Archive for December 2011
Wolfgang Oehme’s Crusade to Change the American Garden
Wolfgang Oehme’s Crusade to Change the American Garden
by Susan Harris, gardenrant.com
December 27th 2011 6:36 AM
Many in the gardening world are mourning the recent loss of Wolfgang Oehme, one of the world’s most famous and influential landscape architects. He’s credited with popularizing sweeps of ornamental grasses and easy, mostly native perennials in a naturalistic style named The New American Garden. He wanted his masses of meadow-like grasses and perennials to be both a metaphor for the great prairies of the Midwest and also to remind viewers of ocean waves and indeed they do – with any breeze at all. He planted not in the usual groups of three or five but by the hundreds or thousands, depending on the size of the landscape.
“I like it wild”, Oehme said in describing this style. He also liked gardens that are natural – no chemicals – and gardens that are interesting in all four seasons. He loved that his gardens, filled with low-care, sustainable plants from around the world, attracted birds, bees, butterflies, dragonflies and frogs.
The New American Garden style was a huge departure from and rebellion against the sweeps of nothing but lawn that up until then had typified American landscapes. Rather than keeping front yards open to the street, he planted shrubs and trees in front of homes, to create privacy – also an unAmerican practice. Even more heretical, Oehme hated the most commonly used shrub in the Mid-Atlantic region – the azalea – on the grounds that it flowers for just two weeks before becoming a boring green bush. He championed grasses instead – they look good all year, and of course they move.
Some of his design team’s more famous works include embassies, universities and private homes, including Oprah Winfrey’s. In Washington, they designed the grounds of sevearl major federal buildings, including the Federal Reserve Building, where he covered its two acres over a parking garage with sweeps of fountain grass, ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum and feather reed grass.
The New American style quickly became popular with other designers and nurseries had to start growing these plants to keep up with demand. In addition to grasses, they popularized such perennials as black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, salvias, joe-pye weed, and Russian sage.
Oehme was born in Germany and began planting things at the age of five. As a teenager he worked in a nursery, then for a local parks department, where he became interested in landscape design. He studied landscape architecture at the University of Berlin and worked on large projects for the Frankfurt parks department and for nurseries in Germany, Sweden and England.
In 1957, he left what had become Communist East Germany to come to the United States and settle in Baltimore, which he considered a horticultural desert. So he embarked on a crusade to do something about that desert – by designing for the Baltimore parks department and on the side, for private residences. Those early private clients were pretty gutsy to break the mold of lawn and azalea-filled gardens in their neighborhoods, but many of their gardens still stand and continue to inspire the gardening world even decades later.
In 1964 Oehme teamed up with James van Sweden, then an urban planner, to form Oehme, van Sweden & Associates in Washington, D.C., and they worked together for 30 years. Here’s my blog post about van Sweden’s garden on the Eastern Shore.
Wolfgang Oehme died at his home in Towson at the age of 81.
Here’s a quick interview I did with Oehme in 2009. He’s telling me about his Federal Reserve Bank garden and the journey that the American native plant rudbeckia made – to Germany, where it first became popular, then back to the U.S. where he he made it popular.
See Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TzTeRJBw70
You and the New American Garden
This “new” style of gardening was already in vogue before I got serious about gardening, so I was influenced by it without realizing it. Those grasses! Those masses of perennials! Soooo unlike the prim rows of annuals and clipped evergreens that comprised the garden of my childhood. My mother may have taught me to love gardening but her style? Not so much.
How about your garden? Is it New and American?
Click here to read or add to tributes to Oehme. Photo credit: Oehme van Sweden and Associates.
Original Page: http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2011/12/wolfgang-oehme.html
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Mulch Mistakes | Garden Design
http://www.gardendesign.com/mulch-mistakes?cmpid=fb
Mulch Mistakes
We are happy to introduce another post from one of our Advisory Board members. We’ll be running regular columns about inspiration and gardening tips from our advisory board throughout the year. (If you missed it, some of our past columns have include how to plant dahlias, by Frances Palmer, creating seaweed art, by Karen Robertson, and creating a container cutting garden, by Saipua, aka Sarah Ryhanen.)
Today’s post is by landscape designer Paul Keyes, who helped create our James Beard garden makeover. Read more about his work on his Advisory Board member page!
The author, cultivating the Donald B. Lacey Display garden at Rutgers University in 1989.
I think that gardeners are often too reliant on mulch. I started in the landscaping business more than 30 years ago and I have very clear memories of professional gardeners who carefully cultivated planting beds. Recently, cultivating beds seems to have been replaced by mulching, or perhaps I should say over-mulching.
My favorite garden tool is my cultivator. When I work in my garden I look forward to cultivating my beds. After I cut my grass, I can get into my garden beds and pinch, prune, weed, and cultivate the soil. There is something so rewarding and almost therapeutic for me and my plants after I cultivate a bed—it’s like giving a great massage to the earth. When I’ve finished, I know I have helped the health and vigor of my plants and the garden looks and smells amazing.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that mulching or rather over-mulching, has replaced the very important garden practice of bed cultivation. So why should we mulch and what is the right mulch and method of application?
Pine needle mulch. Photo by Paul Keyes.
The Good Mulch:
1. Stabilizes soils and prevents erosion.
2. Helps soils retain moisture for plant use.
3. Improves soil structure and quality over time, if properly applied.
4. Looks great (sometimes).
5. Improves biological activity and mixes organic materials into soils.
6. Prevents weed growth. Keep in mind that the definition of a weed is “a plant out of place.” If we mulch to prevent weed growth, then what is it doing to the desirable plants?
7. Can be an effective herbicide in place of chemicals, cutting, mowing etc.
Leaves as mulch. Photo by Paul Keyes.
Types of Good Mulch:
1. Bark Mulch: It stays loose and does not bind. Bark mulch has a nice dark color and is a great background for plants and it does not fade over time. Bark mulch cultivates nicely into the soil and improves soil structure and drainage. It is usually innate and does not require nitrates to decompose. It is readily available and comes in easily handled 1 to 3 cubic foot bags in a variety of sizes from 4″ to 3/8″
2. Soil Conditioner: This is usually the 3/8″ and smaller screenings left over from sorting bark mulch. It is great for top-dressing beds and used as a component in planting mixes.
3. Straw Mulch: This can be either salt hay or pine needles and more commonly used in the southern part of the United States. Straw mulch is available in easily handled lightweight bales and it has a nice color and natural look. Salt hay (also known as salt marsh hay) is hay from salt marshes and spreads through rhizomes rather than seeds, so it eliminates the risk of contaminating the soil with weed seeds.
4. Cocoa Bark: Cocoa bark has a nice dark color, an interesting scent, does not bind, and mixes nicely into the soil and improves its quality. It is little on the expensive side.
5. Sweet Peet: This is the brand name of a specific type of mulch that is a combination of mulch, agricultural manure, soil conditioner, and humus. Look for it, I think it’s amazing. Their website is sweetpeet.com.
6. Leaves and other organic matter: Keep some leaves in the beds—plants shed leaves for a variety of reasons including as a way to feed and protect themselves. But for some reason, we spend too much time and energy removing them. I’ll never understand the fascination to keep our garden like our bathrooms. It’s okay to be neat, but don’t sterilize you garden by removing all the leaves. Find ways to hide them in your garden beds. They will improve biological activity and in many cases, it is much better than mulch. Go walk in the forest and uncover the duff layer (leaf layer) and take a look at what’s happening! It’s alive!
7. Living Mulch: Ground cover plants like ivy, Pachysandra, and Liriope are great. It’s better to invest in this mulch than something that needs replacing every season.
8. Peat Moss: A great material as long as you moisten it and mix it in with the soil and keep an eye on soil PH. It looks great, too.
9. Stone Mulch: This is a durable and long-lasting mulch that is good for areas where much can easily be washed away by heavy rains or in commercial applications such as parking lot islands.
Just say no to dyed mulch, like the stuff shown here. Photo by Paul Keyes.
The Bad Mulch:
1. Too much mulch that is improperly applied in too thick of a layer kills plants and/or prevents proper growth.
2. Some mulch like hardwoods and shredded bark actually bind together, which prevents penetration of air and water.
3. Bad mulch reduces the biological activity in the soil. Where are the bugs and the worms in this mulch? If they can’t live in it, how does a plant?
4. A badly chosen mulch can changes the chemical composition of the soil. Mulch that is not fully decomposed draws nitrogen from the soil as it breaks down. Some mulch also leach micronutrients, like magnesium, that are harmful to plants.
5. Bad mulch can changes the soil structure and chemical makeup of the soil. Productive soils have variable percentages of five equal parts, including clay, sand, silt, organic matter, and biological components. Too much organic matter is never a good thing.
6. Mulch that is not clean and that contains garbage, weed seeds, or harmful pathogens.
7. Consider the cost of mulch. Determine what your annual mulch budget is and spend half on living mulches that will spread, reduce mulching, and increase plant material in the garden.
Types of Bad Mulches:
1. Wood Chips: A by-product from arborists, this is essentially someone else’s waste. It is best used if allowed to decompose for two to three years and mixed with other garden compost and organic fertilizers to aid in decomposition.
2. Double-ground hardwood mulch: These are usually wood chips that are immediately processed as the byproduct of tree removal, dyed, and made available in bulk. It’s not the worst if the goal is to prevent weed growth or to stabilize soils and prevent erosion. But do not use it within the drip line of the plants or apply it around stems and trunks.
3. Cedar Mulch: Everybody loves it for the color and scent, but it has many of the same negatives as other hardwood mulches, with a tendency to bind together and mat down.
4. Rubber Mulch: Yes, I said it and I’ve seen it. It’s just bad and really needs no explanation, so don’t use it. It is sold as an environmental solution to reduce the mountains of discarded automobile tires in this country. Is it really a good environmental solution to grind up tires and put that in our gardens? (No. Obviously.)
5. Plastic sheeting and fabric weed barriers: This should only be used on limited basis. It is best used for commercial purposes and for small scale jobs. It does prevents weed growth, but it is also unsightly and prevents water and air from entering the soil and therefore reduces biological activity.
The Cone of Shame! Photo by Paul Keyes.
The Ugly Mulch
1. Cone of Shame: This is when mulch is piled around trees and plant stems to make a cone. It smothers the plant, looks horrible, and actually brings water away from the plant. Instead, use mulch to make a plant saucer just outside the drip line to keep water where the plant needs it.
2. Hot Stuff!: If you use mulch that is not fully decomposed (too green) or piled on too high, the decomposition process will generate heat and I have seen gardens literally cooked with green mulch.
3. Anaerobic (sour) Mulch: Mulch should normally smell like freshly cut wood or cultivated soil, but sometimes it develops a strong toxicity that can kill plants. This happens when organic material is not rotated or turned over enough. When this occurs, the process may become anaerobic and produce phytotoxic materials in small but toxic quantities.
4. Using mulch to improve the appearance of a garden or landscape instead of using plants. I often see commercial landscapers with little experience and training use mulch as a quick fix to make a garden look good. Great for their bottom line and profits, but a bad investment for homeowners.
5. Mulch that Binds: Most perennials and annuals need lots of air and the ability to spread to thrive. Over mulching or using the wrong mulch prevents good, productive growth when the mulch binds.
6. Garbage Mulch: One person’s garbage is another person’s mulch. Be wary of organic and inorganic materials recycled from the waste stream and made into mulch. Not all recycling is good for the environment.
Types of Ugly Mulch
1. Dyed Mulch: Ugh! Nothing takes away from the beauty of architecture, plants, or landscapes than red or orange dyed mulch. Just don’t do it.
2.Plastic or Fabric: Bad for plant growth, but also unsightly in the long run and does not decompose or improve soil.
3. Rubber Mulch: Just say no.
4. Straw Hay: Used as a construction site soil stabilizer, straw made from barley, oats, rice, rye, and wheat hay have seed heads that will germinate and create a major weed problem.
In summary, I think using good mulch in moderation is the most effective application method. Combine mulch use with good garden design, practices, and know the makeup of your mulch and its origin. Don’t fall into the mulch trap as a quick fix to make your garden look good. Choose plants over mulch and get yourself a good cultivator to get rid of those weeds and massage the earth!
Mcall.com: Lehigh Valley Master Gardeners : Plant Corn When Oak Leaves Are the Size of a Squirrel’s Ear
Plant Corn When Oak Leaves Are the Size of a Squirrel’s Ear
When Endless Mountains Edna first mentioned phenology, I thought “Why is she talking about skull measurements?” Edna’s just completing her Master Gardener training program in Wyoming County and the instructor had mentioned “phenology” (NOT phrenology!) as one way to approach gardening in our area.
Phenology is the study of periodic and recurring plant and animal life cycle events. In our area, examples would be the date that forsythia blooms, the date that lilac leaves appear, the first appearance of robins, the date of leaf coloring and leaf fall in deciduous trees, etc. The timing of these events in nature is extremely sensitive to changes in the environment and can help us to determine when to plant or when we can expect certain insects to show up. In addition to the title…which is really hard for me to picture…. some examples include: when the yellow forsythia and crocus are blooming it’s the time to prune roses and fertilize the lawn; plant peppers and eggplant outside when the bearded iris is in bloom. For those interested in pest management, flowering of chicory is a signal to be on the lookout for the moth of squash vine borers. The moth is active for about two weeks, during which it lays its eggs on susceptible plants.
Two phenology projects are underway in Pennsylvania. PhenPenn is a Penn State and community phenology network that is part of the National Phenology Network. The Eastern PA Phenology Project is a collaborative effort to collect, record, and blog seasonal changes being observed in eastern Pennsylvania. If you’d like to learn more about phenology, the PhenPenn site is http://sites.google.com/site/psuphenology/brief-introduction.
Plant studies miss the full effect of climate change – New Scientist – New
Plant studies miss the full effect of climate change
by Peter Aldhous, newscientist.com
December 15th 2011
Climate change is affecting plants’ seasonal activities more strongly than biological experiments suggest. The finding suggests that such studies may have to be reworked to get a better picture of the effects of global warming.
“This is huge,” says Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and a member of the team behind the study. “We are relying heavily on these experiments to predict what will happen 100 years from now.”
Shifts in seasonal patterns of growth and activity are some of the most obvious ecological responses to climate change. For instance, plants may unfurl their leaves or burst into flower earlier in the spring. The study of such changes, known as phenology, is important because big trouble could be in store if species that rely on one another – such as flowering plants and their pollinators – get out of sync in a warming world.
To predict what the future holds, ecologists are artificially warming selected plots in natural ecosystems using infrared lamps, soil-heating cables or open-top enclosures that act like greenhouses. But researchers led by Elizabeth Wolkovich of the University of California, San Diego, have found that such experiments aren’t a reliable guide to the future.
Day per degree
Wolkovich gathered results from 36 warming experiments and compared them with 14 long-term studies of plant responses to actual environmental warming. In total, she collected information on over 1500 plant species across four continents. Her team looked at the timing of flowering and leaf growth in the spring, expressing the results as a change in days per degree Celsius of warming.
The warming experiments dramatically underestimated responses to climate change, says Wolkovich. They indicated that flowering and leafing would advance on average by about one day per degree of warming, but long-term observations show that responses to climate warming so far have been four to eight times as large.
Some experiments have warmed plots beyond the range recorded in long-term observations, which might suggest that plants’ response to warming begins to plateau at higher temperatures. However, Wolkovich says that the discrepancy cannot be explained this way.
When Wolkovich and her colleagues considered only species represented both in experiments and in observational studies, the difference was even more pronounced. For these species the experiments suggested, surprisingly, that plants would flower later on average under warmer conditions. Observational studies have shown the opposite: flowering times have advanced as the world has warmed.
Why warming experiments should be getting it wrong is unclear. Richard Primack of Boston University says the results suggest that warming experiments do not deliver as much heat as researchers think – some might be dissipated by wind, for instance. Another possibility, notes Wolkovich, is that warming experiments may inadvertently dry soil, which is likely to delay leaf growth and flowering.
Walden data
Primack has studied changes in plant seasonality at Concord, Massachusetts, using records that were started in the 19th century by the philosopher, poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau. Now Primack is relating the Concord observations to results from the Boston-Area Climate Experiment run by Jeff Dukes of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Preliminary results echo Wolkovich’s findings, Primack says.
Changes in seasonal patterns of plant growth and development are not the only likely consequences of climate change. Warming experiments are also being used to investigate predicted changes in total ecosystem productivity and the cycling of carbon, water and nutrients.
Primack suggests that researchers may have to deploy more temperature sensors in their experimental plots to determine how much of the heat they are delivering is being dissipated. “A lot of the results coming out of warming experiments may need to be recalibrated,” he warns.
Wolkovich presented the findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last week.
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Original Page: http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/dn21292-plant-studies-miss-the-full-effect-of-climate-change.html
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SUPERthrive inventor passes
http://www.amerinursery.com/blog-1608.aspx
SUPERthrive inventor passes
12/9/2011
Dr. John Ansel Armstrong Thomson, inventor of the world-famous horticultural vitamins-hormones solution SUPERthrive®, passed away peacefully on November 28, 2011, five days after his 100th birthday. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.
Thomson developed the SUPERthrive® formula in 1939. Seventy-two years later, he was still engaged in the daily operations of his company, Vitamin Institute, actively selling worldwide. As the new President, his daughter Patrisha Thomson will continue her father’s legacy of improving horticultural and agricultural crops with the firm’s sole product.
Holding a Ph.D. in biochemistry, Thomson has collected awards and commendation for his lifetime of work. In 1940, he earned the Science & Industry’s only Gold Medal at the San Francisco World’s Fair Golden Gate International Exposition. In 2006, Dr. Thomson became the first chemist to be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lawn & Garden Marketing & Distribution Association. Other honors include Lifetime Environmental Awareness Award from Sustainable Environmental Education and induction into the “Nursery Retailer” magazine’s Hall of Fame.
Throughout World War II, his SUPERthrive® was used by five U.S. Government departments (Army Corps of Engineers, Air Force, Navy, Department of Agriculture, and Forest Service) respectively to: transplant mature trees for defense plant camouflage; plant and sustain low-dust turf landing fields; improve soil conditions where salt interfered with plant success; develop vital drug- and oil-bearing plants domestically; and increase production of necessary guayule rubber.
When asked about his primary philosophy of life, Dr. Thomson summed it up saying, “My whole idea is to try to leave the world better off for wherever I touch it.”
57 Virginia communities get Tree City USA designation from Arbor Day Foundation – The Washington Post
57 Virginia communities get Tree City USA designation from Arbor Day Foundation
RICHMOND, Va. — Nearly 60 communities across Virginia are celebrating their Tree City USA certification from the Arbor Day Foundation.
The Virginia Department of Forestry says 57 towns, cities and military installations have received the designation.
Officials with the department say trees are much more than just pleasing to look at, they are vital to quality of life and the environment. They say trees can help clean the air and water, as well as help conserve energy in homes.
Criteria for the certification includes having a tree board or department; having a tree care ordinance, an Arbor Day observance and proclamation, and a community forestry program with an annual budget of at least $2 per capita.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
College admits liability for limb fall – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
College admits liability for limb fall
Posted December 14, 2011 15:08:12
An Adelaide private school has admitted liability over a tree limb which fell on a sports day, injuring three people.
Cedar College at Northgate has pleaded guilty in the Industrial Court to breaching safety laws.
The limb of an inronbark fell on on a windy day in September 2009.
The court heard an arborist had recommended the tree be pruned, then removed in two separate reports, the latter in 2007.
Lawyers for the college told the hearing the college did not understand the risk posed and ought to have removed the tree within the 18-month period, but had not.
Prosecutor Michael Opacic for SafeWork SA told the court one of the victims, John Alexander Duthie, was now a paraplegic as a result of the incident.
There will be more submissions to the court next week.
Topics: courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, accidents—other, disasters-and-accidents, accidents, sa, northgate-5085, adelaide-5000
Learning How to Kill Trees – NYTimes.com
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/learning-how-to-kill-trees/
Learning How to Kill Trees
William R.L. AndereggA dead grove of trembling aspen in Colorado’s Grand Mesa National Forest.
Scientists trying to understand the future of forests on a warming planet have a strange problem: They do not know how to kill trees.
I don’t mean the trees in their backyards. I would bet that the average climate scientist, especially one who studies forests, is better with a chain saw than I would be.
What I mean is that researchers don’t have a particularly good idea of how trees die in the wild, and as a consequence, they have a hard time constructing computer analyses that can accurately predict the future of forests. These programs are fine at running equations that describe the growth of trees and other plants as a function of climate in a particular area. But when it comes to understanding what causes large scale die-backs, the analyses are rudimentary at best.
I encountered this problem in my long article a few months ago on the future of the world’s forests, in which I talked about forests’ displaying disturbing signs of stress, probably as a result of global warming. This is not a problem climate scientists saw coming, which illustrates the importance of getting a better handle on the life and death of trees. So it comes as good news to learn that one of the researchers I quoted in that article, William R.L. Anderegg of Stanford University, has offered substantial new insight into how trees die.
His paper was written with five co-authors and released Monday by a journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In it, Mr. Anderegg and his colleagues focused on the phenomenon known as “sudden aspen decline” that has killed broad swaths of aspen forest in Colorado and other states in recent years. At least 15 percent of Colorado’s aspen forests have died, and Mr. Anderegg, a native of that state, was as shocked as other Coloradans.
“I played as a kid in some of those aspen groves,” he said in an interview. As his research project for a doctorate at Stanford, he resolved to learn what he could about the situation.
Scientists already knew that sudden aspen decline was a delayed response to a severe drought and heat wave in Colorado in the first half of the decade, but they did not know at a systemic level how the trees were dying. In fact, the question has almost never been studied in any forest during a massive die-back.
Mr. Anderegg and his group spent long hours cutting limbs from dying trees to investigate their physiology, imposing a drought on nursery saplings and wild trees, and taking other steps to pin down exactly what was happening. As they did so, they were weighing the two main hypotheses about how trees die.
One of these posits that in a drought or other stress situation, trees close the pores that allow carbon dioxide to enter their leaves and water to evaporate. That would conserve water, but it would also slam the brakes on photosynthesis, and the tree might essentially starve to death for lack of the carbohydrates it usually creates in its leaves to build and maintain its tissues.
The second idea is that in a drought, trees undergo a kind of hydraulic failure, with the fine tubes that take water from a tree’s roots to its leaves filling up with tiny air bubbles. The idea is that this damages the tubes and can lead to problems for the tree even after rainfall resumes.
It turns out that Mr. Anderegg’s findings strongly support the second idea: that trees die of thirst, not hunger. He found plenty of carbohydrates in the roots of dying aspens, but also clear evidence that their water distribution systems had been damaged and could not recover even after the drought ended in 2004. In my interview with him, Mr. Anderegg compared trees to people: we die of thirst a lot more easily than we starve to death.
James Worrall, a scientist with the United States Forest Service who has also studied sudden aspen decline, described Mr. Anderegg’s paper (he was not involved in the work) as significant and the data as convincing. But he pointed out that much of the field work occurred in 2010, late in the aspen die-back, and the results might or might not be characteristic of what happened earlier.
He also said that insects had probably played a role in killing some trees weakened by drought, and the insect populations may have built up enough to kill even trees that had not suffered much in the drought. “Although certainly not the last word on how aspen stands die, this work is an important contribution that will certainly spur further research,” Dr. Worrall said.
Both Dr. Worrall and Mr. Anderegg pointed out that the two ideas about tree death were not mutually exclusive, so while hydraulic failure appears to be the answer in at least some episodes of sudden aspen decline, that does not mean it will be right in every forest die-back. People can die in many different ways — why not trees? So a lot of work needs to be done on other forest die-back situations to establish whether Mr. Anderegg’s results represent a universal pattern or just one among several possibilities.
Unfortunately, scientists may get plenty of opportunities for such research, given the rate at which forests seem to be dying. Mr. Anderegg is finishing his doctoral work at Stanford, and my guess is that he will wind up in one of the laboratories struggling to do a better job of forecasting the future of the world’s forests.
Vitex tree gets Texas Superstar ranking | The Advertiser | theadvertiser.com
Vitex tree gets Texas Superstar ranking | The Advertiser | theadvertiser.com
Texas Superstars, like our Louisiana Super Plants, are plants that have been designated by horticulturists in their respective states as outstanding performers in those locales. I was happy to read this week that the vitex tree, also known as chaste tree, (Vitex agnus-castus), has been awarded the Texas Superstar ranking.
And even better news is that whereas the old Vitex had small, unimpressive spikes of flowers that were pale lilac, mauve, off-white or light pink, horticulturists now have identified and tested improved varieties such as ‘Montrose Purple’, ‘LeCompte’ and ‘Shoal Creek’ which have 8- to 12-inch long spikes. The bloom spikes on these improved varieties are not only large and beautiful, they’re fragrant and provide long-lasting cut flowers. These varieties will all be marketed under the name, ‘Texas Lilac’ Vitex.
Long-time readers will remember when The Advertiser reported in 1995 that a federal grant had been awarded to replace trees lost as the result of Hurricane Andrew. Listed among the selected varieties were trees known as summer lilacs or chastetrees, names not familiar to many of us. They were to be planted on Arnold Boulevard, and as far as I know, are still there. Their lilac-hued, spikey flowers, reminiscent of butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii), bloom in early summer, but the color has not been dramatic.
Vitex was commonly grown in old gardens of the South. However, as is often typical of plant popularity, interest declined. Later, new gardeners are discovering that it is a low-maintenance tree plagued by few problems. Plant it in dormancy (late fall to early spring), in full sun to light shade and relatively dry, well-drained acidic soil. Provide a regular fertilization program and faithful deadheading of faded blossoms to keep the tree vigorous and flowering.
Large old trees can live to be 40 years old or more. They are sometimes killed to the ground by severe winters; however, they re-sprout from the roots each spring. Because it is a fast grower, you may choose to cut it back to the ground yearly to keep size under control.
The wonderful flowers produced in early- and mid-summer last for several weeks and attract butterflies and bees. With its tough reputation, the Texas Department of Transportation plants it on highway medians.
Let lycoris foliage fade
The foliage on lycoris bulbs is gathering sunlight to provide nourishment for next year’s blooms. Once it has yellowed and withered, it has done its photosynthesis and serves no further purpose. Feel free to remove it. Without foliage, the bulbs are dormant and water should be withheld.
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