Articles

It's only the last ten or fifteen years that I have become aware of the vast array of shrubs that are available for our gardens. Perhaps it's only been the last ten or fifteen years that so many possibilities have been available.

Shrubs in grandmother's garden consisted of pussy willows, forsythia, wisteria, Annabelle hydrangea, several different spireas and an ugly weigelia near the farm gas tank.

Following last week's lead I will identify my five favorite deciduous shrubs. That's the ones that lose their leaves in the winter. One of the considerations today is whether the shrub has multiple season interest.

I'll start with winterberries, which are the native deciduous Ilex or holly. Its highlight is rather persistent red or yellow berries on the female plants during the winter. You need a male in the neighborhood. If your neighbor is successful in getting berries you most likely don't need to plant a male.

In today's nursery you should find a number of good selections or cultivars, which gives you some choice of plant size, berry color, berry size and how heavy they fruit. If you are a native purist you may find the species, which is a fairly large plant that yields slightly less and smaller berries.

Winterberries will handle any soil conditions, full sun to significant shade and will show no hardiness problems even in our severest winters.

Crape myrtles are my next choice. This is a southern plant that is being adapted to our climate. In light of the last sentence I would seek a site out of our winter winds.

That said I offer a word of warning. They need a lot of light. Plants on the protected side of my house that are 15 feet away from the house bloom better than those 10 feet away. I got rid of the ones within five feet because they never bloomed.

They are picked for their long summer bloom and their interesting bark in the winter. One thing to remember is that they leaf out very late in the spring. Depending on variety you should expect a bit of dieback most winters. Combining the last two sentences I wait until mid to late May to seek the shears and usually have very little cutting to do.

Next on my list are oak leaf hydrangeas. Here we have flower, interesting bark, irregular branching and a large number of cultivars to pick from. Planted where it has a bit of protection is wonderful. In wicked wind, plants the same age are less than half as tall and lose their flower buds some winters.

Fothergilla or bottlebrush plant is another native on my list. It has a host of unique bottlebrush-like flowers in the spring, reasonably good fall color and is completely hardy here. Cultivars offer size and leaf shade possibilities.

Ninebarks present an interesting story. Our native one is green. The Europeans love the US natives and took this plant to Germany. With selection and breeding it has returned as a plant that offers purple leaf color, a bloom that is a good cut flower, and interesting winter bark.This is another plant that is tough and will easily tolerate the worst that you can throw at it.

I was tempted to add Itea, another native with bark, flower and excellent fall color to see if you were counting but I won't; or maybe I did.

Photos: Upper Left Ilex verticilata 'Winter Red'; middle right Hydrangea quercifolia; lower left Physocarpus opulifolius.

Over the last 60 years I have planted a lot of perennials. Most have thrived. Others have died. Most have lived up to expectations. A few were big disappointments. That temps me to list my five favorite perennials.

I'll start with amsonia. I like the thread leaf species better than the wider leaf one. It is one of the few perennials that have fall color. Height goes above the knee but seldom reaches your waist. Somewhat willowy, it produces clusters of blue star-shaped flowers in the spring.

I have a 10 or 12-year-old clump in full sun that seems extremely happy. A similar clump planted in the shade was happy until the shade became so dense that you needed a flashlight to see it in broad daylight.

My last effort put amsonia between a low wall and a viburnum with reddish fall foliage. That will improve as soon as the viburnum realizes that it is taller than the amsonia.

Next is the low growing perennial geraniums. There are a huge number of cultivars that I like. Perhaps the best is 'Rozanne', a blue purple form that is quite vigorous.

In my garden I have 'Jolly Bee', which appears to be identical to 'Rozanne'. It's a blooming machine that weaves around other plants without overrunning them. Mine are in near full sun but light shade also works well.

Pulmonarias or lungworts rank high on my list. They generally have spotted leaves and blue flowers that fade pink with time. I wouldn't put them in full sun, but the eastern side is great as well as is light shade.

About ten years ago I planted three cultivars along the walk leading to my kitchen door. Today I have a nice well-behaved patch of lungworts. The patch is probably the great-great grand children of the originals and are a jumble of cross-pollinated plants, but I love them.

Number four has a long name. It's Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, or plumbago or leadwort, for short. Leadwort is a ground cover with glossy green leaves that turn bright red in the fall. It also produces one of the bluest flowers I have seen.

It's virtue (or fault) is that it is very slow to wake up in the spring. I have this great urge to plant about a mile of spring bulbs interspersed with leadwort.

I promised five and now the hard part has come. Quite honestly, the first four came about as fast as I could type. Number five is a difficult process of elimination.

The decision is to pick a blue form of the native grass, little bluestem. As I implied, the green forms are fine but the bluer ones are preferred to my thinking.

It is a willowy grass that might reach your waist. Mine are smaller. It has reddish brown fall color and an unusual seed-head that looks like the feet of a crow. It grows best in full sun away from the water hose and fertilizer bucket. Overly loved grasses tend to flop.

I am sure that I cannot find a perennial in the garden that can match my sixty plus years, but some are proving surprisingly long-lived, well behaved and beautiful. That recipe fits my gardening cookbook well.

Top photo is Amsonia hubrechtii lower photo is Pulmonaria longifolia.

For ten years my husband and I lived out of state. Every year at this time, I'd start to get homesick. I didn't mind so much being away for Easter and Thanksgiving, no, I missed the Solanco Fair.

There is something wonderful about local agricultural fairs. Daily attendance usually surpasses local population, bringing everyone home to the fair.

When I was little, my brother and I would enter produce grown on our family farm. We didn't always get ribbons to take home, but it was fun to visit our plums, apples, green beans, pumpkins or gourds.

The parade Wednesday night always kicked off the fair for me. I loved getting candy from the floats, listening to the marching bands, seeing the cute little baton twirlers, and of course fire trucks and horses. Son Liam was transfixed last year by the old-fashioned steam calliope that ends the parade.

A trip to the fair isn't complete without gorging yourself on the local offerings. The Lion's Club French fries that my dad makes, elephant ears and milkshakes from the farm women, and chicken corn soup from the Fair Association that my mom helps with are all good places to start.

While there aren't any rides, the tug-of-war, Strongest Man contest, baby parade and the barns full of animals raised by 4-H kids will keep you entertained. Don't miss the sewing and art buildings either. You'll be amazed what your friends and neighbors have made.

Many of you have tried vegetable gardens this year. I want to encourage you to enter something. Nice green beans or tomatoes? Did you can for the first time? Flower gardens looking especially good? Cut a boquet. Enter it in the fair. Entries are accepted on Tuesday September 16th in a wide variety of categories.

A few of Liam's pumpkins that he planted with pop-pop will find their way to the fair this year. They may not win any ribbons, but participating in local fair is fun and the best way to keep a great small-town tradition alive. The Solanco Fair runs September 17-19 on the Quarryville Fair Grounds.

Going green, sustainability or just green are three ways to describe current gardening or lifestyle trends. In fact, they are so common that almost everyone has his own personal definition.

When the subject comes up I'm almost tempted to ditch my ethical hat and don my political one. That's not a shot at politicians, but many would agree that they have the ability to determine our positions on issues and then recite them to us in a convincing way.

Recently I stumbled across seven criteria for a sustainable landscape. They come from a 1995 publication issued by the National Park Service. I think they are so good that what follows will almost be plagiarism.

First: contribute to and not distract from local plant communities and their biodiversity.

Second: provide habitat and food for local and migratory wildlife species.

Third: grow without significant inputs of fertilizers and pesticides.

Fourth: be well adapted to the local climate, particularly in terms of temperature and precipitation.

Fifth: be tolerant and resilient to routine and periodic environmental extremes and disturbances (drought, temperature extremes, wind, flooding and pests).

Sixth: provide ecosystems beneficial to people and the environment.

Seventh: create beauty and comfort to inspire and inform the community about their locale and the ecological processes that define and sustain that environment.

What the above suggests to me is that we seek moderation in our use of fertilizers, water and pesticides while working toward the day when they are not necessary. Avoid invasive plants. Give natives a favored spot when selecting plants.

The last one is my favorite. To me it suggests that we replace the rhetoric with education and action.

Just yesterday I encountered an individual gazing toward the top of a small tree. He had just caught a glimpse of a wonderful new little yellow bird. If that was the first goldfinch he ever saw he needs to spend a lot more time outside, studying and enjoying the natural world.

We all do. Maybe then a consensus would arise on green issues.

When mid July arrived I feared that hot weather could not be far behind. My solution was to get in the car, promise anyone that cared that I would return sometime and headed west looking for higher, cooler ground.

Above tree line I found snow and a plethora of tiny, but beautiful, flowers. Amazingly, despite heavy snowfall, which flees ahead of winds up to 150 miles per hour, they survive frigid temperatures with little protection.

What I also quickly realized was that I was in the homeland of one of my favorite perennials. We saw a wide variety of penstemons or beards tongue. Where they grow naturally they come in a variety of sizes and colors, including a deep purple that was a showstopper.

Therein lays the problem. We are dealing with a plant that thrives natively in a much drier and often cooler climate than we have. The good news is that it is such a wonderful plant that it has attracted the attention of those that breed and select garden-worthy plants.

With one exception, the offerings until recently were beautiful, but short-lived. The exception is Penstemon Huskers Red, a plant selected as Perennial Plant of the Year several years ago.

Found in a garden in Nebraska it is the odd ball among penstemons. It has mahogany foliage with pinkish white flowers followed by ornamental black seed heads. The amazing thing is that, unlike its kin, it thrives here and even favors soil on the wetter side of average.

More recent, extensive work with penstemons, mostly in the mid-west, has yielded a growing selection of varieties. It joins echinacea and baptista as dry land plants being bred or selected for our eastern, warmer, more humid gardens.

There are other recent inductions that warrant trials in our gardens. In all cases, except with Huskers Red, selecting a drier site in full sun will increase your chance of success.

Another surprise on our trip was the huge number of hummingbirds starting their migration south in late July and early August. One of our stays was at the mountain campus of Colorado State University. Outside their conference center were three hummingbird feeders.

To my amazement, there were always dozens if not hundreds of hummingbirds near these feeders. They have a better selection of hummingbirds than we have. One was quite small and often bullied others away from the feeders.

Our instructor said that the little one often bypasses the feeders and uses the penstemon and monarda (bee balm) flowers as a source of nectar during migration.

We almost timed it right, as cooler temperatures arrived just ahead of our return. Our only problem may be that we started home a day too early since the car sensor read 107 degrees about halfway across Kansas.