Deciduous Ideas, Tips & Guides

I N A WEEK OR SO I’LL ENJOY THE BORROWED VIEW of several giant old forsythia, left behind from a long-gone farmhouse that stood just down the road. I love seeing them through the naked woods, giant waterfalls of gold, but I don’t grow forsythia in the garden here, as you may recall.

I CONFESS to something of a weakness for Japanese maples, and I suspect I’m not alone. Now, thanks to breeding work by experts like today’s guests, there are more and more varieties being made available that are suited to a widening range of climate zones and garden conditions, meaning the circle of maple lovers can keep on growing.

I noticed that my friend Bob Hyland at nearby Loomis Creek Nursery is counting his twiggy blessings, too, this week—with an ode on his website to Salix ‘Swizzlestick,’ a distinctive corkscrew willow he grows as a dramatic 60-foot hedge.I’m making myself content with much less, but even a little ‘Winter Flame’ (hardy to Zone 4) warms the winter-weary soul. My young plant hasn’t reached full size of 8-10 feet, though at 4 feet it produces a show of yellow-, orange- and reddish-tinged stems that read as coral to my eye.The Dutch breeder of ‘Winter Flame,’ Andre van Nijnatten, has also developed a smaller-stature version called Cornus ‘Arctic Sun’ that is earning high pr

I HAVE SAID IT BEFORE (BUT AM INCLINED TO REPEAT MYSELF): I prefer white Hydrangea to blue ones. And in this hottest, driest summer I know another reason why: The clean white blooms of my various Hydrangea paniculata freshen the place up a bit.

(Note on Gallery: Clicking on a thumbnail gives you a large, higher-quality image.)Winterberry hollies are native to swampy areas from Canada south to Florida, from Wisconsin and Missouri east.  Despite their heritage in wetlands, I grow my plants in normal to dry soil, at the edges of my hilly outer fields. I just don’t have wet lowland to offer on my windy hillside.Though they’ll fruit much better in a moist year than a dry one (as with all fruiting plant

When I have garden tours, everyone asks what “that silvery-green tree by the vegetable garden” is—even many experts—because you don’t usually see it looking like a tree.And even though I know somebody changed its name, at first I answer, “Salix rosmarinifolia…I mean…” then stop myself, and get it right.The reason you won’t see this looking like a 15-foot-tall, 20-foot wide small tree is that as with other “shrubby” willows, regular rejuvenation pruning is usually practiced.“Will get leggy unless cut back hard periodically” is the kind of advice you’ll find in refer

I have grown a lot of viburnums over the years, and have pruned them at various times of year for one reason or another. Usually viburnums need relatively little pruning, assuming you planted the right cultivar in the right-sized space (for example, not ‘Mariesii’ among the doublefiles, shown, but ‘Watanabei’ if you only had a smallish area). Even the lightest form of pruning, the removal of spent flowers called deadheading, isn’t needed with most viburnums, since what you want is fruit after the flowers (unlike all that deadheading with lilacs, for instance, to prevent messiness).POOR PLANNING TO BLAMEMost of the pruning I’ve had to do on viburnums was because I didn’t leave enough room for the plant to reach its eventual size, and poor planning (meaning my impatience to have a filled-in garden) caught up with me in time. I have cut several viburnums to the ground or the

My plant came home with me in the early 1990s from Western Hills Nursery in Northern California, which still sells it today (including by mail, apparently).Much smaller on all fronts than the all-green Kerria japonica, and with single (not the bawdier puffy double) flowers, K.j. ‘Picta’ is an airy thing, perhaps 4 or 5 feet tall. Because it’s a bit of a colonizer, the potential width varies greatly; mine is now 10 feet across. I dig up suckers and share them or move them to another part of the garden, if it gets too wide, and a few times over the years when it was looking thin, I simply cut the whole thing to the g

Not so many years ago, most nurseries only carried the old-fashioned classic we call Pee Gee, for H. paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ (above), with giant conical trusses of white flowers in July that fade to pink and tan as autumn approaches. Perhaps you have a tree form?  It’s the kind of plant often “inherited” along with older houses, and I love passing big ones at nearby farms and gardens at this time of year.Lately, though, as with so many other plants, there’s a proliferation of available cultivars of panicle hydrangeas, and I have tried many good ones: ‘Kyushu,’ ‘Pink Diamond,’ ‘Unique,’ ‘Limelight’ (an unusual recent color break with greenish flowers), and more that I cannot even bother to r

S HRUBS ARE THE PEOPLE-SIZED PART OF THE LANDSCAPE, the middle layer that you cannot make a garden without. If you go and skip the shrubs, the transition from tree to perennial is just too drastic, don’t you think? I tried to pick one kind to profile today—lilacs, perhaps, or twig dogwoods (both in the photo above and both treating me to a show at the moment) or maybe a viburnum?—but I failed to single anybody out.

With surprisingly timed summer flowers, hot fall foliage and handsome, peeling bark to recommend it, Stewartia pseudocamellia (top) is a treasure. It grows happily even in part-shade, and reaches about 25 feet here. Read its profile. Perhaps the smallest tree I grow (maybe 5 feet tall and 9 feet across at present) is an oddball weeping Kousa dogwood, Cornus kousa ‘Lustgarten Weeping,’ which stirred some controversy at A Way to Garden when I almost sent it packing last spring, after years of non-love for it. I relented, and made it a proper home of its own, as you said you desired.

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

MY GARDENING LIFE STARTED with a hedge—cutting one back hard, specifically. It was the threadbare, tall old privet surrounding my childhood home, and I was determined to “rejuvenate” it, after reading about the process in a book. No artful hedge has ever been created by my hands, though—a fact that feels all the more lamentable after watching Sean Conway’s video tour (above) of designer and nurseryman Piet Oudolf’s garden in the Netherlands. What magic.

My favorite Kousa, the variegated shrublike one called ‘Wolf Eyes,’ looks anything but happy right now, perhaps a combination of an extra-dry May with repeat late frosts tossed in for good measure. That’s it below, in the distance.Mea culpa for not watering it properly, I guess; it looked good early on and then, poof, toast.  No brittle twigs, thankfully; just lots of crisp leaf edges. I’m watching for signs of what it wants to do next before I do anything but keep it well-hydrated (no food, no pruning, not yet).And then there’s the smallest: a weeping Kousa, the one called ‘Lustgarten Weeping’ that I almost tossed, as those of you who were here last year will recall. Despite the fact that my un-beloved yellow bellied sapsucker male apparently moved from the nearby lacebark pine that was his passion last year to the weeping Kousa sometime in the last few months,

Like other spring-blooming woody plants, the lilac produces its flower buds from late summer through fall for the following year’s display. Prune after, say, July 4th in the North and you risk reducing next year’s bloom. Prune in fall or early spring, and you guarantee that disappointment.A lilac is happiest if you cut bouquets from it each spring—essentially you are just deadheading it. Though not essential to its health or survival, the lilac isn’t really asking much but paying you heftily, since the trusses make extravagant indoor arrangements. You work a little, you win.A tip: before bringing the cuts inside, hammer the bottom few inches of the stem ends to split them, so they can drink up the water in a vase, or the flowers will wilt almost at once.Bonus: By

Andrew, who is now assistant director of the Chicago Botanic Garden, is past president of Magnolia Society International’s board of directors, and remains a member of the society’s board. In his tenure over 20 years as curator at Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Andrew built the magnolia collection from about 50 to more than 200 cultivars. That’s a lot of magnolias.Now Andrew Bunting is author of a book on the queen of flowering trees, called “The Plant Lover’s Guide to Magnolias,” just out from Timber Press as part of an ongoing series on various distinctive genera of plants.We talked magnolias on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along while you listen in to the April 25, 2016 edition of the podcast using the player below (or at this link)–and even learn how to train a magnolia or any w

Salix chaenomeloides is just one of various rough-and-tumble shrubs I planted the last year or two out alongside the road, between the parallel rows of my two-part front deer fence. I wanted another layer of botanical interest, and a little more buffer from the dusty dirt road I live on. Fast-growing toughies like the giant pussy willow, too coarse for most beds but a great companion in earliest spring in just such a spot, were perfect for the job.The shrub (Zones 5 or 6-8) is 10 feet high in just two years, and promises to be 12-15 and equally as wide in time. Its leaves are nothing spectacular, just willow-like. I’m told there will be yellow-orange anthers as the catkins mature, but even

IN CASE I FAILED TO CONVINCE YOU in earliest spring that you didn’t want a Forsythia, but a Lindera benzoin or spicebush instead, more evidence just presented itself. Now try to resist this native Eastern shrub, and tell me that your Forsythia measures up to its gold standard.

I doubt that Broken Arrow, founded by Dick and Sally Jaynes in 1984 in Hamden, Connecticut, needs much introduction—especially lately, as they were just featured in a “New York Times” piece by my former colleague Anne Raver. As Anne mentioned in that article, Adam (now 33 years old) used to buy plants at Broken Arrow as a teen-ager; now he’s their Propagation and Plant Development Manager.In the latter role, he’s the kind of particular guy who goes looking for a winterberry holly that shows off even without its fruit on (gold-splashed foliage, anyone?); who has such a passion for witch hazels that the nursery now offers 45 cultivars; who tracked down a pink-flowered Stewartia and….but let him tell you:The Q&A With Adam WheelerQ. So what does it take to catch the eye of the guy whose job is to go around looking for new things to add into Broken Arrow’s already very sophisticated product mix? You must see a l

I don’t even know if this lone pear, with its handsome lichen-covered trunk (background, below), is “wild,” or was planted by a previous owner, as were the remaining half-dozen or so big old apples that have already seen most of a century on this land, a remnant of a long-ago fruit orchard.Each year I’ve just enjoyed the pear for the character-filled tree that it is, and written off the fruit as useless, and a nuisance at that, since much of it drops to the ground and creates an experience not unlike mowing over golfballs (if you don’t slip and fall first after stepping on one).  Birds and other wil

The flowers (from purple to white) are followed by poisonous red fruits, and this year I may try to germinate the seeds inside them, unless I can score some plants from Whitman Farms, perhaps, the only source I have tracked down (and where I have not ordered before, so no personal history to recommend it from). I only want the purple ones; fingers crossed. I never expected the Daphne to live so long, I guess, judging from where I sandwiched it between a shed and a gold-leaf Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Crippsii.’ My previous plants gave up the ghost one after another, as Daphnes do, but this one just soldiers on, the sentry to another spring of heady scents.(1885 print from the University of Hamburg library collection.)Categoriesdeciduous

There is an archive of viburnum tips and profiles of other fruit-bearing shrubs I love, great possibilities if you’re planning on doing some fall planting and want to bring in the birds, or have viburnum in need of TLC and need a hand. It’s all in the bullets below the slideshow for reference.Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows beside each caption. Enjoy.Other Juicy Viburnum Treats from the Archives:THINK FALL (YES, FALL): My original homage to this genius of a genus. PRUNING VIBURNUM: They don’t like being picked at any more than you do. Prune these beautiful woody plants correctly and they will reward you and wildlife. TROUBLE IN PARADISE: Viburnum leaf beetle will ravage certain species and varieties in a flash, others not so. Learn how to combat this pest with non-toxic October-through-April search-and-destroy missions. More Fruit to Savor (and Share With Birds):WINTER

Once they have dropped their leaves and gone dormant, after a good hard freeze or so, I get out the hand cart and engage a brave friend. We say our prayers, then wheel them one by one over my hilly garden, down to the unheated barn.I will certainly meet my end someday under one of these big pots, when I am manning the downhill side of this hauling operation.I make sure that they are well-watered during the fall, so that they go into storage well-hydrated—and therefore less prone to dessication while in there.  No water is offered in the coldest months, when the soil and the trees inside the building are mostly frozen, but I start checking around February, once the

To create a year-round garden, I recommend starting your shrub shopping in the “V” aisle, for Viburnum. It was the stately doublefile viburnum (Viburnum plicatum tomentosum), that got me started in this outstanding genus of flowering and fruiting shrubs, so many of which are good in bloom, in fruit, and colored up in fiery fall foliage. The doublefile (bottom photo) is a plant whose habit of growth is so distinctive I could not help but notice. It stands with its branches held straight outward, like so many arms outstretched, and in spring they are completely covered with white flowers.The variety ‘Watanabe’ blooms off and on all season, May through summer’s end—how many other shrubs promise that? It is a compact version of the doublefile, reaching only 6 feet or so, an outstanding choice for smaller yards. If you can take the larger scale, the varieties ‘Mariesii’ and ‘Shasta’ (the most horizontal) are recommended. The doublefiles have another feature: handsome fall color, from a burnished wine color to smoky purple—another reason to include one in the landscape.Today I either possess or covet many Viburnum cousins, like the highly fragrant

Michael Wojtech of Know Your Trees dot com and author of “Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast” (Amazon affiliate link) can answer those questions, plus this one: Can you actually learn to identify trees by their bark (an especially useful skill now through spring, when many are leafless)? Hint: The answer is yes.Michael left a 15-year business career to pursue his love of natural history and writing, and earned his Master’s in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. His thesis, on tree bark, became the basis for the field guide. Though the book’s plant ID section covers trees of the Northeast, much of the ma

As I told reader Lynn the other day, when she commented about her own snow-damaged landscape, I start working while it’s snowing. During the storm at several junctures, I gently knock heavy loads off some vulnerable evergreens, especially, to prevent buildup. I always use a broom where I can reach, and make my movements in upward strokes (not pulling downward, which further adds to the weight and can split the wood, especially in brittle pines, for instance).I never mess with ice-encrusted branches; too vulnerable. On taller specimens, I use a 10-foot piece of quarter-round molding (above) from the lumber store—my secret weapon, left over from a home improvement a decade ago. It’s about an inch thick, and the trick is it’s sturdy yet flexible, so I can weave it up into the higher branches and sort of wiggle it around slowly (in a small lasso motion) without inflicting damage

Long before I grew ‘Diablo’ (the name on its tag, but which I later learned is ‘Diabolo’) I brought a rooted cutting of the golden-leaf form of Physocarpus (above), called ‘Dart’s Gold,’ home from Western Hills Nursery in Northern California. Or at least I thought it was ‘Dart’s Gold.’But like ‘Diablo,’ my so-called ‘Dart’s Gold’ got really big in time, like 10 by 10 feet or even wider; the labels say otherwise, that it gets to just 5 feet or so. I suspect my gold one is just ‘Luteus,’ or maybe ‘Luteus’ and ‘Dart’s Gold’ are the same thing, who knows?

It’s fast growing.Its foliage is willow-like, and in the ‘Argentea’ (meaning silver-leaved) cultivar I grow, a pleasing grayish-green, if not wildly silver.Its flowers are fragrant, like those of its cousins. Deadheading after bloom will somewhat reduce the messy twiginess, especially of older plants.And like I said, the butterflies really like it.Sources for Buddleia alternifolia: At High Country Gardens At Forest Farm Categoriesdeciduous trees & shrubsTagsbutterfly plants

The bottlebrush buckeye, one of four around the yard, had grown to a hummock-shaped thing of about 10 feet high and 15 or so feet across, a community unto itself with many suckers beneath the oldest stems. This suckering habit will prove to be its (and my) salvation, as younger shoots are known to grow several feet a year, which gives me hope that in time I’ll have my hummock back.I waded into the fallen mess carefully just yesterday, once I’d had time to really look at it for a few days from all angles and think about the right approach to its rejuvenation. (Up top is how the damaged shrub looked from the house; just above, from farther out in the landscape, looking toward

DIRCA PALUSTRIS, OR LEATHERWOOD (top photo), is one of my garden’s real oddities. This woodland native is shaped like a small rounded tree and grows to about 6 feet tall. It blooms in late April here, with tiny yellow brush-like flowers–a charming companion to the shade garden’s minor bulbs and little ephemerals. I got my first plant at the New England Wild Flower Society, and it has made more. Read NEWFS’s portrait of leatherwood.LILACS ARE FLEETING, YES, but I cannot imagine a garden without their moment. so they are one of the single-season plants I make room for here. Lots of room. My favorite lilacs.SPIRAEA THUNBERGII ‘OGON’ gives me eight and a half months of gleam in my cold Zone 5B garden, starting with flowers in early spring followed by gold foliage that never says die till December. Spiraea ‘Ogon’ profiled.YUCCA FILAMENTOSA ‘COLOR GUARD’ soldi

HELLO, SUNSHINE–AND NOT JUST IN THE SKY. Cornus mas is an increasingly vibrant cloud of gold up on my hillside the last week.

ONE OF US IS GETTING OLD, EITHER ME OR THE STEWARTIA. That realization struck this morning when I glimpsed its flowers from my bedroom window, something that wasn’t possible from that distant vantage point in all the years before.

I have read that in the Pacific Northwest, ‘Ogon’ (Zones 4-8, sun to part shade) may even keep its leaves, and color—the kind of golden that’s closer to orange than yellow–until Christmas. This form of Spiraea starts its season with an early show of tiny white flowers on its otherwise-bare, arching branches, which pop before the willowy-textured yellow foliage appears.By summer ‘Ogon’ is yellow-green here, so even in its dullest moment not so bad. This is a great plant for the end of an axial view; mine is due west of where I sit and ponder (my current job: fulltime rumination). At 5 by 5 feet, ‘Ogon’ makes quite an impact even in such a long view. The one here is beside a winterberry holly of equal size, and the two have intermingled, together

Adam and I talked about not just the Japanese types, but also other garden-sized maples for adding interest in every season and garden situation–in pots or the high shade of woodland gardens, to full-sun locations.my maple q&a with adam wheelerQ. When I was at Broken Arrow recently, there were many choice things to look at—but I kept noticing the maples you offer, particularly. How many do you grow?A. In the collection at the nursery, I suspect we have 150 or 200 different maples, and really that’s the tip of the iceberg with this genus.Q. There are a lot of native A

On my radio show and podcast, we talked about why having extra-early and extra-later bloomers—from spicebush to Clethra to goldenrods and more—mean important insects and even birds will choose not just to stop by your garden, but call it home and raise a family.Read along as you listen to the May 11, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).read/listen: choosing native plants,a q&a with broken arrow’s andy brandQ. I know that when the subject of native plants is raised, peopl

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END, but this year the crabapples did so a little too quickly. Days of near-90 temperatures will do that to a flowering tree that popped open expecting 65 or so.