Click on the cover to read now!
Editor’s Note: The following are bonus photos from a profile of Mark and Carolyn Resch’s garden featured in the May 2019 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.
After a moderate rain, water collects in a shallow ditch at the back of my lawn. It looks swampy every year. Any design/planting ideas to improve the look of this area?
This unfortunate nuisance that often occurs in both old and new landscapes is actually a garden opportunity. Evaluate the square footage involved and consider putting in a rain garden. Very simply, a rain garden is a planted depression that allows rainwater runoff from impervious urban areas like roofs, driveways, walkways, and compacted lawn areas the opportunity to be absorbed. It reduces rain runoff by allowing storm water to soak into the ground (as opposed to flowing into drains and surface waters, which causes erosion, water pollution and flooding).
Usually, it is a small garden that is designed to withstand the extremes of moisture and concentrations of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus often found in storm water runoff. A rain garden retards the water flow and absorption, allowing more time to infiltrate and less opportunity to gain momentum and erosive power. Because this area is in your lawn, you have the opportunity to prepare an area with select trees and shrubs as well as perennials that will enjoy absorbing and utilizing that rainwater, processing it, and creating an entire ecosystem beneficial to the greater good of the landscape.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has a 32-page online manual for the how-tos of constructing a rain garden, from measuring to digging to planting. They even include several design diagrams. The basic information is excellent, but it does focus on downspout and house foundation locations for the most part.
The key for an area like yours (away from a downspout) is to use tree and shrub species that love wet conditions. There are a number of Michigan native plants that suit the criteria well. Because you are not necessarily restricted by the proximity of a building, you can consider using trees like river birch (Betula nigra ‘Heritage’), which has the grace of a willow but none of the mess. It also has excellent winter interest in its buff pink, exfoliating bark.
Consider planting a cluster of red and yellow twig dogwood shrubs (Cornus sericea ‘Alba’ and Cornus sericea ‘Flaviramea’). These shrubs are especially suited to swampy areas and, with their colorful twigs exposed in Michigan winters, become a highlight of the snow-filled landscape. Depending on how large your ditch is, you could possibly add a smaller ornamental tree such as a native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), which blooms in October and November, or a native shrub such as the common elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) whose fall fruit provides a great food source for both birds and animals.
Planting a rain garden is a very eco-friendly way to deal with standing water and provide assistance to the natural filtration process for our groundwater. You not only solve the drainage problem but also turn an eyesore into a work of beauty.
Gardening has never been easier. Power equipment, ergonomically efficient hand tools, landscapes featuring groundcovers and mulch rather than labor-intensive hoed flower beds, inexpensive materials for no-bend raised beds, and lightweight prepackaged potting mixes all ease the strain of the garden season on muscles, bone, timetable and checkbook. It’s great.
But there is a consequence of all this efficiency and mechanization that causes me concern. Those long-reach tools, no-fuss plantings and time-saving schemes put distance and time between the gardener and his garden. Yet spring is a time to embrace the garden!
Don’t we get enough separation from our gardens from November to April? Shouldn’t we be kissing the ground, hugging our shrubs and stroking the silky new bulb foliage once the snow melts? That’s what I do.
Not only does it make me feel better to reconnect, but it keeps me ahead of trouble and on the easy side of the street for the whole year.
Here’s my spring start-up routine.
When the bulb foliage is up several inches and perennials’ basal rosettes have begun to show new green, I know the soil in that area has drained and warmed enough to accept my ministrations. In my own beds and most others I’m involved with, I expect to be out there on April 1, although I do work in a few beds that are too low, poorly drained or so shaded and sloped away from the sun that plant growth is retarded and I wait until later in April.
It helps at this time of year to summon one of my alter egos to coax, prod, push or fire me up and send me out the door, because an April morning can seem cold and unappealing. Even though I’ve learned that every hour I spend in early April saves me triple time later in the year, and I know that it will be less than an hour before I’ve warmed up enough to peel off my first layer of insulation, the first step out of the house can take work.
My first and most important job is to visit the plants and see how they’re doing. So I crouch, pruners in hand to clip away last year’s stems from perennials and damaged bits from shrubs, and give each member of my garden the once-over.
I’m not doing anything other than clipping yet, but I’m noting things like the presence of weeds in or near the crown, animal damage, weak or rotted portions, overcrowded clumps or over-eager colonies, and puzzling unknowns. After 30-some years watching my plants wake up, I pretty much know my team. Each species has its own character and unique weaknesses. Some always jump up ready to rock, some winter restlessly and need untangling from the sheets, and a few need to be hustled quickly to the vanity for a makeover before polite company arrives. Occasionally one needs doctoring or inoculation because I see early signs of that plant’s unique recurring problems.
There are always a few new guys every year who give me pause. Getting to know each one is like learning the ways of a new friend, one day and one encounter at a time. In spring, I scribble my observations on a mental clipboard.
As I cut, I toss plant debris over my shoulder onto the lawn or a tarp. Every 10 or 15 minutes I stand up, pocket the pruners and stretch out with a rake to clean up my clippings. It’s unwise in early spring to spend too long in any one position or motion.
If the bed needs fertilizer, I broadcast a slow-release, organic product. I do this now so that the granules of fertilizer will be mixed into the top few inches of soil as I do my next steps—weeding and dividing.
I weed the bed beginning where most weeds begin—on the edge. Most of the plants we call weeds get into a bed as creeping roots or from seed dropped from the plants just outside. If I keep the edge free of weeds, the middle of the bed can almost fend for itself. After one good weeding in April I generally have very little weeding to do in May and often none in June, July and August.
I cut along the edge with a spade, separating runners from their source and loosening the soil. Then I lift out seedlings and creeping infiltrators, chasing every bit of running root. If there is a root barrier such as edging surrounding the bed, I loosen and lift seedling weeds all along the perimeter and check to be sure that defensive barrier is working. Sometimes I find that running root plants are coming in over the top of the edging or ducking beneath. If that’s the case I plan a change in tactics—a wider no man’s land to thwart above-ground creepers or a deeper edging against the subterranean invaders.
When I have secured the borders, I look to any weeds in the center. Weeds there consist mostly of desirable plants that have run amok. Running root perennials like bee balm, obedient plant, herbaceous artemisias and Japanese anemones have that tendency to spread beyond their appointed places. I sort out such messes by chasing the aggressive plants’ roots outward from their crowns. Sometimes it’s necessary to lift neighboring perennials all around these aggressive species, remove the foreign roots from their crowns and then replace them. Do this now and the oppressed plants will have time to reestablish roots before they stretch upward for the year. No sign of the disruption will remain.
Right: But I will use anything that is free of weeds and can cover the ground, from shredded bark…to the fall leaves shown.
Now or at my next visit in April I divide declining perennials and tend to those who seemed to need help with pests. Dividing is a matter of lifting all of an existing plant, removing the oldest parts—usually the center—and replanting only about one-quarter of the whole. I put back only pieces that are vigorous, outer-edge divisions, as those probably carry the least spores and eggs of pest diseases and insects that may have contributed to the original plant’s decline.
Every plant I lift for dividing represents a loss of organic matter for the bed. So for every bushel of peony, daylily, daisy or anything else I remove, I spread a bushel full of compost on that space and work it into the soil. If I don’t, the area will settle after replanting. Plants in such depressions may suffer from poor air circulation or puddling water.
My final chore in spring is to top up the mulch in the bed. Where the existing blanket of mulch is less than two inches thick, I add new, being careful to leave a clear collar around the crowns of plants so moisture isn’t trapped against stems.
Pre-emergent weed killers are unnecessary if you mulch. Pre-emergent products are often counter-productive in a perennial bed, getting mixed too deep into the soil in the normal course of weeding and dividing so that they do not prevent weeds at the surface, but build up to begin affecting the deeper roots of desirable plants.
There! Now I can sit back and enjoy the season because there will be very little hard work to do until fall!
Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.