It’s time to take stock of the plants I’ve been growing for companies that are kind enough to send me their latest products before they hit the retail market.
And the winners are …
Sorry. Picking winners isn’t in my DNA. My heart and hopes are always with the underdog.
When it comes to gardening and new plant introductions, history seems to support my wishy-washy attitude. What works for you may fail for me. And vice versa.
I have a city garden — with no worries about clay soils or rabbits or deer. (I know. Go ahead and hate me.) But just so you know my life isn’t perfect, I also have a dog, lots of dry shade and those eye-sore power poles.
Beyond purely practical matters that make critiquing plants practically impossible, there’s that pesky little business of personal taste. What I like may not be your thing at all. And vice versa.
Which raises the issue of trends. Just as in fashion, we all follow them.Or we set them. Trends wield enormous power. None of us is resistant to the power of trends. And why should we be? It’s fun to change things now and then. Getting tired of the same old is part of what makes us creative.
Why are the breeders sending us heucheras with foliage in every color under the sun? Because some trendsetter somewhere decided that trying to maintain a perennial border of constantly changing flower color was way too much trouble for the average Joan.
Low-maintenance gardens drove the trend for homeowners dying to replace the boring old lawn with gardens but unwilling to spend all their free time keeping their yard from being ticketed by the tidiness police.
Flowers are insanely labor-intensive. Annuals bloom all summer only if they’re deadheaded. Perennials need deadheading, too, and only bloom for a few weeks unless the entire plant is cut back, and we all know how unlovely that is and how time-consuming — and that it only works for some perennials anyway.
Landscape designers turned to ornamental (no-mow) grasses planted in masses around rows of ornamental birches for their trend-conscious clients who want to have it all: an ecologically correct yard with no maintenance required.
To keep things interesting they’re now adding shrubs. Every year, I’m sent fewer perennials and more shrubs to trial because, like perennials, shrubs produce flowers, but unlike perennials, they look good all year round.
Shrubs can be pruned into interesting shapes. They keep their structural appeal in every season. They don’t simply vanish in late fall as perennials do.
FOOLED BY HARDINESS
As with perennials, shrubs are pushing the zone envelope. I used to receive only Zone 4 plants. Now half of the boxes dropped off in May contain Zone 5 and even a few Zone 6 plants.
Anyone who’s gardened for decades, as I have, knows that predicting a plant’s hardiness is difficult. We all have microclimates in our gardens. The Zone 5 plant that dies in one part of the yard might make it through in another. Also, there are ways to trick a plant into thinking it’s in a warmer region, such as covering it in mulch.
This is not a low-maintenance activity. The plants I’m sent to trial are expected to survive in our region, thanks to climate change. It’s just not as cold as it used to be. In fact, we’re told that in the Upper Midwest we can expect pretty much business-as-usual in the summer months (though more humidity and violent storms) while winters will be much milder.
That may mean snowier, which is excellent news for Zone 5 plants. In our new climate, it’s the soil temperature fluctuation that will challenge plants in winter, not bitterly cold temperatures.
I’m old enough to remember when winters got so cold snow didn’t happen. We skiers knew that it was the rare patch of above-zero weather that brought decent snow conditions. The rest of the time, we skied on ice.
DELIGHTED WITH DWARFS
So what are the shrubs I’ve planted and enjoyed in recent years?
Hydrangeas are the ultimate shrub for all the reasons I mentioned.
There is a hydrangea flower for every month in summer, except June. Hydrangeas bloom far into the fall. They have flowers in many shapes and sizes and colors. The flowers can be cut for indoor use and kept going through the winter, if you like the look of them in dried arrangements. The foliage is robust and holds up well in the shade. Hydrangeas like a respite from full sun.
Dwarf hydrangeas are hot. Tuff Stuff is a timely arrival in this category. It blooms all summer (on new and old wood) and can produce blue lace-cap flowers if the soil is acidic. Otherwise, they’re pink. It creates a tidy 3-foot-square mound.
At just under a foot, Tiny Tuff Stuff is even hotter.
A hydrangea that has been around awhile longer and has proved itself garden worthy is Quickfire. I also like Pink Diamond. Both have huge blush-to-crimson lace-cap flowers in the fall.
Another once-off-limits genus that’s nice to have in the garden is Deutzia. It’s a dwarf that’s taking the garden world by storm.
I grow a pair of Yuki Cherry Blossom dwarf deutzias that would have perished in our long-ago winters on an east-facing slope. They suffer a bit of tip dieback but rebound quickly. In spring they are covered in tubular pale pink booms. The long stems grow outward from the center of the plant, spiderlike.
Ninebark continues to top the trends list here, partly because it’s native. The cultivar Summer Wine is a medium-size (for a ninebark) showstopper in my garden. The arching stems reach for the sky until, at a certain point, they topple over under their weight, creating the effect of a waterfall. The foliage is deep bronze to near black. Tiny white flowers cover the stems in early summer.
As with deutzias and hydrangeas, small is beautiful. The newest of the ninebarks are dwarf varieties, such as Tiny Wine, which grows to about 4 feet. Dwarf ninebarks also come in new colors — lime green and burgundy, for example. What’s not to love?
THIS WEEK’S TO -DO LIST
— Get those spring bulbs planted while the weather’s fine.
— Keep weeding to slow the production of seeds that will come back to haunt you next spring if you don’t.
— As your lawn prepares for its winter slumber, raise the blade on the mower a notch or two and run it over falling leaves to shred them so they’ll decompose more quickly. Leave clippings where they fall. No need for an expensive fertilizing regime. Nature knows how to build turf too.
— If our recent endless rains didn’t convince you to invest in a rain barrel, nothing will. When setting up your system, remember to put the barrel below a downspout. Get one with a faucet that you can hook up to a garden hose. Keep the faucet open a wee bit and the lid off, so the barrel doesn’t ever overflow and direct water to your foundation.
Contact Bonnie at bonnie@gardenletter.com.
