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Sunday Opinion: September

I woke up this morning and it was September. The floors in the house were cold; it is 49 degrees. Naturally, I think I smell the beginning of an end.  I see a blustery wind broke a giant branch off one of my daturas.  7 flowers and 3 times that many buds went down with it, for pete’s sake.  I notice for the first time that my garden looks like it is slowing down. My giant coleus ball by the kitchen door has that deflated look about it. Would I put off September for another 30 days if I could?  Though summer’s end is not my idea of a cause for great celebration, it is probably time-so no; I am ready for September. Time to stop looking at that garden- its time to do something about those things that need to be divided, moved, pitched, or added to.  September is a great month to work in a garden.  Cooler temperatures and more regular rain is a friendly environment in which to plant.  Though the air temperatures are cooling, the soil is still warm, and cools off slowly.  The roots of plants continue to grow until the ground freezes.  In my zone, that date is 4 months away. 

I do not really garden in the summer.  I maintain what’s there.  I pollarded the lilacs, dead headed the roses, and wired up the panic grass after a big wind.  I water, and as I am watering, I look at it, and enjoy it.  I also sit in it, entertain, contemplate, and live in my garden.  The season is changing.  September is break out the fork and spade month. I think fall is the best time to plant.  Spring in Michigan is  unpredictable, inconsistent, and can be amazingly inhospitable.  My local nurseries seem to have a good supply of great looking plants in the fall-I think I might do some planting.

 I have several perennial gardens that need renovation. I planted them for clients 10 years ago or better.  Trees nearby have grown and are casting shade; the too crowded daylilies are not blooming as profusely as they should.  Civilized patches of black eyed susans have distressingly burgeoned into oceans of black eyed susans.  Some things they really like are not all that long lived, and need to be replanted.  Is there a spot for more peonies? The kousa dogwood that has never looked good-September is a good time to make changes.

Should you plant new perennials in the fall, they most likely will look like two year olds next spring.  They will look identical to perennials you planted last spring. If you are late to the party, redemption can yet be yours. I like to have new perennials in the ground by the end of September, so there is time for some rooting to take place.  Nothing is so discouraging as seeing your perennials with their crowns heaved up out of the ground in the spring.It is a lot of work to buy a plant, bring it home, dig a hole, and plant.  It only makes sense to optimize your chances of success.  If you are like me, dead plants make you very crabby.    

I went out to Wiegand’s Nursery this afternoon.  The parking lot was full of people loading all manner of plants into their vehicles.  I saw perennials, evergreens, houseplants and shrubs being jammed into trunks and back seats.  I saw two kids in the back seat of a car-they both had flats on pansies on their lap.  Never mind that look of distaste I could see from 10 feet away-they might decide to garden once they grow up.  Some young people were engaging in a heated discussion about something garden related-great.  All of these people had the right idea.  They know they have September to dig up, divide, rearrange, replace a dead tree, cut a new bed-act on their ideas. 

My Mom took me to the American Peony Society Convention at the Kingwood Center in Ohio  for my 30th birthday-that would have been 1980.  It was my idea of the best 30th birthday present I could imagine. She obliged, and we had the best time.  I have a scrapbook of photographs she took.  There are a few of me, and one of her-all the rest are of peonies.  Each photograph is labelled with the cultivar name, and class.  I still refer to it, many years later.  I have no memory of where we stayed, what we wore, or what we ate.  But I do remember that I was by at least 20 years the youngest attendee.  Many growers and exhibitors made a point of telling me they were so happy to see a young person intensely interested in peonies.  I so much better understand their concern today than I did 30 years ago.  Anyone who loves plants wants to see that they continue to be grown by the next generation.  I had that same feeling today- seeing so many people younger than I, buying plants in celebration of the September gardening season.

Posted on: September 5, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

At A Glance: The Shop Floor

In 2005, I painted one of the concrete floors in the shop to look like a lawn panel surrounded by gravel.  A painting of a tapis vert-a lawn panel of a definite shape.  A landscape painting. Howard in the grass

paint drips and swirls

Milo in the grass 

2010


It might be time for a new idea.

Posted on: September 5, 2010 5 Comments
Filed Under: Picture This Tagged With: ,

Evergreen, Ever Lovely

Being Labor Day weekend, I knew I could expect the weather to change. Sure enough, it was 51 degrees when I came to work this morning, and I hear I can expect 48 degrees overnight.  Our British born Christine who works weekends came in today in shorts-and a sweatshirt-grumbling about how “perishing cold” it was.  The onset of fall gets me to thinking about reworking the garden-so it might be better next season.  But fall also has a way of bringing the issue of planting evergreens to the fore-as we have a very long leafless winter season ahead. Norway spruce thrive in our climate; should you have the space, they are brave and comforting against the winter skies. 

There are many cultivars of thuja; they can be very effective in providing year round privacy. Thuja Smaragd, or Emerald Green arborvitae, takes up little space on the ground compared to the big growing pines. Thuja Nigra is bigger growing, but still fairly vertical.  I could not do without them in my small urban garden.  In this landscape, thuja Pyramidalis provides privacy on a grand scale.    

Taxus media “Moon” is an upright growing yew that rarely needs any side pruning.  Taxus media “Hicks” is the old standby for vertical yews, but they are much more open in growth.  Choosing the right cultivar of evergreen for your purpose is important.  The natural habit of a plant  is a vastly superior to that too heavily pruned look.     

I use Green Velvet boxood almost exclusively-as it keeps its color and performs well even when we have terrible winters. It tolerates shearing well.  Should I need boxwood that grows taller, or bigger than 3′ by 3′, Buxus microphylla var koreana is a good choice.  It is much more open growing than Green Velvet, but sometimes the eventual scale of a plant is the most important issue.  The foliage of Green Mountain boxwood is very close in appearance to Green Velvet, and matures at 4′ by 3′. Vardar Valley boxwood has a beautiful blue cast.  Faced down with Japanese painted ferns-really beautiful.  Boxwood is handy as a companion planting to deciduous shrubs. It helps to relieve that twiggy look, or that cut to the ground perennial garden look-in the winter.  
There are no end of interesting and visually arresting cultivars of dwarf evergreens. Though I am neither a connoisseur nor collector, I know a beautiful and well grown evergreen when I see one.  People who love dwarf conifers really really love them.  Designing a landscape for a collection is great fun.  For each specimen plant or plant grouping I may choose a companion evergreen that will showcase that specimen.  The juniper “Calgary Carpet” is a juniper I can take to.  This prostrate evergreen has needles with a silvery sheen that is very attractive.      

Given my druthers, I would only plant blue needled evergreens far in the distance.  Everything at a great distance in a landscape has that far away blue cast.  The color blue seems so natural-far off. But creating an informal tapestry of various shades of green  can be very appealing.   

This old dwarf scotch pine on standard rules this view-never mind a climbing hydrangea  that has been draped over this wall for decades. All of the attending horizontal elements make much of the singular shape of this specimen evergreen. 


The most commonly planted evergreens in my area represent but a fraction of what is available to plant. In the above photograph, Pinus Flexilis “Vanderwolf’s” on the left, and Pinus Heldreichii Leucodermis further down the drive.  One of the nurseries where I buy plants lists 42 cultivars of Chamaecyparis alone. This is more than enough to replace one’s regret at the passing of the summer with an interest in making some new friends.

Posted on: September 4, 2010 4 Comments
Filed Under: Landscape Design, Woody Plants Tagged With: ,

Small Spaces

 

The dowager queen French vase from yesterday’s post has a home waiting for her-but not the home I expected.  An object of this size would need an even bigger space, wouldn’t you think?  What evolved was anything but.    

My clients bought a house that had never really been finished.  The landscape was much the same; unfinished.  My client referred to the property on the side of the house as “the music room mulch garden”.  It was bleak.  This very small space functioned as a transition space between the front of the property, and the rear-a sheer 8′ foot drop in grade. A boulder retaining wall at grade barely visible in this picture was punctuated by a staircase down with 16 stone steps-maybe more.  This left the area with an edge that was in fact a precipice.  At the base of the precipice, multiple air conditioning units, and a collection of meters apparent in this picture.     

My first design, they flat out rejected; I had missed some important information. My first design did not take into account that they spent their summers at a home on the East Coast.  OK, my plan for a cutting garden and whatever went with that was way off the mark.  Plan 2-a landscape that would function and look beautiful early and late, and especially over the winter.  A small landscaped area that would have big impact. A healthy hedge of Thuja Nigra sporting one lone out of place Thuja Pyramidalis was a starting point.  

Three linden espaliers of great age would form a backdrop to this small garden.  The green wall they would provide would take up little space, and would screen the clunky boulders and grade changes from view.  Enclosing a small space makes for a feeling of intimacy.  And the room would need some furnishing.  

Three linden espaliers, each about 10 feet wide, completely covered the back.  It would be up to my client to decide whether to maintain the horizontal pattern of the branches, or let the the twiggy growth make a solid wall of leaves. Green velvet boxwood organizes the ground plane.  The precipitous drop to the rear yard is shielded from view by a hedge of Thuja Nigra that matched the hedge already in place on the street side.  Flat and safe spaces are friendly to people. As for the mulch pile we had scraped up-that would be used to mulch the new plantings.  

Decomposed granite walkways make it easy to navigate the space. The color is easy on the eye, but provides strong contrast to the green elements.  There is no reason a small space cannot be a lively and interesting space.

A simple arrangement of plant material and gravel finishes the landscaping portion of the project.  Now what? 

From inside the house, a generously proportioned bench makes the space look inviting. The placement of the bench implies there will be something of interest to see.  I thought that old French vase might be just the thing.  

The colors of each compliment one another. The placement of a large element in a small space can be dramatic.


The view from the bench side is in scale with the size of the house.   Should I plant very tall? Short and wide? With what? It will take some time and thought to get the planting just right.

Posted on: September 4, 2010 1 Comment
Filed Under: Garden Ornament, Woody Plants Tagged With: , , ,