GardenDesignOnline

Designing in Winter

You'd never guess from looking at the picture at left that this landscape is in desperate need of more plants. It's one reason designers should pay more attention to the winter landscape. 

When everything is in flower, you just don't notice anything else, and flaws in the garden design are overlooked. But when the leaves are off the trees and the shrubs, it gives you a chance to really study the structure of your garden.

The image at right is of the same part of the garden, taken from a slightly different angle.  Nevertheless, in winter you can easily see that you should a) ask the neighbors if you can plant a few shrubs in their yard behind the bench and b) plant an evergreen to the left of the bench, along with a little more groundcover.

The additional plants would "enclose" the bench a bit more, making the entire area almost a room unto itself in a very small space. From spring until fall, the Doublefile Viburnum provides the "roof."

Bluetooth in the Garden

A Revolution in Watering

Can't wait until this new technique hits the home irrigation market, and it just can't be that far off.

Scientist Robert Evans of the USDA's Agricultural Research Laboratory in Sidney, Montana, has developed a revolutionary new watering system in which the plants talk to the irrigation system and let it know how much water they need.

Evans and colleagues developed the system using Bluetooth technology, sensors, weather stations and traditional irrigation equipment.  Apparently, the sensors constantly take the temperature of the plants as well as the soil surrounding them.  This information is transmitted back to a central station via Bluetooth wireless, and each individual sprinkler head is then told exatly how much water to release.

It almost sounds too good to be true, but let's all hope that someone re-configures this system for the home landscape asap.

(image: Jack Dykinga courtesy USDA/ARS)

The Art of Color

Most people have probably never heard of the Rosengarten family, but we all owe them a deep debt of gratitude for the garden they left to the public in Wayne, PA, near Philadelphia.  It's called Chanticleer, and it's the old country estate of Adolph Rosengarten, whose family was in the pharmaceutical business for many years.

In the 1980's, Rosengarten hired horticulturist Chris Woods to turn the huge open space into a series of gardens connected by a long circular path that winds throughout the estate.  Chanticleer first opened to the public in 1993, and it is, simply, a most amazing place.

The entrance courtyard is overflowing with tropicals -- bananas, taro, pineapple lilies, gingers, and many more --  an astounding  array of purple, chartreuse, maroon and burgundy, oranges, reds, and hummingbirds all summer long.  The old tennis court, shown here, has now been turned into a series of garden beds with specific color themes.

Azaleas with a Difference

CLOUD PRUNING

Dateline: Washington DC, Spring

It can truly be a sickening sight:  in front of every house, all over the city and throughout the suburbs, you see the same thing:  big blobs of garish azaleas, the colors usually clashing wildly with brick facades.

So, what a pleasure it was to come across this house in my own neighborhood, where yes, there are azaleas, but wow -- these have been artfully pruned by someone who really knows what they're doing.  Click on the image for a larger view, and you'll see a great example of what's called cloud pruning. 

This is an oriental type of pruning that accentuates the plant's branching structure and gives the foliage (or in this case the flower clusters) the appearance of little clouds.  It's usually done on evergreens, such as boxwoods, pines, and yews, but it clearly can be done on azaleas as well.  This is only the second time I've ever seen azaleas that had been cloud-pruned, and it surely makes them a standout in the landscape.  They're a lot more interesting than those ugly globes of neon color that scar the landscape in spring and are truly dull for the rest of the year.

Containing the Garden

I'm tempted to call Ray Rogers a P__head, but there are certain kinds of people I don't particularly want to attract to the site.  However, Ray is just that:  a man driven by pots and gardens, and who unlocks all the mysteries of how they go together in his new book, Pots in the Garden (Timber Press, 2007).

The main thing you'll learn from Ray is that you simply cannot have a successful garden without pots.  So read up.  I love the front cover of this book:  a container garden at the Scott Arboretum overflowing with color, texture, form, and dynamism. And I love the back cover, from the garden at Chanticleer, a single plant in a plain pot, a spare setting, and impact that you couldn't get any other way.

Ray takes you through all the basics on containers: soil requirements, pot size, and basic design elements: color, line, form, repetition, texture, space and placement.  And then he throws out all the rules.  When I met Ray recently in Washington DC, when he was speaking at the US Botanic Garden, I asked him how he'd use pots in the garden.  He replied that containers can be viewed like objects inside the home and used as "lamps, a piece of art, an end table in the living room."  The possibilities, he said, are simply endless.

In the book, illustrated with  hundreds of photographs by Richard Hartlage, you'll learn about the power of novelty:  a simple terracotta pot planted with Buxus microphylla var. japonica 'Morris Midget,' and placed in the middle of a brick pathway.  You'll see several examples of empty containers placed singly, as focal points, or in groups, for visual effect. You'll learn how to use pots to direct the eye, and how to place them to direct the feet along a path, or on a journey around the garden.

When asked about good plant combinations, Ray simply said that "there aren't any horticultural police out there."  In other words, anything works as long as you yourself are happy with it, and anything goes.

Ray does have some favorites, however.  He likes the new glazed containers produced in Asia, the new pots made from resins and composites that are both lightweight and inexpensive.  And as for plants, he often uses coleus, lantanas, scaevola, cacti and succulents.  Those last two, he says, often "look like sculpture ... and really make an interesting container."

For the record, Ray Rogers is a lifelong gardener who regularly enters exhibits at the Philadelphia Flower Show (and regularly wins blue ribbons -- 300+ and counting). He's an amateur breeder of amaryllis, and has worked as a garden editor and writer for many years.

(click on image to purchase book).

Sweetgums, Slugs and Bird Flu

This should be a tree for everyone's garden, except for those #@*!?$#! gumballs.  But slug season is soon upon us, so gather up those gumballs and get to work.  A ring of sweetgum fruits around your hostas, it's said, will keep the slugs away, much kinder to the environment than slug poison.  Now comes word from scientists at the American Chemical Society that the mace-like gumballs contain a lot of shikimic acid, used in production of the drug Tamiflu(R), which many countries are stockpiling in the event of a global flu pandemic.  At a recent ACS meeting, Thomas Poon, a professor of chemistry at Claremont College in Claremont, CA, said sweetgum trees "may help to alleviate the worldwide shortage of shikimic acid" because "they have lots of potential for fighting bird flu."  How about that!

And as for the tree itself, I'd definitely consider this one if you need a shade tree.  It has a perfect pyramidal shape and lovely, star-shaped glossy dark green leaves that turn stunning shades of yellow, orange, red and purple in fall.  It can get 60-70 feet high and 40-50 feet wide, so give it lots of room.  Zones 5-9.

(photo: J.S. Peterson, USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database; Drawing: USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database)

The Pruning School

What a great day ... pruning class with Peter Deahl (the expert, left) at Tudor Place in DC's Georgetown section.  Deahl runs classes in northern Virginia & other locations throughout the year, and you simply can't get better instruction. Check out ThePruningSchool -- it's packed with information and advice. For all the books I've read over the years on pruning, there's nothing like having an expert show you how to do it and then practicing those same techniques yourself.  First lesson and most important:  DO NOT CUT THE TOPS OFF TREES -- you'll kill them.  Just a few other tips we picked up during the course of the day:  Do not prune plants when they're putting on new leaves in spring or when shedding leaves in fall. Don't shear shrubs over & over -- you also need to thin them from inside to keep them healthy.  Do not flush-cut   trees or shrubs -- or you are inviting decay and eventual death.  Here's a huge boxwood at Tudor Place (right) BEFORE Deahl's crew got to it. They took it down by about five feet (left) in no more than about 15 minutues. When you buy a new boxwood or other plant from the nursery, Deahl recommends leaving it alone for a year or two before you touch it with pruners. And don't forget -- if you're in the DC area, time your visit to coincide with one of Deahl's classes -- you'll never, ever regret it.

(click on images for larger view)