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| Verbena bonariensis |
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| Dahlia |
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| Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light' |
Today I thought I'd share a few of the projects I'm working on this fall.
#1. The creation of a special home for Cypripedium or Lady Slipper orchids.
I have ordered six hybrid varieties... they are 'Sarah Louise', 'PKP2', 'Michael', 'MPK', Lucy Pinkepank',and 'Aki'.
I've truly been obsessing over getting this right. The specific areas I've researched and I am dealing with are as follows...
a. Cypripedium need perfect drainage, yet they need to not dry out. Their preference is a woodsy duff with some sharp sand added.
b. Light is a concern and dappled shade is a priority with a bit of east morning sun being acceptable.
c. Protection from voles is very important.
d. An alkaline ph is required for most of the hybrid lady slippers.
I really didn't have a location that fit these needs so I decided to create one.
In front of the house, there was an old stairway constructed of RR ties. At the base is a maple tree which has grown to the point of making the stairs useless. Aha... 'dappled shade'! I created a simple stone wall, removed the ties, and shoveled the crushed stone that lay behind them to the bottom of what is basically a big 'sink'...
At the base of this wall, I placed bags of concrete mix and wet them down so they would harden and help support the wall...
I filled the sink with soil removed from what was my old cistern planter... alas, it had served its purpose (more on that later)...
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| It is no more! |
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| The landscape fabric is meant to keep the soil in, and as it turned out, the voles out |
I soon realized that I needed to raise the walls a bit more, which I did... after filling with a whole lot more soil, I read about how voles love to partake of lady slipper roots. I had come too far not to deal with this, which meant moving soil about so I could install hardware cloth a couple feet down... sure wish I'd read about this sooner as it took three hours of shoveling to accomplish the task and one aching shoulder when the day was done...
With the hardware cloth under the soil, I dealt with the drainage issues... at least I hope so. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find sharp larger grained silica sand (doesn't take on the ph of the soil it's incorporated to)? After transporting 100 lb bags of sand home and thinking better of using it because it was too fine, and making scads of calls to landscapers, big box stores, and quarries... I decided to use a product called Turface MPV which is basically a man made fired clay product designed to deal with drainage issues on sports fields. With this mixed into the soil, I now await the delivery of my orchids. My only concern involves whether I should settle the soil by watering now or after the plants are installed. I am open to suggestions as this is all new territory to me!
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| Mixing in the Turface MPV |
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| Ready for planting |
#2. Planting drifts of astilbe and ferns as well as other shade loving plants in the new area I developed about a month ago...
I planted twenty-five of the larger astilbe's on either side of the althea path in groups of five or six per variety. There were lots of tree roots from the 'Celestial' dogwood and especially the large spruce so I used a bulb auger on an electric drill to prepare the holes and widen them out. I was surprised how well this worked and did a nice job of spreading the roots of the trees while preserving them. My wife and I also planted the occasional peony in this area.
There is a wonderful layer of spruce needles throughout this area that is six inches deep. There are a great number of selections in this area that I'm watering this morning. To the left of center is Pinus flexilis 'Vanderwolf's Pyramid' with a Pinus virginiana 'Wait's Golden' which turns a bright gold in the winter. These pines make a beautiful combo but obviously are in very close quarters, necessitating candling each spring. I am fairly confident that if I keep up with this process, they should be fine for many years despite their potential sizes. The grouping of small thujas are 'Danica' which maintain this small stature and I really like the accents they create.
Other new introductions to this area include a Clethra 'Pink Spires', a Rhododendron mucronulatum within view of the kitchen sink on those cold April days when it's in bloom, two Azalea schlippenbachii under the needed shades of the spruce and magnolia trees, and a whole lot of ferns. These include Dixie Wood fern, Dre's Dagger, Male Robusta, The Ghost, and others. To the right in the photo below, you can see a Cornus x rutgeriensis 'Stellar Pink', fronted with what is my first attempt at growing Acorus, these being 'Evergold' from Proven Winners which are gorgeous plants. If hardy, I'll be adding many more in the future. Spring interest in this area includes drifts of trilliums lutea, erectum, and grandiflora. To the south are specimen plants of grasses, there is a nice area of hostas, and the two magnolias are 'Yellow Lantern' and 'Butterflies'. There is also a tricolor beech. Conifers include 'Picea pungens 'Fat Albert', 'Hoopsii', Picea abies 'Pendula' and a large Picea glauca var. 'Densata' (Black Hills Spruce) which provides much of the needed shade. The garden morphs into the althea walk and the tree peony gardens to the west. Additional spring color will be introduced with hellebores, phloxes divaricata and stolonifera (subulatas are already installed in the sunnier portions), heucheras and tiarellas. The new trellised area contains at least a half dozen clematis and I expect to add four more selections of clematis this spring. This area of the gardens is quickly changing into my shade garden theme which will eventually allow me to cut back on garden chores. There are also hemerocallis and reblooming iris here.
#3. I had my brother-in-law bring over his favorite toy... a smaller John Deere back hoe, but large enough to do some serious 'deconstruction'. The goal was to remove the trunks and roots of two larger magnolias, but I got a bit carried away!
This new project began because I have been losing several large magnolias over the past several years. There were some things that were consistent throughout... the plants were all in the 15-20+ year age range, all were from the same Oregon nursery which is now out of business, I suspect that none of the plants were grafted although I can't be certain of that as memory fails, and the symptoms were consistent with each loss. I really feared verticillium wilt based on appearances. This summer I sent several samples to the University of Wisconsin to be tested over the course of a full month and all came out negative for verticillium. Throughout this period of several years, I had a thought that kept dogging me... I wondered if this could be herbicide damage as all the affected plants were near treated areas of lawn and of course, magnolia roots are very close to the surface and fleshy... I further wonder if damage could take a few years to show up. This past weekend I had an opportunity to discuss the situation with members of the horticultural community and they had the same thought regarding the herbicides. Lesson learned... no more lawn weed controls close to important trees... overall, I will only touch up individual weed problems in the future.
So that brings me back to fall project #3 which was begun as a result of removing my two 'Spring Snow' magnolias trunks and roots.
This portion of the gardens has become overgrown. I had already begun tearing the cistern apart and moving the soil to the new orchid bed by hand. Four magnolias... two of Betty and two of Pinkie were taking a lot of space and I didn't want to limb them up as the wall of color in spring is very dependable and quite magnificent. The peony collection grown in this area was suffering from botrytis for lack of good air circulation, and the Louisa flowering crab had grown to the extent that its form could not be appreciated.
The magnolias came out easily enough once the trees were cut and trunks removed... it was difficult trying to decide what parts of the roots network belonged to the removed trees... we pretty much avoided roots of trees that are being saved, thankfully. We even discovered the trunk of an old spruce that I had entirely forgotten about...
Before long, 'unpremeditated ideas' began popping into my head... yes, take out all those hostas, those small magnolias will get too large... off with their heads (and roots too), there are way too many Annabelle hydrangeas... dig them out, this grass looks awful... take it all! I became entranced with having a vacant canvas once again. It's not a pretty site when this mood comes upon me... it can happen anywhere... the house, the wood shop, the storage rooms... it's such a sense of renewal getting rid of those things no longer needed or part of 'the plan'!
By evening it looked like a tornado had struck!
This morning I went to work and hauled all the roots and tree carcasses away... all the sod went to my compost pile. I then returned about ten yards of my broken down compost to the site. I now have a great place to design a new garden which is already dancing about my head. I still have to move out the peonies and a number of other shade perennials from the adjoining areas of the garden and to level the site. This bed will be a sort of gallery of a few very interesting conifers which I will plant this next week. I will need to bring in a few large rocks as accents and I will put touches of color here and there... a daylily here, a peony or japanese maple there... but overall I want a mulched and very open space where one can wander about while appreciating the various specimen trees. I also want to play design-wise on the fact that this area is a very long and relatively narrow corridor.
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| Can't wait to get to pruning this weeping Louisa crab on the left! |
So... it's been a busy two days for me, but the prospect of improving the gardens is always exciting... actually, I even have an idea in mind for my next big project, but there it will stay as it will probably be at least late spring before this one gets to the point of completion.
Take care, Larry
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