Summersweet Clethra

 

The Sweet Smell of Summer

 

Oh, how the gardens are alive with butterflies this time of year!  Finally, in the past two weeks, we are seeing so many fluttering around the nursery searching for nectar.  And lucky for us, it’s a living lab.  We get to watch and see which plant the butterflies love the most.  Butterfly plants are the most commonly requested at the nursery.  And I hear so many people say the same thing…I get hoards of butterflies on my Butterfly Bush.  Butterfly Bush is not native, although many people think it is because it has escaped cultivation and become naturalized.  It is not on the invasive list in PA, but it might be soon.

 

Summersweet Clethra 'Ruby Spice'



There is a great native shrub that is the perfect substitute to Butterfly Bush.  It goes by the name Summersweet Clethra, or Clethra alnifolia.  It has a similarly shaped flower, but more cylindrical than pyramidical.  The straight species is white, but one of our favorite cultivars is ‘Ruby Spice’.  The best part is the scent…they don’t call it Summersweet for nothing!  You can smell a large Summersweet shrub before you see it.  And ‘Ruby Spice’ blossoms have such a gorgeous color gradient, rose to light pink to white.  It grows best in moist conditions but it will tolerate drier conditions once established.  It prefers full sun to part shade and in comparison to Butterfly Bush, it is much more rounded and full all the way to the ground and topping out at 5-8’.  It is attractive in fall with its yellow fall foliage.  Once you get a whiff of it in bloom, you’ll wish you were a butterfly so you could drink its sweet nectar!   

Japanese Barberry and Lyme Disease

Japanese Barberry 'Atropurpurea'

 

               One thing that most native plant enthusiasts know is that native plants facilitate and support insect lifecycles, which is essential for maintaining healthy wildlife populations.  But what about discouraging unwanted insect populations?  For instance, the recent findings that Japanese Barberry is a significant factor in increased deer tick populations, with a strong scientific correlation between Lyme Disease occurrence and Japanese Barberry population. 

Japanese Barberry leaves, thorns, and berries

 

                Drive through any neighborhood and you’ll see this purple shrub, with small leaves and thorns, planted in yards as landscape shrubs.  The particular variety that I see most is called ‘Crimson Pygmy’, or Berberis thunbergii var. atropurpurea ‘Crimson Pygmy’.  Talk about big name for a small plant.  The Japanese Barberry species is wreaking havoc on our health in more ways than one.  Sure it has escaped into natural areas, displaced native plants, and taken over to the point that it is a classified invasive.  But more than that, the humid underside of tiny rounded barberry leaves make this the perfect place for the deer tick to breed prolifically.   White Footed Mice, one of the deer tick carriers, also love the protection that Barberry thorns provide.  Pair this with the characteristics of invasive plants and it’s a recipe for disaster in terms of public health.

 

Ninebark 'Diablo'

                So why is this plant so popular anyways?  I think it’s the color and the hardiness.  This particular variety has a reddish purple leaf.  If there were one invasive plant to get rid of in your landscape, it’s this one.  If you like the color of ‘Crimson Pygmy’, try our native Ninebark in ‘Coppertina’, ‘Summer Wine’, or 'Diablo'.   You can still get that purple color in a native shrub without creating deer tick habitat.  In fact, you'll be creating habitat for beneficial insects.  Spread the word to your neighbors and friends who might have Barberry in their landscape. 

 

Click here for more information on Barberry and Lyme Disease



 

Phlox

Have you seen that purple and white phlox growing on the side of the road lately?  Well, what seems to be phlox?  It’s a great color combo and every time I see it I am reminded of why I like it.  It’s not really phlox, but an introduced flower in the mustard family called Dame’s Rocket or Hesperis matronalis.  The easiest way to tell the difference is Dame’s Rocket has 4 flower petals and Phlox has 5.  The phlox we often confuse with Dame’s Rocket is Woodland Phlox.  It grows in moist shade, blooming with white to purple clusters of flowers (see below).

Woodland Phlox

Broadleaf Creeping Phlox, Phlox stolonifera (photo below), has a similar flower but the reddish trailing stems root out where they touch the ground.  Its creeping habit makes it a great groundcover that blooms in May.  The best part is that this Phlox can grow in sun or shade.  This is a great groundcover to plant under taller trees or plants that like their roots cool.  As the tree grows it creates shadier conditions and the phlox is perfectly fine with that, enjoying both sun and shade. 

 

Broadleaf Creeping Phlox

Moss Pink, Phlox subulata, is the most commonly seen Phlox.  It is very low growing, not getting much higher than 4”.  It grows as a dense mat that can keep even the most stubborn weeds at bay, making it a great groundcover or lawn substitute.  It becomes covered in white, blue, or pink flowers in April to May.  Once it gets going, expect it to spread up to 2’ in diameter.  This is a tough groundcover that looks gorgeous spilling over walls or rocks and doesn’t mind clay or rocky soils as long as its in full sun.

And let’s not forget that charming cottage plant, Garden Phlox or Phlox paniculata.  This one blooms in early to mid summer and is taller, reaching 3’-4’ on average.  There are many varieties of cultivars, including pure white ‘David’, or the pink butterfly magnet, ‘Jeana’.  This phlox has a very sweet scent and likes full sun.

The pink, white, and blue color on all the phlox species adds a feminine touch.  By having a patch of each you can enjoy its delicate grace blooming in your garden from April to August.

 

Flowering Dogwoods and Redbuds

 

Young Redbud

 

I love this time of year!  The flowering trees and the chartreuse leaf buds make the landscape look so vibrant.  Whose garden can hold a candle to Mother Nature’s design?  Most of us aspire to recreate that jaw dropping mass of color so prevalent in the natural landscape this time of year.  It would take a lot of perennials to match what our small flowering trees provide in terms of color impact.  I admit, I have a soft spot for dogwoods and redbuds.

 

Pink Flowering Dogwood





The purple flowering trees we are seeing in the landscape this time of year are Eastern Redbuds, Cercis canadensis (top photo).  However, there are non native Chinese Redbuds as well.  They get gorgeous purple flowers before the heart shaped leaf emerges, then turn golden yellow for fall.  Redbuds are in the Leguminosae (pea) family.  Plants in the legume family have nitrogen fixing properties so they improve your soil.   But even better, the flowers of the Eastern Redbud are edible (and make a great addition to salads), and the fruit, which resembles a pea pod, can be cooked and eaten when young and tender.  You get flowers, shade, soil improvement, edible pods, and fall color all wrapped into one!  What more could you ask for?  Oh, you want them to be hardy too?  Got it!

 

Flowering Dogwood



The white to pink flowering trees we see this time of year are dogwoods (pictured above).  There are native and non native varieties.  Our native Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida, provides flowers this time of year before leaves emerge.  The flowers (petals are actually showy bracts), start out pink then turn to white, providing an interesting color gradient that seems to change daily (photo above).  There are many cultivars including varieties that have pink (middle picture) or yellow flowers.  The dogwood berries are loved by the birds and the fall color is burgundy red.  Dogwoods prefer moist, well-drained acid soil and a site that is shaded part of the day, although they can tolerate a wider range of conditions.  They can be susceptible to anthracnose if they aren’t healthy, so Redbud is a better choice if you can’t provide the habitat the dogwood prefers.  But if you have the space and the right conditions, why not grow both?         

Native Bees

Native Bees 

 

 

As I drive to the nursery, I look at all the homes nestled into farmland, each property like a unique piece of fabric in the landscape quilt.   The day progresses and I find myself talking to a gardener about planting flowers amongst their tomato plants to increase fruit yield or explaining why clover in the lawn is actually a good thing.  I drive to my consultation and I am helping a homeowner decide whether or not to clear out those “wild” areas along the fencerows near the farmers’ field and what to do with the vast amount of acreage that is lawn.   

 

 

Thanks to the media focus on Colony Collapse Disorder, most of us know the role that honeybees play in sustaining our food source.  But fewer people are aware of the fact that native bees are also important pollinators for crops. The honeybee, which is a non-native European bee, is essential for commercial growers.  The bees can be kept in hives and moved around from place to place, pollinating large monocrops upon demand.  Most of our wild bees on the other hand are solitary and require natural habitat because they are ground bees or wood bees.  They obtain nectar from a variety of sources instead of having a limited diet of the beekeeper’s choosing.  Supporting native bees seems to be the best insurance plan for our food crops. 

We have over 300 species of native bees in PA and they are the ones pollinating the majority of our summer crops.  As a gardener, you can do some simple things to support native bees.  If you have a large lawn, create forest or meadow habitat along the edges.  Allow clover to grow and flower in your lawn.  Plant borage with your tomatoes.   Let some of your basil bolt for the bees.  Leave snags and stumps in place.  Don’t use pesticides.  Plant Linden trees which provide a large amount of flowers early, when food sources are scarce.  Plant masses of diverse flower shapes and colors (Helenium and Mountain Mint shown above) that flower from spring through fall.  By providing food for our native bees, we ensure food for ourselves. 

More information on native pollinators in our area

 

 

 

Local Ecotypes - the next big thing in native plants!

There is lots of new stuff at Sugarbush for the 2013 season, but perhaps the most exciting overall is that we've greatly increased our stock of local ecotypes.

No, we're not talking about the eco-types who arrive here in their Priuses and Civic hybrids, although we've always got plenty of those, too. Local ecotypes are the varieties of plants that are growing wild right around here.

Why's this important? Well, some plants that are native to PA are also native to other states - or, more importantly, other "eco-regions". An eco-region is defined by geological and climatic uniformity. Species that are commonly found in one eco-region may not be found in another - even if these eco-regions are side-by-side in the same state. However, many species can exist across many different eco-regions, and here's the key take-away about that: species of the same plant found in different eco-regions are all different from one another!

Now, these differences might not be discernable to the naked eye, or even to the experienced botanist. But they're there at the genetic level. Communities of a plant species in one eco-region have adapted themselves in often micro ways to the particular habitat they find themselves in. They're nuanced in their genetic make-up in the same way their area is nuanced in its soil type, weather vagaries, typical diseases, etc. This makes them better adapted to that specific neighborhood.

It also means that within plants of one particular species, there exists a huge amount of genetic diversity - the genetic diversity borne out of plants that may be native to and thrive from the deep South up to Vermont.

Where a plant is actually from is called its "provenance". A plant of Rhododendron periclymenoides, or Pinxterbloom Azalea, may be sold in a nursery as a plant that is "native to PA". However, the plant itself could have been propagated from Pinxterblooms that were growing wild in Tennessee. It's the same species as the species that is native to PA, but the provenance of the particular plant is Tennessee.

This kind of mixing up of the genetic pool is the norm in the nursery trade. In fact, as the native plant boom gets bigger, economies of scale kick in, making the field as a whole less true to its roots - so to speak. Big wholesale growers start growing "native plants" in massive quantities, propagating them all from seed from wild populations that are in the area of the grower, and then shipping those "native plants" everywhere around the country, to every different eco-region, thus introducing a different gene pool into that plant neighborhood - and ultimately impacting that gene pool. This means genetic diversity will get replaced with uniformity - definitely to our detriment, as we know that genetic diversity increases chances for survival.

And we haven't even gotten into the issue of cultivars!!

So, to wrap this up, the local ecotypes are the counter to this phenomenon. These are plants grown from seed from wild populations growing in the same eco-region as the eco-region in which they'll be sold. There is no mass propagation potential here: a grower could not ship a local ecotype to Minnesota and still call it a local ecotype. It's like a boutique plant....you can only get it in one place, and you should only plant it in one place.

Talk about buying local!

So, to make things super easy for our customers who want to go the native plant route in style, we're now labeling all of our plants that we know have local provenance with a new "Local Ecotype" tag. Our prediction is that the "local ecotypes" will be the next big trend in native plants - a big trend that will have to express itself through a multitude of small growers around the country, each specializing in their particular plant communities.

Pizza Gardening

In honor of the Rt. 10 Organic Nursery and Farm Tour coming up next Saturday, August 27th, I am going to blog this week about my favorite organic gardening practices - both at home and in the nursery.

This gives me the opportunity to share with the world a brand new gardening term I've just coined: pizza gardening.

It is related to lasagna gardening, as you might expect. This is a gardening practice many people are familiar with - the concept of layering fresh organic matter, usually in a pit or trench, covering it with soil, and then planting (usually veggies) directly into it. The composting process happens at the same time the veggies are growing - no time lapse.

Pizza gardening is another no-till gardening method. It involves eating pizza as a necessary first step. Ah - if only more gardening tips started that way!

The idea first came to me when I discovered that recycling centers wouldn't take pizza boxes - or any other cardboard boxes that have directly contacted food. So, not being someone who throws anything away that is even remotely potentially recyclable, I held onto our pizza boxes, trusting that in the unknown future, I would be able to recycle them. The stack grew higher, and higher, and higher (I'm sure there were one or two kids' parties in there somewhere), until finally it came to me, in a rare flash of brilliance - "I'll just use these to make a new garden!"

And so I did. Killing off sod by smothering it is a tried and true organic gardening practice. It's the ultimate no-till method, as no soil is ever disturbed, except when you shovel into it to plant your shrub border. Tilling negatively impacts soil structure, which is a precious thing not easily restored. And have you ever tried removing sod by hand? It's back-breaking work, and then what do you with with all of that precious organic matter you have just removed? Yes, you can compost it, but wouldn't it be better to just leave it in place to keep working for you?

So, back to smothering. This is best done with thick layers of organic material that allow water to penetrate and will eventually completely decompose over time. You can use thick layers of newspaper covered with a few inches of grass clippings, or you can use cardboard, held down by whatever heavy objects are at hand.

This method does take a while, during which time you will have an area of your lawn that is covered in cardboard - or, in the case of pizza gardening, with rows of overlapping pizza boxes, in particular. Perhaps not the most attractive presentation, but it gets the job done: in about 2 months, you'll be able to plant directly through the pizza boxes, install your new garden, cover everything with a layer of mulch (preferably shredded leaves or compost), and voila! Your new garden is born, no back-breaking labor or sod removal required.

Before the cardboard returns to the elements entirely, it will keep the weeds down in your new bed for some time. The sod underneath the cardboard will provide organic matter in the top layer of soil.

So - who's up for some Dominoes?