Clean Tools Before Pruning...

In New Hampshire, spring is around the corner and it’s time to prune many trees and shrubs. But before you start cutting (and digging, when the soil warms), make sure your tools are clean. If you didn’t clean your tools last fall, it’s not too late to do it now.

• Remove dried soil from shovels, spades, pruners, loppers, shears, etc. Use water, or soap and water, to accomplish your task. Dry tools thoroughly before storing. If you want to remove sap and soap and water don’t work, rub the sap with a rag dipped in a little paint thinner.

• Rub off rust spots with steel wool or, for bigger surfaces, a wire brush.

• Sharpen pruners, scissors, and knives with a small whetstone so that you can take care of small pruning jobs quickly. Take larger tools to a pro or sharpen them yourself.

• Wipe metal parts with penetrating oil, or spray them with cooking oil in a pinch. Tighten up screws, and apply lubricating oil to joints and springs.

• Store tools properly. Hang large hand tools such as brooms, rakes, spades, and shovels to protect bristles, tines, and blades. Keep small tools like pruners and trowels away from moisture and off the ground. Laying them flat in a raised box or tool kit works well.

Good gardening tools are an investment. They last longer with proper care, and preparing now will make your spring tasks easier to do.

Fabulous Foliage...

Rolling Green Nursery’s Spring Garden School Series kicks off this Saturday, March 9, at 10:30 a.m., when I speak on Fabulous Foliage: Year-Round Interest with Trees & Shrubs. I’m going to show some strange and wonderful trees like this odd little beech in my garden. For information, check out this link: http://bit.ly/10cjLH9

Irresistible Sinocalycanthus raulstonii ...

As editor of Coast Home magazine, I get to write about some of my favorite–and not so favorite–plants for the magazine’s newsletter and website. Here’s one of the best, Hartlage Wine hybrid allspice (Sinocalycanthus raulstonii ‘Hartlage Wine’.) It may not be as powerfully fragrant as its parent, Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus), but the flowers are fabulous! Check out the pix on my editor’s blog by clicking on this link.

Gardening Panel...

I’m looking forward to being on a gardening panel sponsored by The Pick of the Planet nursery and Water Street Bookstore. Here’s a press release about the event:
Join us at Water Street Bookstore on Tuesday, June 5th, 7 p.m.
Expert garden panelists include:
Penelope O’Sullivan, editor of Coastal Home magazine, author of The Homeowner’s Complete Tree & Shrub Handbook: The Essential Guide to Choosing, Planting, and Maintaining Perfect Landscape Plants, and co-author of The Pruning Answer Book.

Roanne Robbins, author of The Continous Container Garden: Swap in the Plants of the Season to Create Fresh Designs Year-Round and a design consultant who specializes in creative plant and floral designs for small-space gardens, containers, and special occasions.

Ellen Sousa, author of The Green Garden: A New England Guide to Planning, Planting, and Maintaining the Eco-Friendly Habitat Garden, a practical, comprehensive, and inspirational guidebook for New Englanders looking for low-cost, beautiful, and earth-friendly ways to green their landscapes and welcome friendly wildlife habitat.

John Forti, herbalist, ethnobotanist, landscape historian at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, co-founder of Slow Foods Seacoast, and contributor to the book, Renewing America’s Food Tradition, will speak on growing heirloom herbs and vegetables.

The Pick of the Planet will be providing plants for demonstrations, and the expert panel will be prepared to answer any questions you may have. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information and directions to Water Street Bookstore, visit www.waterstreetbooks.com

The Evolving Landscape of South Church...

Life is change, and change upsets many people. Change came last Thursday to Portsmouth’s South Church, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, when two trees were cut down in front of the building. One was a 90-year-old European copper beech, and the other a robust sugar maple. I had just finished scouting a house for Coastal Home and stopped by the church to take a photo of the controversial takedown.

The shallow-rooted trees had been planted too close to the church for their ultimate sizes. The debate over the removals touched me, because I have a poorly sited copper beech at home and often ponder its removal or the extensive, expensive professional pruning that it will need to keep it in check. At South Church, the bare beech seemed to loom over the entry, even without its canopy of big dark purple leaves. The roots of the beech, according to newspaper reports, were already damaging the building’s foundation and starting to lift the steps leading into the church, thus creating a future hazard to the congregation.

When I returned to the site Easter Sunday (April 8), new beds had been installed on the two front corners of the property, each with a multi-stemmed magnolia in the corner. As the magnolias mature, they of course will grow taller and wider, but not hugely so. They will soften the façade and bringing some privacy to people gathered inside the fence at sidewalk level. In fact, the new landscape looks to me like a garden with a designed and functional gathering space.

Like many gardeners, my mantra is right plant, right place, so that beloved trees like the copper beech won’t suffer illness or premature removal. On Easter morning, someone who had disagreed with the Portsmouth beech removal drew a white outline of a little tree canopy where the big tree used to be and wrote inside it one word, “SIN.” Did church leaders, who apparently held a public tree forum and responded with compassion and transparency toward concerned members and residents, miss the mark by taking down the trees? I don’t think so. I hope that the controversy stimulates caring discussion on siting trees for their best outcomes in terms of health, function, and ease of maintenance. What’s your opinion?

A Touch o’ the Green...

What a year! I haven’t lived in the mid-Atlantic for 20 years, but now the mid-Atlantic has come to me in the form of milder winter weather. My witchhazels (Hamamelis x intermedia) have been blooming for a month, and scads of bees are buzzing my Tommies (Crocus tommasinianus), lured by their pollen-rich yellow stamens. In a few days, it will be spring in my garden (see the photo above of my garden in spring). Yet before spring comes St. Patrick’s Day, a special day for me, because I’ll be speaking at the Boston Flower & Garden Show, Mass Hort’s annual rite at the Seacoast  World Trade Center. My 2:30 p.m. talk is Four Season Landscapes: Trees & Shrubs for Year-Round Appeal, based on my book, The Homeowner’s Complete Tree & Shrub Handbook from Storey Publishing. Come and join me at the talk, or visit with me at the bookseller outside the lecture hall afterwards.

Graham Blandy Boxwood Strikes a Pose...

This odd winter, more warm than cold, feels different to me and full of change. At times like this, I turn away from my thoughts and take comfort looking at my garden, specifically at my favorite trees and shrubs. ‘Graham Blandy’ boxwood (Buxus sempervirens ‘Graham Blandy’) is one of those prized plants. I have three of them in front of my house in a more-the-merrier little group. They are dark green, columnar boxwoods with shiny leaves. In warm sunny climates they can grow up to 9 feet high and 1.5 feet wide, but in their semi-shaded location on the north side of my house, they stay pretty small–maybe 4 feet high at the most–after 15 or more years in the ground. We had a storm a few weeks ago, and their upright branches bowed, weighed down by ice and snow. I took this photo after shaking snow from the flexible branches, restoring the plant’s fastigiate form. Why do I like GB? Well, it has a strong winter presence and makes a satisfying, vertical, garden accent; it contrasts nicely with the light yellow color of the house; and…I like boxwood.

Do you have a plant that makes you feel good when you look at it?

Chief Joseph makes light of winter...

Want a plant that stands out in the winter landscape? ‘Chief Joseph’ lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta ‘Chief Joseph’) does that with its stunning winter color. Typically described as squash yellow, ‘Chief Joseph” is pure gold–more specifically yellow with a slight orange tint and an ochre-ish undertone. In summer, the plant is green with not a hint of its dramatic winter look. The photo above shows a plant about 2 feet tall in my garden after a light snowfall. I feel happy on my garden walks when I visit this little lodgepole pine and other plants chosen for winter interest. After all, the next best thing to being outdoors on a warm sunny day is enjoying my plants on an icy cold one.

According to the folks at Washington State University, ‘Chief Joseph’ grows slowly (about 2 to 4 inches per year) to 6 feet high and 3 feet wide in 10 years. This lodgepole pine, discovered in northeastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, is hardy in USDA Zones 5 to 9.

Do you have a favorite winter tree or shrub?

Rocky Labyrinth in the Maine Woods...

Good garden things happen unexpectedly. For example, I met avid gardener Bob Scherer last spring after I spoke at a pruning workshop at Rolling Green Nursery in Greenland, New Hampshire. An online conversation began, followed by an invitation to visit his woodland garden. Bob and his wife Jeni, another plant lover, live in Cape Neddick, Maine. Bob plays endlessly with stone. His latest effort came a year ago when the couple had to have their septic system rebuilt, and Bob couldn’t leave the resulting mound alone. In addition to being a self-professed wine and beer snob, Bob’s a rock guy, buying stones by the palette and collecting them by the ton from the woods near his house. All this rock goes for one thing–their ever expanding gardens. He’s built a Japanese garden on a slope, three patios, a dry stream bed, and now, on the septic mound, a labyrinth. Bob and Jeni installed a bench by the labyrinth so they can take a break from planting, weeding, or  whatever they happen to be doing outdoors.  Now they have a quiet place to think and to watch the nearby ferns and mosses move in and soften the spiral path.

Taxodium in home landscapes...

Why don’t we use more bald and pond cypresses (Taxodium spp.) in residential landscapes? I took the photograph above of a house landscaped with Taxodium on a recent house tour in New Orleans. Limbed up, these tall narrow trees fits the space by the driveway and by the street. Here in New Hampshire, I group two bald cypresses (T. distichum) with dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Ogon’) and giant Petasites for a dramatic, primeval effect. In leaf, these deciduous conifers have fine-textured foliage and cast light shade.  Pond cypress grows fast–up to 80 feet tall in the wild with a crown 20-30 feet wide, but it takes longer to achieve this height in a typical home landscape. In poor soils it grows slowly indeed. Both species prefer rich, moist, acid, well-drained soil. Taxodium tolerates compacted soils, wind, and some drought. In wet soils the trees develop “knees,” or woody protrusions from the roots that can be a tripping hazard. The trunk, wide and buttressed at the base, appears to soar, narrowing to a small point at the top. Native to the southeastern US, these trees are hardy in Zones 5-10. A bald cypress cultivar, Shawnee Brave (‘Mickelson’), is shorter, skinnier, and hardier (to Zone 4) than the species.