Bad pruning

One of the easiest gardening no-nos to observe (just walk anywhere) is bad pruning.  This is a so-so bad example here.  The lowest whorl of branches was too low, and by the way, not pruning off the lowest branches of lawn trees is another easily observed no-no.  Here the branches 2-3" in diameter were just wacked off, sloppily cut off leaving a stub.  The tree may grow out and around such stubs, but this injury will remain internalized to the end of this tree's life.  The normal decay of such stubs may also lead to a hollow tree because this becomes an avenue to the heartwood of the tree.  This hurts so much to see.  If you look up tree pruning on the web & just try a little it will come out better than this.  However, this tree is in the lawn of a rental and this fairly demonstrates the attention, or more usually the lack there of, to landscaping around these buildings.

Helping hand at the zoo

TPP was offering a helping hand to a local zoo. Oh, it had nothing to do with the animals, but the landscaping of some exhibits being built and planned. Here's the rub, you're not going to have authentic Australian plants landscaping the area around a wallaby exhibit. The hard zone 5 climate here in the upper midwest USA very much limits your landscape choices to plants from similar climates. That pretty much leaves Australia out. Too bad, TPP would love to have a tree fern or two, or maybe a Wollemia nobilis. No gum trees, no grass trees, but perhaps a cycad in a planter box so it could be moved inside for over wintering. There was a time when TPP had house-sitters who left his cycads outside for the winter. That only happened once. Sigh. Actually many zoos are quite interested in getting and keeping plants. Hardy bamboos were discussed, and curiously the spreading habit of some is not a liability when the prunings become animal fodder in a sort of "grow your own" plan. Kroger bamboo is always so expensive. It was actually quite a bit of fun, and some rather bad suggestions from their architect who obviously didn't get any horticultural help were improved upon. The zoo people found it amusing when TPP pulled out his much used, much annotated, much stuffed with labels copy of Dirr, and if you have to be told what that is, then you are not a serious gardener in these parts. Why, Dirr is the woody plant Bible of the upper midwest.

Gardening the hole day

TPP is bushed, tired, not politically inept. Yes, hole not whole, because that's what he did today; TPP dug holes. That's the bloody trouble with new shrubs, they need holes.  And when you take down 5 or 6 old spruce you end up with an empty space that's at least 65' x 20' to re-landscape, and that's what we be doing.  Let's see a Japanese snowbell, a fancy purple lilac, a Korean pine, a Korean azalea (hmm, is there a trend here?), a June berry, a double-file viburnum, a couple of Korean spicebush viburnums (yes, definitely a trend!), and something, something else?  Oh, a fancy dwarf conifer for the Japanese garden, but that's out back, and a quite nice plum yew was planted there too (Cephalotaxus - look it up!).  Of course lot's of old standard hostas were moved to make room for the new stuff; in our gardens, it's never an easy planting because things must be removed to plant something new.  Anchoring this new front garden is a large Japanese maple, a Crimson Prince who is at least 8' tall with a 3-4" trunk, a fairly big fellow, so the Phactors wisely paid younger, stronger backs to plant that one, and it already looks terrific. This is high impact gardening, a hobby, a life-style, with a built-in exercise program.  Watch for our exercise video out soon.

Flowering shrubs - the intelligent, tasteful, moral choice

"I feel quite comfortable saying that unless your garden is filled with flowering shrubs, your taste, intelligence, and probably your morals are highly suspect." So reads the advertisement that just arrived. Well, you'd have to be a real Ediot to argue with that!  And as a fellow who collects magnolias, flowering shrubs do get a lot of the Phactor's attention.  It's not as if you need another gardening reference book for your already overcrowded book shelf, but the Phactor does assure you that the Encyclopedia of Flowering Shrubs is a very good reference, and marked down to $35 it's a bargain.  Then you will be able to carefully consider where that Disanthus might be planted.  What? You don't know Disanthus?  Well!  Guess who needs this book?   File it right next to your Dirr.   What?  You don't have a Dirr, or worse you don't know who or what a Dirr is?  OK, put down the blog, show both hands, and step away slowly.  You are highly suspect!  

Landscaping quiz

Scenario: You buy an attractive, classic home in a well-established, historical neighborhood and after you move in you decide the landscaping needs some fixing. In order to endear yourself to the neighborhood do you
1. Prune the over grown, renew some perennial beds, and replace a few too-far-gone shrubs.
2. Hire professionals to come in redesign the whole thing starting afresh with boxwoods everywhere.
3. Decide to get a cold dring, sit and study the whole problem for a year or two because you don't want to be precipitous.
4. Have a knowledgeable person make suggestions about what to do and where to begin, then start on a gradual process of renewal of the landscaping.
5. Announce a disinclination to landscape, rip out all the shrubs, foundation plantings, perennial beds, and any tree not on the property line and plant grass.

Please attempt to justify your answer so as to mollify your neighbors. This may turn out to be more of the psychological study than a gardening quiz.