Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2021 i Garden Gate

You all are just the best, and I love hearing your advice, solutions and observations. There’s so much to learn about gardening, no matter how long you’ve been doing it. Sometimes we survey our readers, and one of the questions we ask is whether you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate or expert gardener. I’m always interested to see that even most folks who have been gardening for 25 years or more consider themselves to be intermediate rather than experts. I guess that speaks to how humbling gardening is, and to the natural curiosity that defines a gardener. There’s always something to learn. From nature. From each other. There are so many sources of inspiration and education in our world. That must be why reader tips continue to be so popular…

Mason bee Osmia spp. What mason bees lack in honey-making skills, they make up for with their ability to prolifically pollinate — up to 100 times more than honeybees! These native, solitary bees nest individually in holes in the ground, in abandoned insect holes or in pithy stems of plants, and they aren’t aggressive, so they usually don’t sting. Life cycle You’ll see mason bees buzzing about in early spring when the females gather pollen for food to take to their nesting holes. They spend about a month packing the nest with food and laying eggs. Each egg is laid in its own chamber with a food source. In summer, larvae hatch, feed and mature in their nests. Then as adults they spin cocoons and hibernate in their nests through…

Gardening in the shade has its benefits and challenges, and Barbara and Alton Hall have experienced both in their zone 7 Virginia garden. Barbara comes up with the ideas and Alton helps build them. This garden team loves working under the canopy of oaks and pines, out of the hot sun and surrounded by a subtle palette of greens and pastel hues in the photos at right. On the other hand, this shady woodland has plenty of hungry deer, pesky voles and a myriad of tree roots, all of which have caused difficulties over the years. Epimedium, such as ‘Pierre’s Purple’ at right, is a go-to plant that thrives even with all these challenges. GOODBYE LAWN When Barbara and Alton moved into their new home in 1973, they struggled with…

Woodland gardens aren’t just for the woods. Creating the habitat woodland plants enjoy is simple—plant trees and shrubs to provide shade or put to use those you may already have, and underplant with a combination of easy-care perennials. This not-so-big woodland walk features a subtle palette of colors that makes a handsome canvas for the striking redtwig dogwood stems and exfoliating bark of the river birches, especially in the spring when these shade-loving flowers are in bloom. THINK IN LAYERS The key to creating an authentic woodland garden is to ensure there are distinct layers. The first and most obvious layer is the canopy, which creates the shade needed for the other plants to thrive and provides a sense of shelter. The next layer is the intermediate shrubs. This includes…

What does Growing Solutions Farm do? Operating under the umbrella of Urban Autism Solutions, Growing Solutions Farm is an educational training ground, community-supported agriculture operation and charitable organization all rolled into one. This 1.2-acre garden grows fresh produce for sale to the community, as well as to a handful of local restaurants, but the best thing is that it is planted, maintained, harvested and sold by young adults with autism. This training garden donates some of the produce to local food banks, as well as to the participants themselves. How can you help? If you live in the Chicago area, visit Urban Autism Solutions’ web site to find Growing Solutions Farm’s produce market location. To make a donation, visit urbanautismsolutions.kindful. com (note you want the donation to go specifically to…

TOOLS • Pruning saw • Loppers HOW TO DO IT Get all of the dead wood out first so you can see what you have to work with. Then take off most of the trunks that are tall and scraggly, but leave at least 1 to 2 feet at the base. (Leave a couple of trunks taller so the shrub will still have some leaves to help it stay healthy.) Don’t worry about looking for buds when you cut big branches—new growth will still sprout from below the cuts. Notice that the cut in photo 6 is made at an angle so water can run off instead of soaking in and rotting the trunk. In photo 7 you can see loppers cutting back all of the smaller branches. This will stimulate even…

Easy Spring Container Ideas Splash some color across your garden with our collection of early spring container plans. GardenGateMagazine.com/articles/ containers/ JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP Celebrate. Commiserate. Ask. Share. We’d love to see what’s happening in your garden and show you what’s going on in ours. Join the Garden Gate Magazine Garden Club Community Group on Facebook. Grow a Garden in a Straw Bale This innovative technique allows you to grow vegetables anywhere. But it requires some prep work and know-how. Let us show you the secrets to success. GardenGateMagazine.com/articles/vegetables/…

Succulent spurges usually have evergreen foliage, develop a woody base over time and can get pretty large in areas where they’re cold hardy. They don’t grow well in humidity and need sharp-draining soil to avoid winter rot. One challenge with this group is that stems often develop “bare legs” as they age. But there’s a simple fix: Position a lower-growing plant in front to supply some camouflage. To learn more about these plants, I talked to Panayoti Kelaidis, senior curator and director of outreach at Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado, who’s been growing spurges for decades. He explained that succulent spurges have biennial stems. They grow foliage the first season, flower the second and then die back to the woody crown. The illustration below gives you an idea of what…

Looking for a botanical adventure? There’s no better place to visit than a public garden. You’re bound to find something that inspires or educates—just the right plant combination to fill out a border, a class on how to fix some stubborn garden problem or a way to volunteer and put your green thumb to work making the world a better place. Let me introduce you to three public gardens: Virginia’s Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Missouri’s Powell Gardens and Colorado’s Denver Botanic Gardens. They all have diverse plant collections and gorgeous display beds paired with classes, events and programs that reach a wide range of visitors from the most casual observer to plant geeks of all types. Let’s take a quick tour of each and I’m betting by the time we’re…

Ed Lyon’s garden got a big head start. When he moved from Wisconsin to Iowa seven years ago, he filled a 28-foot rental truck with thousands of mature plants that he had dug and potted up or balled-and-burlapped from his former garden. He drove them hundreds of miles away and transplanted them into a 1/5-acre zone 5 property surrounding a 1910 Victorian home in a tree-lined neighborhood. “The new house had a fairly open landscape, and I would not only be looking at a huge expense to start over, but I would likely be purchasing small sizes and waiting for years for the same level of maturity and fullness,” he says. The results of all that effort are impressive: a lush and textured garden that boasts around 4,500 perennials and…

Spring is always a key moment in the woodland garden. And this plan replicates the casual beauty of a walk in the woods just as these early-spring flowers are strutting their stuff. I selected a color scheme (yellow-chartreuse, burgundy and bright red) and a variety of textures (fine fern foliage, waxy hosta leaves, peeling birch bark) to repeat in the garden. They are repeated just enough to tie the whole together in a roughly 20×28-foot space, although this could be adapted to fit in any similar-size space. In keeping with the casual feel, the curving pathway is heavily mulched with pine straw, which is fragrant, soft underfoot and tends to stay in place (it will need to be refreshed every year or two). Other than that, this garden is fairly…

Perfect cuts are just above a bud and at a slight angle. No part of the cut is lower than the bud. The result, above, is that energy coming up the stem is directed to the top bud and the wound will heal over quickly. Too angled or too close and the callous tissue can’t cover the wound easily and the stem dies back. The closest bud dies, too. Since you’re pruning to direct a new branch (in this example the one on the left), you’ll have to cut again lower on the stem. Too far away and the part of the stem that stimulates rapid healing can’t seal off the cut quickly. The wound stays open and rot spreads down the stem. The bud you were trying to direct…

TOOLS • Hand pruners • Sharp hedge shears (or an electric hedge trimmer) HOW TO DO IT Working with a shrub that has been sheared before? Clip off the new growth level with the surface of the shrub, as with the yew (Taxus x media) in photo 1. The tender green stems will be easy to see and cut. It’s tough to shear an old unsheared shrub and expect it to look good. It’s better to train a small shrub as it grows. For the first few years loosely prune the plant into the shape you’re going for. But don’t take off much—you want the shrub to grow bigger. Trimming a few inches off the tips will stimulate more side branches and ultimately a thicker, denser plant. When your specimen reaches the…

PLANT LIST (number to plant) A Spotted deadnettle Lamium maculatumPink Chablis®(15) B Hakonechloa Hakonechloa macra‘Aureola’(5) C Coral bells Heuchera‘BerrySmoothie’(8) D Creeping Jenny Lysimachia nummularia‘Goldilocks’(7) E Redbud Cercis canadensis‘Hearts of Gold’(1) F Smooth hydrangea Hydrangea arborescensInvincibelle® Spirit(3) G Dianthus DianthusFirewitch (‘Feurhexe’)(7) H Weigela Weigela floridaSpilled Wine™(4) I Basil Ocimum basilicum‘Ruby Frills’(5) J Golden oregano Origanum vulgare‘Aureum’(4) If you’re a plant lover, having a patch of ground to garden in is a priority, no matter how big or small your yard is. One of the best reasons for having a small garden to tend is that it’s less work for you. Choosing plants that look great, bloom for a long time and are easy-care is a must. Take a look at this combination—small ornamental tree, shrubs, perennials and ground covers—that features colorful…

Where winters are a little colder, summer is humid and the soil is moist but well-drained, herbaceous spurges are the types to grow. Plants in this group die back to the ground in winter, but before the foliage fades most put on a great fall show. There’s not a lot you need to do for maintenance. Just cut last year’s stems back to the ground in late winter to early spring as the illustration below shows. DIVIDE SPURGES Though spurges in general have a reputation for being short-lived, Panayoti hasn’t found that to be the case. He’s had a large, healthy clump of cushion spurge in his garden for 20 years. Dividing can help rejuvenate an older clump if it’s starting to look ratty. The best time to do this…

PLANT ONE CROP AFTER ANOTHER. This is the most common technique for succession planting, and it’s also very easy to do. As one crop matures and is harvested, it’s followed by another planting. Depending on your growing season and the types of vegetables you choose to grow, you can likely enjoy two to four harvests from a single garden space during the main growing season. PLANT THE SAME TYPE OF CROP, BUT VARIETIES THAT MATURE AT DIFFERENT TIMES. You may have noticed that varieties of vegetables mature at different times. There are early, midseason and late-maturing varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, broccoli and peas. By choosing to plant two or more varieties with different maturity dates, you’ll have a long harvest season without the need for a second planting. PLANT…

Lilies, for Ed, are the frosting on his horticultural cake. But he wasn’t always such a fan. He used to find that breeding for “gorgeous large flowers” was at the expense of sturdy stalks, and he found it too much work to stake them. Then, one day, while working at the Rotary Botanic Gardens he noticed a grouping of lilies starting to bloom with sumptuous flowers on unusually thick, strong stems. He discovered it was a grouping of ‘Satisfaction’ lilies, and this was his introduction to orienpet lilies (hybrids of several species, most often Oriental with trumpet or Aurelian lilies). It wasn’t until he moved to Iowa that he was able to indulge in this new passion. “A moderate passion for the genus Lilium exploded into an addiction,” he says.…

To be honest, I’m a lazy gardener. I really hate to have to bend all the way over to pull weeds, so I find raised beds to be a great solution, especially for the vegetable garden, where I want to weed often and harvest comfortably. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to try out a variety of raised beds and have discovered a number of things I like and dislike about them. Let me tell you some of my experiences and what I’ve learned. Go Big or Go Home A shallow raised bed—6 to 10 inches deep—works fine if you have crummy soil and want to simply add what you need to grow plants that won’t suffer. However, vegetables should have 12 to 18 inches of good soil to…

1 | Recycled Paper Pots Check all the eco-friendly boxes with these square paper pots: 100% recycled food-grade materials, sustainable manufacturing processes, made in the USA, biodegradable and compostable. They even fold flat for easier, less wasteful shipping — simply squeeze the sides to pop the planting cells open. Bonus feature: You can write the cultivar name and planting date on the side. Botanical Interests,® botanicalinterests.com, 877-821-4340 ($5.20 for pack of 12 with tray) 2 | New Naturalism Gain a new perspective on naturalistic gardening with this book by Kelly D. Norris, horticulturist and plantsman. Norris encourages the reader to consider how plants grow, their origins, and the sites where they thrive to create ecologically diverse yet jaw-droppingly beautiful gardens. A section of “plant palettes” offers suggestions and tips. Loaded with…

Soften the hard edges of pavers and a low stone wall with pillowy mats of candytuft and basket-of-gold. Add punctuation with a compact grass and taller-stemmed bright red columbines. A Candytuft Iberis sempervirens ‘Purity’ See information above left. B Dwarf basket-of-gold Aurinia saxatilis Summit ™ Golden Yellow Perennial; rounded clusters of bright yellow flowers from early through midspring; full sun; 4 to 8 in. tall, 12 to 18 in. wide; cold hardy in USDA zones 3 to 8 C Columbine Aquilegia canadensis ‘Little Lanterns’ Perennial; bell-like red flowers rocket upward on delicate stems in midspring, hovering above blue-green three-lobed leaves; full sun to part shade; 9 to 12 in. tall and wide, with flower stalks to 18 in.; cold hardy in USDA zones 3 to 8 D Blue fescue Festuca…

Maintaining foundation shrubs is something anyone can tackle. And if you do it on a regular basis—once a year for most shrubs—it’s easy. Since there are no drastic cuts, the shrubs fill in again in just a few weeks. This technique works on many deciduous shrubs, such as this flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa). The shrub in photo 1 gets trimmed every year when branches start to cover the window. Let it grow bigger, and it’s more work to prune. If you like a natural, informal look for your shrub, here’s how to prune it shorter without sacrificing the shape. TOOLS • Hand pruners • Loppers HOW TO DO IT Start with the loppers and cut out half to two-thirds of the largest stems. In photo 2 you can see how to cut…