Spring For Some Color

April 25 2014 (92)Our spring so far has been cold.  As in damp April 42 degree cold.  I spent the day outside with my crew today-I am chilled all the way through.   Of course I expected a stellar spring, given the extreme length and depth of our winter.  Silly, that.  Our spring is hung over in the worst possible way from an arctic style winter. Landscapes from house to house are troubled.  Only yesterday did I see a forsythia in bloom.  Thin bloom, by the way. Today I have a magnolia stellata at home blooming-a month late.  The flowers are small, but there are lots of them. This is the good part of the bad and the ugly.

spring-container-planting.jpgThe residual effect of a winter such as we have had may mean that the spring and early summer may be cold.  Gardeners in Michigan are well aware of this.  The Great Lakes still are 40% ice covered.  Air moving over our very cold lakes means we may have to live with chilly conditions for a while.  Maybe quite a while.  My reaction?  Plant like crazy for spring.

annual-planting.jpgHad I known that this winter would prove to be so relentless and lengthy, I might have planted more spring flowering bulbs.  More hellebores.  A group of hamamelis.  Hindsight is twenty-twenty, yes.  Never has some spring color meant so much to these winter weary eyes. We have been planting spring pots non stop since the first week of April, and for good reason.  Nature has not seen fit to let go, and move on.  I am not inclined to hang back, and do without.  Anyone who loves the garden is ready to see something grow and bloom.

container-planting.jpgI can think of no better year to plant some containers for spring.  My guess would be that the reliably warm weather is many weeks away, and that the early part of the summer may stay cool.  I have no science whatsoever to back this up, but I see that the transition from one season to another always takes a month or better.  A transition from a brutally cold winter to summer indicates a transition that may be protracted.  I hate to predict, as predicting the weather is a skill vastly beyond my abilities, but I will say I feel my area may feature residual cool weather.

planting-with-lettuce.jpgLots of plants tolerate, and thrive in cool weather.  On the thriving side, cool weather vegetables such as peas, as sweet peas,, pansies, violas, parsley, chard and alyssum.  On the tolerant side, osteospermum, rosemary, sagina, lavender, dill, angelina and dusty miller.  I would bet there are lots of plants I have missed.  One only needs enough cold spring tolerant plants to assemble a palette. And plant.

spring-planting.jpgI will do whatever it takes to add a big splash of color to a spring planting.  This lavender preserved eucalyptus and yellow-green preserved lepto adds a big splash of color to a landscape which is by and large still dormant.  Thank heavens for the pansies.  That live and vibrant color is strong medicine for anyone who is garden starved.

eucalyptus-centerpiece.jpgI did plant the window boxes at the shop for spring.  This one features sweet peas Rob bought on a plant buying trip out east this past week. The trailing violas and phlox intensia will grow.  The centerpiece of this window box is an arrangement made from preserved eucalyptus, hakea, lepto, and curly pussy willow.  This centerpiece of preserved and fresh materials will make a generous statement about spring until these plants take hold.

spring-planting.jpgSpring containers in my zone are plant challenged.  Cold weather means the cold tolerant plants may take a while to take hold, and represent.  The alyssum and creeping jenny will soften the edges of these urns.  By early May, these plants will be thriving.  They may still be thriving, come the first of July.  In the meantime, the centerpieces for these urns will provide both color and scale.  Containers do a great job of providing a little drama ahead of a garden just waking up.

contaner-planting.jpgPansies,, alyssum and creeping jenny are sure harbingers of spring.  But they have a modest profile, like many cold tolerant spring plants.  No need to ask them to make a splash.  Making a splash of a punch of spring color is entirely in your hands.

spring-container.jpgAny material you have at your disposal can dress a spring container planting. Cut forsythia branches, or pussy willow in a spring container-beautiful.  You cut branches might root in the pot.  Green leaves breaking from branches may be all you need to move on from the winter.

spring-centerpiece.jpgEvery gardener celebrates the spring differently. Every spring is different.  My landscape is on a schedule all its own.  Biut when I am ready for spring, I do not dog my landscape to come to.  What good would that do?  The plants in my landscape will make their program known over the next four weeks. In that meantime, I plant spring pots. Should your garden still be really sleepy, a container planted up for spring could make for some sunshine.  Try it.

The Bad News

DSC_9332Every warmer day, there are new signs of the damage sustained in the landscape from our once in better than a lifetime winter.  The news is discouraging.  Any gardener who has zone 5 or 6 plants in their landscape is feeling the side effects of a zone 3 or 4 winter. I do not know the cultivar of pine in this neighborhood garden, but I am quite sure these trees are bone dead.  I was a long ways away, but a close inspection was unnecessary.  That saturated orange brown color on every needle but for the very bottom branches-very bad news.

DSC_9403Our past winter was a once in 130 year event.  Record cold. Record snow. The ice on the Great Lakes-3 feet thick.  The ice on the Great Lakes are still 40% covered with ice.  Some say it will be well into June before all that ice melts.  Chilly is the prediction for our immediate future.   This specialty and marginally hardy spruce grew and prospered in this client’s garden, for going on thirty years.  This past winter proved too be too cold.  Just too cold.  No one could have foreseen a winter like this, nor could this spruce have been protected.  Unless you are older than 130 years, this is this first time you have seen a winter this fierce.

bamboo.jpgLike other stands of mature bamboo I have seen this spring, the culms and leaves are dead.  It is impossible to predict yet if the roots survived.  Time will tell.  We have had a very long period of mild winters.  That length of time was long enough to tempt gardeners to push the limits.  My magnolia stellata bloomed today.  The flowers are small, and look like wet kleenex.  Not that I am complaining.  I am shocked it is blooming at all.  Planting magnolias in a northern zone is a leap of faith.  A story about hope. Our winter was very rough, and every gardener in my zone is being educated daily about how that winter is intruding on our spring.

alberta-spruce.jpgI have not seen a single Alberta spruce untouched by the winter.  Every neighborhood I have visited has alberta spruce burned on the south side.  Some very exposed locations show burn all around.  Fierce burn.

winter-burn.jpgMany landscapes show damage which is hard to understand.  Some plants are untouched.  Others are burned all over.  Others are burned in specific spots.  Some have been killed outright.  Do I have a simple and swift explanation-not really.  Some species of plants that are marginally hardy in our area-many of these are in the killed outright list. Do I have zone 5 and 6 plants in my landscape-yes.  A once in 130 year winter cycle would not prevent any gardener from testing the limits.  The fact is, my 20 year old  garden is but a short intermission in the bigger scheme of things.  This spring is making me realize that nature bats both first and last.  There is no negotiating once a winter tests the limits of cold hardiness..  Too cold is simply too cold.  No zone 6 specialty conifer could not have fared well this past winter.  I have no easy and simple answers.

winter-damage-on-boxwood.jpgI love boxwood as much as the next gardener.  Every Green Velvet boxwood in my garden at home is unscathed by this past winter.  They are green and good to go.  This boxwood hedge in a neighborhood garden south of me did not fare so well.  The cause of the damage?  Salt spray generated by cars driving by at a brisk speed is a toxic bath that can damage boxwood.  Extremely low temperatures can test boxwood cultivars intended for warmer zones.  Exposed plantings of boxwood were bleached by sun reflected off of deep snow.  A boxwood that went into the winter dry can be severely damaged by cold winter winds. Evergreens need to be well watered in the fall.  They cannot absorb water from the roots once the ground freezes.  Water evaporates quickly from evergreen leaves given cold temperatures, wind and sun.  The damage on this hedge is hard to pinpoint. How that damage should be handled-it is too early to tell.

winter-burn-on-boxwood.jpgBoxwood is a broad leaved evergreen.  It needs to be well watered and juicy before winter.  Once the soil freezes, no boxwood can access the water it needs to keep the leaves juicy and green.  The water available at the root is turned off.  Strong winter winds makes the water in the leaves evaporate at an alarming rate.  An evergreen cannot replace the water it looses by evaporation over the winter.  What that leaf has to sustain it in November will have to do for the rest of the winter.  An evaporation rate that exceeds the store of moisture means leaves will dry out and die.

damaged-boxwood.jpgThe boxwood leaves on the interior of the shrub, protected from salt winter wind and sun scald may survive the toughest winter.  The damage I see on the boxwood at the shop makes me want to rush out there with my pruners. Notwithstanding my instinct to remove any sign of damage, I will wait.  Viable branches that have lost their leaves will releaf, given some time. Boxwood damaged by repeated soaking in road salt may not recover. Marginally hardy varieties of boxwood may be dead from the cold.  Hicks yews are not so wonderfully hardy.  Yews pruned after August show striking signs of damage.   I am inclined to wait and see how all of my plants will respond.  Plants have a will to live.  I would advise giving them the room they need to recover.

boxwood-damage.jpgA sick and challenged plant needs time to sort out the insult and injury on their own.  This is my opinion.  This spring following a once in a century winter-what do I know what will be?  I do know this section of boxwood has been struggling with fungus for 4 years.  An extraordinarily bad winter may have done them in.

winter-kill.jpgI have a plan to grieve privately about the damage to my beloved boxwood hedge, and wait.  I know I need to wait for the plants to respond.  Once they respond to warmer weather, I will know what to do.  It is not clear yet what is lost, and what is burned, and needs pruning.  Having never experienced a winter like this before, the last thing I want to do is interfere with the natural order of things.  If you are as passionate a gardener as I am, the waiting will be horticultural hell.  But all of us would go to hell and back for a garden, wouldn’t we?

Early Spring Planting

April 19, 2014 (2)Planting containers for early spring has its pleasures and its pitfalls.  The overriding concern is always the cold.  We planted containers for a client in downtown Detroit Thursday and Friday of last week-a dicey move, considering the overnight temperatures were very cold.  One night-22 degrees.  How to best avoid cold damage in early spring is to be sure you are using plants that have had the opportunity to become accustomed to, or the inclination to tolerate the cold.

April 19, 2014 (8)Very few plants thrive in cold weather.  That does not mean that they will not adapt and tolerate it.  This project was planted solely with plants that had been sown and grown to a good size last fall, prior to being wintered in a cold but not freezing house.  The pansies had had months to become accustomed to cooler conditions.  Placing them outdoors in cold April weather did not send them into shock.

April 19, 2014 (31)Gardeners who start their own vegetables from seed indoors know that those seedlings need to be hardened off before placement in the garden.  Hardening off is a process of exposing seedlings to the reality of seasonal weather, a little bit at a time.  A few hours a day in a shady place, then the day outdoors in the sun.  Then a planting in the garden.  Early vegetables that are sown directly in the garden do not experience transplant shock.  Pea seeds can be sown when the soil is workable, and the soil temperature is 45.  However, peas that that has been germinated or grown in a warm greenhouse will react poorly to a drastic change in environment.  Easy does it.

April 19, 2014 (22)The same would be true for spring flowering perennials.  Some growers  winter their plants in tunnel houses with no heat, so they are subject to the same cold conditions as perennials already planted in the garden.  Other growers pot up bare root perennials in early spring, and bring them on in a warm greenhouse. A hothouse grown perennial may react poorly to being put outside without a hardening off period.  Forced pots of hyacinths need some limited exposure  to the elements before they are placed in a spring container.

April 19, 2014 (27)Lime leaved heucheras do not have much tolerance for cold.  The leaves will bleach, and go limp.  However the heuchera Creme Brulee  seems to shrug off the cold.  I have had angelina survive the winter in a small pot I had forgotten to get in the ground.  But moved outdoors from a warm greenhouse to a cold garden will cause the needles to color up orange and red.  This not so spring like look results from the plant’s inability to absorb potassium from the soil, due to cold.  If your zonal geraniums have red tinged leaves, they are out in the garden too early.

April 19, 2014 (24)There are plenty of plants that can handle the transitional season known as spring.  And having good success with them becomes easier if the plants have been properly hardened off.  The hellebores we had in our greenhouse in March were kept at just below 50 degrees overnight.  Once the season moderated, we moved them outdoors on carts for the warmest part of the day.  When we moved them outdoors for good, we placed them underneath our benches, in the shade.  Even a sunny greenhouse is not near the light intensity of a full sun location outdoors.  Plants exposed to the sun too abruptly can be scorched by sun and wind.

April 19, 2014 (17)Any plant that is already outside at a nursery is good to go for a spring container.  Small spring flowering shrubs are great in containers, and provide some scale.  Twigs and dry or preserved materials can add some heft and presence.  Perennials that look good in spring containers include hens and chicks, lady’s mantle, brunnera, columbines, coral bells, angelina, lavender and hellebores.  Spring vegetables and herbs such as peas, lettuce, cabbages and kales, bok choy and chard, rosemary and parsley, look great in pots.  Pansies, violas, ivy, sweet peas, alyssum, and fuchsia can provide so much color and fragrance.  If in doubt, harden off.

April 19, 2014 (15)My summer pots usually go on long into the fall.  They have the opportunity to get accustomed to the coming of the cold over a long period of time.  Petunias, verbenas, million bells, creeping jenny will look great until frost, having been planted in late May.  If you want to plant them in the spring, give them some time to adjust to the outdoors before planting.  Some gardeners cover their spring plantings for a week or so with floating row cover.

April 19, 2014 (14)A quick introduction to weather that is too cold can set some plants back such that their growth is stunted.  Some never recover.  Much better to celebrate each season, in season.

 

 

At A Glance: The Branch Fountain

April 19, 2014 (49)To each and every one of you who left a comment about this new fountain from Branch, my sincere thanks.  It was a sculpture that was months in the making. So much conversation.  So much thought.  So many members of the Branch group stepping up.  All of us fell for this fountain.  We are pleased that you like it too.  This morning my colleague, friend, and director of landscape services for English Gardens, John Collins, brought an operator in on a Saturday, who drove his Volvo 6000 pound capacity front end loader several miles down Orchard Lake Road to Detroit Garden Works.  Our front end loader could not unload and place this fountain. We needed help, and our good friends at English Gardens responded.

April 19, 2014 (55)Branch spends some of the winter building containers, pergolas and fountains outside of our usual product line. The best part of a fierce winter at Branch is the opportunity to go beyond what we have already done.  Imagination is like an ocean, water charged with energy washing up on the shores of what has been before.  Branch manufactures a stock group of garden boxes, fountains and pergolas.  But in the winter, we go off course, we dream, and we make what we have never made before. This winter work gets all of our blood moving, in spite of the cold.   But my lame attempt at a poetic description of the creation of this fountain lags far behind the story and reality of moving an object that weighs close to 2 tons.    April 19, 2014 (60)John, and his Volvo,  handled it with ease.  I truly value the relationships I have with other companies in my field.  English Gardens has many garden centers in our area.  They speak to a broad spectrum of clients via their retail locations.  They also offer and deliver thoughtful landscape design and installation.  They are friends and treasured colleagues.  I so appreciate that they would lend me a hand.  On a Saturday, of course.  All of us are busy working during the week this time of year.  And especially busy, given how shy spring has been to make an appearance.

April 19, 2014 (64)Once the fountain was in the general vicinity of its home, we set it down with the loader forks.  We picked it up again with straps slung over the forks, to place it true and square to the wall.

April 19, 2014 (72)Once in place, Buck and Sal saw to attaching the jet.  The jet pipe was threaded by hand, and screws into the base plate welded to the fountain floor.  The jet needed a secure installation, as it weighs close to fifty pounds.

April 19, 2014 (76)Any fountain demands a perfectly level placement.  Water levels itself with the horizon.  A fountain out of level -not good.  The water will talk about any mistake.  We spent a good bit of time with a pallet jack and a level.  Any fountain asks for as close to a perfectly level placement as possible.  Leveling is the most time consuming part of a permanent installation.  When filled over the top, the water should flow over every inch of the rim equally, and at the same time.

April 19, 2014 (78)The Branch fountain has a rectangular housing for the pump.  It has a jet in the same style, shape, and proportion as the fountain itself.

April 19, 2014 (79)The rectangular pump cover encloses all of the workings of the pump.  No one needs to see this.  The fountain could be hard wired with a remote location for the pump, if an installation warranted that. But for now, it can be fired up by plugging it in.

April 19, 2014 (80)This steel nest jet breaks the water falling from a very powerful pump.  The music that a fountain produces is important.  I could not be more pleased with the sound.  It is musical, not at all metallic.

April 19, 2014 (81)The fountain filling and the pump running – a moment I will not soon forget.  There is such pleasure in bringing the construction to a close, and attending opening day.  We have 3 other fountains just about finished at Branch.  More on that when they are actually here and running.  Buck says we will have them within two weeks.  It has only been within the last 10 years that I have seriously considered water as a feature in the landscape. Now I would not want to do without it. No matter the size or scale, water in the garden is a pleasure.  Bring on the ponds, birdbaths and fountains.

the Branch FountainThe Branch fountain is now on display at Detroit Garden Works.  Thanks again for all the comments and calls-we all appreciate every one of them.  Should you live nearby, we invite you to stop in and see for yourself.