The dogwood (Cornus florida, below) in the front garden suffers from a variety of maladies, though it does not seem in distress at all. The tree has multiple cankers that swell the stems and cause sucker growth that must be regularly removed, and every year the dogwood’s foliage is plagued by powdery mildew and black spot….
Category: Native plants
Native flowering trees – from the forest to the garden
At the forest’s edge, serviceberries lean far over into the sun, scattered clusters of small white flowers twinkling against the stark bareness of early spring. A native woodland tree, the serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis, below) grows with such informality that I find it ill suited for a position as a centerpiece in the garden. Instead, it is marvelous…
In the mud and the muck
The lower garden is sinking, I’m afraid. Why, is partly a mystery, but in recent years the back third of the garden has become wetter, for longer periods of time. There have always been times in early spring when sections of the rear garden are wet enough to suck the shoes off your feet, and…
The yellow magnolia
On Sunday the blooms of the pale yellow flowered ‘Elizabeth’ magnolia (Magnolia ‘Elizabeth’, below) were perfection. By some confluence of circumstances nearly every flower arrived at once so that the tree went from nearly bare to full bloom, probably within hours though I was not watching at the time. From Saturday evening to Sunday morning the transformation…
A pussy willow for every swamp
The variegated pussy willow (Salix gracilistyla ‘Variegata’, above) sprawls about the rear property line with an open habit and a tangled mass of branches. One look will dissuade a gardener from believing this wide spreading shrub is appropriate for any place other than the far reaches of the garden, and more preferably onto someone else’s property. A…
The scent of winter
Despite the horrid cold of recent days, the vernal witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis, above) blooms on, though the ribbon-like petals curl tightly in the worst of the freeze for protection (below). My wife tells me that scents are muted by the cold, but I’ve never paid much attention to this because I’m generally resistant to…
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…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 