Not all plans work out

Three years ago we cleared out a section of garden that was over run by English ivy.  The plan was to put in some new native species as well as watching to see what would sprout up from the soil that had been covered with ivy for a number of years.  To the newly cleared space I put in some goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus), and a strawberry bush (Euonymus americanus).  As a ground cover I got a bunch of Virginia jumpseed (Persicaria virginiana), which looked like the 'Lance Corporal' cultivar, with reddish chevrons on each leaf. These were followed up the following spring with American alumroot (Heuchera americana), Indian pink (Spigelia marilandica) and Solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum).

A jumbled mass.  Blue lobelia is recognizable on the left with spent flower stems of the alumroot.  The glossy leaves of Solomon's seal are evident on the right.  In the center you can make out the red flowers of the jumpseed, but the leaves are barely discernible.

Over the next 3 seasons I let the plantings develop without much interference, except for pulling out Japanese honeysuckle and garlic mustard.  Additional species that cropped up included natives like white avens (Geum canadense) and great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) as well as introduced species like mock strawberry (Duchesnea indica) and a cultivated species of columbine that had been reseeding itself for a number of years through the ivy.

In September as the flowers of the jumpseed are opening up,
something goes after the leaves, eventually skeletonizing them.

While it was interesting to see 'new' plants coming in, the overall planting was too chaotic to look good as a whole.  One problem with the new scheme was that the goatsbeard gets tattered by mid-summer if it gets too dry.  This can be fixed with a little more care and watering through the season. Also the long flower stems of the alumroot add to the confusion. The biggest disappointment was the jumpseed.  It looks nice early in the season with its striped leaves, but by late summer the leaves are decimated by some insects.  What remains is a jumble of wiry stems going every which-way that detracts from the spikes of red flowers.

After letting this area go for several years and not seeing any improvement I decided it was time to make it a little more formal by adding more defined layers to the garden.  While a random planting works in the distance, close up the human eye is looking for more defined structure and order.  In general, lower plants will go in the foreground, near the stepping stones.  Medium sized perennials go to the middle and the bushy goatsbeard stays in the back.  This new planting will be easier to maintain because it will be easier to identify the 'weedy' plants over a background of low sedges than it was before.

First I removed as much of the jumpseed as I could see.  Then I pulled out any encroaching English ivy and honeysuckle.  I also pulled out some native trees that seeded in, like butternut and box elder.  The lower-growing alumroot was already near the path.  For additional low-growing plants, I transplanted several species of sedges from elsewhere on the property.  Their lower stature, defined form, and contrasting texture will help show off the taller perennials.

Here's the garden after removing the jumpseed.  The back right is dominated by two goatsbeard, and the fencing is getting covered with virgin's bower (Clematis virginiana) that was planted in 2013.

In the foreground is one of the sedges I moved into the garden.
It could be Carex laxiculmis but I won't be sure until it blooms.
Also shown here are Alumroot and white avens,
at top with its deep red autumn color.

Since the Indian pinks don't like to be moved I left them in place and instead transplanted all the columbine to the middle ground.

The Solomon's seal was doing well, but they were getting hidden by the jumpseed.  I put some sedges around the Solomon's seal to give them some vertical space.

One of the sedges I chose has 1/4-1/2" wide blades and  grows in clumps about a foot wide.  These went in along the path and are scattered with the perennials to provide some height variation. Also it's evergreen so it will be around all year.  The white avens that is indigenous to this site has deeply lobed leaves that blend well with the alumroot.  The avens can get lanky and will benefit from some cutting back late in the season.

The other sedge is also clumping but has very thin, light green blades.  I'm pretty sure this is rosey sedge (Carex rosea).  It grows very well on partly sunny to shady sites.

The strawberry bush is known for these brightly colored seed pods in early fall.
Where the branches are touching the ground I am seeing new roots forming.
I'll separate these from the parent plant next season.  This is an easy way to propagate this shrub.

This unknown columbine was planted by a previous owner and
has been reseeding itself for a number of years.  Definitely not a native, but it looks good here.

So here's the garden after clean-up and planting.  It looks a little sad now since leaves are falling off and the plants are settling in for winter.

Weeded and replanted, we'll see what happens next year.

If all the transplants come back and the weeds don't return in force the new garden may look something like this overlay drawing.

As drawn here the goatsbeard, Indian pinks, and columbine are shown in bloom.

The sedges and alumroot line the stepping stones, from lower right to upper left.

Finding a mate for my Plants, part 2

One of my goals in creating a more wildlife friendly landscape is to use plants that produce fruits and berries in addition to pollen, nectar and habitat.  While for some plants that is not a big deal.  A single specimen may be self fertile, or there are other nearby plants for cross-pollination.  Where I have been having more trouble is with some of the less common species to my neighborhood.

A good number of fruit bearing trees and shrubs are dioecious, that is, they have male and female flowers on separate plants.  You need one of each in order for the female to bear fruit.  The classic example of this in horticulture is with the hollies (Ilex sp.).  Fortunately, the industry knows that customers expect to see red berries on their winterberry hollies, so they have provided distinctly named male cultivars to interplant with the more attractive females.  Usually one male plant is sufficient to fertilize five females.

Finding information on the genders of other plant species is more challenging.  Many maples are dioecious, but it is rare to find its gender in the plant description.  Most folks don't care much about the flowers on a maple, they are too far away to see and the foliage is the main feature anyway.  However gender is an issue for many allergy suffers.  Male trees produce loads of pollen and if it's wind borne, that's a lot of pollen in the air.

This Sassafras was blooming at the beginning of April.
Males have showier flowers because of all of the stamen.
The female flowers are more subdued.

My goal is to have mating pairs so that I can get fruit production for the birds and other wildlife.  On my property I have a number single specimens.  In order to find out which genders I have, I need to be out there observing them while in bloom.  I learned that my big sassafras tree is a male since I was out there in early spring while it was blooming.  I didn't see any others in bloom.  I recently purchased a new seed grown sassafras, but it will be maybe 10 years before I learn its gender.

One approach to getting mates when buying young plants is just to buy a lot of them and then play the odds.  I often buy 3 at a time, but 5 gives you a better shot. This is only certain for seed-grown plants.  Plants propagated from cuttings will have the gender of the 'parent' plant.  Then you need to hope that the propagator started from a mix of plants and not a single cultivar.

This fringe tree is probably 4 years old and
has a few blooms on it.

Another approach is to be at the nursery and find plants in bloom.  I got lucky this year when I found small fringe trees in bloom at my favorite nursery.  I went home and saw that both of mine were also in bloom and they were both females.  I headed back to the nursery and looked though their plants until I found a male and bought it.  Now I'm all set for next year.

This is the female flower, there are two stigma held closely in the center.

The male flowers have two paddle-shaped anthers that protrude from the flower center.

Tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica, is another tree that is dioecious.  I put in two of them in a couple of years ago.  Then I realized it was a big gamble that I would have one of each, so a added a third this year.  These mature into fairly large trees, so I don't want to fill up the yard with a bunch of them.

I have a mature persimmon tree that is female.  The first year we moved here I added 5 more saplings.  Now, 4 seasons later they are about 10 feet tall, but still no sign of blooming.  Maybe next year.

Here's the female persimmon in bloom.  I haven's seen what the male looks like, yet.
CORRECTION: This is actually a male plant.  See comment 6-14-2020 below.

The native pussy willow (Salix discolor) also comes as separate male and female plants.  The male is showier with its large fuzzy stamen.  These plants do bloom when they are small, so you might have luck determining which to buy at the nursery.  These bloom in mid-April around here and, unfortunately, many nurseries aren't open for business then.  The one I purchased two years ago was male.  Willows are very easy to propagate by cuttings.  So I was able to quickly grow several new plants, but these will all be male.  I did pick up another this spring, but it was not in bloom.  The vendor said it was seed grown so I'm working blind.

The male flower of this pussy willow is adorned with bright yellow stamen.
The flowers on female plants are green and somewhat scaly in appearance.

I did get a couple of goatsbeard (Aruncus diocus) which turned out to be both male.  This is a case where I am happy not to have a mate.  The male has the showier flower and two plants take up more than enough to space in the garden.

The stamen on these male goatsbeard flowers really catch the light.

New Gardens for Fall

Autumn is a great time to do planting of trees, shrubs and perennials.  The weather is cooling down but the soil is still warm.  This allows new plantings to get established with less stress.  The roots do not need to pump as much water and nutrients to support leaf growth, rather they can focus on growing out and adapting to their new home.  Although we have had a nearly rainless September in Maryland, fall is usually a moister time than late summer.

Another factor that makes fall a good planting time is that many plants are on sale.  While somewhat picked over and tired looking there are many good deals especially for perennials at the nurseries.  There are also a number of native plant sales that occur in the Fall.

I visited a native plant sale in Virginia that featured locally native plants for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.  I found some plants that I had been searching for for a long time (Aromatic Sumac and Yellowroot) and some that I had never heard of (Astilbe biternata - a North American species of Astilbe).

While not the actual location, this is similar to what we started with.
First my wife cut off the runners, then I dug out the roots.

One of the long term projects for the new property is the elimination of English Ivy.  Our local deer like to eat it; that is one of the few positive things I can say for them.  In the fenced areas, however, the ivy is taking over.  I have been holding off removing the English Ivy from an area until I have something on hand to replace it.  At this fall's Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy native plant sale I found an American Strawberry Bush, Euonymus americanus.  The Strawberry Bush was just the plant I needed for this shady moist corner where the ivy was dominating.

This shrub can grow 6-12' tall.  You can see a little of it's fall color.

The American Strawberry Bush is one of two native Euonymus species that I know of.  The other is Eastern Wahoo, E atropurpureus.  I'm not sure why these plants are not more available in the trade.  While not as showy as the invasive Burning Bush, E. alatus, they each have decent reddish fall foliage and the color of their fruits are outstanding, a red exocarp with fluorescent orange seeds inside.  I did read that deer really like to eat the Strawberry Bush, so finding it the wild can be difficult if there is any amount of deer pressure.

'Hearts-a-burstin' is one of the common names for E. americanus.
The orange seeds are not as bright as when the fruit first opened up.

With the Strawberry Bush as the focal point in this renovated corner I picked up a pair of Goat's Beard, Aruncus diocus to fill the back corner.  The white plume-like flowers should brighten this area in the early summer.  Since this plant comes as separate male and female plants I bought two to increase my chances of producing some viable seed.  (Usually it is recommended to get 3 plants when you want both male and female, but I don't have the space here.)

Goat's Beard should grow to about 5' tall and wide.
These are starting at about 1 foot.

This seed-grown selection of Jumpseed has the pronounced red markings
like those on the cultivar 'Lance Corporal'.

To fill in the ground plane I was imagining buying all sorts of natives like Heuchera, Tiarella and Labrador Violets.  On my trip to a local nursery I noticed that they had a bunch of escaped Jumpseed, Polygonum virginianum, with well defined red markings on the leaves  Since I already have these growing in the woods nearby, I thought it would be great to integrate this species into the plantings around the house.  It worked out that the nursery owner would give me the plants if I provided the labor of digging them out.  What a deal!!!  So I loaded up 9 pots full of this native ground cover, indigenous to my site.

At a distance the long racemes of red flowers look similar to those of Coral Bells.
(The name for this plant has been changed to Persicaria virginiana.)

To complete this design I need to remove the Japanese Honeysuckle on the back fence, then I would like to bring in some wild ginger (also growing nearby) and maybe some Solomon's Seal in the back to add a different texture.

Here's the corner without the ivy and just after planting.  The Aruncus is in the back,
the Euonymus is in front and the Jumpseed is in between.