Dave – Page 122 – Ramblin' through Dave's Garden

The problem with cold

As is typical of the winter months in northwestern Virginia, temperatures vary considerably, and the daily high might be fifty-five one afternoon, and then seventeen the next. While plants are dormant these fluctuations are of little consequence, and little or no damage is done, though the cold is often of great concern to gardeners. Long ago…

A time for inspiration

I admit without apology, but also with no pride, that I am not a book reader. For better or worse, I haven’t the attention span to relax for a few hours with a good book, though I read the newspaper religiously, and I will wade through the densest academic writings, so long as they are…

Shrubs in the flowering winter garden

I am likely to do as little work as I can get away with through the winter (and certainly most gardening chores can be delayed unless some catastrophe strikes), but these months drag on far too long. At some point there will be a few bright, sunny days when I’m anxious to get out, until…

Mistaken identity

The nursery owner was a bit of a kook. Or, perhaps he was overly anxious to make a sale, any sale. The recession had been raging for several years at this point, and many neighboring tree growers in mid Tennessee had fallen on hard times. It appeared that few trees had left this fellow’s fields…

A good year

I’m not much on looking back, perhaps because my memory is so poor I often can barely recall if something happened a year ago, or three. In any case, it seems to do little good to look backwards. Of course, there are lessons learned through successes and failures, but I gain little from this annual…

When is enough, enough?

I can state with certainty that it’s possible to have too many trees in one garden. I don’t believe that I’ve quite reached that point (regardless of my wife’s thinking on this), but there are portions of the garden where one tree stretches to touch the next, and then the next. I don’t consider this…

Birds and bees in winter

The winterberry hollies (Ilex verticillata ‘Sparkleberry’, above) have been stripped bare. The shrubs are situated along the driveway so that they cannot be seen in the usual course of a day, so it’s not possible to know if the birds made off with the last of the berries a day, or a month ago. Of…

Koi on a warm winter afternoon.

Last week the edges of the large koi pond were frozen, the result of prolonged cold. There is no harm that comes from this, even if the pump is turned off and the pond’s surface freezes over. On smaller ponds water must be kept moving, or a hole kept open for harmful gasses resulting from…

The promise of spring

Despite bouts with ice, snow, and several nights when temperatures dipped far into the teens, ‘Winter Sun’ mahonia (Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’, above) continues to flower into late December. In recent years the blooms have persisted into January, and there’s no reason to expect anything different this year. On close inspection a hint of…

The winter’s worklist

Sleep, sleep, and cut back foliage on the hellebores. That’s it, that’s all I plan to accomplish between now and spring. Perhaps I’ll manage to work in a bit of time to continue to cut up the trunk of the tall maple that toppled over into the garden in last week’s ice storm. The top…

A blessing or a curse?

For the better or the worse, the garden changes. Plants grow (if the gardener is so fortunate not to kill everything), but in time this can present problems as trees shade smaller shrubs and perennials. While Japanese maples and dogwoods grow vigorously, a tickseed or sedum will invariably require transplanting to a sunnier location, and…

A maple and the ice storm

There are undeniable benefits to living at the forest’s edge, but today I’m not so enthused about living in close proximity to towering swamp red maples and tulip poplars. A portion of the garden is tucked beneath the shade of these tall trees, and after last night’s ice storm the ground is littered with branches….