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PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.

We will continue to update our Website with articles and enter current gardening events in our website Event Calendar. All the best wishes for 2024 and beyond.

What are some suggestions for deer-resistant plants?

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My subdivision has been taken over by deer. As I plan next year’s garden, please suggest some perennial flowers or shrubs that deer will not eat.

If deer are hungry enough, they eat just about anything. This answer will include deer-resistant or rarely-damaged varieties and resources to check out more. You might first consider deterring deer from entering your garden. One suggestion is a motion-sensitive sprinkler, called the ScareCrow, which is available at many garden centers. It sprays a shocking blast of water about twenty feet, scaring away deer. Move it periodically or the deer “learn” the pattern, but it is harmless and waters your plants. Be sure to turn it off if you have guests! Also, deer do not like prickly items, many fragrant plants, and footing areas that make noise or feel unstable.

Here are some plants that deer tend to avoid. Bulbs: allium, daffodil and autumn crocus. Herbs: dill, purple coneflower, lavender, sage, tansy, thyme. Shrubs: boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), American holly (Ilex opaca), and Japanese pieris (Pieris japonica). Trees: paper birch (Betula papyrifera) and Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens). Perennials: yarrow, columbine, bergenia, bleeding heart, oriental poppy, Russian sage, coneflower (Rudbeckia), lambs’ ears (Stachys byzantina), and yucca. Groundcovers: sweet woodruff, dead nettle (Lamium maculatum), plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides), and pachysandra.

Deer-Resistant Plants for Homeowners is a 2008 publication by Michigan State University, Bulletin E-3042. Contact your county extension office for a copy (www.msue.msu.edu). Also try the book Deerproofing Your Yard & Garden by Rhonda Massingham Hart (Storey Publishing).

Gardening could be the hobby that helps your longevity

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Dan Buettner has studied five places around the world where residents are famed for their longevity: Okinawa in Japan, Nicoya in Costa Rica, Icaria in Greece, and Loma Linda in California and Sardinia in Italy.

People living in these so-called “blue zones” have certain factors in common – social support networks, daily exercise habits and a plant-based diet, for starters. But they share another unexpected commonality. In each community, people are gardening well into old age – their 80s, 90s and beyond.
Could nurturing your green thumb help you live to 100?

It is well-known that an outdoor lifestyle with moderate physical activity is linked to longer life, and gardening is an easy way to accomplish both. “If you garden, you’re getting some low-intensity physical activity most days, and you tend to work routinely,” says Buettner.

He says there is evidence that gardeners live longer and are less stressed. A variety of studies confirm this, pointing to both the physical and mental health benefits of gardening.

Wanted: Sightings of Michigan’s largest trees for the Big Tree Hunt

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big-tree-hunt-0918

Whether you’re out in the woods or wandering through city streetscapes, keep your eyes open—you may spot one of Michigan’s largest trees!

Started by ReLeaf Michigan in 1993, the Big Tree Hunt takes place every two years and helps catalog the state’s biggest trees. Your assignment: Seek out the most majestic trees in your area and report them, because tree-spotters can earn certificates and prizes. “This is a really fun reason to get out and enjoy nature,” said Melinda Jones, executive director of ReLeaf Michigan. “It also helps raise awareness and enjoyment of the trees in our landscape.”

The Big Tree Hunt is one way to discover candidates for the National Register of Big Trees, which so far includes 19 Michigan trees. The biggest tree spotted on the last hunt is a sycamore in Lenawee County with a 315-inch girth.

ReLeaf Michigan is a nonprofit group that encourages planting trees. Entries, either online or hard copy, will be accepted until September 3, 2019. Find out how to participate by visiting www.bigtreehunt.com or calling 800-642-7353.

Plant Focus: Colchicum and Fall Crocus

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colchicum-hill
Fall-blooming crocus or colchicum bulbs are durable, long-lived, low maintenance wonders.

Gardeners looking to extend their garden’s blooming season far into the fall have a limited palette from which to choose. Fall pansies continue to grow in popularity and usually provide color until a hard freeze between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In a protected area these will often return the following spring and bloom until the heat of the summer knocks them out. For reliable October perennials, fall-blooming crocus or colchicum will do the trick. They come in a variety of colors ranging from rose, pink, violet, and white. Both produce chalice-shaped blossoms that poke through fallen leaves when you least expect them.

There are actually two types of these fall bloomers. It is very easy to confuse the autumn-flowering Crocus or “fall crocus” (a member of the iris family) with the Colchicum or “autumn crocus” (a member of the lily family) because of similarly shaped and colored flowers. Some differences, however, do exist.

Colchicum usually have layered blossoms on taller plants that flower a little later than autumn-flowering crocus. The other major difference is the price: fall-blooming crocus is much less expensive than colchicum.

Colchicum ‘Waterlily’
Colchicum ‘Waterlily’

Both types will produce green foliage in the spring that turns yellow by June. In fall, blooms appear without foliage, thus producing the nickname “naked boys” for colchicum. Crocus require a planting depth of 3 to 4 inches while colchicum prefer a 4 to 6 inch planting depth. Both prefer well-drained soil amended with bulb fertilizer, and both will tolerate full sun to partial shade. Both are reliable as naturalizers, which means they will return yearly without any fuss. Use groundcovers such as ivy, pachysandra, myrtle, or even your existing lawn to camouflage the spring foliage. This may also protect the bulb from getting damaged when, inevitably, its location is forgotten during the summer. Several colchicum varieties are readily available and will bloom this fall whether you plant them outside or not. These corms will even flower on a table without water or soil, and will survive as long as they are planted outside shortly thereafter.

All colchicum are poisonous, so squirrels are not likely to present a problem. Colchicum also makes an interesting and attractive cut flower because it doesn’t require water and stays fresh for days. The hybrid variety ‘Waterlily’ is 8 to 12 inches tall and has large, fully double, pink blooms in early to mid October. ‘Lilac Wonder’ has thinner petals and single pink blooms in early October. Other varieties exist but expect to pay more for rare ones such as the double white version.

Fall crocus (Crocus speciosus) are far more economical and therefore are perfect for mass plantings. The lavender-blue flowers open in the sun and close at night or during inclement weather. Although squirrels like these corms, other food is readily available in the fall during planting time. Once established, fall crocus divide into “cormlets” so easily that it would be almost impossible for animals to get every last one.

These 5- to 6-inch tall beauties are snow tolerant and naturalize exceptionally well. In addition to Crocus speciosus, with a little extra winter protection you can also try saffron crocus (Crocus sativus), from which the highly sought after saffron is harvested.

Use fall-blooming crocus or colchicum bulbs in perennial beds, rock gardens, or tucked beneath deciduous trees or shrubs. They are durable, long-lived, low maintenance wonders and a perfect way to end the garden’s flowering season.

George Papadelis is the owner of Telly’s Greenhouse in Troy and Shelby Township, MI.

Janet’s Journal: Lawn Long Gone

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Nothing looks so good alongside a flower bed or feels so comfortable underfoot as lawn. It deserves better than we give it. After years of drought and neglect, your lawn might need your care more than a quick pass with a magic wand dispensing liquid fertilizer and weedkiller.
Nothing looks so good alongside a flower bed or feels so comfortable underfoot as lawn. It deserves better than we give it. After years of drought and neglect, your lawn might need your care more than a quick pass with a magic wand dispensing liquid fertilizer and weedkiller.

How to restore weed-infested lawn areas to healthy turf grass

My mailbox is full! One out of four letters reads: “My lawn is being taken over by (description or sample of weed). I’ve tried weedkiller but it didn’t work. What should I do?”

News flash: In many cases, the weeds are not taking over your lawn. They are your lawn. Perhaps you should think twice about trying to kill them.

The grass has been dying out for years, thinned by drought, heat and wildly oscillating winter temperatures over snowless, uninsulated turf. It’s tempting to think that a few passes with the right magic wand will fix it, but it won’t happen that way.

Portrait of a dying lawn

Five years ago, your sod may have had a dozen bundled grass blades in each square inch, the individual growing points snuggled tight against one another. Those leafy sprays were content to be packed in with their fellows since they were all equals—and polite, as plants go. They were also healthy, each one tapped into enough water and nutrients to meet its needs.

Then as soil moisture dwindled, these plants began to strain. Whenever temperatures soared you could almost hear them wheeze, as their pores closed in defense against dehydration. Although those pores release water vapor and have to be stopped like leaks when heat and drought combine, they also serve as intake ports for atmospheric gases. Without those gases that are essential ingredients in photosynthesis, the whole sunlight-into-sugar process stops. The plant must switch to emergency power—burning the starch stored in its roots. This literally reduces the size of the roots. As they shrink, so does their reach. They cover a smaller, shallower area so the plant has even less moisture to live on.

One by one, the grass blades sicken and die from starvation, dehydration or diseases they were once vigorous enough to stave off. In the new open spaces, sun penetrates and dark soil absorbs the radiation, heating and stressing the roots further.

The advent of rude, greedy weeds

Meanwhile, the sun has now reached and spurred the germination of heat-loving seeds such as crabgrass that can wait decades for such an opportunity.

These newcomers to the grassy carpet are not polite. Crabgrass is all elbows and explosive growth. Spurge, purslane, ground ivy and others don’t even have the manners to stand up straight. They sprawl and worm their way between grass blades. All of them are better able to function in hot, dry times and compete heavily with the sickly turf for available water. Thieves like dandelion and Queen Anne’s lace put all their seedling energy into deep tap roots that drain the lower reaches of the soil.

News flash—those weeds aren’t taking over your lawn, they are your lawn!
News flash—those weeds aren’t taking over your lawn, they are your lawn!

At first it’s just a few discolored spots in the lawn where weeds have incurred. If you return the lawn to good health you can keep it at this state of nearly all lawn or even reverse the tide.
At first it’s just a few discolored spots in the lawn where weeds have incurred. If you return the lawn to good health you can keep it at this state of nearly all lawn or even reverse the tide.

In their first year of lawn incursion, maroon-tinged, clover-like oxalis plants (common yellow sorrel) can be overlooked as nothing more than slightly discolored areas of turf. Yet these weeds have dropped seeds and runners into every available space. Given continued poor growing conditions for grass and inadequate lawn care by the gardener, they will run amuck in subsequent years.
In their first year of lawn incursion, maroon-tinged, clover-like oxalis plants (common yellow sorrel) can be overlooked as nothing more than slightly discolored areas of turf. Yet these weeds have dropped seeds and runners into every available space. Given continued poor growing conditions for grass and inadequate lawn care by the gardener, they will run amuck in subsequent years.

Creeping along beneath our notice

In its first year, all this trouble may escape our notice. It’s a few discolored areas of maroon-tinged, clover-like oxalis, chartreuse nutsedge or gray-green henbit. Those pioneers make lots of seed, however. They also crowd and shade out more lawn. By seed and runner they move quickly into every new opening.

Winter kill leaves even more gaps in the sod, just in time for cool season weeds such as chickweed and creeping speedwell to sprout and settle in. Since they germinate between November and March, the gardener spreading grass seed in April is too late, and her well-intentioned fertilizer assists the wrong plants.

After years of escalating losses, we finally notice the trouble. Restoring that battered greensward now is more a matter of starting over than kicking out a few weeds.

Crabgrass is all elbows and explosive growth, and produces seeds that can fill an empty space next year or lay in wait for twenty! Ground ivy doesn’t even have the manners to stand up straight. It sprawls and worms its way between grass blades. Dandelions have a deep tap root that pulls the water down away from the shallower grass roots.
Ground ivy doesn’t even have the manners to stand up straight. It sprawls and worms its way between grass blades.

Fix the areas where poor drainage has been undermining your lawn’s health.
Fix the areas where poor drainage has been undermining your lawn’s health.

Starting over

It’s best to sow seed between the third week of August and the middle of September when conditions are prime. Fall rains and milder temperatures support seed germination and establishment.

You’ll need broadleaf weedkiller since handweeding thousands of square feet that’s mostly weeds is usually not practical. Don’t use preemergent, though, if you intend to sow grass seed.

If there is almost no grass left in that field mowed short you’ve been calling “lawn,” kill the whole shebang with a non-selective herbicide such as glyphosate. Whichever route you take, time it so the herbicide finishes its work before the prime time window for sowing closes.

Oh, but you said that weedkiller didn’t work. With no offense intended, I think that was not the fault of the herbicide. You may have applied it when it couldn’t work, such as in the hottest part of summer when the target weeds were metabolizing too slowly to be affected. Or perhaps you spread a weedkiller over dry greens. Rather than sticking where they could do the most harm, the pellets slid to the soil and dissolved with little effect. Maybe you did kill some weeds, but without follow-up help your lawn couldn’t recolonize the weeded spots. By the time you looked again, the bad guys had reasserted themselves.

Don’t spread seed on dead weeds. Rake or till to let the seed fall on loosened soil, as shown here.
Don’t spread seed on dead weeds. Rake or till to let the seed fall on loosened soil, as shown here.

Seeding like you mean it

After killing the weeds you’ll need grass seed. Buy a premium blend—bluegrass for sun, fescue for partly shaded areas. “Premium” is an important term. It means the seeds are from recently developed strains of grass bred for disease resistance. In a lawn as ravaged as yours, disease organisms have found a toehold and could devastate susceptible seedlings.

You can sod rather than seed. But sod is more expensive than seed, while both are quick to take in September.

Don’t spread seed on top of dead weeds. Seed must rest on moist soil to sprout and survive. Till lightly, make numerous passes with a core aerator, work the soil with an iron garden rake—whatever it takes to loosen and expose the earth. Smooth it and water it so it’s settled, moist and level like a tray of potting mix ready for seeding.

While you’re at it, address other problems that have undermined the health of your turf. Level or drain puddled and soggy areas. Use a garden fork to pierce and break up the compacted layer that’s been there, 6 to 9 inches down.

If a hard pan exists all over your property, you could rent an irrigation pipe-pulling tractor and drive it back and forth with its pipe slitter lowered but no pipe being played out. This will knife into or through that dense, airless, water- and root-stopping layer so soil dwelling creatures can finally move in and soften it.

Rake lightly after seeding to tumble the seeds with soil crumbs at the surface. No straw cover is necessary—sod farms don’t mulch! Don’t water right away. Wait for Nature to do her thing. Fall rains will coax the grass up and keep it growing. Water only if Nature fails you and the soil begins to dry after the seed has sprouted.

Take it from there

Fertilize when the new grass is 1-1/2 inches tall. Mow when it reaches 3 to 4 inches, just barely clipping its tips with a freshly-sharpened blade—dull blades can uproot the seedlings. Most important, get down on your knees to watch for weeds, then kill or pluck them as they appear.

While you’re down there, apologize to your lawn and promise to water often, lightly—so the water isn’t wasted below summer-shortened lawn roots—at midday when it’s hot so the mist cools the air and pores can stay open.

These directions may sound like heresy but have been proven effective by tests at Michigan State and other universities. “Water deep and infrequently” sounded good but had not been empirically tested before 1995 and turned out to be inappropriate for lawn species.

Tell it you’ll mow it high so it has enough body to shade out weeds and cool its own roots. Mean it when you say you’ll fertilize at the start and end of each year with a slow-release, soil-building organic fertilizer.

Finally, promise that you’ll pay closer attention from now on, so problems won’t get so out of hand.

Or take it in another direction

Reviving a lawn isn’t your cup of tea? I can sympathize. Lawn care bores and frustrates me—millions of clones demanding my help to grow evenly across sites where soil conditions, sun and moisture vary foot by foot. Yet I respect its place in the landscape and all the work that’s gone into breeding grasses and developing lawn care products that work even in our clumsy hands and laughable sites. Try as long and hard as you like, you won’t find another plant so visually perfect as edging for flower beds, that we can grow with so little care yet walk on regularly, enjoy in all four seasons and depend on for decades of service. Like me, you’d better learn to care for it correctly.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Website Extra: The Rubinstein garden

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Editor’s Note: The following are bonus photos from a profile of Beth and Richard Rubinstein’s garden featured in the September/October 2018 issue of Michigan Gardener. To read the full story, pick up a copy of Michigan Gardener in stores or see it in our Digital Edition, which you can read for free at MichiganGardener.com.

The lawn is framed by a mixed border of perennials, grasses, and shrubs, designed by Beth Rubinstein.
The lawn is framed by a mixed border of perennials, grasses, and shrubs, designed by Beth Rubinstein.

A weeping Norway spruce accents the landscape at the beginning of the stream. Beth collects frog statuary and this frog couple at stream’s edge is enjoying the soothing sounds as they relax on a bench.
A weeping Norway spruce accents the landscape at the beginning of the stream. Beth collects frog statuary and this frog couple at stream’s edge is enjoying the soothing sounds as they relax on a bench.

The stream is still running in late fall.
The stream is still running in late fall.

A new 10,000-gallon pond is being built for some new fish, which will be arriving from Hawaii.
A new 10,000-gallon pond is being built for some new fish, which will be arriving from Hawaii.

Michigan Herb Associates makes donation to Michigan 4-H Children’s Gardens

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Members of Shoreline Herbarist present a ceremonial check for the Michigan 4-H Foundation to Norm Lownds, right, curator of Michigan 4-H Children's Gardens. The group helped raise funds at the convention through participating in the silent auction and herbal plant sale.
Members of Shoreline Herbarist present a ceremonial check for the Michigan 4-H Foundation to Norm Lownds, right, curator of Michigan 4-H Children’s Gardens. The group helped raise funds at the convention through participating in the silent auction and herbal plant sale.

During the 2018 Michigan Herb Associates (MHA) spring conference in Lansing, herb enthusiasts from throughout the state celebrated and learned about herbs. Through a silent auction and herbal plant sale, conference attendees raised $3,000 for Michigan 4-H Children’s Gardens. The Michigan State University Department of Horticulture graciously contributed the plants for the auction and sale.

Since its founding in 1987, MHA has donated more than $121,000 to the state’s 4-H Foundation in support of three specialty areas at Michigan 4-H Children’s Gardens: the Peter Rabbit Herb Garden, Garden of Delight, and Herbal Tea Garden. The gardens are located at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

“We are in a renaissance for edible gardening, and the increased attendance at MHA annual conferences echoes the rising interest in learning how to grow and use herbs,” said Jeanne Hawkins, MHA president. “Fresh herbs make everything else in the garden taste better, plus they are pretty and smell wonderful.”

Michigan Herb Associates is a statewide organization dedicated to sharing herbal knowledge. To learn more, click here.

Janet’s Journal: When Tolerance is Not a Virtue

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Rather than placing plants where they only “tolerate” a space, plant them where they are actually happy

For the best garden, avoid the word “tolerate” as you select plants. Use what will thrive on a site, not just survive. Barberry, German statice, lavender, dianthus and iris can all thrive in the dry soil.
For the best garden, avoid the word “tolerate” as you select plants. Use what will thrive on a site, not just survive. Barberry, German statice, lavender, dianthus and iris can all thrive in the dry soil.

Why do we deliberately plant species that only “tolerate” our gardens? Perhaps it’s because “shade tolerance,” “heat tolerant,” “tolerant of a wide range of conditions” and similar phrases are basic to horticulture. It’s so common in books that we skip right over this important word as we read.

Maybe we just don’t recognize body language in plants as well as we do in people. A plant’s message may reach us on a subconscious level and trigger vague disquiet, but for most it doesn’t process beyond that point.

Are you in tune, or are you living in a garden full of sullen, sniveling, grumbling malcontents? Here’s a primer, a listing of some of the signals I’ve learned to read as “I’d rather not be here but if you insist I’ll stay and make us both miserable.”

Rodger’s flower (Rodgersia sambucifolia) is far less tolerant of drought than lamium, and unable to stand the full sun, crying out with scorched leaves.
Rodger’s flower (Rodgersia sambucifolia) is far less tolerant of drought than lamium, and unable to stand the full sun, crying out with scorched leaves.

There may be fine line divisions in your garden between tolerable an intolerable sites. Sweet Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’) is a stalwart performer here where the lilac shades it all afternoon, yet would fall prey to pests and disease in the full sun and heat just a few feet to the left.
There may be fine line divisions in your garden between tolerable an intolerable sites. Sweet Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’) is a stalwart performer here where the lilac shades it all afternoon, yet would fall prey to pests and disease in the full sun and heat just a few feet to the left.

Astilbe is a tough plant all around, so long as it doesn’t have to go dry. Given constantly moist soil, it can put on a show even while putting up with singed leaves in full sun.
Astilbe is a tough plant all around, so long as it doesn’t have to go dry. Given constantly moist soil, it can put on a show even while putting up with singed leaves in full sun.

Clematis suffers from its reputation as “tolerant of shade.” Here, it’s tolerating shade as it always has, by escaping over the fence to bloom in the sun, in the yard outside the gardener’s view!
Clematis suffers from its reputation as “tolerant of shade.” Here, it’s tolerating shade as it always has, by escaping over the fence to bloom in the sun, in the yard outside the gardener’s view!

Subsisting in Shade

A key to recognizing tolerance is knowing what a plant could look like. Until you see a member of a species being all it can be, you may not register your flora’s resentment of the conditions you force it to endure. You may never hear the mumbled curses shared between pallid plants who view you as the stingy human who’s consigned them to, in this first case, chronic light deficiency.

Perhaps the plant that opens your eyes is one of your own that escaped by seed or runner into a brighter place, to stun you with its transformation. Although I’ve also seen this happen where the gardener does not even recognize the original and its progeny as the same species. Maybe your enlightenment comes when you see a division of your plant in better circumstances, strutting its stuff in someone else’s sun garden. The differences, minor or major, and the chance for comparison might escape you except the resident gardener is there, thanking you for the gift of (name of plant here) and bragging on its performance.

What a shade-tolerant plant does is become thin, developing more stem and fewer leaves. The stalks may be weak so the plant dips and sags. Its yearning for sun may make it lean or even crawl toward the light on prostrate stems. The foliage lacks substance and is paler than it should be. In the case of variegated foliage that longs for the sun, golds may become dull green, maroons a muddy pink, and gray loses its silvering fuzz to reveal ordinary green.

Flowers, too, are paler. Worse, they’re fewer in number despite all you spend on “bloom builder” fertilizers.

Some shade tolerant species whose discontent becomes obvious in midsummer:

Daylilies – come on, count the flowers per stem and then try to tell yourself it’s happy compared to sun-grown siblings!

Purple coneflower – snip a flower from your shade-grown echinacea and put it in a vase with one cut from the sun garden.

Balloon flower – this sturdy creature shouldn’t require staking but it will fall when it’s starving for light.

Sullen in the Sun

Their foliage wilts on hot days and has a hang-dog droop even when it’s only pleasantly warm—these plants are begging you for a place with at least midday shade. A leaf’s edges may be scorched, while the blade is pale and chlorotic, its color-producing chemicals destroyed by light as surely as sun fades a drapery. Singed, washed out foliage may be concentrated at the top of the plant or on its sunniest side, that outer rank of leaves taking the brunt of the abuse. Flowers may be abundant but short-lived. The whole plant may opt for a shorter season, in the case of woodland and forest-edge species able to escape into dormancy.

Hostas are troopers, making only the smallest unhappy noises in the sun. Not so, flowering dogwoods and rodgersias, who moan and wail for cool shadow. Lucky bleeding heart and mayapple can fold their foliage early and depart the scene by midsummer.

Whining in the Wind

Holding shredded, tattered flower petals or snapped flower stalks out for you to see, your “wind tolerant” plants can’t believe you fail to notice their plight. Some are less stoic, simply refusing to flower or, if woody, holding back growth on their exposed faces until the windward side is all stunted, twiggy limbs. Other shrubs and trees thrust dead branches in your face, hoping you’ll understand that constant rocking in the wind is costing them roots.

A more subtle sign is foliage that’s been rattled and rubbed against itself until it’s bruised, creased, abraded and wide open to every leaf spot fungus that ever took a liking to that kind of plant.

Serviceberry is wind tolerant, but don’t ask it to endure too much if you expect to enjoy its fragrance or cut a pristine flowering stem for a vase. Poplars stand up to any gale but try not to look at their spotted leaves and cankered twigs, and don’t hold it against them when those twigs grow into easily broken limbs. Great Plains gardeners know lilacs as dependable windbreaks, but don’t send a photo of your symmetrical shrub to your gardening cousin in Kansas, if you want him to remain deaf to his deformed lilac’s moans. And certainly don’t cut a bunch of big, rich-colored blooms from your shrub and drive them out to him, unless you want him to learn to cry over his plant’s paltry showing.

Hostile in the Heat

Plants that don’t love heat, only tolerate it, cry out in singed spots, especially on wide, horizontally oriented leaves. They wilt on the worst days and even on the best days curl their foliage under like so many clenched fists. With every stab from their ever-present mites, they hurl silent curses at the gardener. If all else fails, the herbaceous ones will develop crown rot, tender young buds drying and dying as they emerge, and the plant will bow out.

Many people ask their plants to tolerate heat without knowing it. Away at the office, you may not notice the midday sun or superheated 3 p.m. air that oppresses your Hydrangea, pounds your Pulmonaria, and cooks your Caladium.

Dreadful in Dry Places

Brief bloom, slow growth, increased susceptibility to fungus and sucking insects, tip dieback—these are all the price we ask a plant to pay when it must tolerate drought.

Just because it puts up with the shade, don’t ask it to take the drought, too, or Astilbe will simply retract its developing flower buds in crisped disappointment. Spirea is a dogged player, even where it’s dry—just don’t expect it to put on any but the briefest floral show. Misunderstood Monarda, grown dry for fear of wetting its mildew-prone leaves, will powder up even sooner than otherwise. Given constant moisture the same plant may show not a spot of gray.

Pests can tell a plant that’s being tolerant, even if we can’t see any difference. Above, this butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) growing in compacted soil at roadside may look fine at first glance...but it regularly falls prey to aphids (below) that never touch its sister plants growing 10 feet away in deeper, better drained soil.
Pests can tell a plant that’s being tolerant, even if we can’t see any difference. Above, this butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) growing in compacted soil at roadside may look fine at first glance…but it regularly falls prey to aphids (below) that never touch its sister plants growing 10 feet away in deeper, better drained soil.

butterfly-weed-attacked-by-aphids-0718

Muttering in the Mud

Listen early in the year for the voices of plants who want out of the wet soil. They give themselves pep talks and start into growth, then gasp as stems are bitten by crown rot and fall. Surviving stems bear pale and discolored leaves, deprived of nutrients available only in warmer or better-aerated soils. Leaf spot and mildew plague them, especially at high summer.

Burning bushes and yews must be the most tolerant plants of all time, for all the places they’re asked to grow. But watch them to be the first to tell you when it’s too wet, with pale foliage that yellows or develops fall color early. Redtwig dogwood, a native to wet places where soil water is constantly refreshed, is often relegated to stagnant mud where its beautiful foliage assumes a tortured, pocked look.

Don’t scoff at intolerance of confinement. Look closely at the bee balm (Monarda ‘Violet Queen’) in the center of this picture. See the brown, thin, stunted, bloomed-out stems to the right? That’s her mother plant, the only difference between the two being that the daughter is a division, set into fresh soil renewed with compost.
Don’t scoff at intolerance of confinement. Look closely at the bee balm (Monarda ‘Violet Queen’) in the center of this picture. See the brown, thin, stunted, bloomed-out stems to the right? That’s her mother plant, the only difference between the two being that the daughter is a division, set into fresh soil renewed with compost.

Crabby in Confinement

Some aspects of a plant’s environment are quite natural, others almost entirely manmade. Confinement, for instance: forcing a plant that wants to spread to stay put, or restricting a woody plant that wants to stretch its roots to a small pot.

We must confine plants to be able to grow trees in openings in the sidewalk or perennial gardens in patio containers. That’s all copasetic so long as we understand the unavoidable consequence of limited space: premature aging. Wood ages and dies sooner, herbaceous stems become more crowded more quickly, leaf size diminishes on older limbs and crowns, and diseases multiply as blooms decrease.

So star magnolia and callery pear will perform acceptably where their root space is limited, but to keep them flowering well, prune regularly to stimulate fresh young growth. Mint makes a great container plant, lush and fragrant even on a hot patio, but where one in the garden might need dividing every two or three years, divide the potted one each and every spring.

If I were a plant, I would probably tolerate much in exchange for compliments and the satisfaction of persisting against all odds. Yet I doubt that I could handle confinement with anything approaching grace, for there as here I would always want a little more space!

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: Double Your Perennials, Double Your Fun

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Pair perennials properly to create superb companion plantings

Crocus, a spring-blooming lark, has an additional qualification for doubling up: It has a shallow root and so can be paired with tap-rooted myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites).
Crocus, a spring-blooming lark, has an additional qualification for doubling up: It has a shallow root and so can be paired with tap-rooted myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites).

Quamash (Camassia leichtlinii) is a lark, a spring-blooming bulb of wet places. When it fades into dormancy, it can be covered by a late rising, moisture-loving owl: boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum; foliage in the foreground). Boneset is a relative of another, better known owl, Joe Pye weed.
Quamash (Camassia leichtlinii) is a lark, a spring-blooming bulb of wet places. When it fades into dormancy, it can be covered by a late rising, moisture-loving owl: boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum; foliage in the foreground). Boneset is a relative of another, better known owl, Joe Pye weed.

Doubling up on perennials. It’s the designer’s color-hungry attempt to copy and even improve on nature. Nature, which blankets the ground below trees with spring ephemerals and populates a prairie with low-growing vernal species among taller, later-blooming types. In both instances two perennial groups co-exist harmoniously. The spring species live fast and finish their business as the summer crowd takes over. The summer species graciously shed their leaves or topple to the ground at year’s end, letting in light to fuel the next cycle.

The designer who doubles up perennials will plant two species where one might be expected to fit, pairing them in one of several ways:

A) Larks with owls: One species that starts and finishes early in the season with another that comes on later. Larks often have a summer dormancy, or don’t suffer when the gardener cuts them back hard early, to make room for the owl.

B) Layered species: One wide, ground floor occupant below a narrow high-riser.

C) Equitable competitors: A shallow root scrambler with a deep or tap root, each drawing on different levels for water and nutrients, and the scrambler able to move out of the way as the other grows.

The concept is simple. Yet it is an attempt to copy natural elegance so it requires observation, patient trial and a certain ingenuity in execution. I coined the phrase “doubling up” for my garden design classes. So here are some successful doubles and the most important practical lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Perennial alyssum is not only a tap root plant but a ground floor specialist. Thus it doubles-up well with a shallow-rooted high riser such as Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum).
Perennial alyssum, left, is not only a tap root plant but a ground floor specialist. Thus it doubles-up well with a shallow-rooted high riser such as Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum, right).

Be a matchmaker.

In the accompanying chart are species for doubling up, each with its qualifications listed – lark, owl, ground floor, high riser, tap root or shallow-rooted scrambler. Any species that rates a check in the “lark” column (A1) is a suitable candidate for pairing with an “owl” (A2). High risers (B1) can double up with any ground floor specialist (B2). Tap roots (C1) are right to be teamed up with shallow root scramblers (C2).

Always plan for “Right Plant, Right Place.”

In making these pairings, I leave it to you to familiarize yourself with a species’ cultural requirements—amount of sun, moisture needs and soil preference. I trust you’ve already learned the lesson that it only pays to plant where you know the species will thrive, so you’ll pair off plants only if you know they both suit the site, or you’ll modify the site. For instance, oriental poppy, a lark, can share space beautifully with the owl, hardy hibiscus, but only if you can meet the former’s need for deep, well-drained soil, plus keep that soil moist enough to satisfy hibiscus, a native of damp pond edges.

Aim for more than one qualifier.

Plants get along in crowded quarters even better if they have compatible adaptive characteristics from two or even three of the categories. For example, balloon flower as a high riser does well with ground floor rock cress. You will learn to recognize the match is more sure when you see that it also pairs a tap-rooted owl (balloon flower) with a shallow-rooted free ranging species that does its growing in late winter (evergreens have that advantage!) and early spring.

I might also pair balloon flower with hybrid pinks for the high rise/ground floor match, but I’d be less confident of success. Neither is shallow-rooted so they will compete with each other more than is good. Also, because the pinks can’t scramble—i.e. move readily by surface-rooting stems into better space when conditions such as shade from a growing partner becomes greater in one spot than another—it will be a bit slow to react to openings in the balloon flower’s “canopy,” suffer more thin spots, and be less vigorous overall.

Lark and owl: The lark, Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), is a great match for the owl, Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum), because both are at home in the shade.
Lark and owl: The lark, Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica, left), is a great match for the owl, Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum, right), because both are at home in the shade.

Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is another late-rising owl, excellent for covering the departure of larks such as tulips and daffodils.
Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is another late-rising owl, excellent for covering the departure of larks such as tulips and daffodils.

Wait to see who wins.

Yet you should keep an open mind as you pair the plants and avoid making snap judgments once you’re growing the doubled-up combination. Some pairings will test your determination, requiring the patient trial I mentioned earlier. I call this period “see who wins” even though what I always hope for is a long-term balance of power.

When one plant is slower growing than the other, but persistent enough to endure, it’s all a matter of time. Tap-rooted, high riser gas plant increases so slowly that it may be years before it’s a visually wonderful match with shallow-rooted, ground floor sedum ‘Vera Jameson,’ but that day is almost sure to come.

However, when the paired plants are both vigorous growers, it’s best during the wait and see period to adopt the laissez-faire of a really good kindergarten teacher. Watch and tolerate rambunctious individuals so they have leeway to grow, and step in only when one’s assertiveness becomes a threat to another’s growth. Stepping in between plants may involve judicious cutting back during the season, yearly thinning, or staking the lark to allow the owl to emerge with straight stems.

Consider once more the oriental poppy/hardy hibiscus double up. Through a wait-and-see strategy, I learned that a slow-growing pink cultivar of oriental poppy may coexist peacefully with hibiscus, but the rampant red-orange standard doesn’t play nice and will abuse a well-mannered partner if I turn my back. One year, I planted both types of poppy, each with a hibiscus companion. The pink poppy and its hibiscus are still happy campers seven years later, without any interference from me. The red-orange beast, however, acts like a red tide and would reduce its hibiscus partner to a tired swimmer trying to keep her nose up to that crimson surface, except that I act as referee.

So I wade into my red-orange poppy every June as the flower petals fall to remove that foliage before its time. I grasp each cluster of poppy leaves and stalks, then give a sharp tug to break it off below soil level. I learned that this does not kill the poppy, just slows its spread. It does free the emerging hibiscus shoots from the poppy’s shade. I can almost hear the hibiscus gulp in air as I pull the poppy out of the way.

Tap root and shallow. The category “tap root” doesn’t always mean a single, straight root but a root that is deep. Hybrid lily, left, has a deeper root than perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum a.k.a. Conoclinium coelestinum, right), so the two can co-exist harmoniously.
Tap root and shallow. The category “tap root” doesn’t always mean a single, straight root but a root that is deep. Hybrid lily, left, has a deeper root than perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum a.k.a. Conoclinium coelestinum, right), so the two can co-exist harmoniously.

Accommodate the staggered start.

Some pairings involve plants that are best planted in a certain season—bulbs in fall, the first sowing of a self-seeding annual in spring. Yet you may want to plant their double up counterpart earlier or later. Or you may decide to try doubling up beginning with an established plant in your garden. The challenge is to insert the second plant and insure its good start but cause minimal disturbance to the first.

It can be a puzzle to do this with bulbs, especially the big ones. The plants they double so well with are often in full, glorious bloom at bulb-planting time. Perhaps tiny bulbs can be shoehorned in with a narrow trowel, but the gardener can’t bear to insert a spade and ruin that show. The best answer I’ve found is to wait until November to add the bulbs. Then the new additions still have time to get established before their debut, yet I’m less hesitant to plant in the other plant’s midst.

The reverse of that situation, planting an owl companion in spring among already established larks, is also difficult. Digging to place a one-gallon container of Japanese anemone among bulbs is likely to destroy or at least set the bulbs way back. When working among spring bloomers, it’s more do-able to trowel in several three-inch pots, small divisions of a late riser perennial, or the smallest available cell packs of an annual, or simply sow seeds between the established plants.

Sometimes you do have space at ground level for digging, but the air space is full of stems of established plants. You have to be a terrific lightfoot to avoid bending or snapping stalks as you work in that already tight place. I find elastic tarp straps helpful for cinching in existing plants, temporarily reducing their girth while I plant between them.

Have fun but don’t go broke!

Which brings me to one final, practical aspect of doubling up—the cost. It’s more costly than conventional planting because you plant two for one and there is always the chance that a pairing will fail. That consideration, along with the knowledge that small plugs make better double ups, keeps me always on the look-out for small starts at garden centers and plants that can be divided to plant as double ups. You can also do some begging of perennial divisions from fellow gardeners. Since you’ll request only very small divisions, perhaps your friends will be more likely to say yes. Then you can cut your costs even as you double your perennial show!

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Janet’s Journal: The Value of a Garden

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This “rain garden” full of wetland plants was installed to catch run-off water and let it be filtered by soil and roots rather than sluiced directly into the storm drains with its full load of road-collected pollutants.
This “rain garden” full of wetland plants was installed to catch run-off water and let it be filtered by soil and roots rather than sluiced directly into the storm drains with its full load of road-collected pollutants.

Standing in my garden where she’d come to see a plant and size it up for inclusion in her own collection, my client spread her arms to encompass the whole yard and said, “Let’s have it all. What would it cost to do all this at my place?”

Given the size and basic composition of a garden—mostly perennials, perennials and annuals, shrubs and perennials, etc.—I can answer with a dollar figure. Yet I hate to, as it puts such a definitive edge on a garden. With a price tag neatly tied to one corner, a garden seems comparable to any other item that can be bought and sold.

Call me a gardening addict, all mixed up by too long an association with landscape architect Thomas Church’s proclamation, “The only limits to a garden are at the edges of your imagination.” For I think putting a dollar figure on a garden is too simplistic, that the other strings attached are more important and make it a far more complex consideration.

For my client, under the impression that a checkbook could transplant my garden to her property, I would say, “It’s not just the money, it could change your life, and your family, fundamentally, in many ways we should talk about.”

What is it worth toward family harmony that there is an outdoor room where people made memories together?
What is it worth toward family harmony that there is an outdoor room where people made memories together?

Diversity is a great mental stimulator, and attraction to life in general. The more species diversity there is in a landscape, the more interesting will be the life forms that gather there. A garden has far more diversity than basic lawn and shrubs, so it can support butterflies and their predators as well, like the praying mantis shown here.
Diversity is a great mental stimulator, and attraction to life in general. The more species diversity there is in a landscape, the more interesting will be the life forms that gather there. A garden has far more diversity than basic lawn and shrubs, so it can support butterflies and their predators as well, like the praying mantis shown here.

How much value can be assigned to the health of the gardener, who is drawn to go outside and putter. It’s been estimated that gardening and jogging burn an equivalent amount of calories, but gardening uses more muscle groups and imparts less forceful impact on the knees!
How much value can be assigned to the health of the gardener, who is drawn to go outside and putter. It’s been estimated that gardening and jogging burn an equivalent amount of calories, but gardening uses more muscle groups and imparts less forceful impact on the knees!

Shouldn’t the garden get credit when a child steps into an exciting, influential career in life sciences?
Shouldn’t the garden get credit when a child steps into an exciting, influential career in life sciences?

Hidden value to the person and the family

What is it worth, after all, that families stay together through shared memories because they have an outdoor room to enjoy and recall as stage and backdrop for important events?

Health is priceless, but poor health’s costs are harshly defined in drugstore and doctor bills. Should we begrudge the money spent on a garden whose upkeep brings us physical well being? It gives us better muscle tone through bending and stretching, strengthens our respiratory and circulatory systems by providing regular opportunities to rake and wheelbarrow, and when we’re ill, helps us recover more quickly. (Studies in hospitals have linked shorter stays and lower use of pain-killers to the view from a patient’s room—those in rooms with a view to greenery left sooner, having taken less medication, than those with windows looking out onto other buildings or hardscapes.) Should we simply use our gardening money for a health club membership instead? Or invest it wisely since eventual health care costs will be exponentially greater?

What about the value of stress relief, mental health and imagination? Just looking at greenery has been proven to slow the heart rate and increase the alpha brain waves associated with relaxation, creative thinking and problem solving. Being in direct physical contact with plants is even more powerful, as any mental health care practitioner will tell you who uses horticulture as therapy for patients.

Let’s add something for that one child who lives in or visits that garden and takes an important mental leap after a gardener explains something like the fact that a seedling plant may not be just like its parent. When that first peek into the field is the child’s stepping stone to a career as a top level genetic researcher, why not credit his or her lifetime salary and awards to our garden’s output?

Connectivity and resources for the community

Influence is worth something, and gardens are notably influential in a neighborhood. Eventually most gardeners see it, how their use of flowers or attention to lawn and shrubs catches on in nearby properties. Even in the most dilapidated neighborhood, it’s the home with the neat yard that garners respect and gradually raises the standards for everyone. The existence of a garden is both incentive and deterrent—studies in urban Los Angeles indicate that graffiti and other building defacement happens less where there are diverse, tended plantings.

Communication is more lively and there’s more camaraderie in neighborhoods where people are seen in the yard and lean on the fence to exchange news. The gardener who is outdoors regularly is likely to be an essential link in passing the word during emergencies small and large, from lost dogs to missing children. That person is more likely to notice and sound an alarm when things look wrong. Little things like a nod and a greeting, more important ones like acknowledging big changes in one’s life from the birth of children to loss of loved ones—these are the vital links that bind us, activities more likely to involve gardeners than people shuttered with their home entertainment systems.

To save time and money you can change front yard gardens (above) back into sod (below) but what will you lose in mental stimulation, wildlife habitat and eye-relief by reducing the species diversity?
To save time and money you can change front yard gardens (above) back into sod (below) but what will you lose in mental stimulation, wildlife habitat and eye-relief by reducing the species diversity?

gardens-without-plant-diversity-lack-stimulation-0518

Cleaner environment

Gardeners tend to reach out and spread the green. Every year, garden clubs, Master Gardeners, volunteer foresters and informal teams in southeast Michigan are responsible for hundreds of new trees and acres of colorful displays, planted free or at a very low cost. These plantings open minds at libraries, heighten the image at civic centers, increase enjoyment and learning at zoos, parks and museums, and help ease the pain at hospitals and convalescent centers.

Where diverse plantings are, there are more birds. Proven by federal studies to be highly effective weed-seed eaters and bug catchers, they’re also heart-lifting singers of song who just can’t survive on grass alone.

Cleaner air is one of the benefits we all reap from gardens. The gas-scrubbing powers of green growing things has been proven many times over, but the garden’s effect on air quality goes beyond that. Every square foot of garden is one foot that might be tended without the use of power mowers and string trimmers, machines that are dirtier than cars in terms of emissions—and noisy to boot.

Gardens purify water, too. At a conservative estimate, every 100 square feet of garden in Michigan can absorb and filter 720 gallons of water per year that would have run rapidly off of hardpan sod or paved surfaces. As run-off, that water would have sluiced away into storm drains loaded with pollutants such as oil drips from vehicles and animal feces. As we’ve learned through increasingly common notices of beach closings, what goes into storm drains often flows directly into streams and lakes, and sometimes finds its way back into the drinking water supply. Absorbed into the loose, receptive soil in a garden, that water will not run but fall gently through a cleansing filter of soil particles and roots to have all or most of its pollutants stripped away before it returns to groundwater, wells, streams or lakes.

Every day in one way or another, a garden increases in value.

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

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