Butterfly Bushes for Every Garden

The Butterfly Bush, once a favorite plant with children for the hordes of beautiful butterflies it attracts, has had some bad publicity in the last few years. Beautiful as it is, these plants produce a lot of seed, and this will easily spread and grow just about anywhere. In some parts of the country it grows where it is not wanted, and interferes with the natural ecology of the surrounding countryside. In the last few years there has been a lot of concern with this issue, and in some states, most notably Oregon, the sale of these plants has been stopped, because the invasive habits of the plant have caused such problems. To be clear, there is nothing harmful to humans or pets about these plants, and many biologists recognize that they can be a valuable food source to lots of different species of butterflies and moths. It is just that when they escape by seed into natural areas, they prevent the normal development of native plants, including forest trees in areas which have been logged. They also grow along rivers and streams, again interfering with the growth of native plants.

Can you Grow these Plants Safely?

Since the Butterfly Bush can only escape into natural areas as seed, then one clear way responsible gardeners can prevent that spread is by removing flowers heads as soon as they have faded. Even if you don’t get to them right away, most if not all the seed is released in winter, so as long as you cut down your plants in fall, and destroy the seed heads, they cannot spread. It is however better to remove the flowers earlier, so that there is no seed inside the heads, which could be spread from compost, for example.

If you are a responsible gardener, and conscientious about removing flower heads promptly, then you can continue to grow all the traditional varieties of butterfly bushes, such as the popular red variety, ‘Royal Red’, or the rich purple ‘Black Knight’. For large pink flower heads, the variety ‘Pink Delight’ is sure to please. If you live in a state that has no banned these plants outright, or if you live in the central and northern mid-west, where it is too cold for these plants to survive a winter outdoors, then if you dead-head, you can grow these plants with a clear conscience.

By the way, if you do live in an area which is too cold, you can lift the plants in the fall, place them in a pot, and once early winter has arrived, and the plants are fully dormant, simply store them in a cold place – it doesn’t have to have any light, as the plants have no leaves in winter – and bring them out and re-plant in spring. They will quickly sprout and be blooming in no time at all. The storage place can be a few degrees about freezing, or well-below it. Anything from zero degrees to 40 degrees will be fine. Keep the soil just barely damp, and the plants will survive perfectly.

Seedless Hybrid Butterfly Bushes

Even if you feel you can reliably remove the old flowers, you may still be reluctant to grow these plants. Many of us want to send the message to our friends and neighbors that we care about the environment, so we just won’t grow at all any varieties that could produce seed. You might live in Oregon, where there is an outright ban on these plants, so the option of growing them, even if you do remove seeds, is not available to you.

In that case, you will not want to grow the traditional varieties, but there is good news. Not wanting to lose these plants in gardens, several colleges and private plant breeders have set about producing new varieties that do not produce seed. That’s right – Butterfly Bushes that produce no seed and therefore cannot spread into wild places. These plants are perfectly safe to grow. In fact, they are so safe that even in Oregon, the state authorities responsible for the environment have agreed that they can be safely grown and sold. To avoid confusion, they are sold in that state as ‘Summer Lilac’, because the flowers look a little like the flower spikes of lilac bushes. Often the colors are lilac, blue or purple, very similar to the colors we find in varieties of the true lilac. The name ‘Nectar Bush’ is also used for some varieties, in tribute to the copious quantities of nectar produced by these plants. It is this sweet nectar that makes them so attractive to butterflies, and means these plants help many of these gorgeous insects to survive.

Summer Lilacs come in a dazzling array of colors. There is bright blue, in the variety ‘Blue Chip Jr.’ There is bright pink, in the lovely ‘Miss Molly’, and there is rich purple-red in the charming ‘Miss Ruby’. These are just a sample of the best varieties, but in total there are currently18 different varieties permitted in Oregon, the state with the strongest controls. These come in many colors, from white to purple, in many shades of blues or pinks, and in peach and orange shades too. Further new varieties are sure to follow over the next few years.

Names to Look For

The varieties already mentioned are perfect choices for a ‘safe’ Butterfly Bush, but other ones you will know are safe, if you see them available, could include the word ‘Miss’ in the name, or the word ‘Chip’, or they may be sold as part of a series called Flutterby Grandé. Most of these were produced by breeders at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh. Gardeners who love Butterfly Bushes owe a big ‘thank-you’ to these hard-working professionals, who have solved the problem of the spreading Buddleja. They have brought us all, wherever we live, a way of growing these sweetly-scented, charming plants. We can continue to feed our local butterfly populations, and at the same time protecting our local environments. A new generation of children can grow up playing in gardens where these plants attract such spectacular insects, and help teach a new generation about the wonders of nature – and also that we can garden responsibly, without giving up beauty.

Some Interesting Evergreens for Gardens

Gardeners fall into two camps when it comes to evergreens – those that love ‘em, and those that hate ‘em. Some people find them boring, since they don’t flower, and mostly keep their leaves all year, with little color change as the seasons pass. Others love them for exactly the same reasons – they give permanent privacy, and provide a stable backdrop to the seasonal comings and goings of flowers and fall leaves on other plants. While it might not be possible to change their minds completely, if those ‘haters’ saw some evergreens that didn’t fall into the typical mold, they might at least partially move into the ‘lovers’ camp for a while. So with that in mind, let’s look at some interesting evergreens that bring something different to the garden, and don’t resemble the typical arborvitae, juniper or spruce tree.

Dawn Redwood

Now here is a tree that stands out among evergreens for lots of reasons, but the most interesting reason has to be that it isn’t – evergreen that is. Yes, it certainly is a conifer, like a spruce or pine, and it is a close relative of the famous Giant Redwood trees of California, which do keep their leaves all year round. The Dawn Redwood sees things differently, and belongs to an elite group of conifers that shed their foliage in winter. The others are the Larch (Larix), the Swamp Cypress (Taxodium), and the critically endangered Water Pine (Glyptostrobus) which grows in China and Vietnam. Being deciduous is enough to make the Dawn Redwood of interest, and of course it means it does not throw that dense winter shade that some people do not like, and that prevents many plants growing under evergreens.

The Dawn Redwood tree has the tongue-twister botanical name of Metasequoia glyptostroboides, and until 1947 it was only known from 50-million-year-old fossils. Now there is a talking point when showing visitors your garden! The tree was discovered in China by staff of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, and caused a media sensation when they brought it back to America. If its ‘living fossil’ status was all it had, this would probably not be a tree of long-term interest, but it is undoubtedly also one of the most handsome trees around, and certainly therefore a top-choice tree. It is also a gift if you garden on damp or wet soil, since it will grow happily in exactly those conditions. There, solved that problem for you.

This is not a small tree, as it will grow to 50 feet in height, with an attractive conical form, and a spread of 20 feet or more. It will hold it lower branches for many years, so plant it where you don’t need to trim them up – it looks very handsome with branches reaching almost to the ground. The foliage of the Dawn Redwood is a little like that of a Yew tree, with soft, flat needles in two rows. They are a rich green, turning a dramatic rusty-red in fall. Use this tree as a unique specimen, or as a beautiful screen. It also clips easily into a magnificent hedge. The Dawn Redwood – an all-round winner.

Virginia Pine

Coming from much nearer home, this interesting native pine tree doesn’t have the usual pine tree look. The short needles are twisted in bunches at the ends of the branches, and the tree is broad and spreading, with a lot of ‘character’, even when young. There is a lot of talk and interest in growing native plants these days, but some are either hard to grow, or simply not very interesting in a garden. The Virginia Pine, Pinus virginiana, is certainly not hard to grow, in fact if you have poor, dry soil, and even clay soil, this tree will be right at home. Those are exactly the conditions it grows in all the way from Long Island to Alabama, and it will grow well for you in similar difficult spots on a larger property. Often dismissed as a ‘scrub pine’, in reality this is an interesting tree that is also so easy to grow that it’s a great choice for any low-maintenance garden. If growing native plants is something that appeals to you, then for ease of growth, this tree is a perfect candidate.

Although when crowded in a forest this tree grows tall and upright, when planted in a garden with space around it you will see a broad, irregular tree develop. If you have an Asian-themed garden, this tree has just the right rugged look, and it is also popular for growing as a bonsai tree, because the short needles look perfectly in scale.

Bruns Weeping Serbian Spruce

Say ‘spruce’ to an evergreen hater, and they will immediately picture the classic, and over-planted Blue Spruce, and lose interest. Show them a Bruns Weeping Serbian Spruce and they will sit up and take notice. No one could ignore this remarkable tree, and a mature specimen, once seen, is never forgotten. Picture a slender column, but one that cannot find it way, and instead meanders and turns in random directions. The central leading shoot adds 12 to 18 inches a year, and from it, becoming longer and denser lower down the tree, are pendulous branches that hang straight down, adding 6 to 8 inches to their weeping form each year, until they reach the ground and spread out around the base of the tree into a skirt of green. You can attach your specimen to a tall stake – it will reach 30 feet or more in about that many years, so make that a very tall stake – and keep it more-or-less upright, or you can just let it free and allow this unique tree to do its own thing and twist and turn as it will. Whatever you do, every specimen of Picea omorika ‘Pendula Bruns’, to use its full name, will amaze you, your neighbors, and everyone else who sees it. The tree is named after the Bruns Nursery, Bad Zwischenahn, Germany, where it was found in 1955. It is hardy to zone 5 and easily grown in full sun in any well-drained soil. In 2007 the American Conifer Society selected it as their Conifer of the Year, and if they don’t know a unique and novel evergreen, then who does?

Summer Care of Japanese Maple

Everyone loves Japanese maples, with their diversity of leaf color and form. Some are upright, some weeping, while some cascade elegantly over rocks and walls. Leaves may be green, or the coveted rich-reds that are always so popular. Their fall coloring is also varied and spectacular. Some have attractive seed clusters hanging from their bare branches, or brightly-colored twigs glowing in the winter sunlight. A keen gardener could almost build a whole garden around them, the range of varieties is so great and the diversity is so rich.

Keep Japanese Maple Healthy in Summer

• Keep them moist – don’t forget to keep the soil damp, with mulch and regular watering
• Give them afternoon shade – when planting your tree, arrange for afternoon shade in summer
• Choose a suitable variety – some forms resist burning better than others
• Keep them red all summer – plant a newer variety that doesn’t fade to brown
• Use nutrient-rich mulch – this feeds the plant as well as keeping the soil moist

It doesn’t take long for the new gardener to buy their first Japanese maple, since they are so enchanting and appealing. Sadly, some new gardeners are disappointed, finding that their plant does not thrive, and that although they begin the year with glorious spring foliage, as summer arrives the leaves scorch and brown. They then often fall and leave a bare tree just when you want it to be leafy, and of course meaning that those fabulous fall colors are nowhere in sight. With this in mind, let’s lend a hand and give you some tips on how to get your maples through the summer in good health, looking gorgeous and ready for that fall show to come.

Why Does My Japanese Maple Burn in Summer?

There are several interconnected reasons why Japanese maple foliage often dries up and burns in summer. The main reason is lack of moisture. These trees originate in Japan, and there the summer climate is very damp, with high humidity and frequent rain. If you live where summers are dry, the soil and root-ball can dry out, quickly causing the leaves to brown and scorch. As well, these trees grow naturally in the shade of larger trees, so they do not enjoy hot sun, which is most pronounced in the afternoons. Also, some of the varieties with very finely-cut foliage are especially prone to drying, since the leaves are so thin and delicate.

Lack of Water

This is the primary reason for leaves burning. In hot weather, to keep the foliage cool, water evaporates from the underside of the leaves. This must be replaced with water drawn up from the roots. Some garden plants have thick, leathery leaves that only lose a little water by evaporation, so when the soil is dry they are still fine. In contrast, Japanese maple leaves are thin and delicate, so they cannot stop losing water. If that water is not replaced from the roots, the leaves dry out, turn brown, and shrivel up. While this usually doesn’t harm the tree itself much, it certainly makes the tree look bare and it loses much of its appeal too early in the year.

To protect your tree from drying, add plenty of rich organic material to the soil when planting. Dig deeply, and mix that material well into the ground. Digging deeply will allow your tree’s roots to get into the damper soil down below. Add a layer of that organic material over all the roots, to conserve the moisture (and prevent weeds growing too). Water well throughout the spring and summer, letting the water soak down into the ground. A slow trickle for an hour to two is always better than a quick, heavy spraying, which often doesn’t go deep into the soil at all. Don’t rely on rainfall, especially once summer arrives. In a thunderstorm, a lot of the water simply runs off the surface, and bigger trees very quickly suck up any that does go into the ground, so that your Japanese maple may get nothing at all. A long soak once a week – or twice a week during very hot weather, especially if your soil is sandy – will keep up the moisture levels.

Hot Afternoon Sun

Even if you water thoroughly, you might still find that your Japanese maple is scorching, even if only at the tips of the leaves. If this is happening, you might have your tree in the wrong place. While these trees thrive with some direct sunlight, especially in spring, by summer they need protection from the hottest rays between noon and four in the afternoon. When choosing a planting spot – or where to place your tree if it is in a container – find somewhere where there is afternoon shade, but ideally some morning sun. This will keep your tree growing healthily, while keeping the leaves fresh and colorful all summer long.

Growing a more sensitive variety

The size of the leaves of Japanese maples is very variable – this is a large part of their appeal. Those that are often called ‘dissectum’, with deeply divided leaves in thin, narrow lobes, are much more likely to scorch than other varieties with broader leaves. If you don’t have much time for your garden and can’t be sure that sufficient water will be available, or you want to place a plant in a sunny place, then choose a broader leaf form. This is especially important if you live in warmer zones, where it is hard to keep those leaves from scorching. Generally, varieties with broader leaves are much less prone to scorching. The Coral Bark Japanese Maple is often recommended for hotter parts of the country, as with its broader leaves it resists drying well.

Choosing an older red-leaf form

Some of the older types of red-leaf Japanese maples are subject to color-fading, after the glory of their spring display. As summer comes, that brilliant red can turn a less attractive greenish-brown. If you want strong color all summer – and who wouldn’t – then choose a more modern variety like the Purple Ghost Japanese Maple, which can be relied on to hold its color well.

Starving your tree

If your tree is low in nutrients, the leaves will be smaller, so they will be more prone to drying. Keep your tree well fed, by using a rich mulch, and putting down some fresh, new material each fall. Garden compost, or rotted animal manures, like sheep or cow, are much better than bark chips, or shredded bark, which add nothing to the soil. As well, especially when your tree is younger, some feeding with liquid tree food is very beneficial.

 

Japanese maples are glorious trees, and every garden should have some. If you attend to these simple things, you can enjoy them without the frustration of scorching and burning foliage in summer. It’s easy to get it right.

Tips on Placing Shrubs in Your Garden

Planting shrubs is the best way to create form and structure in your garden, and working with a selection of different ones, both evergreen and deciduous, and large and small, is the way to create variety too. Getting the balance right, between mass planting and individual specimens, using different heights, and with different foliage types, is the key to creating a garden that looks good all year. We want a garden that is both calm and interesting. There are some basic ideas we can follow, that will help us get it right, and create the garden of our dreams, so here are some tips on selecting and placing shrubs in your garden.

Tips for Placing Shrubs

• Plant in Groups – don’t just plant a collection of individual plants
• Use Repetition – put the same plant in several spots, it brings harmony
• Use Accents – upright or spreading, choose a variety of forms
• Scatter the Planting – don’t plant in rows, let sizes flow in and out
• Plant for Every Season – select plants with different seasonal features

Don’t Buy ‘One of Everything’

When we first discover the amazing variety of shrubs available to us, all with interesting features, the temptation is to want them all. Since our gardens are limited in size, it is very easy to end up with a collection of many individual plants – ‘one of this, one of that’. This is fine if you want to grow many different things and become a collector, your garden will inevitably look a little chaotic and disorganized. The choice is yours, but if you want a beautiful garden, resist that temptation and limit your choices to plants that work for structure and appearance, and be willing to use plants in groups, and repeated them around the garden.

Groups or Specimens?

Knowing how many of each plant to buy can be tricky, but there is a simple way to approach it, that works most of the time. Basically, the larger the shrub, the less likely it is you will want to plant it in a group. Plants that are more than 6 feet wide or tall will be big enough to stand alone, in all but the biggest gardens. Usually a large shrub 10 or 15 feet tall is going to make a statement all by itself, and unless you have a lot of space to fill, or want a screen, one in each location will be fine. Smaller shrubs, under 3 or 4 feet tall, will usually be lost in all but the smallest spaces, so they look best planted in groups. The ideal number for groupings is always an odd number – 3, 5, 7, or even more. This allows you to space them more naturally. Remember too that a group should look like a unit, so space the plants a distance about 65% of their final width, so they grow together a little and make a solid mass.

Repetition Brings Harmony

Repeating the same plant, alone or in groups, around the garden, is an easy way to create harmony, and tie the garden together. You may not have room for more than one example of a large plant, but medium-sized and small plants can be scattered around, just as we see in nature, where plants are usually numerous at any one location. If you have a few favorite plants, then use them around the garden as your ‘signature’. This will make the garden uniquely your own.

Choose a Variety of Forms

Most shrubs are basically rounded – usually a little taller than they are wide. But some have been selected to be narrow and upright, and others low and spreading. Plus, there are shrubs that are pendulous or weeping in habit. Up to a quarter of the area you plant can have unusually shaped plants, but don’t get carried away with this. Too many and you lose their purpose – to emphasize and accent the plants around them. Low, spreading forms are especially useful in the foreground of your beds, but remember when planting them to allow room for their spread, especially if the bed meets a lawn. Otherwise you will find them growing over the grass, and killing it. On the other hand, if you have paved areas, letting low plants spread across the paving is an effective way to soften the stiff, linear edges. That works well at the tops of walls too, where spreading plants will cascade down and soften those hard edges.

Don’t Plant in Rows

When you come to place your new shrubs in beds, obviously those that will grow taller should be further back, but don’t make the mistake of planting three rows – tall at the back, medium in the middle, and small in front. Create a more natural arrangement by planting some taller plants near the front, especially if they are narrow accents, and push some lower plantings further back. That is where groups are useful, as a group of low plants can flow inwards in one area, and a group of medium-sized shrubs can flow to the front in another place. This way you will create flow and harmony, and an ever-changing picture in your garden beds.

Consider the Flowering Season

When laying out those shrubs, taking into account when they flower is important. In any season, you want the interest spread around – although in larger gardens it is also possible to make season areas. In these, the focus is on planting for one season, and creating a powerful display. For the rest of the year you use other parts of the garden.

In most gardens though, spreading the interest around is the best approach to take. Plants that have both flowers and fruit, or fall color, are very useful in smaller spaces, as they bring interest to more than one season. Scatter the spring flowers around, and do the same for summer ones, and for the fall too. If you have a part of the garden you use most at one season – perhaps the barbeque area for summer – then focus appropriate seasonal planting in that area.

 

Planting shrubs in your garden is an on-going adventure. Something new is always catching our eye, and we want to use it in our gardens. If you have a good basic layout established, new plants can be slipped in, or used to replace something that hasn’t been a big success, without upsetting the overall look of your garden.

Time to Prune Spring-flowering Shrubs – Part Two

Last week I started discussing the pruning of spring-flowering shrubs and trees, but after diverting into the choice and use of pruners, delayed finishing the conversation till now. So let’s get back to the topic, and investigate how to do the important job of pruning plants that flower early in the year. Many gardeners plant something new, and for the first few years it does well, flowering abundantly, but after a time the plant becomes large, too bulky, and flowering is reduced. Too many people take hedge shears to everything in the garden, ‘trimming’ instead of pruning, and as a result the quality of their plants deteriorates over the years. Regular annual pruning is a much better choice, giving you control over the size of your plants, and stimulating them to give the maximum flower-display possible.

The purpose of pruning is to keep plants young and vigorous, and this is especially important for spring-flowering plants, where flowering takes place on older shoots, so a hard cut-back will eliminate it entirely for at least a year. To keep flowers coming, without your shrubs getting old and ugly, is the goal. So how to achieve that? First, a reminder of the basics.

Prune Spring-flowering Shrubs in Summer

Timing is important in everything, and it is important with your shrubs too. The best time to prune plants that flower before June is immediately after the flowers have faded and fallen. This leaves the longest possible time for new growth to mature and ripen, and so maximizes the likelihood and intensity of the flowering display in the following spring. If you didn’t do it at that time, or realize that you didn’t do it properly, it is not too late to get out your pruners and set to work. Then you can get closer to the ideal timing next year.

Remove Dead Flower Clusters

We did get as far last time as discussing removing dead flowers, and giving some tips on how to do it with plants like lilacs and rhododendrons, which don’t need intensive pruning. The purpose of removing those flower clusters is to prevent energy going into fruit and seed production, and divert it instead into flower-bud formation for the next year. In a sense, dead-heading sends a message to the plant that their reproductive efforts didn’t work out well, so best to try harder for next time. Of course, this doesn’t apply to plants where the fruit is attractive, and part of the pleasure of the plant, and clearly not to plants we grow for edible fruit, like apples or peaches.

Remove Older Wood

While dead-heading may be all some plants need, a fundamental step in pruning most spring-flowering shrubs is the removal of old wood. We consider wood to be old if it is, in most cases, 3 to 5 years old. By that stage branches will be thick, and very often they have lost some vigor, so they produce fewer blooms, or the blooms are smaller. Each year, when you prune, remove the oldest branches by cutting them back as low as possible, and certainly to a younger stem that is growing out low down. If there are several newer stems, they will often be in a cluster at a low point. Remove the branch directly above them. If the new stems are scattered all along the branch, then try to find something sturdy about two-thirds of the way down the old branch, and cut back there. Lilac is a good example of a plant that benefits from this approach.

If you haven’t prune the plant much for several years, it may be all ‘old-wood’, so in that case remove about one-third of the old branches completely, and do the same in the next two summers. That way you will allow your plant to replace its branches gradually, so you won’t be sacrificing all the flowers, or giving it a big shock by cutting it back too harshly.

Remove Flowering Wood

This is the second stage of pruning your spring-flowering plants, and how much of this you do will vary from plant to plant. If you look at the structure of most of these shrubs, you will see shorter branches coming from older stems, and these shorter branches will have had flowers on them. In some cases, such as with the spring-flowering spireas of the ‘Bridal Veil’ type, an established plant can replace many branches, and you will get superior results with them by removing almost every branch that has send out flower-shoots. The plant will look a little thin for a few weeks afterwards, and you may think you have gone too far, but when you see the result the following spring you will know you did the right thing.

In other plants, taking out all the branches that flowered is not the ideal approach. With forsythia, for example, this can result in very long, vigorous shoots forming, which grow a lot, but don’t flower much the following year. With plants like that, we want to avoid over-stimulating them, and this will also be the result if we do neglect pruning for a few years, and then do a drastic cut-back. Some plants – and this is true with crab-apples, flowering plums and cherries, and other related plants, flowering mostly takes place on what we call ‘spurs’. These are short side-shoots on older branches, and even forsythia will have these too. We can encourage spur-development by trimming back new stems that have flowered for the first time. Once the flowers fade, cut those stems back to a few lower leaves, and the plant will respond by sending out a cluster of short shoots at that point, giving even more profuse flowering the next year.

Side-shoots that didn’t flower also respond well to this treatment. Trimming them back to a few leaves will encourage them to switch to flowering-mode, and after a few years you will see profuse blooming, on a nicely structured plant. Once the stem carrying these spurs is a few years old, you may see some loss of vigor, and reduced flowering. That is the signal to remove the whole branch, but by then you will have developed plenty of replacements, and the plant will benefit from the more open structure you create by removing the oldest stems.

Good pruning makes all the difference in keeping plants simultaneously neater and more prolific in their blooming. Rather than let nature take its course, we can control the plants we grow, and divert them into giving us the best garden display possible. Careful pruning is the best tool we have to achieve that goal, and create an outstanding garden.