas leaves in the fall and applying mulch.  And removing the occasional branch of acuba that gets too tall and starts to droop down over the driveway.  Some supplemental watering for the  American hollies; all the rest have pulled through the longest of droughts with no help at all.

Here’s a little closer view showing the scene at the height of its summer lushness.

With spring fast approaching, let’s look at  two popular plant-related spring events, especially at what one prominent authority on sustainable gardening has to say about them.   She’s horticulturist Linda Chalker-Scott with Washington State University and her website features "Horticultural Myths."  There happens to be one of those on point, from 2001:

The Myth of Arbor Day/Earth Day Planting in the West: "Arbor Day/Earth Day is an ideal time to install trees."

According to the good professor, Arbor Day began in Nebraska back in 1872 as a way to encourage the planting of trees on what was basically grassland, and the official date was set for the first Friday of April.  She applauds the moves taken here in the East to move the date up in the hotter regions and back for the colder, for obvious reasons.

Earth Day, officially April 22, is more recent but still, notice, in the spring, and has been used as an event for "revegetating human-altered landscapes," including the planting of trees, which she thinks that’s a bad idea - in the West.  In the West they average from 2 to 10 inches of rain per month through the summer, with Seattle at the 2-inch level.  Besides the problem that plants need more water during the heat of summer, late spring and summer are when they’re devoting all their resources to new above-ground growth and can’t develop the kind of root structure necessary to survive in the long run. 

What Will Survive?

According to Chalker-Scott, the only plants that can survive dry summers are: well established native or Mediterranean climate plants grown under optimal conditions.  Notice the plants not ONLY have to be naturally drought-tolerant but they have to be grown under their ideal conditions and have already survived a year or two.  And how many of our suburban and urban gardens offer optimal conditions?  Thanks to the nature of development itself, very few.  So what chance does a sapling stuck in the ground in April have, especially in the hell strip between the street and the sidewalk -  a less than tree-friendly place if there ever was one.

Back East    

So what’s the situation here in the supposedly wet East?  Not so different, as it turns out.  Our average rainfall (in DC) is only about 4 inches per month for the summer months but man, those wet days may be over.  In 2007 we averaged about half that per month, but it’s even worse than that sounds.  Because so so much of that rainfall occurred during downpours, droughts were longer than the 2-inch number would indicate.  With our less-than-normal rainwater coming in more extreme amounts - either none or too much at once - it was a terrible situation for not just plants but also runoff into our waterways.  Hello, Global Weirding.

All this explains why the city garden manager in my town spends Earth Day and Arbor Day FUMING about the utter waste of saplings.  Move it to fall, he says to anyone who will listen.  It’s happening in enlightened communities across the country and sounds like a change whose time has come.

But What About Those Fun Spring Events?

But-but-but spring is when HUMANS are ready to start planting.  People are in the MOOD.  That is, if they ever are, and let’s face it - most people never are.  But in my town anybody who gives a damn about trees and the environment in general turns out in droves for both events.  They’re So happy about the new trees the city gives away on Arbor Day.  But I’ve seen the results by late summer and I don’t know who I feel sorrier for - the trees or the discouraged treehuggers, who see their efforts come to nothing, year after year.  Some succeed, I’m sure, but they’gardeners, not your average homeowner, tree-lovers though they may be.

Ann Whitted - Fotolia.com

Think of those quote marks as a wink to the quaint notion that blooms MATTER.  In fact, I have a little
story about that.

When the Associated Press photo editor called me to set up a shoot of me in my garden earlier this month there was grave concern that this would even be possible.  Did I have ANYTHING blooming, even a HOUSEPLANT?  And that just got me started on my schtick about evergreens and rocks and ponds and garden furniture and all that good stuff and she fell for it!  No seriously, though a nongardener working and living in Manhattan, she could envision all that looking damned photogenic.

And the photographer herself immediately saw all the best shoot locations - standing under an arched doorway, against the backdrop of a waterfall, on a teak bench with evergreen foliage and red berries behind me and ON AND ON.  (Did I mention it was about 40 degrees and a bit windy, too?)

But back to blooms because that’s what gardenbloggers show off on the 15th of every month and I only have one really sad-looking and disappointing hellebore bloom (H. foetidus) that you don’t want to see.  That’s why I’m showing you my friend Pam’s rosemary as it looked just last week, which she assures me will be its happy state right through the winter.  Gotta get me some of that.

And here’s a favorite winter photo of mine, taken at the National Arboretum.  Don’t winterberry
hollies look awesome massed like that and paired with grasses?  For the Latin-inclined, that’s Ilex verticulata.

This is Part Umpteen in my series about Getting Rid of My Lawn in which I ponder the question of what plant(s) to grow instead.  As much as I enjoyed the book Covering Ground, it didn’t - and couldn’t - answer every question about every site, so experimentation is needed. 

Now there are lots of plants being tried (or "trialed," to use my new favorite hort term) as replacements for turfgrass and they have to meet these requirements:

• Short enough to drag a garden hose across them
• Drought-tolerant
• Less labor-intensive than the lawn was, or at least more enjoyable tasks than lawn care, so you see I’m setting a low bar.
• Happy in this sunny, sloping site with really nice soil.

Here’s the plant I have the most of, since it grows as a weed here.  I call it creeping sedum but if you know the Latin name, please tell me.  I did notice that that groundcover book cautioned about this group of plants doing a poor job of preventing erosion on hillsides because their roots are so short.  It’s always something, to quote the beloved Rosanne Rosannadanna.  But I ain’t giving it up without a fight.

Then there’s my own question/doubt about this plant:  Will it be evergreen enough to look decent all winter in the center of the whole backyard?  Here you see it photographed in January, so whadaya think?

Funny thing - by reading gardenblogs from other climates I’ve come to better understand my own climate and how it affects my gardening choices.  I now see that it’s only because my beds and borders aren’t covered with snow all winter that I care about having evergreen groundcovers.  And unlike other gardeners who write about raking dead leaves into their borders for the winter, I quickly remove fallen leaves because I’d much rather see the evergreen groundcovers underneath (and potentially being smothered by) them.

Something that all temperate zone gardeners can agree on, though, are the glories of evergreen shrubs and trees, like the ones I grow listed here just below the deciduous ones.  But today it’s not those big green partners in my garden that I’ve come to praise but rather the evergreen perennials that I wouldn’t even see if I didn’t continue to stroll my garden through the winter.  But stroll I do here in Zone 7, more days than not.

Euphorbia amygaloides (top) is
my new favorite perennial.
The lamb’s ears (above) are starting to look ragged and definitely aren’t  blooming but they still look good, even after our first snow.  Same goes for the Pulmonaria (right).  Liriope looks look good all year. Carex?  Same deal. (Photos in the links.)

And how about the Persian ivy ‘Sulphur Heart’ (above left)?  It’s well behaved and always gorgeous.