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?

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

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?

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.

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.