Articles

Last week I completed a five-week course titled "Landscape Design" at Longwood Gardens. It was excellent. However, I'm still a bit unsure or confused about what I learned. Maybe it was like much of education. You emerge a better person with knowledge but you are not quite sure how it will benefit you.

The amazing thing is that we went 10 hours and never once mentioned a single plant. As a plant person you may suspect that I was in over my head.

Landscape design as it was presented is the creative marriage of analysis and artistic expression. My problem is that I am very analytical. Give me a problem and I thrive, usually coming up with a viable solution. Suggest a planting situation and after a few questions (analysis) and I can usually suggest a good solution.

My weakness is the artistic expression. I am still smarting from the criticism of the poor quality of my V-shaped, air borne, turkey buzzards in a fourth-grade drawing. My critic was a giant of a man who is still well recognized in local art circles.

A few days after finishing the course, my problem was compounded by a conversation with a person who does both landscape design and installation. He claimed that he needed to finish his installations and return to design.

I assumed that since it was well into November, that was justified. A side note that I have observed is that professional gardeners are much more prone to plant in the fall than the general gardening public. The claim he made was something different. He said that with all the planting that he was doing he was losing his creative imagination needed to design and produce a good garden. Whoa, that did little to resolve my confusion.

He suggested an example to explain. If you wish to add a new porch to your house do you just call a builder and tell him to build a new porch without any more details? If you did, I'm sure that surprise and disappointment would be words to describe the results.

Is garden creation any different? He has a good point although I would disagree a bit. Even the best garden professional will admit that some of their biggest successes were unintended. Next week I'll recount one such tale as I try to repeat this week's message in concrete practical terms.

As encouragement, let me say that it is really difficult to create an ugly garden. It is just that some are better than others.

By the way, Longwood Gardens offers a second course in which you get to do drawings of real life garden situations. Am I going to go? Yes. Will I be a star pupil? No. Will I learn something? Certainly.

My in-laws live at the end of a lane leading to a greenhouse operation that grows a lot of Christmas flowers. Now that does not make me an expert on poinsettias but at least it gives me someone to tap for information.

Recent efforts by the poinsettia breeders have made the plant much more consumer friendly. They are bred to last in most any spot in the house. Kept out of a sunny window and away from a heat source will keep the bract colors more vibrant. The cooler side of normal house temperatures is best.

About the only way to quickly kill today's poinsettias is to over-water. Somehow that seems like a common sin with plants in all environments. Keep poinsettias on the dry side.

Color-wise changes have come recently. Red is still the most popular color but with some new wrinkles. One breeder lists its best seller as a red-and-white variegated one. A pure white one is second followed by a burgundy offering.

Pink varieties seem to be falling out of favor. You will also find some small flowered varieties, which are often labeled as novelties. Plants in this series are called Christmas roses, which I think is a good description.

There are other varieties of interest. Pink and white bicolors exist as do a number of varieties that offer different leaf shades including variegation.

One of the newest trends is painting the flowers. I guess I will better appreciate that idea when I decide my white hair is not a mark of experience and think painting it some other color would be an improvement.

The rise in white flowered varieties is directly related to the painting idea. An industry supplier has developed a line of horticultural paints that give one a lot of choices to be creative. People doing it often use a spray can, but an eyedropper is another tool of the trade.

Blue is the most popular paint color. I guess that is because it is still impossible to find a pure blue flower in nature.

I'll need a poinsettia or two for my house. A few days after I eat my Thanksgiving turkey I'll cruise past my in-laws house to make my purchase. I'll stop and see them, too.

Fall is that exhilarating season that walks hand in hand with the dread of winter. We cherish each shirtsleeve day as it postpones the inevitable. We bask in the wonderful colors of the landscape.

By early November I must abandon my rural hills and head for the towns and more suburban areas if I am in search of the best foliage display. This comes from two reasons. Generally, the residential landscape is planted with plants selected for their ornamental value, including fall color.

Secondly, in more residential areas it is warmer, a fact which extends the season slightly.

If you wish, you can say that buildings, asphalt and man's activity creates a microclimate that is warmer. In reality, every garden site regardless of its size has microclimates. Recognizing these as you design and plant your gardens will improve your efforts.

Winter is the best time to identify the microclimates in your landscape. Do it by watching the snowmelt. Given a fairly even snow cover, it quickly becomes obvious that snow lingers in certain spots. Remember those spots for plants that like cooler soil.

Meanwhile in the November landscape, clip you lawn rather short. I got mine a week ago and am hoping that is it, but am willing to take the mower for another ride if necessary.

Remember those trees in your yard that you could not see through in the summer. November is rendering them into skeletons. If the leaves you couldn't see through make it impossible to see your grass now, you need to find the grass or you will have bare ground next spring.

The past two months have been gracious with rainfall, which will position new plantings, and shallow rooted leaf holding plants to survive the winter well. On new plantings it is a great idea to wait until the ground freezes and then mulch. That will minimize fluctuations in soil temperature and keep the roots from moving in the soil.

Another question to soon address is winter plant protection. First, make sure you are not building a home for rodents. Second, ask yourself "why?" Third, maybe do it on a limited basis. Wind, with its ability to suck more moisture from the plants' leaves than the roots can supply, is the issue.

In other words protect newly planted conifers, broadleaf evergreens and plants that are a bit north of their normal range. A spray or two of something like wilt-proof will benefit the first two. Larger plants will have the most problems because of the ratio of leaf areas to root areas. Barriers will help break the wind and its bad effects for all three.

One final winter problem occurs with newly planted trees. It is most noticeable on soft-barked trees, like flowering cherries, but is not uncommon on trees in the landscape less than maybe five years old.

Let me paint the picture. It's February. There is snow on the ground. The bright sun is low in the southwest sky. It's a hot day for February with the temperatures set to fall rapidly during the night.This combination against the brown bark of a young tree generates a significant buildup of heat in the tree trunk. With a cold night to follow you can often get a change of 80 degrees in the tree trunk. That's capable of cracking the growing tissue on the southwest side of the tree. That may not be fatal, but it is close. A light colored loose wrap of the trunk is a good idea for young trees during the winter. White latex paint also works. It's another shirtsleeve day. I'm not counting the days till spring yet, but it won't be long till I start I fear.

I recently visited one of the largest camellia nurseries in the country and am happy to report that another wonderful southern plant is marching north.

The saga started about 20 years ago when the south was ravaged by record cold winter temperatures. The result was thousands, if not millions, of dead or damaged camellia plants. As one would guess, a few survived intact and they became the basis of breeding programs that produced plants which will tolerate our temperatures. The final leap came when bud hardiness was established. Varieties now exist with flower buds hardy down to minus 10 to 15 degrees.

Camellias offer a wide color range with either single or double flowers. There is at least one variety that isn't too stable and will produce random different colored flowers. The foliage also shows some variegation in this one. Single flowered varieties are generally more fragrant than the double flowered varieties.There are both spring and fall blooming camellias. The spring bloomers will start our season here and the fall bloomers will end it. In other words, you can get late winter blooms or fall blooms lasting until nearly Christmas. Cold temperatures occasionally will tarnish the aging flowers, but the opening ones will usually escape damage.

The shrub is evergreen and needs attention similar to that given a rhododendron or azalea. In other words, they like a lower ph soil and protection from the afternoon sun and winter winds. The fall bloomers will tolerate more sun than the spring bloomers but both want some wind protection in the winter.

Camellias are an ideal low maintaince plant for the dry understory. Once established, they don't want extra water. In fact, excess water is the easiest way to kill one. In North Carolina we viewed dozens of plants ranging in age from maybe five to 12 years old, planted amongst pine and oak trees, which had never been pruned.

My host also pointed out that while their daylily bed never flowered because of browsing deer he has never seen damage on camellias. Deer will eat anything if really hungry, but that was encouraging news.

Before you run out looking for one remember that this is a southern plant that the breeders are making available to us farther north. That doesn't mean it can be treated like a lilac or forsythia.

For now, the recommendations are to plant in the spring or early summer rather than the fall. Camellias do not produce massive root systems and with the evergreen foliage, dehydration can be a problem in the first winter.

Use wilt-proof or some other respiration inhibitors as a winter spray the first year. This will greatly reduce water loss through the leaves. Another alternative would be to wrap the plant with burlap the first winter. After the first winter, out of the wind, you should have few problems. Incidentally, everything I said in this and the last paragraph could apply to azaleas, rhododendrons and that other southern traveler, crape myrtles.

It was a quick trip. North Carolina isn't that far away but we slowed down enough to enjoy the wonders of the fall leaves.

Generally, red is the most difficult color to incorporate in the garden. It's stark and attention grabbing enough that I understand why it is used by bullfighters.

I almost used the word spring and summer ahead of the word garden in the first sentence because my difficulty with red is limited to the blooming season. In the fall and winter bring on the red.

Every landscape needs a focal point and since most of our fall colors are built around yellows, red is that focal point. In the fall or winter my attention is always drawn to red.

Four shrubs quickly come to mind if you are looking for red fall foliage. The most common is the Euonymus alata, commonly called burning bush. The other three are Itea, choke-cherries and Viburnum nudum. The latter three are natives.

Burning bush has been a standard for as long as I can remember. The others have emerged because they are natives and do not share the many insect and disease problems common with euonymus. Some also fear that this plant can become invasive. My observations are that both problems are much less than is often reported although I am now selecting the other three for my plantings.

Itea, in addition to excellent red fall color, adds a white spring bloom and a winter stem color with some ornamental value. This plant will grow anywhere but I would keep it out of windy spots and site it out of the afternoon sun.

Choke cherry, Aronia, also produces black or red berries. The red-berried varieties seem to have better leaf retention than its black counterpart. This berry is not the first choice of our birds.

Viburnum nudum gets a deep mahogany leaf that is just now beginning to change. It also will sport deep purple berries if a pollinator is also planted.

The other fall red that generally persists into winter are plants with red berries. These include the hollies, both evergreen and deciduous, as well as many viburnums. In each case you need a pollinator to get berries.

The final red shrub that I prize for winter is the red-twig dogwood; Cornus sericea is the Latin. This plant is also a native but as usual selections of the native are most often used in our landscapes.

My favorite fall tree for red color is the maple, Acer rubrum. That is our native maple which generally has smaller leaves and probably gets its name from the color of its spring buds. This is a maple. That said I quickly add that it does not share the real nasty surface root structure that is common with the large leafed maples. It also does not provide the dense shade common with some maples.

There is an aging gnarled American red maple growing in a waterway near my house. It was there long time before I built my house. Every fall I am treated to a brilliant red display.

Nearby are other seedlings of the same tree, which show great variability in leaf retention and color. I guess that is why in the market place you will generally find selections of this native plant. There are some really good ones.

Do they bullfight in the fall and winter? If they do they must share red with my garden. >