Helter Skelter;Plant a Perennial Flower Bed with Random Leftovers

There is a hawk screaming in the distance as I smilingly contemplate the robust increase in the number of species I’ve added, just by installing a little flower bed. Basically it went from one species (overgrown Liriope) to twenty+ not counting the seeds scattered to grow at will. All but 3 plants were dug from my old garden and shoe-horned into a small flower bed about 6 feet deep by 18 feet long that slopes down across the front of the house, so the drainage is wonderful. 

As it rounds a corner, the flower bed narrows considerably, but still has room for some hot sun-loving perennials on the south side of the house. 

After the Liriope was dug and bushels of it were discarded, I amended the Georgia red clay with compost and Nature’s Helper so now it’s pretty easy to dig. This flower bed gets direct morning sun and no sun at all past noon, so it is ideal for almost every perennial and azaleas too. Hope there is enough sun for the Storybook Roses I’m trying out. 

The majority of plants were planted 12 days ago; not yet time to see what will make it and what will not. Since this is Zone 7 in Atlanta, there will be plenty of time for the transplants to root in the summer-warmed soil before cold weather and hard frosts arrive. 

Here is a list of the plants I’ve included, all of them odds and ends from moving except for purchase of one pot each of Parsley, Foxgloves and English Thyme. The list is arranged according to location, with tall, medium and short plants.

Background plants

George Tabor and a second Azalea (mystery)

Swamp Sunflowers

Gold Euonymous

Amsonia hubrichtii native bluestar flower,  2011 Perennial of the Year

Digitalis 'Excelsior Hybrids'

Middle Plants

3 Storybook Roses 'Little Women' pink

Helleborus x orientalis 'Deep Purple"

Shasta Daisies

Pink daisy Mums

Daylily 'Colonel Scarborough' early yellow

Lungwort, Pulmonaria longifolia

Lemon balm

Late yellow Mums

Foreground Plants

Creeping golden lemon thyme

Upright English thyme

Japanese Roof Iris, white

Japanese Roof Iris, lavender

Spearmint

Lamb’s Ears

Parsley

Seeds

Rudbeckia triloba

Ironweed

Zinnias

 iPhone photos by gardengeri

Can you see the tiny seedling parsley? I bought a pot of young parsley and separated them and planted each long tap root in moist soil, taking care to keep everything moist and shady. Transplanting parsley is a 50/50 proposition. <<>> Let me know how you "walk on the edge" in your garden.

Shopping for a Japanese Maple Tree in Glorious Fall Color

The free, 8-foot tall, 4-in caliper Japanese maple that my friend arranged to have transplanted to her  garden held on through a year of drought, but finally gave up the good fight during the brutal heat and drought of this recently past August/September.  So I was asked to come along to offer some advice as she set out to purchase a replacement.

She is an incredibly talented interior designer/decorator, an expert with color, scale, form, symmetry and all of the elements of design, and I was lucky to be on the receiving end of her expertise on the room arrangement at our home. Her attention-to-detail extends both inside and outside-- for example, although she calls it “pink”, her house is actually a rosy-terracotta brick that goes very nicely with the purple Loropetalum and other burgundy-leafed plants she has chosen. Her annuals are mainly pink flowered to dress up three beds around the front door.

 So tasked with the idea of finding the perfect Acer palmatum cultivar, first I suggested that we page through my book on Japanese Maples (J.D. Vertrees, second Edition), which helped her decide she did not want a red-leafed tree, nor a dissectum, and she wanted it upright rather than pendulous so she could plant underneath it. 

Then I suggested she accept a Coral Bark maple that I had growing in a huge tub on the patio as a gift, but she hesitated to take it, mainly because it was “already too big”. This narrowed down our search: we needed to look for a maple that reaches only 6 to 10 feet in height.

Next we set out for the nursery. She decided that the huge nursery with the big selection favored by commercial landscapers use was too far away after all, and so we settled for a nearby garden center. Most amateur gardeners look no further than the nearest nursery for their plants. These retailers offer a wide variety of sizes of the most popular plants, and the customer can pick exactly the specimen (s)he feels would look best on his/her property. And some of the nursery employees are knowledgeable about which plants do best in the local area. The main difficulty with local nurseries is often a lack of choice because they tend to stick to the tried-and-true, but that seemed OK for this trip.

After first looking at their huge, pricy maples we found the area with 3-, 5- and up to 15-gallon trees, and what do you know? She immediately chose a red, dissected-leaf, weeping variety known as Burgundy Lace because its leaves looked good. Then we almost settled for a Viridis, another cut-leaf, weeping variety but this time green.  We were two for two on the “unacceptable: weeping dissectum types.  

As we kept looking, my friend was surprised when I examined some root systems by pulling the trees out of their containers and rejecting several with circling brown roots.  I pointed out unnaturally bent trunks and crossing branches, and soon she began to see past the leaves to the overall form and we were on our way. I suggested we did not have to buy a tree right that minute, but could shop other garden centers for a different selection, but “plant lust” was heavy on her.   

Luckily we stumbled across several young Japanese maple trees with an upright habit, and two-toned leaves, smaller and more reasonably priced.  Happy to find some vigorous white roots on one particularly graceful specimen, the label said ‘Tiger Rose’; too new to be in the second edition. Described as pink leaves in spring and gracefully intermediate habit with upright branches and trailing twigs, it was beginning to look like we were close. 

I assured her that a little marginal leaf scorch on a container-grown tree wasn’t that unusual for mid- October, and instead we should look past the leaves to the structure of the limbs and the graceful shape of the tree. Plus the price was lower because it was a smaller tree. Such a deal, she was convinced! After adding some silvery and maroon Heucheras, broad-leaved Dusty Millers and vigorously growing Autumn Ferns, we loaded the plants into her SUV, where she will plant and water them to success.    

Last two photos 'Tiger Rose'

Top 10 Steps for Soil Amendments and Bed Prep

"Fall is for planting", and the best garden preparation known is to provide a deep, enriched root run for newly transplanted plants to get a good start.  

1. Rake off duff

Typically there is a layer of dried grass, leaves and sticks that is best raked off and composted

2. Take soil samples and do a soil test

Samples are small amounts of soil taken from several locations throughout the bed, then mixed together and tested for pH and nutrient levels. Try a kit or send to the cooperative extension service. 

3. Dig out dead plants, old roots, weeds, rocks, sticks and so forth. Cobalt blue bottles, maybe. Old or dead shrubs, roots, rocks, weeds and so forth are best removed from the planting bed

4. Turn soil over leaving big chunks

Your garden spade should break through compacted soil and turn big clods

5. Top dress with compost, Nature’s Helper, Mushroom Compost, Mr. Natural, finely ground pine bark, or dampened peat moss, plus gypsum or pulverized, dolomitic lime according if your soil test  feedback calls for it

You can’t go wrong with adding organic matter: clay soils are lightened while sandy soils hold more water and loams are enriched. Add 2 or 3 inches on top of the cleaned bed. Other possibilities include blood meal, cottonseed meal, triple superphosphate, symbiotic mychorriza, well-rotted manure, well-rotted woodchips and so forth

6. Fork organic material and amendments  into soil

My spading fork prevents me from lifting soil that is too heavy

7. Water in

If you have a few hours, water in the amendments and let everything settle

8. Rake smooth

A steel rake lends a calming influence on a prepared bed. The soil should now look just like a chocolate cake. Resist rolling in it.

9. Set out plants, then plant into prepared bed

Spread out roots of container-grown plants and plant level with the top of the soil or slightly higher

10. Mulch with organic mulch

I use pine straw or ground pine bark, but pecan hulls, salt hay, compost or whatever common mulching materials are available will help protect the bed and insulate the root systems. Water thoroughly once planted. 

Photo 2 shows a bed prepared between a house, a Nandina and a border of Liriope.and spread with Nature's Helper. 

Silver Sage, Salvia argentea in the Garden

I’ve been gardening in Atlanta for quite some time, carrying on a love affair with herbs and many folks know me as the herb lady. However my garden and plant interests are wide-ranging. Back around 1985 or -88 or so, I was a card-carrying member of the Royal Horticultural Society in Great Britain and therefore eligible for their seed exchange program. I poured over their list and carefully selected the limited number of seeds I was allowed to import. 

One of them was Silver Sage, Salvia argentea. None of my gardening circle of friends had ever heard of this plant, though it sounded lovely, like a lamb’s ears on steroids with big, wide, ribbed, wavy leaves frosted with long silver hairs and panicles of white Menthaceae-style flowers. Would it grow in Atlanta? It would certainly be exclusive!

Salvia argentea in flower, above. 

Later that winter my seed packets arrived in the mail and the Salvia argentea packet had five seeds in it. It was quite a production; I sowed them carefully, putting them under fluorescent grow-lights in my light garden, and 4 of them germinated! After potting up and hardening off  I shared one precious plant with my closest gardening buddy, and planted the remaining three in my Silver Garden, where they grew and thrived for three or four years. Short-lived like many salvia in Atlanta, they remained a beautiful memory. 

                                                                                                  Silver Sage top left, above

Fast forward twenty years, and perhaps you can imagine my astonishment when I saw a plant table in my local big box store loaded with millions of Silver Sage! And for $1.98 each! Although spring might be a better time to plant them here, it was amazing to see these formerly exclusive ta-ta plants available en masse, and a delight that everyone could plant these beautiful plants and enjoy them in their gardens.  

Garden Debut® speeds up this process, collapsing time as it helps its consortium of growers to get their superior and enhanced new plant hybrids and selections to the gardening public more quickly. The hummingbird on the Garden Debut® logo recently changed from hot pink to chartreuse, and look for black pots with white printing in your local garden centers this fall and next spring.  

gardengeri's photos: of her silver garden 20 years ago and of the table of Silver Sage yesterday. 

How "Green" and Sustainable is our Green Industry?

The Topic of the Day at the Mobley Plant Farm Open House Sept. 28 was that Green Industry practitioners really ought to show leadership in adopting sustainable practices, and they invited some great speakers and had terrific demos and workshops to examine this point. As a working definition for sustainability, “Meeting the current needs without eliminating the potential for the future to meet theirs” was used.

Dr. Allan Armitage emphasized “the right plant in the right place” concept, naming plant favorites from his UGA Test Gardens that withstand the local climate without pampering. Sustainability is not a fad but is here to stay, he noted, citing trends including color, containers, low maintenance and recycling. He is a big proponent of Mobley Greensleeves, a paper sleeve surrounding a ball of growing mix that eliminates the need for plastic pots, is faster to plant, saves labor costs and biodegrades in the soil. He called them “sausages” of potting mix (they are bottomless) and said he’s used them successfully in the test gardens for five years. Mobley people go the extra mile to pick up and reuse/recycle the trays they use to deliver Greensleeves plants to their customers.

Another company demonstrating CSR is Garden Debut(R)'s parent company, Greenleaf Nursery Company in Oklahoma, an industry leader with a long history of good environmental stewardship. Their voluntary water recycling program and comprehensive eco-friendly fertilization and insect-management systems received third-party validation and awards from the U.S. EPA: Environmental Excellence and Pollution Prevention Award, the Sierra Club: Earth Care Award and the Environmental Leadership Award from the Southern Nursery Association, all for forward-thinking and voluntary action.


At the open house Dr. Richard Ludwig quoted a study from about 18 months ago showing 46% of landscape customers have zero interest in sustainability; 26% are green washed (green in theory but will not change any behaviors) and 6% will use green practices if they are cheaper or easier than current behavior. This leaves only 20% who actually make an effort to be green and only 2% advocates who have changed their lives based on principles of sustainability.

As an industry, Ludwig continued, we create artificial environments. Despite that hurdle, the new goal is to make them functional; environmentally friendly; cost effective; visually pleasing; and profitable. He urged landscapers/retailers/designers to provide a better customer experience by educating clients to invest in their landscapes, to lower energy costs by smart plant placement, to save water through irrigation technology, and so forth, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and trust. Only then will customers be open to redirection on the matter of sustainable procedures and organic products, which may be a tad more expensive but are better for the community overall.

At the recent 2010 Garden Writers Association annual symposium in Dallas, Keynote Speaker Kierstin De West had discovered a different and more hopeful perspective. De West’s SHIFT Report was based on 5,000 responses from across North America, and she found that people are starting to make lifestyle and purchasing decisions based on integrity and social responsibility. When people feel connected to the community their sustainable behavior increases. I know we are all hopeful that this research predicts the future.

I won a homemade pumpkin pie at Mobley's Open House, so I feel pretty connected. Let me hear what you are doing to connect with your community! 

New Plant Introductions and the First Day of Autumn

The golden Harvest Moon last night was an excellent introduction to the first day of Fall. Although it’s now officially a new season, our weather has not broken and temperatures continue in the mid-nineties, still with no rain. Faced with this sort of challenge, it’s time to revert to catalogs in air conditioning and the new plant introductions appearing in the garden magazines. Garden Debut® will be offering some beautiful new woody ornamentals in Spring 2011, and we’ll hear more about them soon.

As a preview, there is Merlot Redbud, with dark, wine-red merlot-colored leaves and a delightful parentage that enables it to beat this continuing heat and drought. Merlot is the offspring of Forest Pansy Redbud crossed with Cercis canadensis ‘Texensis’! The first parent contributes the dark leaf color, intensified in Merlot, while the second adds a thickness and drought resistance to smaller leaves, enabling this plant to withstand hot dry conditions without a ripple.

Then there is Admiration Barberry, a showstopper with a blaze of orange-red foliage with yellow margins adding plentiful color to the garden pallet. Garden Debut® says this dwarf has a broad, upright growth habit reaching only 12-15 inches tall in 4 years. And though it is a Japanese Barberry, it is non-flowering and therefore there are no worries on spreading by seed.

A host of new plants are in the lineup, all of them thoroughly tested; be sure to visit the website and the Garden Debut® Facebook page for daily news and previews.  

Container Plantings Designed for Fall

Summer annuals have had it, and it’s time to revv up my containers for a fall show. This year I’m adding a bright yellow cushion mum, yellow-chartreuse creeping jenny and a few little ornamental gourds to a container that already holds Nanina for height, a dwarf juniper and some trailing Asiatic jasmine.

After pulling out and composting the annuals, I add fresh potting mix where the root balls formerly grew. For continued growt h of the woodies already growing, I space three plant food spikes evenly around the container and push them down the sides. This adds nutrients to pot bound plants. To keep mold and bacteria from attacking the ornamental gourds I’m setting them on some cork I had left from lining my kitchen cupboards.

I plan to set this container next to a big pumpkin on the front porch, and hope my entranceway will be the cutest on the block through Thanksgiving, when I'll prepare another arrangement to go through winter.