Winter | Deborah Silver & Co.

Boxwood Obliteration Warning

My friend Michael wrote me yesterday that the National Weather Service should have issued a “boxwood obliteration warning” along with all of their other communiques on our endless string of winter storms. I perfectly understand his irritation. We have had storm after storm, layered between bouts of very cold temperatures. This means the snow is piling up. The piles along my sidewalks are easily 6′ tall. Thick layers of snow are extremely heavy. My boxwood hedges are very densely twiggy, and seemed to be handling the weight with relative ease. But some select spots of those boxwood hedges are beginning to look alarmingly splayed open from the weight of the snow. Am I worrying-oh yes. Other shrubby plants are beginning to get that smothered and half strangled look. This observation having been made, I have always been a member of the do not touch group. Am I recommending that you do not touch a shrub going down from a load of snow? No. How you handle your garden is your business. What is to follow is a discussion of my experience. Do with that what you will.

My PJM rhododendrons have broad leaves, arranged in tufts atop slender branches. Heavy wet snow in 28 degree weather that sticks to those tufts usually slides off. But if the temps take a sudden dive, those wet greasy snowballs can harden and stick. A weighty iceball on the end of a long slender branch can prove very destructive. Every gardener in a northerly climate has seen damage to trees and shrubs from ice. I have a substantial dogwood branch that broke close to the main trunk last spring. The weight of the ice on the branches was enough to snap the branch, almost through. As for these PJMs, warmer weather will tell the tale. I feel quite sure if I were to try to dislodge this caked icy snow, I would damage the plants.

When snow buries both evergreen and deciduous shrubs, I have no worries. Snow is an insulator, a winter packing material of sorts. Most snow is light, and infills all of the spaces between the branches. But when heavy snow collects, freezes hard, and glues itself to the ends of branches that are not so hefty, an alarm goes off. Shall I brush the heavy snow off of the tips of my shrubs, or leave that snow be? Plants are tough, but maybe not tough enough in their already stressed circumstances to withstand a broom.

I do not plant even arborvitaes when the weather is right around freezing. The needles will surely brown wherever I touch them. I do not brush the snow off of any plant-especially when the temperature is really cold. I have always thought that my efforts to clear snow from my plants may do more harm than good. I am more inclined to back off, and wring my hands in private. Plants have an incredible will to live. I have a substantial broken dogwood branch that has been hanging on by a one inch wide piece of bark for better than a year. It is loaded with buds for spring. No matter how terrible the winter weather is, my inclination is to not intervene.

Snow cover which is frozen through and through is a tough coating to remove. Just tonight I was chopping ice on my deck with a shovel. I do not want to slip and fall-nor do I want my corgis to slip and strain a muscle. I am not a fan of ice anywhere in the travelled landscape, except as a last resort. Chopping the ice on a deck is a vastly different issue that brooming wet frozen snow from my yews. The densiformis yews pictured above have arms bent to the ground. I have no idea if those branches are bent to the breaking point. Branches are subject to all manner of insults from weather. Wind, sun scald-the scraping from my staking, the scale-branches endure assault year round. Should I broom the snow off of them? Could I damage the branches even more, if I interfere?

Most of my boxwoods are buried in snow. Once a too heavy snow load falls to one side, and splits open a shrub, I am alarmed. Snow can be heavy enough to crack branches open. There can be fresh hell to pay in the spring. Cracked branches are an invitation to disease. A beloved boxwood hedge with a big dead section is enough to make any gardener weep. My advice? Do not intervene in the natural order of events, unless the need for intervention wakes you up in the middle of the night. If you must intervene, use a long bamboo pole-gently. Wait until the weather is close to, or above freezing. A branch frozen through and through is brittle. If you must remove excessive snow, tickle it off.

There are those that favor removing snow from shrubs. There are those that favor letting nature take its course. For the moment, I am standing pat. A good bit of my reason-I cannot really reach them anymore.

No matter the work that I do in my garden, I feel sure that each and every plant comes equipped with all the survival gear it needs. Nature has never needed much from me. I am believing these densiformis yews will spring back, once we have a decent melt. But there are those moments in a garden that warrant intervention. The trick is to judge the right time and circumstance.

Though I am not entertaining, planting, weeding, or watering right now, my garden is on my mind. Like the corgis, my garden cannot tell me where it hurts. I observe, and make my best call.

My winter weary shrubs – it is a worry. And we have more snow on the way.

Posted on: February 4, 2014 23 Comments

Filed Under: Winter Tagged With: snow removal, snow load on evergreens, snow load, heavy snow, the winter garden

Say It Ain’t Snow

In Detroit, 49.3 inches of snow have fallen so far this winter, more than the full season average of 42.7 inches, and there are at least two months left in winter. Detroit is seeing its snowiest January on record: Detroit has received 31.3 inches so far this month, breaking the old record of 29.6 inches set in January of 1978, according to the weather service’s White Lake Township station. And more snow is on the way. There are those who might think this is a record of dubious merit. But though I am truly tired of the endless snow, I am also much relieved.

The shop is about 30 miles north of downtown Detroit. The USDA plant hardiness map puts us in Zone 6a. This means that plant which are hardy from -10 degrees below zero to -5 degrees below zero should live and prosper here. True plant hardiness is not all that formulaic. There are invariably mitigating circumstances. Some years those circumstances work for me. Other years, marginally hardy plants slip away. Some zone 7 plants will live for me, provided they are planted in very sheltered spots, and have good drainage. But no matter my efforts, the proof is in the winter putting.

I have clients that have old Franklinia trees, 2 story tall American hollies, Brown Bracken magnolias- and other more southerly specific landscape plants that are healthy and robust, in spite of our plant hardiness zone designation. I am sure that proper siting played a big part in their survival. I have another client who lives in Detroit, and with much effort, mulching and wrapping, overwinters certain palms in the ground. Palms-really? Detroit is a big city with lots of buildings. The mass of all of those buildings holds the heat, and the height of the buildings protects plants from wind. Plants are very specific about what they want, and what they will tolerate. The hardiness borders are not fixed.

There is no reason not to push the envelope, if there is a plant you feel you cannot do without. The -10 degrees to -5 degrees is a worst case scenario in zone 6a. So what gardener doesn’t like to plant dangerously? That is part of the fun of having a garden-stretching the limits. But we have had temperatures that are coming close to that worst case scenario, and colder temperatures yet to come. What does this mean for the garden?

First up, I need to refer back to the snow cover, as amply illustrated above. Snow is water that freezes as it falls. As this granular and crystalline form of water piles up, it forms a blanket which, despite its cold composition, has great insulating properties. Think of all of this frozen water, with air trapped in between each crystal. Years ago I was so surprised to learn that spring flowering bulbs never freeze solid. The earth has a latent heat which keeps most bulbs just at or above freezing. Bulbs that I plant in pots for the winter, that freeze solid through and through for lack of sufficient protection, will rot come spring. Insulation is an important part of weathering the winter.

Where am I going with all of this? The insulating role of soil, and in our present case, heavy snow, plays a major role in protecting landscape plants from cold injury. My landscape plants began slowing down in August. In an ideal season, the transition from the growing phase to the sleeping phase is very long, and imperceptibly gradual. Sudden and extreme cold, like what we experienced several springs ago, will catch a plant off guard. A plant which has begun leafing out has had a biological, final, and emphatic call to leaf out. The new shoot that is out there is vulnerable to an abrupt change in conditions. If the environment suddenly goes cold, the new leaves will suffer. If the dramatic cold is cold enough, and long enough, branches of trees can die back. In our cold a few springs ago, many Japanese maples died outright.

Tulips are well prepared for nature’s mood swings. The leaves poke out of the ground-they test the early spring waters. Unforeseen cold weather can disfigure the leaves, but the buds stay tucked away underground until the weather reliably warms. An unexpected freeze when the tulips are in bud-I shower them with water. The water will freeze before the blooms. Gardeners, and spring blooming plants-they are endowed with incredible fortitude. My trees and shrubs have been dormant a long time. The roots of my magnolias are deep in the soil, and mulched with 40 inches of snow. I am thinking – and hoping – that they will survive this brutal cold without incident.

If I have to have the cold, then I want as much snow as possible. Middling cold winters with no snow cover worry me. Though I know the will to live is incredibly strong, will is not everything. Middling cold can damage or kill plants that have no insulation from snow. As utterly bored and irritated as I am by the extreme cold and the relentless snow, I am in the gardening gig for the long run. That would mean a spring in which I see all of my plants leafing out, ready to grow. So bring on that snow.

Underneath our 49 inches, a garden.

Posted on: January 26, 2014 13 Comments

Filed Under: Plants, Winter Tagged With: plant hardiness zones, plant hardiness, winter hardiness

Mighty White

My landscape is mighty white right now. We have already had better than twice the snow we had all season last year, and this is just mid January. I was so surprised that we got another 3 inches of snow yesterday. Have we not had enough? Who thought we needed more than the 16 inches we have already had? OK, I wasn’t so much surprised as weary. The snow has piled up everywhere. The landscape is blurred. The glare from the snow makes everything else some variation of black.. Lots of white, with some black bits. What gardener in my zone isn’t bleary eyed?

These reproduction cast stone pots made from a well known design by Frank Lloyd Wright are all but buried in snow. The snow silhouette features the rim of the pot. The shape of a mature plant, a garden bed, a tree canopy, a garden path, a terrace, a container – shape is one of many elements of design. A shape is a 2-dimensional visual description of an object. An outline, if you will. Heavy snow makes it easy to see and decide if you like the shapes.

We have mountains of snow and uniformly gray skies. There are only so many ways to tell this story. The better story is about what is missing visually, and how a landscape can be better. As I have watched the snow pile up higher and higher, I realize how much I appreciate the skillful use of color, line, texture, mass, edges, and proportion in a landscape design. This garden table and bench has been reduced to its simplest shape, in black and white.

Deep snow has all but obliterated any complex relationships in the landscape. What the snow has not buried are the basic and simple shapes. The very strong and simple relationships. A good design should be evident in every season. In all kinds of weather. There are those gardeners who aim for one season at the expense of all the others, and I respect their choice. It just wouldn’t be my choice. I do believe that good design is all about what is there when there is nothing there to see. The stone pot filled with cut evergreens pictured above has a distinct form and proportion that is described and enhanced by snow.

The heavy snow had reduced this landscape to its most elemental gestures. What I still see, given the lack of color and texture, is the form. I would venture to say that a design that does not work in its most austere winter state will work no better flushed out with plants, and clothed in green.

Good form is a quintessentially important element of good design. A weeping Japanese maple has an overall shape, both a leafy shape, and a twiggy shape. That maple also has a three dimensional structure-that is its form. The successful placement of that maple in the landscape is dependent upon an understanding of its form. Planting small or young trees require an understanding of a form that is yet to be. Forms come with baggage, too. A weeping Japanese maple is so common in suburban front yard landscapes that it asks for an unusual treatment or placement for its form to be truly appreciated. Asparagus means vegetable, which means it gets planted in the vegetable garden. But its form may be perfect for a rose garden, or a container.

The relationship of one form to another can be incredibly exciting, or sleepy beyond all belief. Some forms are so striking they stay with me for a long time. Years even. The fluid and informally curving form of this magnolia garland is all the more striking visually against the formal and rigid form of this steel bench. The snow is that relationship graphic and clear. Personally unforgettable moments in a landscape usually involve a form which is under some sort of visual discussion via the weather, or the season. Landscape elements that are not up to a year round discussion should be placed accordingly.

Some forms I do not give a moments notice. Why wouldn’t my clients feel the same way? Whenever I am designing for a client, I always ask what was an unforgettable experience of the landscape. This will tell me a lot about what forms will have meaning for them.

This embarrassment of riches in snow is an experience of the landscape that is making me testy, but it has its virtues.

Milo thinks this winter’s garden is grand.

Posted on: January 18, 2014 14 Comments

Filed Under: Winter, Color, Landscape Design Tagged With: winter landscape, winter garden

Snow Day And Night

The pictures recovered from my iphone of the rose garden in June a few days ago were indeed a pleasant interlude. However, the winter season is all over my garden. Buck says we have 10-12 inches already on the ground, and our heaviest snowfall is yet to come. Overnight, another 6 inches. I have not one problem in the world with that. Due to arrive shortly-zero and below temperatures. I told Buck it was at least 20 years ago that I remember temperatures this cold. Given an extremely low air temperature, I am glad that all of my plants have roots buried in the ground. With the temperature set to drop to zero, I am further comforted by the insulation provided by all of this snow.

Winter hardiness is an exact science, provided you factor in each and every one of the mitigating circumstances. OK, it is an inexact science. Plants reputedly hardy in my zone that are planted in poorly draining clay soil die out regularly. Perennials and shrubs planted so late in the season that there is no time for any rooting to take place can be heaved out of the ground in a freeze/thaw/freeze period. Marginally hardy plants placed in protected locations, and mulched for the winter stand a better chance of survival.

Plants have an extraordinary will to live. They will suffer my careless planting and indifferent siting, my over watering, my thoughtless pruning and wrong headed culture without so much as a peep. But once the insults reach a critical mass, a plant will die. My garden starting slowing down this past August, and we have had fairly cold and snowy weather since November. The garden couldn’t be more ready for the cold. I doubt that anything in my garden will be damaged by the brief but extreme cold to come. Dormant is dormant. The insulation that will result from all of this snow is a bonus.

Heavy snow does not keep any plant warmer. The snow is an insulator. It protects against any response to a rapid change in conditions. With mulching, or insulation from snow, a plant that is frozen will most likely stay frozen until the time is right to grow. Our temperature today was 29 degrees. It has dropped precipitously to 9 degrees. It is forecast to drop again to zero on Tuesday. Once a plant has gone dormant, it is the hope that the dormancy will be maintained. Up and down, freeze and thaw-big changes are not good changes. If I have a mind to mulch a tender perennial for the winter, I do not apply the mulch until the ground is frozen. The mulch will help frozen ground stay that way.

I dress in lots of layers in weather like this. A turtle neck, a fleece jacket, a down vest and a down coat keeps me comfortable outside in cold weather. Warm air is trapped by all of the layers. My sheepskin winter boots, warmed by the radiator, will stay warm for several hours outdoors-the sheepskin holds the heat. I am not looking for my winter gear to warm me up. I only ask that it help me maintain a comfortable temperature outdoors.

I have been in and out all day today with my camera. A snowfall of this magnitude is not an every day garden event. Piling on the clothes prior to a garden visit is an event the corgis notice. They know something is about to happen. I have had them outside on and off all day today. Though they are not equipped to handle really deep snow, they have been game. Milo plows, and Howard follows in his tracks.

At 7pm it was snowing even harder. The snow had gotten more powdery, and the wind was blowing it around.

The light strings in the pots were unfazed by all the snow. All else was a deep blue gray.

My winter pots-pretty fazed. This is a moment when I am glad that we take such trouble to insure that the winter arrangements are secure. The centerpieces go deep into the soil in the pots. As that soil is frozen solid, it would take a lot to dislodge them. The eucalyptus is preserved, and will bend before it breaks.