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.

Speaking of pruning…...

If you have a pruning question, I can answer it! My new book, The Pruning Answer Book: Solutions to Every Problem You’ll Ever Face, Answers to Every Question You’ll Ever Ask by Lewis Hill and Penelope O’Sullivan, is just arriving in bookstores. Storey is my publisher and has once again delivered an outstanding and useful little book (383 pp., 4.5 ” x 6.5″). So take a walk outside, check out your trees and shrubs, and make a list of what you have to do. I’ll do my shrub and small tree pruning later in winter because the snow is too deep right now. However, this is a good time for an arborist to climb your trees and remove a high broken branch or a limb that can damage your home. Many large deciduous trees, in particular, are best pruned in dormancy because the arborist can clearly see the tree’s structure without leaves.

Microbiota’s Winter Color Change...

You like it or you don’t. For many winters I’ve hated this particular planting of bronze-hued Russian arborvitae (Microbiota decussata) and winterberry (Ilex verticillata), but recently I changed my mind. The old me thought that the bronze microbiota looked drab and sickly (it does), but this year I changed my thinking. Winterberry and microbiota bring color to the winter landscape. The planting, after all, is in southern New Hampshire, where winter used to last five or six months. Seeing the bright red fruits makes me smile, and even if dull olive-bronze and clear red make a jarring pair, the microbiota complements the stone wall over which it drapes. And the pairing doesn’t last all that long. Sooner or later, birds eat the winterberries, and only the bronzy microbiota foliage remains. Both plants are tough, hardy, and relatively care free. So I’m curious. Does this combination appeal to you?

“Tosca” and my fall garden...

In the Puccini opera “Tosca,” the artist Cavaradossi’s garden stands for love, beauty, desire, lushness, and passion. It’s the place where Cavaradossi and Tosca, the opera singer, first embraced. I’ve been thinking about this garden ever since seeing the Boston Lyric Opera production yesterday afternoon. I imagine that the artist’s garden, neither pictured nor described in the opera, is formal in outline and overblown in its proportions.

At the BLO, Cavaradossi (tenor Richard Crawley) and Floria Tosca (soprano Jill Gardner) expressed their doomed passion with operatic perfection. The heat of their attachment contrasted with the evildoing of the sadistic Baron Scarpia (Bradley Garvin.) But it’s the garden references that stick in my mind. Why? My garden is also lush and beautiful, and I feel passionate watching my plants grow and change through the seasons.

For me, no season is more fragile and striking in its beauty than autumn, especially after the leaves have changed color but before they start to fall from the trees. I decided to share with you a photo that evokes the fullness and passion of fall. The red trees are cutleaf fullmoon maple (Acer japonicum ‘Aconitifolium’), Heart Throb kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa ‘Heart Throb’), and sourwood (Oxydendron arboreum). The lemon yellow shrub is Witches Broom ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba ‘Witches Broom’), the golden trees in the distance are sugar maple (Acer saccharum), and the fine-textured, bronze and green trees in front of the sugar maples are bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). There’s opera in my garden, starring lushness and color that are all the more poignant because they cannot last.

Passionate pruner Pearl Fryar comes to D...

Pearl Fryar, a folksy self-taught topiary artist from Bishopville, SC, spoke recently at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. As luck would have it, I’m taking a course in landscape construction at the school and got to hear him speak. Fryar, subject of a documentary film, A Man Called Pearl, also demonstrated his technique by carving a potted Eastern arborvitae into a nascent spiral.

In 1984 when Pearl moved to Bishopville (population c. 3,000 at the time), his goal was to win the town’s “Yard of the Month” award. He began to “cut up bushes,” he says, to reach his goal. Now the Garden Conservancy has anointed his 3-acre garden a Preservation Project, and Fryar speaks around the country about the whimsical green sculptures he creates from plants ranging from boxwood (Buxus spp.) and holly (Ilex spp.) to pine (Pinus spp.) and firethorn (Pyracantha spp.) Half his plants are castoffs from a local nursery.

Pruning is Pearl’s passion, and he does it every four to six weeks with the help of one apprentice. “If you have to rake clippings after pruning, you waited too long to prune,” he says. He uses no chemical sprays or fertilizer and attributes the health of his garden to digging six-inches deep trenches around his topiaries and filling them with pine straw before setting out the plants.

The results achieved by this self-taught “outsider,” or folk artist, are striking. Although some topiaries are representational (an elephant, a mushroom cap) or nearly geometrical (a spiral), many resemble snaky, twisting abstract expressionist sculptures. Both his topiaries and the funky mobiles and sculptures he makes from found objects express his underlying philosophy of peace, hope, and love. Pearl is a speaker whose enthusiasm and good intentions are hard to resist.

Morea iris is a mystery no more...

Once upon a time, a mysterious flower grew near my son’s house in New Orleans. It looked like an iris, but when I tried to discover the variety, it was nowhere to be found. I searched and searched with no luck. I gave up until the end of August, when I went to my nephew’s wedding near Seattle. Wandering in the garden with Wilma, his fiancée, I saw it. At least I thought I did. It was a peacock orchid, Acidanthera bicolor, Wilma explained. I looked it up on my iPhone and it seemed right–a bulb in the gladiolus family hardy in Zones 8-11 and blooming late summer through fall. Thrilled, I emailed a photo to my son.

He replied fast: “Wrong plant,” and sent the photo above. It was back to the beginning for me.

Yet the annual meeting of the Garden Writers Association was just a week away in sunny Dallas, where I hoped to see Brent Heath, an amazing plantsman, bulbophile, and owner with his wife of Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. I stopped Brent on a steamy Dallas garden tour and showed him this photo. Without a pause he said, “This is morea iris.” Sure enough, I looked it up and he was right (of course!) The mystery was solved. Morea, also known as Dietes bicolor or African iris, is an evergreen perennial. Each 2-inch wide flower lasts one day. White or pale yellow blooms with three reddish brown marks occur in groups every couple of weeks, giving the plant its other name, fortnight lily. Hardy in Zones 9-11, this iris forms big, 2 to 3-foot high clumps of skinny swordlike leaves. It is somewhat drought tolerant once established but blooms better with moisture. Morea iris may self-sow but flowers more when seed pods are removed. I can grow it as an annual in a cold climate like New Hampshire, if I can find a reliable source. Thank you, Brent, for sharing with me your vast knowledge of plants.

Is there a mysterious plant in your life?

Stump for Paulownia...

“Eek, you’re showing my stump! That’s private!” the Princess wails.

“Not exactly, Princess,” I reply. “I know you’re embarrassed, but hey. This is to sate the curiosity of tree folks everywhere.”

What’s with my Paulownia tomentosa, you wonder? She liked the last blog, with a photo of her bumptious leaves, but today I’m writing about what’s underneath, and there isn’t much to admire. The photo shows her coppiced base. Three green stems at the back remain after I changed her form from a shrub to a multi-stem tree. You can see green stubs from shoots I removed this season in the foreground and upper right. The brown woody stubs are shoots cut back in previous years. Daylilies and climbing hydrangea grow around and over the stump.

“Are you done yet, you awful human? Haven’t you seen enough?” sighs the Princess.

“Oh I’m done, my pretty,” I say, respecting her need for privacy. We both know that her robust shoots and leaves will wither soon, and the stump that she decries will be her public face until next May.

Paulownia: A Princess with Laughable Lea...

“What’s a nice girl like me doing with a leaf like you?” I asked the biggest leaf on my princess tree (Paulownia tomentosa) the other day.

“Whaddya mean?” she answered with attitude.

“You’re wrinkled, you’re sticky, you’re big and hairy.What’s to like?” I replied.

“You love me,” she said simply. And she was right.

In my summer garden, I can’t resist a leaf that’s 33 inches long and 31 inches wide, even if ugly is one way to describe it. For me it’s a big deal. I live in New Hampshire, where tropical-looking plants are rare. In fact, they’re conversation pieces, and I’ve met many neighbors and passers-by when they gape at the princess tree by the road.

Why princess tree and why me? I like trees, and I like pruning.

To get my tree to look the way it does, I used a pruning technique known as coppicing. I whack it back to the ground each September when the foliage dies at the first or second frost. Each spring, new shoots arise. I let them grow, then pick a few straight ones and cut out the rest. The remaining shoots grow fast–the plant is usually 15 or more feet by summer’s end. But because I out the shoots every year, my princess tree never has a chance to flower or reproduce. Thus all its energy goes into shoot growth and into the foliage, which looks like munchies from the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Now you may have heard of Paulownia, and what you heard probably wasn’t good. This Asian tree produces lightweight valuable wood. If left on its own, it grows about 45 feet high and wide in Zones 5B-9, producing grand clusters of purple flowers and jumbo seeds, which are messy when they drop.

Yet it’s a weedy invasive from Massachusetts to Texas when it goes to seed, and I wouldn’t grow it in those states. My tree, however, never has a chance to set seed and reproduce. For me it’s a folly and a conversation piece, and it gives me a chance to explain ornamental coppicing to strangers.

“Hey, why aren’t you paying attention to me?” said my persistent princess, interrupting my train of thought.

She’s right. I should pay attention. In three or four weeks, she’ll be gone–just a jumbo mirage from the spectacular summer of 2010.