Seems like so many of my blog posts are about removing invasive species. That is a big part of gardening and landscaping, editing out the things that don’t belong. That said, the more exciting aspect of gardening is putting in new plants and features and celebrating new milestones. With that in mind let’s take a look back on new things that I’ve encountered/undertaken in my landscape.
This past year I have been trying to be smarter about where I placed plants. I’m trying to make the hard choice not to buy something if I don’t have the right conditions, or enough space, for it. An example is wavy hair grass, Deschampsia flexulosa. While tolerant of shade I placed on the edge of a shrub border along with some mountain mint. I was quickly overgrown and did not make it through the season. This year I planted it in open shade in a dry location where there won’t be much competition.
I did start some native perennials from seed this past year. I had good results with downy woodmint, Blephilia ciliata, both in terms of germination and potting up and planting out. It seems to be doing better in open shade in average to dry soils. This is another candidate as a vinca replacement. I also had good results germinating and potting up both fireweed, Chamaenerion angustifolium, and pearly everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea. Neither of these did well after being potted up or when planted in the garden. They seemed to have a problem with the soil being too moist, or not draining fast enough.
A few years back I planted a ring
of red osier dogwoods, Cornus sericea,
around an existing clump of forsythias with the goal of eventually removing the
forsythias as the dogwood got established. The dogwoods on the sunnier, drier
side of the forsythias have died off. I
replaced one of these with a gray dogwood, C.
racemosa, which is more tolerant of dry soils. Other woody plants added
were a shadbush, Amelanchier canadensis,
and a choke cherry, Prunus virginiana. I had planted some these bare root in the
past and had limited success. This time
I got larger, potted specimens and I planted them where they would get better
light.
I got an American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, and put it in the
same area as some of the Asian species, purple beautyberry, C.
dichotoma, which are starting to spread more than I’d like. As the native shrub matures I’ll pull out the
exotic species. We are located just
north of its native range, but with global warming, it will probably do all
right here.
American beautyberry, at the top, has larger, more oval leaves than purple beautyberry (below). |
I got a pair of Hydrangea arborescens ‘Haas Halo’, a
lacecap form of smooth hydrangea having many more fertile flowers than the very
popular mophead cultivar ‘Annabelle’. I
expect these to be better for the pollinators.
They arrived late in the year and I put them in the ground as soon as I
could. I will need to mulch them soon to
help them survive their first winter here.
This past
spring I planted a number of small trees in the woods, particularly red maples,
which I had potted up and held over the winter. I put them in areas where I had
killed some mature tree of heaven, Ailanthus
altissima, to get a head start on reforestation. Being
somewhat remote these trees did not get a lot of aftercare. Not surprisingly, most did not survive. Recently I saw this story about success of natural succession. They observed that trees that came up from the
existing seed bank performed better than ones that were planted. Maybe adding trees to the already forested
areas is more work than it’s worth, especially when there are already naturally
occurring seedlings present. On my last
survey of the area I noticed a number of seedlings of hackberries, maples, oaks
and tulip trees.
I’m starting to get fruits on
some of the native trees that I planted.
I got my first persimmons this year.
I planted this tree about 7 years ago.
I also got some berries formed on the fringetrees, Chionanthus virginicus, but these didn’t stay on the tree long
enough to ripen. I also go some fruit on
my 4 year old sassafras.
My first crop of persimmons. Persimmons are not ready to be picked until they are soft and starting to wrinkle. These are ready! |
The dark blue sassafras berry has already fallen away leaving the bright red pedicel. This effect should be more striking when the tree has more than two berries. |
Freshly planted obedient plant. I hope that it will spread here and help displace the Japanese stiltgrass. |
For garlic mustard I am including a fall treatment with glyphosate, after most other plants have lost their leaves. I did this in mid-winter 2020 and it seemed to help reduce the number of mature plants in the spring.
So now that the 2020 growing
season is about to close, it’s time to start thinking about what to do in 2021.