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Recently I had some outpatient eye surgery. As part of the pre-op I was told to get clearance from my family doctor. After a quick scan of the vital signs, a few well-placed pokes and a few mumbles about the waste of medical dollars he filled out the necessary paperwork.

His gripe is that the medical journals more than five years ago reported that the physical stress of my surgery was so small that he was wasting his time and my money. Yet he reported you would not find a surgeon who would do this work without a similar checkup.

I chuckled because I see almost universal disbelief about my answer when people ask how to prepare a hole for planting. The answer is that almost, if not always, the best approach is to do nothing. Dig the hole, set the plant in, water it and cover it. Go on to the next plant or put your tools away.

Research in 1979 at the University of Oklahoma proved that amending the hole was worse than just planting. Prior to that, it was common practice to enhance the hole with peat moss or like material and even throw in a little fertilizer to boot.

What the research showed was that the plant was so happy in its special hole that its roots refused to grow beyond the magic circle. It was the equivalent of leaving the plant in the plastic pot when planting. Yes, that was thirty years ago and yet there are few converts.

I first heard about the research about ten years ago in a class at Longwood Gardens. Before that, I believed the conventional wisdom that the hole needed improvement.

The 1979 research has been repeated ad infinim at university after university, in all kinds of soil and with all kinds of amendments. The results remain the same. The untreated planting is best although they have uncovered a few processes that may give equal results. It's time to be lazy and put this one to rest.

The last study I read claimed that if we dug a star shaped hole, the roots would grow into the star's points quickly accelerating the root growth in general. Wow, does anybody know how many points a star has?

Enough sarcasm. We can agree that an oversized hole is better that one that just barely accommodates the roots. We can agree if you must amend the soil it is ok to do the whole area with the necessary tillage to provide the transplant with a uniform soil mixture.

Other than that, save your time, energy and money. Put your improvement efforts into the corn or potato patch. Perennials, shrubs, trees, most annuals and most vegetables will be happier in what you have, rather than in what you could make.

I have a love/hate affair with one member of the hydrangea clan. It's not the oak-leafs. They are easy and reliable given a hint of shade and a wee bit of protection from the worst winter winds. It is not the paniculatas, the ones with the large whitish flowers. They thrive almost anywhere. It's not the arborescens who were grandmother's white snowball bush.

My struggle is with the macrophyllas. They are the colorful, large mopheads or lacecap varieties. Several years ago I did two articles on hydrangeas. Recent experience has convinced me that my current knowledge will easily fit into one article.

Let's start by saying that 'Nikko Blue' and 'Pia', two varieties that have long populated our yards are almost always successful. 'Nikko Blue' is pink until the pH is sufficiently lowered. 'Pia' is a more compact pink variety that seems to be less pH sensitive.

Beyond that, there is a host of varieties that are rated for zone 6. I planted a pair of one of the more exotic/beautiful lacecaps on the east side of my house where they will catch the house's shadow by lunchtime. Isn't that about perfect?

Looking at the horticultural maps, zone 6 is listed to have low temperatures of 0 to -10 degrees. Do we ever get below zero? Yes. Do I remember the last time it happened? No. Are my fancy lacecaps happy? No.

They grow like crazy in the spring and summer. I don't prune the buds away, they disappear when the plant dies back to the ground each winter. In fairness, I can find several spectacular blooms if I root through the foliage carefully. I'm disappointed.

In all honesty, I wonder if the ratings given some of these might include a fib factor. Perhaps the breeders agree, since the rage now is to create varieties that re-bloom. In other words, they set late summer buds for a regular season bloom and then set some buds on new wood and continue blooming.

I'm trying to sort through the hype here, too. The much-advertised re-bloomer is 'Endless Summer'. The distribution of this one is tightly controlled and it is priced accordingly. I am not ready to make a judgment yet.

For those of you without adequate financial coverage, there is a generic version called 'All Summer Beauty'. The claim is that it is nearly identical. It is somewhat effected by pH. Again the jury is still out at my house.

Current catalogs suggest the near term arrival of re-blooming varieties. As one who has planted a host of re-blooming daylilies and bearded iris that have fallen short unless in unattainably perfect conditions, seeing will be believing.

My best guess is that time will provide the reliable macrophylla hydrangeas I long for. Until then I will search for ones that I can love while meeting many who seem to hate me.

The best thing about TV is that occasionally you get a really catchy, creative commercial. One of my favorites is the one from Mastercard that ends with the tagline "something" is priceless.

Several days ago I experienced one of those priceless moments. A young couple pulled into our parking lot. The mother was out of the car in a flash and off on a mission to buy some plants. The five-year-old was close behind as he headed for the sandbox.

The two-year-old lingered at the edge of the quiet parking lot. The father was the slowest to emerge from the car. My guess is that the two-year-old's indecision interrupted whatever had the father's attention.

They then joined the five-year-old at the sandbox. After an undetermined amount of time, the mother appeared with a wagonload of plants and looking at the five-year-old, announced that it was time for him to pick a plant for his garden.

The sandbox immediately lost appeal and the family was off again. Minutes later, they returned with the five-year-old lugging a Shasta daisy that was almost as tall as he was. Watching his expression, effort and excitement I do not remember whether the two-year-old even got a plant.

What I am sure is that I was seeing the beginning of another gardener and one that can appreciate and enjoy the wonders that nature brings to those willing to see it. A recent medical report linked the upsurge in allergies to our population's fixation on cleanliness. Sorry, but I couldn't resist adding that.

My own life is blessed by the nearness of grandson Liam who lives less than a hill away. I watched his excitement as we planted pumpkins, watched then grow and then picked them. His blue ribbon from the fair was one of his first show-and-tells at nursery school.

Liam just turned three and will spend long minutes watching the birds at the feeders. He started with two centers from toilet paper taped together but soon graduated to an old pair of my binoculars. He already knows a lot of birds by sight and sound.

One day last summer my wife and I were perched on a bank where our yard meets the woods with our binoculars hoping something interesting would appear. Sure enough, it did. Not a bird, but Liam. My wife soon lost her binoculars and Liam was fascinated for at least a half hour. I wish I knew exactly what he saw or was thinking.

He's now into insects. Recently I found a katydid to show him. A day or two later I found a wheel bug. His reactions --- priceless.

This week, as my Medicare card arrived, I vowed to hang on to some of the wonder that tends to diminish with aging. Liam, his younger cousin Lexi, and his newborn sister Ali, might just be the ticket to stop the trend and keep life priceless.

Recent posts in a question and answer column in another newspaper asked how to revive or rejuvenate a patch of black raspberries that were in rapid decline. The short answer is that you can't.Black raspberries are perhaps the most difficult common plant to grow successfully. Expected life span of a garden patch of black raspberries may be as little as several years and almost never more than five. The culprit is virus.

Signs of the virus include stunted plants, swiveled fruits and yellow or dying stems. There is no spray, fertilizer or cultural practice that can eliminate the virus and turn around a patch that is virus infected. At best we can offer a few tips that will delay the inevitable.

Start with clean plants. Commercially available plants are grown from tissue culture and generally virus indexed. Let's try an adequate, but over simplified, explanation of that last sentence.

One can assume that the newest growth on a plant has the least exposure to the virus. Thus, the process is to harvest a small section of the newest growth and in lab conditions grow new plants from it. That's tissue culture.

Repeating that process a number of times is indexing, and should produce a plant near virus free. The optimum word here is near. Taking suckers from your own or a friend's garden will start you much closer to the end as these plants are already somewhat infected.

If you are planting, select a new site well away from any previous black raspberry beds. It is also essential to destroy any wild plants growing in the area as they surely harbor the virus. Also, if you see a plant in decline, remove and destroy it immediately.

I am puzzled that there seems to be some wild bushes that thrive and that the plant people have not been able to use them better make the leap to better black raspberry plants.

You may have spotted that I always have used black in front of raspberries. Red raspberries are easy and almost foolproof as a crop with a bit of attention to pruning.

Blueberries are easy too, if one can get the pH low enough in our limestone soils. They are multiple stemmed. Maintenance suggests keeping five to seven stems and removing the oldest stems each winter.

Last spring I planted several short rows of strawberries in my garden. One was my favorite spring bearer but the other was one of those ever-bearing varieties. Their fruit is not as tasty but you can't beat finding several quarts of strawberries in the garden in late September.

Grandson Liam likes to visit there. It takes almost a dozen berries until he exclaims that his belly is full. Speaking of Liam, his pumpkin got a blue ribbon at the fair and his new sister waited until two days after the fair to arrive.

All is well. I don't like black raspberries and my wife can satisfy her cravings with a few wild bushes along the fence row and an occasional purchase.

One line of an old nursery rhyme asks, "How does your garden grow?" Since I only remember bits of the fractured version that includes something about a big onion I guess I will need to rephrase the question.

Lets try how long does your garden grow? I frequently get asked what to do about a mature or old landscape. The initial tendency is to rip everything out and start over. Don't. The wiser approach might be to decide what you can save and work from there. With age, I have learned to appreciate that a chainsaw can take down in a few minutes what it took nature decades to create.

A family member recently moved to a house dating to the 1950ies. It has lots of wonderful trees but a few of them are starting to show their age. Trees are the starting point of most landscapes so their first problem is to decide what stays and what goes. That's better than starting with a blank lot and waiting years for shade.

To answer my question you can find trees that will live for a decade or two, or ones that live for 100 or more years. The tradeoff is that the long-lived ones grow slowly and vice-versa.

After trees, the next component of the landscape is shrubs. I've often heard that the acceptable lifespan of most shrubs is 15 or so years. A chief contributor to that number is the tendency to select shrubs that are too big for the space we give them. Over time our shears get tired of constantly trying to beat the shrub back into its space.When I built a new house 18 years ago I planted four azaleas, two low juniper, several large grasses, two small leaf evergreen hollies and a rhododendron in front of my house. At about year five the grasses were getting gigantic so they were replaced by two crape myrtles.

Then the junipers began to eat the crape myrtles and one of the hollies started to claim the walk. They left. Next I discovered that the crape myrtles were not getting enough light to bloom so they left.

Two slow growing upright Japanese maples came to take center stage. One last problem remains. The second small leaf holly is about halfway across the walk. The question is whether to wack again or remove. I'm running out of fingers to count the wacks.

Once I solve that question I plan to get a lawn chair and watch my creation because I finally think that I have gotten it right. I think that is the story of many landscapes.

Picking the right shrub for the space will go a long way toward determining how long it contributes to your landscape.

After trees and shrubs most of us focus on perennials. The expected lifespan of what we call perennials is all over the board. A few, like peonies and those with taproots, seem invincible. Most should be divided every three to five years to keep them at top performance.

It's important to recognize that some perennials are more difficult to grow than others. Also, success and lifespan will improve as we figure out a plant's needs either by study or observation.

Finally, in every landscape there is room for the color one gets from annuals.

How long does your garden grow? That's a tough one to pin down. The several hundred-year-old hickory at the edge of my yard is growing out nicely after being whipped by near tornado-like winds a decade ago, while a pricy perennial planted carefully and correctly last year is ready for last rites.