18 Feb 2010

Conifers in Your Landscape: Overgrown? Priceless?

Nearly every year a list of new plants appear on the market  for home landscpape use.  Most disappear after only a few years on the planting schedules.    Most of these plants are perennials.  Hostas, aquilegias,  heucheras come and go like revolving doors.  Some are better than others either in hardiness, fussiness, life expectancy, disease resistance, or assets such as flower or foliage color  or strength of stems or general form. Among shrubs, Endless Summer Hydrangea has been...

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13 Feb 2010

The Winter Garden Made More Beautiful

Now is the time to be analyzing your winter landscape.  This is not the best year for such analyzing.  The snow has been much too heavy causing many of our evergreen forms to disappear into the abyss of snowcover.    Many of my four plus foot high shrub arborvitaes have simply disappeared into the drift totally unnoticeable and likely will remain so all winter long. The six to eight inch snowfall of last week whitened the...

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06 Feb 2010

Some Ornamental Trees Must Be Pruned in Late Winter

Remember, mid February to late March  is the best time of the year to prune your apple and crabapple, pear, plum and mountain ash trees.  All of thes fruit bearing woody plants are members of the rose family and are susceptible to a deadly bacterial disease, fireblight.  If pruned during the growing season, in spring especially, there is great risk for infection particularly if fireblight happens to be active in the neighborhood or if following your pruning,...

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