As Autumn approaches, many gardeners are putting their tools and gloves away in preparation for the long wait until spring. However, greenhouse owners are continuing to diligently tend to their plants in expectation of the harvest still to come.
21.07.2023 - 22:10 / awaytogarden.com
ONE OF MY FAVORITE lines ever in a garden book: vintage Christopher Lloyd, the late daring plantsman of Great Dixter in England, in his Clematis manual. “An unpruned Clematis looks like a disemboweled mattress—a painful sight,” he wrote. Indeed. Yet so many of us go into denial and paralysis mode when approaching our beloved vines during spring cleanup.“Now what was I supposed to do with this one?” we say, scratching our heads while not-so-accidentally turning away to some other task, and leaving the botanical sprung mattress innards just hanging there. Boing! I asked Dan Long of Brushwood Nursery to help me (us!) get past our “pruning fears and misconceptions,” as he calls them.
The how-to pruning story is below in Q&A format, plus pruning diagrams … and a podcast full of more vine-growing tips beyond the subject of pruning.
the clematis-pruning q&a with dan longQ. On the Brushwood website, and in other Clematis references, pruning instructions always refer back to three types, or groups. Can you explain?
A. My first answer to anyone about Clematis pruning is: Don’t worry! It’s very hard to kill one by pruning it or neglecting it. That said, they will all benefit from regular care, and pruning should be a part of it.
The climbing varieties and species fall into three general categories. They should be listed on the tag or in the description as 1, 2 or 3 (sometimes A, B or C).
Type 1 bloom the earliest in spring and set their flower buds on old wood only. Examples are the alpina, montana and armandii species. Type 2 can bloom on old and new wood and generally start flowering in late spring. Almost all of the traditional large-flowered hybrids like ‘Henryi’ and ‘Nelly Moser’ are in this group. Type 3 bloom only on new wood.As Autumn approaches, many gardeners are putting their tools and gloves away in preparation for the long wait until spring. However, greenhouse owners are continuing to diligently tend to their plants in expectation of the harvest still to come.
A sea of Dandelions
APPARENTLY MRS. ANDRE’S TOMATOES succumbed to “tiny insect things that will not leave our garden alone,” we hear this week from Himself, who very sweetly shared the actual sympathy postcard he drew for Herself on the occasion of her lost tomatoes.
If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it
I invited my favorite fruit expert, Lee Reich, author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening” and “The Pruning Book,” to come talk figs on my public-radio show and podcast. (I’m giving away a copy of “Grow Fruit Naturally;” enter by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.)I often refer to Lee as “the unusual fruit guy,” because one of his first books I read was “Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention.” Lee lives with blueberries and paw paws and medlars and kiwis and of course figs and more not far from me, across the Hudson in New Paltz, New York, on what he calls his farm-den (as in half-farm, half-garden) loaded with unusual fruits.Learn wh
Brushwood Nursery, aka gardenvines [dot] com, was founded in 1998 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, out of a Lord and Burnham greenhouse Dan rented for $5 a year plus upkeep. (Such a deal!) Dan, a University of Delaware horticulture graduate, used to teach at nearby Longwood Gardens and worked with Conard-Pyle, where he got fluent in the propagation of Clematis, which most nurseries call “a nuisance crop,” he says, with their particular trimming schedules and rambunctious intertwining tendencies.Enter a business opportunity: a high dollar-per-square-foot greenhouse crop, and one that not everyone is good at–enter Brushwood. He started selling vines over eBay, eventually launching his own website, and recently outgrew the climate and space in Pennsylvania and moved to Athens, Georgia.The Brushwood collection now numbers more than 500 climbers, with Clematis as the main event—including ‘Omoshiro,’ top photo, which may be the first large-flowered one I ever buy (it’s more than 7 inches across, and fragrant). There are climbing roses, jasmines, passionflowers and more–but let Dan tell
THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.
John, whose dramatic and delicious purple ‘Dragon’ carrot is bright orange inside, was reassuring as ever. First, don’t feel bad, he said. “Carrots are one of the harder vegetables to grow,” confirms John (with flowering carrots in an OSA photo, above), and for a few reasons:They’re such small plants when they first sprout (the seed isn’t too big, either; I like to use pelleted, shown below, and there are now pelleted ones that meet organic certification requirements).To get really good quality you need “unchecked growth”—no obstacles either literal (like rocky or otherwise tough soil) or meteorological (extremes of heat, cold or especially dryness). “Succulence and flavor wi
Let me admit: I have a soft spot for old apples, and the massive, century-plus-old trees I’m blessed to cohabitate with deliver loads of imperfect but delicious fruit with the occasional soft spot—or at least various marks of character.The venerable trees have taught me an appreciation of botanical history, more than some modern idea of perfection. That lesson was underscored in 1999, when I visited Seed Savers in Decorah, Iowa, where about 10 years earlier founder Kent Whealy had begun the orchard, each tree bearing a name, and a backstory, I’d never heard before. Apples such as the ones up top (clockwise, from top left): ‘Franklin,’ ‘May Queen,’ ‘Woodard,’ and ‘Blue Pearmain.’Dan Bu
Few people have a more practiced eye about ferns than Judith, a.k.a. The Fern Madame, who joined me from Fancy Fronds in the State of Washington to introduce us to some distinctive favorites from among her vast collection: ferns with pink-to-bronze early color, with glossy foliage, with forked, divisifine-textured cresting (like the crested uniform wood fern, above).Read along as you listen to the March 5, 2018 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).fern q&a with fancy fronds’ judith jonesQ. I’ve known about you and your catalo
The key is which vine for which use, because (hint): planting a trumpet vine or wisteria in your climbing rose bush probably isn’t a good matchup.Dan Long joined me on my public-radio show and podcast from Athens, Georgia, where he owns Brushwood Nursery aka gardenvines dot com. Dan’s the person I know with the most vines—300-something over all in his collection the last time I asked, and more than 150 Clematis species and varieties alone. I suspect he has something for every possible use we can
Dan Long–proprietor of Brushwood Nursery aka gardenvines.com–is celebrating 15 years of selling an impressive assortment of hundreds of vining and climbing plants. He joined me from Athens, Georgia, on the latest radio show and podcast, to give us a tour through some upwardly mobile choices in the world of scented things. (Details on how to listen and subscribe free to the program are at the bottom of the page.)my fragrant-vine q&a with dan longQ. I mentioned the recent headlines of new fragrant Clematis–so maybe let’s start there before we talk jasmines and honeysuckles and even some passion flowers and climbing roses, among the many delicious possibilities. When I think fragrant clematis I think of C. mo