Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2021 i Horticulture

It’s summer—who’s ready for fun? Horticulture’s audience, contributors and staff certainly make a hardworking group who take their gardens seriously, with the grubby nails and aching backs to prove it. But the botanical world can be a wild and wacky place, and summer is prime time to cut loose and enjoy it. So with this issue —Volume 118, Number 4 — we bring some project ideas and colorful inspiration: See “Ferning the Table” to learn how to create and care for a micro woodland scene in a shady corner (page 32). Turn to “Kaleido-Blooms” to get your creative juices flowing with patterned flowers (page 40). For many of us, containers offer an artistic outlet every year; check out “Places, Please” to be sure you’re setting your pots for best effect…

Plant!›Want to maximize production in your vegetable garden? Practice succession planting! This technique is the key to a non-stop harvest. Once early crops like peas, carrots and lettuce are harvested, I amend the soil with compost and re-plant with seeds or seedlings. My favorite crops to plant in July include bush beans, zucchini and cucumbers. Check “days to maturity” on the seed packets to make sure there is enough time left in your season for them to mature. Weed & water!›Chores like weeding and watering may not be much fun, but they are essential to plant health and productivity. When watering, aim to water the soil, not the plant, and water deeply. I also mulch the soil around my plants with two to three inches of straw. The straw holds…

Compact, hardy ferns are the main ingredient for their namesake tables, but they need companions. Here are some to choose among: Accent perennials • Miniature hosta, such as ‘Blue Elf’, ‘Sunlight Child’ and ‘Mini Skirt’ • Sharp-leaved hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) • Calanthe orchid (Calanthe discolor) • Dwarf Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum) • Dwarf coral bells (Heuchera), such as the Little Cuties series • Wild ginger (Asarum) • Saxifrage (Saxifraga) • Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla), such as ‘Jack Frost’ • Foamflower (Tiarella), like Pink Skyrocket Groundcovers and grasses • Hens and chicks (Sempervivum) • Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) • Peacock spikemoss (Selaginella uncinata) • Green and gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) • Dwarf mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus), such as ‘Gyoko Ryu’ or ‘Nanus’ • Golden sweet flag (Acorus gramineus ‘Ogon’) • Dwarf meadow rue (Thalictrum…

NEW NATURALISM  by Kelly D. Norris Cool Springs Press, 2021 This is a beautiful and practical book that shows how to partner with nature in creating a garden—rather than attempt to direct nature. On my bookshelf, New Naturalism has found its place near favorites Garden Revolution by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher, Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West and Cultivating Chaos by Jonas Reif, Christian Kress and JÜrgen Becker. All of these books describe ways to create low-input gardens that evolve in mostly predictable ways. Plant choice is made with consideration to each species’s lifespan and inclination to spread, along with how it spreads. Among these titles, New Naturalism is my choice for home gardeners newly interested in trying concepts of ecological design in their…

Scott asked Peter to name three plants that people think are difficult to grow, but they aren’t: Rhododendrons: I feel like they’re trending out because of deer browse and the diffi culty of establishing container-grown plants. But to be successful you’ve got to just massacre the root ball when you’re planting them. If you just scruff up the edges, the first time it dries out it’s never going to come back. What I do is try to flatten the root ball as much as I can, get the roots layered into the real soil and watered in well. I don’t think most people realize the importance of proper planting technique for rhododendrons and other ericaceous plants. Lady’s slipper orchids:›Our native Cypripedium kentuckiense and C. parviflorum var. pubescens are pretty easy…

1 SPOTTED GERANIUM Geranium maculatum This tough native perennial resists deer and rabbits, tolerates drought and attracts butterflies when it blooms in spring. It grows to about two feet tall. The foliage might fade a bit after flowering, but it can be sheared for a flush of new growth that brings texture to the summer garden. Full sun to light shade. USDA Zones 3–8. 2 ‘SILVER CARPET’ LAMB’S EAR Stachys byzantina ‘Silver Carpet’ If you like silver and soft textures in the garden, look no further. This plant will blanket the ground with fuzzy silver-gray leaves. Unlike many other stachys, ‘Silver Carpet’ doesn’t flower, which is a benefit since those other stachys’ leaves decline after they bloom. Highly deer resistant, it can also withstand drought, rocky soil and pollution. Full…

SOMETIMES LOOKING backward points out the best path forward. That’s what Chris Wiesinger of Golden, Texas, has found with The Southern Bulb Co., the business he started 16 years ago. He’s learned that rescuing heirloom plants — bulbs specifically — can be a fertile path to garden sustainability. Chris has a long history with bulbs. He planted a single hybrid tulip bulb in his parents’ California garden at age 11 and was transfixed by the brilliant red flower that emerged the following spring. It crushed him when no flower appeared the following year, and not even foliage the year after that. He had an introduction, though, to a more persistent kind of bulbs as an undergraduate studying horticulture at Texas A&M University. One of his professors, Dr. William Welch, an…

Choose a focal point to base the design around. It might be a striking specimen plant, a choice dwarf shrub, a twisted piece of wood or a shapely stone. Don’t get tied down by rules like working with odd numbers of plants or placing plants from the tallest to the smallest. These can be helpful concepts, but the idea here is to have fun and end up with something you enjoy. To achieve this, let your imagination run! Boldly use texture and color. Garden tables are meant to draw the attention of the viewer. Know from the start that you can edit it later. I always tend to over plant and then remove the excess later in the season.…

Echo Park is a densely populated neighborhood of central Los Angeles that was originally named Edendale. The neighborhood has an often-hilly nature and a somewhat bumpy history. Economic development began with the renovation and restoration of the Echo Park reservoir in 2005. Resident and landscape architect David Godshall, cofounder of Terremoto Landscape, has lived in both Northern and Southern California. “While I’m deeply moved by and wax nostalgic for the accessible wild nature of Northern California, … when I think of natural beauty, I think of the nature I visit with most frequently right now and where I grew up,” he says, speaking of the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel and Sierra Pelona Mountains. But, he adds, “I live in a layered, complex, densely populated city, and I…

BY MID-JULY the first cherry tomatoes have begun to ripen in my garden and it feels as though summer has officially arrived. I grow at least a dozen varieties each year, selecting both hybrids and heirlooms and evaluating them for flavor, disease resistance and vigor. Cherry tomatoes can be grown in garden beds and containers. They produce best in full sun. I support my plants with seven-foot-tall wooden stakes, tying the new growth to the supports weekly. I also feed them every two weeks with a liquid organic fertilizer to maximize thier production. Looking for new varieties to try in your garden? Here are four of my favorite cherry tomatoes to grow: If I could grow only one tomato, it would be ‘Sungold’. The vigorous hybrid plants yield hundreds of…

Many of us got started in gardening by growing plants in pots. Houseplant collections, summer flowerpots and planters filled with herbs and vegetables provide great training for the day a gardener acquires a plot of land. Yet even once we possess ground to garden on, we don’t often lose the desire for potted plants. Instead, we look to find effective use for containers as elements within the garden. I can thank my horticulture students for bringing the importance of setting to my container-design lessons. Several years ago, my lessons included lots of photos illustrating design ideas like matching the pot to the plant, working with contrasting forms and textures and harmonizing through color echoes. Insightful students invariably asked how setting influenced the design of the container plantings, and how they…

To enhance the naturesque feeling of the tablescape, I always add a selection of stones and, often, interesting bits of wood. This is a chance for creativity to take over. If you feel a little unartistic, here are a few suggestions that will help tie it together. As you scout for pieces, keep in mind that you’ll bury at least a third of each one in the soil on the table. Use local stone and wood. I will often rob bits from other areas in the garden. This helps the table relate to its surrounding space. Keep each material uniform. This will lend continuity to the table. If each piece of stone or wood has a different color and texture, it is almost impossible to make it look cohesive with…

WITH A PASSION for plants that began in his teen years, Dr. Peter Zale earned degrees in horticulture and plant breeding and genetics. He works as Associate Director, Conservation, Plant Breeding and Collections at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. SCOTT BEUERLEIN: You became interested in horticulture at a young age. PETER ZALE: When I was freshman in high school near Cleveland, we had a leaf collection identification project as a lesson in taxonomy. The teacher gave us a simple key of trees in the area, and we had to assemble 20 herbarium specimens. But, if you found certain rare species, you got extra credit. I’d always loved collecting things, so I became obsessed with looking for these extra-credit trees. I ended up with a lot of extra credit! After…