Sustainable Gardening Blog

Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I love the smell of leafmold, a reaction I acknowledge is not shared by all.  Luckily, I have the kind of neighbors who wouldn’t complain even if the smell drove them indoors, possibly because they know it’s the secret to the health of my garden.  Anyway, that’s what I’d say in the mulch’s defense.

Mulch and compost are HOT topics on the local gardening email groups and no wonder.  For most of us, it’s the only ingredient we add to our gardens all year and our biggest single gardening project.  And confusion abounds - maybe because a nearby town sells fine, fully decomposed compost and calls it mulch, which folks use as a mulch, creating the perfect growing condition for weeds.  And may I add, at the risk of sounding fussy, that it looks like bare dirt?

Among those of us who know what mulch is there are arguments about which is best for the soil and whether city mulch is too acidic or contains weed seeds.  And normally I’m the biggest defender of city mulch, which is collected from our curbs in the fall, then ground and left to decompose to varying degrees.  This year, if you’ll indulge me a brief complaint, it’s a tad trashy for my taste.  Not that I have anything against used condoms but hey, not among my tulips, please.

P.S.  Sandy in B.C., tell me again how many yards of mulch you use where you work?  I know you mentioned a number once and it made me feel a lot better about this onerous task.

Tom Moseley was one of those lawn-mowing kids who found out he liked working outdoors, so he took more and more landscaping jobs and learned a lot about plants, especially trees, and ended up creating Maryland Gardens Tree and Shrub Farm in Potomac, Maryland.  I can’t give you a link to his business because, as I learned, Tom would have to buy a computer first, something that interests him not a whit.  Yes, he’s a Neanderthal but an endearing one, I tell you, because he loves trees and shrubs and seems to know everything there is to know about them.

Why the ‘Green Giant’, you ask?  Because several lecturers in my Master Gardener School have warned us against ever planting Leland Cypress for screening, as landscapers have done by the millions over the last few decades.   One PowerPoint included a 15-minute section entitled "What’s wrong with my Leland Cypress?," the answer to which was long and multifaceted.  Everyone seems to be recommending the ‘Green Giant" nowadays, for its evergreen columnar shape, its fast growth, and its resistance to the myrid problems that afflict Lelands.  I happened to buy one from Tom two years ago and it’s doing great - in a crappy location - so I needed no convincing.  And here’s Tom with the five I bought, ready to be loaded into my small but useful Honda CRV for the ride home.

Much of my garden is under construction right now, what with the removal of the Bradford pear, and now, this very day, the addition of five ‘Green Giant’ Arborvitaes.  So it’s a major transformation of one long side of my back garden, pretty exciting stuff.  I even get to redesign my neighbor’s side of the border.  You all know what an opportunity that is - she’s even spliting the cost of the trees.  And yesterday 7 cubic yards of leaf mulch were dumped in my driveway.  More on all that later.

For now, I’ll avail myself of the magic of photography and select some of the pretty spots to show you.  This multi-stemmed sculptural juniper was planted last fall.  The ‘Ogon’ Spirea is the object of a new infatuation of mine, dating only from last August, so I’ve never seen it blooming.  Well, I’m shocked, I tell you, at how early it’s blooming, considering that all my other 5 or 6 types of spireas bloom in late spring.  But what attracted me to it is the wow factor of it chartreuse foliage.  Now I’m on the look-out for 2 more because these babies in mass are awesome. 

In front of the spirea are Euphorbia x Martinii, an evergreen perennial, which I’ll be showing you again when they bloom.

And I don’t know what’s up with the lone pink tulip - probably a carryover from another year, another design.  So it’ll have to be yanked to clear the stage for the Tulip Design of 2006 (alert the media).

Our guest lecturer on Garden Design was none other than Joel Lerner, local designer/contractor/writer in the Washington Post, author of numerous books, including Anybody Can Landscape!, which comes highly recommended by Sandy Farber, D.C.’s Extension Agent (and our leader!)  And I loved the design idea that Andrea at Heavy Petal passed on to us recently and want to add Joel’s words to the conversation because I smelled the truth in everything he said. 

First, we learned about the classic "Principles of Design" in every textbook: balance, sequence, contrast, repetition, and proportion.  I love these principles because they apply to everything, not just landscaping.

Then Joel listed his "considerations for interest," including:
   -Designing for 12-month interest
   -Designing for all your senses
   -Choosing plants for form, size, texture, and color
   -Designing for the ground level and for the vertical and overhead planes (those nature-mimicing layers from top to bottom.)  He says beds need to be 10′ wide or more to accommodate these layers.
   -Creating progressive realization in the garden.

Did I lose you on that last one?  I had to rack my brain to remember what it meant, and here’s what I remember.  It means that as you progress through the garden new elements unfold, rather than everything being visable at once.  I remember a designer 20 years ago suggesting I create "surprise" by placing plants so they’re hidden until I round a bend and I slapped that idea down immediately - no surprises for me, thank you!  Boy, I knew NOTHING and it took me years to appreciate that suggestion.  Luckily, I went along with everything else she suggested and I’ve never regreted it.  The plan was one of those free-if-you-buy-from-us designs through a local nursery and not only was it excellent design-wise, but it included large shrubs I’d never heard of then that have come to be the mainstays of my garden - viburnums, pieris Japonica, nandina, and cherry laurels.

But back to the design wisdom of Joel Lerner and his "design concepts." The first is "total outdoor living: maximum use for maximum number of people," an idea I’ve hinted at occasionally myself because I totally agree that the main purpose of landscaping should be to get people outdoors.  And Joel tells us to create "smooth indoor/outdoor relationships" because they integrate people and structures with the environment.  And finally, "spacial enclosure" is important because who wants to sit outside in full view of everybody?  Enclosure isn’t unneighborly; it creates wonderful spaces.

Finally, "common landscape design errors" are:
   -Planting before planning
   -Planting plants too close together or too close to structures
   -Failure to ascertain the mature size of plants
   -Not massing the same plant varieties together (what I call planting in "onesies")
   -Sporadic or non-existent program of maintenance (which I’d call a follow-up mistake, not a design mistake, just to pick a nit.  So I’d amend this to say:  Failure to consider the maintenance burden in the design.)

So Joel, thanks for the great information.  Thanks, too, for talking so fast you were able to finish your whole presentation, uninterrupted by those pesky, patience-testing student questions.  Grrr. 

Now since I can’t show you Joel’s awe-inspiring slide show, here’s a humble one from my garden.  It’s one of my favorite plants, a Persian (noninvasive) ivy called "Sulpher Heart" adorning an ugly cinder block wall.  I thought of it because I had the pleasure today of killing English ivy climbing up 26 trees in the wooded valley in back of my house, having finally gotten up the nerve to ask permission to do it.  Ooh, it was gratifying to cut those stems and I’ll enjoy watching the leaves die a slow death over the next few months.  See, I hate ivy growing on trees as much as anyone else, but in safe spots - like pots - I don’t mind it and I think some ivies, the distinctive and well-behaved kinds, can be real dazzlers.   This one, if it could talk, would probably say "Please don’t judge me by my badly behaved English cousin.  Damn pommie."   

Loved the book.  Loved the movie about the book.  Like any avid gardener/reader/filmgoer.  But my fond, fond feelings about them come from another cold day in March when it snowed on March 30, a date I remember because it’s my birthday.  Instead of spending the day in the garden as expected in this climate, I took myself to a matinee showing of Adaptation.  What a birthday present it was - the amazing combination of great cast, a brilliant, inventive screenplay and total immersion in the world of orchids. Friends, I got so high off that movie. I’m having a flashback now just thinking about it.

Hearing people complain over the years about our summers or winters not being to their liking, I’ve sometimes offered my assessment of how much crappy weather we really do have.  Which is that we have roughly 3 weeks in the summer and 3 weeks in the winter, if by crappy you mean oppressive heat and humidity or freezing temps and bothersome winter precipitation*.  See, that’s not so much, is always my point, and this winter it was even less.  Because really, we’re lucky to live in such harmony with the elements here, something I think about whenever all hell breaks loose in other parts of the world.  And it’s the First Day of Spring and I don’t care that it’s on the crappy side today; we gardeners know how to wait a couple of days for the Opening of our Season.
                  

*If you’re wondering if I know anything about real winters, I present my case.  I had to go north to find a liberal college and ended up not far from those brutal winds off Lake Erie, in Oberlin, Ohio.  You’ve heard of Chicago winters?  Like that.  Any other Obies out there?

To read about a City Gardener who’s making a difference, see my new COLUMN in the Takoma and Silver Spring Voice Newspapers.  Didn’t know I had a column?  Hey, it’s already in its second month!  And I’m pleased as punch to be part of the Voice team.  It’s definitely the area’s hippie newspaper - not exactly radical but solidly funky, progressive and fun.  The publisher and staff try to make a difference and though I’m no objective observer, I think they succeed.

And here’s what I wish I’d said in the article about our City Gardener:  His design and plant choices are spectacular, both aesthetically and functionally.  They actually thrive in tough park and curbside spaces.  I’ll try to remember to praise his work this summer when his gardens are at their peak.  And here’s something I’d never have said in the article:  Mike and I have butted heads a few times over the last few years during our various projects together but I still have a soft spot for him, so that tells you something right there.  Are gardeners just inherently lovable, or what?
[Photo by Julie Wyatt of the Takoma/Silver Spring Voice.]

Well, the most amazing gardening shows are running all week on WETA, the local PBS affiliate - Jerry Baker’s how-to videos.  He not only calls himself "America’s Master Gardener," he’s actually trademarked the term.  Takes cajones, don’t ya think?  Well, that’s just for starters (though I can’t help wondering if "Maryland’s Master Gardener" is still available.  Hmm.)

Anyway, his advice for a "spring clean-up" is to spray everything with a mixture of antiseptic  mouthwash, dishsoap, the juice of chewing tobacco, and any "medication" that we think is needed.  And by "everything" he means lawn and all your "trees, shrubs and evergreens."  He used that nonsensical term so often during his show on the subject, I almost forgot how stupid mistaken it is.  This homemade formula is supposed to start our gardens out "clean, green and mean" and is to be followed by spraying everything with dormant hort oil, followed by a combination of "any old fertilizer" to which is added sugar and epsom salts.  This is not only to be sprayed on everything but also inserted into holes drilled around every tree.
 

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Val for helping me convert this and other House and Garden Tour photos into JPEG.  Here’s one taken in the woods looking back at my house (on the left) and my neighbors’ house.  And one more for now - a nice shot of the birdhouses.  For some reason the color got all screwy in the conversion from TIFF, so imagine the leaves here a normal-looking green, okay? 

But back to Val.  If I think it’s cool that my new buddy in Australia helped me with a computer problem, does that make me hopelessly uncool?

[Photos by Julie Wyatt, Takoma/Silver Spring Voice.]

The results are in from my 2001 trial of various miniature daffodils (narcissus, if you insist).  For sheer staying power, ‘Jetfire’ is the winner by a mile.  It’s even spreading, so it qualifies as a naturalizing bulb (as opposed to perennializing, meaning returning for several years).  ‘Thalia’ and ‘Tete-a-Tete’ tie for second place, still popping up after five years but in diminishing numbers.  And the varieties that have proven to be short-lived are: ‘Pipit,’ ‘Bell Song,’ ‘Jack Snipe,’ and ‘Hawera,’ and all of the doubles.  None of the contestants received any attention on my part - surely we all have better things to do than pamper our daffodils.

I stopped by the local paper to pick up their photos of last spring’s House and Garden Tour, the fun day in May when 700+ people traipsed through my house and garden and that of my neighbors.  It was a wonderful neighborhood lovefest, the sharing of our little slice of heaven, and we raised big bucks for the local historic society.  And now that I have these photos, I can add them to our new website.  Well, that’s the idea.  For some reason this is the only one that Photo Deluxe recognizes (yes, I still use the freebie program that came with my first digital camera.)  In order to do anything with the others I’ll have to figure out Picasa, a program also on my computer that I’ve never used and which looks utterly foreign to me.  If continually having to learn new programs doesn’t stave off senility, well, I don’t know what will.

Anyway, I’m glad the one shot I can show you is this one, taken by the Takoma Voice’s Julie Wyatt from my neighbor’s deck and looking into my garden, with tour-goers strewn about.  In the center of the photo is the doomed Bradford pear you’ve heard so much about, which I’m resolved to have removed this very month.  To that end, my job this weekend is to move FIVE fully grown shrubs that are in the way of the removal work and, if I can manage it, a four-year-old Kousa dogwood with presumably a sizable rootball.

Yeah, I’m busting my butt this weekend moving these large plants that I’ve been told don’t really have to be moved because I don’t trust myself.  If I leave them there, assuming they really do survive the tree work, I’m afraid I’ll get lazy and plant all the new trees conveniently around them instead of where they should go.   No, after decades of compiling one mistake on top of another in that border by planting around whatever’s already there, I’m finally doing it right, dammit.  No more slacker design for me.  Good thing I know a good physical therapist, though.