Care for your garden
During the late winter months, several garden projects are timely or even overdue. The spring season begins March 20, so the installation of new plants is already late by the usual standards. For example, fall planting allows for root development during the winter months.
Some gardeners might pretend that a few days remain now to complete such seasonal tasks before the deadline, but plants do not watch the calendar.
I admit to being a pretend gardener at times, so here’s what I’ve been doing recently.
Roses
I have planted eight new roses to replace those that have failed for one reason or another. My primary rose bed has four petal-shaped sections (visible best from a drone camera) with up to seven roses in each section. The bed is now nearly complete, except for two slots left to fill.
The new roses include four reds, two whites and two pinks, all acquired from Heirloom Roses during its Valentine’s Day sale. They weren’t gifts, just a bit better priced. They are all “own root” roses, which I prefer because grafted roses have bothersome suckers.
I pruned all existing roses while they were still dormant and moved one vigorous climber (‘Polka’) to a better location.
Clematis
I wrote recently about clematis, while learning about these plants. I then purchased four plants from Brushwood Nursery in Pennsylvania, which specializes in these plants. The plants will arrive for installation just before the first day of spring, my pretend deadline. All four will grow to moderate size, so I’ve avoided rampant C. armandii, which I had removed in preparation for a house painting project.
Two of the new clematis will be next to climbing roses. Rose–Clematis combinations are highly regarded. They succeed best with synchronized and complementary blooms, but I barely got under the wire, so I depend upon the plants to provide an excellent display.
The Rose-Clematis combination works well when the twining clematis has a rose to clamber on. That’s good, but I anticipate complications at pruning time. One of the two clematis next to roses is in pruning group No. 2 (blooms on previous season’s growth) and the other is in pruning group No. 3 (blooms on current season’s growth). Both are to be pruned lightly during dormancy, which occurs at around the dormancy of the roses, which require relatively hard pruning. We’ll deal with that issue at pruning time.
The other two new Clematis plants, both in pruning group No. 2, will twine on their own trellises and will be easier to maintain.
Plant rescue
Years ago, I installed a Sweet Box (Sarcococca ruscifolia), a shrub that reportedly will thrive under full shade. The plant is favored for glossy foliage and small winter blossoms with fragrance that resembles a Swedish bakery (sadly beyond my olfactory memory). My specimen survived but struggled under shade, so I moved it a site with bright indirect light. It’s now doing great, proving once again the need to relocate a plant that isn’t succeeding.
After blossoming, the plant will produce small scarlet berries, which should be quite decorative. The plant is now in a small container, but it could grow to 6 x 6 feet at maturity, so I will have to move it to an appropriate location.
Bed development
I’m extensively revising a semi-shaded 6-foot-wide bed that runs 30 feet along a curving walkway in my front yard. I had cleared away a relentlessly spreading colony of Geranium × cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’, a very nice low-growing plant with a mission to take over the world.
The next step was to install a layer of recycled cardboard covered with four inches of wood chips (free from tree service company) to discourage the persistent Geraniums.
Replacement plants include nine European Grey Sedge, aka Berkeley Sedge (Carex divulsa), which will grow to three-to-four-feet wide, with a row of smaller bedding plants in front of them. So far, I’ve installed eight Sweet-scented Bedstraw (Galium odoratum), which will mature to about eighteen inches wide. I’ll need to add about eight more of these plants to complete this simple design.
Weed control
There has been a lot of seasonal weeding with the help of garden workers. The garden looks good now, but the ever-present weed seeds will respond quickly to late winter’s rain and spring’s sunshine. The now-urgent project is to spread a pre-emergent herbicide. Two options at a local garden center: will keep both desirable and undesirable seeds from germinating.
One product lists Trifluralin as its active ingredient. It comes with instructions to keep people and pets from enter a newly-treated area until it is dry, and to call 911 when needing emergency medical information.
The other product is “powered” by corn gluten meal plus plant nutrients bone meal and potassium sulfate, an N-P-K analysis of 8% Nitrogen, 2% Potassium, and 4% Phosphorus, and no warnings.
The former product probably has greater effectiveness, but I’m using the latter for personal safety and environmental health.
Advance your gardening knowledge
The Cactus & Succulent Society of America will present “The Splendor of Orchid Cacti” at 10 a.m. Saturday. The speaker is Frank Süpplie, who has written 300+ articles and books about Epiphyllums, a gender are called “orchid cacti” or “epi’s.” These are popular garden plants with dazzling blooms and a large and growing number of hybrid cultivars. To register for this free event, browse to cactusandsucculentsociety.org/.
The California Garden and Landscape History Society will present “The Modern Landscapes of Robert Royston” at 6 p.m. March 24. Royston, a distinguished landscape architect during the post-war period, helped define California landscape modernism. The speaker will be JC Miller, a licensed landscape architect, writer, and educator with strong qualifications to address this topic. To register for this fee-based event, visit cglhs.org/.
Enrich your gardening days
Gardens are not static scenarios on display, but living organisms that need the gardener’s continuing attention to succeed. From another perspective, the garden offers the gardener continuing opportunities to create pleasing vignettes and landscapes. The garden is the basis of a reciprocal relationship that satisfies the needs of both the garden and the gardener.
Stay safe and enjoy your garden.
Tom Karwin is past president of Friends of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society, and Monterey Bay Iris Society, and a Lifetime UC Master Gardener (Certified 1999–2009). He is now a board member and garden coach for the Santa Cruz Hostel Society. To view daily photos from his garden, https://www.facebook.com/ongardeningcom-566511763375123/. To search an archive of previous On Gardening columns, visit http://ongardening.com.
