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White Trees

 

Some years ago I landscaped a gated community in our area.  I put all my visual bets on groves of scotch pine, and Himalayan white-barked birch.  Pinus Sylvestris and Betula Jacquemontii-sounds like an engagement announcement to me.  Both trees like sun, and perfectly drained soil.  The birch likes cool moist soil; a placement in a lawn panel that gets regular water.  The Scotch pine-placed ever so slightly out of range of the overhead irrigation-in drier locations.

Both species are doing just fine, but no doubt the Himalayan is the looker of the pair.  The whitest barked of all the birch, that white bark is evident at a very early age-unlike other species that have to grow up into the white. The striking color of this bark puts it on my dance card of white trees I  like to waltz around with.  Very susceptible to the bronze birch borer, they need care-just like everything else that is so worth the trouble.  

White flowering trees make the spring landscape spectacular.  The magnolias first up, the apples, the Bradford pears, the crabapples-the list of white spring flowering trees is considerable.  They bloom before they have foliage.  Take a minute to think about that phenomena.  Asleep all winter, they burst forth with their show like they have 10 minutes to live. This year the blooming was especially heavy.  I am not a big fan of Bradford pears, but my favorite thing about them is when their topmost branches start to green up, while the rest of the tree is still in bloom.  A gorgeous spring phase.

My dogwoods are coming on strong now. Cornus Florida-when they are good, they are excellent, and when they are bad, they are horrid.  I have one tree in the grove with 2 flowers-go figure.  They fade from fungus over the summer. They perpetually look wilted, and unhappy.  But today, I have no complaints.  The flowers keep me coming back for more. 

I have a particular interest in single flowers, for whatever reason.  Bloodroot, white hellebores, dogwood, white annual phlox, white pansies, daisies, Peony Krinkled White, white poppies, Nicotiana alata, Japanese anemones-you get the idea.  White single flowers are especially beautiful.  So simple, elegant, and satisfying to the eye.


The Venus dogwood is no doubt the most spectacular white flowering tree on the planet.  A cross between the Pacific dogwood, Cornus Nuttalli, and Cornus Kousa, it has the great characteristics of each, in addition to great hardiness, a fast growth rate, and the most spectacular white flowers I have ever seen.  The trees at the shop were in bloom a full month last year, start to finish.


The foliage is large and lush.  They do not fruit to speak of, which doesn’t turn me away from them much.  I like that I can place them in full sun in my zone, and see them thrive.  You can see the size of the trunk in this picture; even an immature tree puts on quite a show.

I typically buy them as 1″ or 1.5″ caliper trees in 25 gallon pots.  This makes it easier for a home gardener to plant them-although  those pots are terrifically heavy.  Even at this early age, each tree will sport upwards of 300 flowers.  Though magnolias can be every bit as willing to bloom, they are fussy about weather conditions.  In a warm year, they may drop their flowers in an instant.

The willingness to grow vigorously and bloom heavily for a long time makes “Venus” my favorite white tree. The trees at the shop are small, and quite green right now; they have inherited that later bloom characteristic from the Kousa parentage.  If you like dogwoods, a Venus will greatly extend the spring bloom season beyond Cornus Florida time. The Venus season is just about to begin.


This was my red white and blue view the other day.

Posted on: May 7, 2010 2 Comments
Filed Under: Woody Plants Tagged With: , , ,

Best Spring Ever

Our winter was benign, and left early, never to return.  Our spring has been balmy, even tempered.  I can only think of two nights where I worried about frost.  It shows.  Early spring bulbs were beautiful.  Flowering trees woke up and represented early. My hellebores, congested with blooms.   Cool nights are making every spring statement essay length.  My old tree form wisteria is gorgeous right now. In its vining form, wisteria can be a colossal irritation.  It grows too fast. It frequently refuses to bloom, after all the work you might do to feed, water, and prune properly.  It crushes anything but the strongest support. Rumor has it that some ancient estate in the south has been completely engulfed by a wisteria vine covering acres. Like I said, just a rumor from my early gardening years that I have never forgotten.  Is not any wisteria story believable?   But this year-the wisteria blooming makes me understand why gardeners put up with them.   

The tree form isolates those uncivilized and fast growing tendrils from the community at large, and keeps all their mischief confined to their own home.  My first wisteria tree was a one gallon whip; I planted the tiny thing with nothing but lawn around it for blocks. I drove 3 galvanized steel stakes into the ground as far as Fred from next door could manage.  Within a year I was tying the trunk to my steel tripod with nylon stockings. The first five years-not a good look.  My green vining version of Cousin It, bound to those silver poles-bizarre looking.  Of course, there were no flowers.  Neighbors would occasionally ask me what my intent was with that plant.         


The 6th year, my tree wisteria bust forth with hundred of fragrant lavender racemes-all of them dripping to impossible lengths.  Thousands of pea-like flowers, weeping in the most breathtaking way you could imagine. I laid down on the ground under that tree, and looked up through those flowers to the sky-a perfect gardening moment.  This spring, the wisteria is blooming everywhere-heavily.  The perfume, heady.  

Not all evidence of a great spring is so dramatic.  My old Picea Mucrunulatum have pushed forth very long candles this year.  They are going for broke.  This new evergreen growth I call spring green.  Everywhere I see plants growing robustly; they have all been coached by the mild winter season, and the milder spring.  Some years we have had no spring. An extreme winter is replaced by an equally extreme summer.  I so understand why the gardens, and the gardeners in England take my breath away.  A gentle and moderate climate is the best dance partner any gardener could ever hope for. 

The tulips at the shop are in their glory right now. Their incredible size and height I attribute to a benign frozen dormancy, and regular soaking spring rains.  Juicy. My asparagus this year-divine.

Our early spring plantings show no signs of being under siege from overly cold temperatures.  The in ground plantings have grown and thickened up; the blooming is profuse.  In this limestone pot, the new Alyssum “Snow Princess”.  A new variety that has gotten much press at trial-I will give it a try.  That distinctive alyssum spring smell-I got the message from fully ten feet away.

The crabapples have been outstanding.  The flowers on this coralburst crab-dense.  A coralburst has a naturally round lollipop shape-in bloom, they will make you smile.  This spring, our spring-every gardeners smile is a broad one. 


As Janet would say, this particular spring has been so beautiful, one could fall to the ground and weep.  That’s the kind of gardener she is.   As for me, it has been everything I ever imagined, and more.  The best spring, ever.

Posted on: May 5, 2010 6 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Design, Spring Tagged With: , ,

Those Other Places

The next in my series about containers is about those other places that might ask for pots besides the front door.  I alluded to this in my last post; containers can be a vastly more civilized and interesting version of a road sign, bollard or directional symbol.  In this case, they say please do not park on the sidewalk.  They are also providing fresh lettuce for spring salads.

I do have a thing about driveways, and their landscape.  Those places that people drive out of, and up to, every day-it is a very important space.  I may not cruise my entire garden start to finish every day-but I drive out and up  that driveway-daily.  At the end of my driveway-a little garden punctuated with containers.  They say, welcome home Deborah. Those flags and brass band greet me every night.  In the summer, the corgis go right up those steps into the garden-no garage door entry for them.  Those pots make the transition from my day, to my garden, a pleasure.

A terrace that is big enough to hold a dining table and chairs, lounge chairs and a coffee table, a chaise or two, the grill-a big space.  By this I mean that my deck terrace is bigger than my dining room.  A pool terrace might be three times this. Terraces ask for some punctuation, enclosure-some balance.  Great containers and beautiful plantings can transform a terrace into a garden. I am a lunatic gardener-my terrace is home to 14 containers-maybe more.  When I have dinner outdoors, I am in the garden.

My shop has a very simple landscape.  Linden trees in the ground, and gravel.  That’s all.  This may sound sleepy, but Detroit Garden Workds is in fact a very lively place.  Containers, urns, pots, boxes-everywhere.  It is my idea to visually explain to people that a planted container is in fact a garden.  An alternative garden to those planted in ground-but a garden none the less. Should you have a spot that needs some punch without the dirt space and hoopla that a garden requires-consider a container.  Would you guess these hyacinths and alyssum were planted in a vintage collander?


A few not at all fancy containers casually placed on this old bench -a good look.

I put them at the road, next to the mailbox.  On the terrace.  At the end of the drive.  In the middle of the lawn.  In a bed of pachysandra-or in this case-boxwood.   On the terrace.  On the pool deck. On the outdoor dinner table.  Next to the back door. At the four corners of the rose garden.  Between the car bays.  At the entrance to a garden room. 

Containers mark the entrance to a space.  They enrich the terrace where you have dinner in the summer.  They advise guests how to get to the door.  They greet you when you get home.  Try some.

Posted on: May 4, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Garden Ornament, Garden Design Tagged With:

Backing Up The Front Door

Apparently I am still stuck at the front door; bear with me.  The architecture of homes in any given community varies widely. We are, after all, the land of the free and the home of the free speaking.  But one issue applies to all-the front door needs backing up with containers and plantings of sufficient scale to make a visible difference. This front door is overscaled and imposing; small non-descript containers would add nothing.  My rule: any container that does not contribute substantially and solidly is not the right choice.  Pass them by.  If smaller scaled pots appeal to you, consider some pedestals underneath them.  The big idea-get the pots, and the plantings close to eye level .  What you have to look down on, you won’t love so much. You will appreciate, and maybe love, what you see, eye to eye. 

As I said, not all front doors are created equal.  This home, symmetrical in every detail, has an awkwardly and asymmetrically placed front door.  The landscape which disguises that placement-and the overscaled single planter centrally placed, do not frame the door.  They do a different job; they both signal how to get to that door.  The container says ” Welcome.  Come up here; I will tell you where to go next. Visual maps-containers can be just that. 

Some homes are very large.  Though this door is massive, it seems quite intimate in scale given the overall size of the home-as it should.  Who wants to be intimidated by a front door, unless they are at the Met, or the Lincoln Memorial?  This series of four French Jardin du Soleil boxes provides weighty company to the door, and balances entrance to edifice. The v- shaped lead pots flanking the front door need not be so large; they are just two of six. The stair piers provide the height those pots need.  The planting height, topping out at just below the lanterns, frames a view without obstructing a single detail. 

Some front doors lie at the back of a roofed porch.  This makes the door hard to see.  15 years ago when I was renovating the shop building, the architect told me I needed front doors with glass.  He told me my clients would not feel comfortable opening a door into a space they could not see into, in advance.  Speakeasies and poker joints have solid doors with a peephole-retail stores telegraph their entrance moves, and thereby say welcome.  This front door is dark.  The planters flanking the porch are tall.  You can only see their topknots of white New Guinea impatiens from the street. As dark as the door might be, the landscape, containers and plantings arranged around that door are light. 

This front door is not so far from the city sidewalk.  A centrally placed rusty obelisk bisects that door-though the walk is short, there is a route around that obelisk that has interest. The obelisk, and its placement-on purpose. Pots on that walk would be obstructive, and not in keeping with the overall structure of the landscape.  Two urns on pedestals, widely placed to the sides, do a great job of saying welcome, gracefully. 

Some driveways slide by the front door.  A perpendicular drive up to a formal home-not the usual.  Beautiful containers can bring formality at the same time that they signal the slow down you are here zone.  These subtly exquisite French boxes, planted tall with arborvitae are the best version of a traffic light I have seen.  It can be of help, to picture yourself as a guest coming to your own home.  Containers, properly done, can give the visual cues you have in mind. 

This arts and crafts bungalow has a low slung profile, and a giant front porch. There are a number of shallow, and not so wide stairs to that porch. The stair piers are narrow. The placement of two cast stone Italian vases in the landscape adds width to that approach; the glazed French footed pots a top those stair piers are in scale with their greater base. More importantly, those pots do not need to be big-they are part of a bigger scheme that says hello.  The Italian vases, the French pots and their greater landscape, shoulder the work of saying hello.

A giant pair of Bulbeck lead egg cups flank this front door.  Not that you could make that out from here.  In the interest of addressing a proper scale, a planting in ground can strengthen the impact of a pair of pots from a distance.  Up close, the lead cups reads beautifully.  The lesson here?  There are multiple views to consider, in choosing containers.  The near view, the far view, the view from inside.   


The last of what I have to say about containers at the front door-some choices may not work so well, but a lot of choices do work.  I love these Kenneth Lynch lead round containers.  The choice of the architect, they beautifully echo the tower window with the round detail.  I admire that they in no way impinge on an appreciation of the architecture.  What would I have done?  I have not thought about it.  I have my own home where I can do as I please.  A client’s point of view is very important; people have reasons for their choices-you just have to ask.  Were they ever to ask how I see this, I would tell them.  But for now, I just plant them. No designer can really rescue you.  Trust your own eye, and use it. Photograph that front door, and take that photograph with you, when you are shopping for pots.  Should you feel you need help, ask. There may be someone out there that could look at your pictures, and answer in a way that makes sense to you.

Posted on: May 2, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Garden Design, Garden Ornament Tagged With: ,