New garden books in time for spring planting… and reading

Like most garden lovers, Cheryl and I enjoy reading books on our favorite subject. However experienced you are, you can always learn something new (or re-learn something you had forgotten) and many of today’s books are a delight to look at with page upon page of lavish photographs.

Here are a few books that recently landed on our desks at the Nursery. They might be treasured additions to your own garden bookshelf.

“The Homeowner’s Complete Tree and Shrub Handbook”


Penelope O’Sullivan (Storey Publishing)


Trees and shrubs are the heart and soul of the home landscape. You can learn how to use them effectively with this comprehensive handbook, covering all the essentials of woody plant gardening.

In addition to basic design principals and plant selection and care, the handbook features an extensive encyclopedia of more than 350 tree and shrub profiles.

“Garden Bouquets and Beyond”


Suzy Bales (Rodale)


If you love to see an abundance of flowers growing in your garden but are somewhat hesitant about how to bring their color and fragrance successfully indoors, “Garden Bouquets and Beyond” could be the ideal book for you.

Combining her lifelong experience as a gardener with her skills as a floral designer, Suzy Bales puts together fresh flowers and foliage from her landscape for dozens of enchanting seasonal designs.

The book’s subtitle, “Creating Wreaths, Garlands and More in Every Garden Season” points out that getting creative with your flora is something you can enjoy all year round, for special occasions or just your own pleasure.

This is an all-encompassing guide, from when to cut and how to arrange to using flowers, leaves and vines in all types of decorations and arrangements. Lavishly illustrated with more than 150 photographs, Suzy’s book takes found objects, foliage of all colors and seasonal blooms to put together deceptively simple, beautiful arrangements.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Year-Round Gardening


Delilah Smittle and Sheri Ann Richardson (Alpha)


Most people in temperate zones think of gardening as a seasonal endeavor, but there is a way to stretch the planting season and harvest fresh produce year-round. The authors of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Year-Round Gardening” take you through every step of both covered outdoor and indoor gardening.

I’m not suggesting you’re an Idiot (honest!) but both a complete novice and a more experienced garden lover will find plenty of tips to keep the goodies coming all year long. Particularly useful are the in-depth sections on the best use of row covers, cloches, cold frames and greenhouses. It’s an easy-to-follow guide with straightforward information presented in bite-sized chunks.

Grow Your Own, Eat Your Own


Bob Flowerdew (Kyle)


If you’re looking for something a little more lavish than the Idiot’s Guide, look for this new book by Bob Flowerdew (Could there be a better name for a gardener?) one of the world’s most respected authorities on organic gardening.

The first part of the book begins in the garden, showing you how to achieve a more continuous crop as well as how to extend your harvest. But Flowerdew’s book goes beyond the garden and into the kitchen to show the best way to preserve and cook these crops by bottling, drying, jamming, smoking, freezing, juicing, soaking and candying. It includes a ton of luscious photos that will appeal to both the gardener and the home chef.

“Dead Head”


Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books)



Subtitled “A Dirty Business Mystery”, this is a novel that has all the elements to appeal to gardeners who also love to curl up with a good mystery. Wise-cracking gardener and amateur detective Paula Holliday is back, following her two previous adventures in “Pushing Up Daisies” and “The Big Dirt Nap” in this quick-witted and fast-paced mystery.

Author Harris is a master gardener and a former television producer, and knows how to cultivate a mystery that appeals to gardeners and non-gardeners alike.

The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, including archived columns, visit www.landsteward.org

Groundcovers can replace lawns… and mowing

Is there a groundcover that doesn’t need mowing, is kid-friendly but uninhabited by critters and insects? That’s a tall order as this reader finds out…

QUESTION: “We recently moved and purchased 5 acres but we only plan on a small garden for now. I really don't want to spend time mowing right now. Is there a short ground cover which the kids could play in?

”I am reading things about snakes, chiggers and ticks. I want my kids to be safe, yet I would like to keep the mowing to a minimum. Any suggestions?” – Linda

ANSWER: Most groundcovers will attract those unwanted elements, although they can be present even without the habitat that groundcover provides. Outside dogs and cats will help to keep the snakes at bay, but chiggers, ticks and other such critters are all around.

Any groundcover will take several years at best to fill in a large area such as you describe. There are chemicals that can be sprayed on the ground to help reduce the tick and flea population, but with children in and about the yard, you probably wouldn’t want to use it.

Here’s a compromise suggestion. Mark out a reasonably small area close to the house and seed or sod it to provide a “kid friendly” lawn. You could then put down some groundcover over much of the remaining area, so you only have to keep the kids’ play area mowed.

If you’re looking for a low-growing groundcover, you could try Wooly Thyme. It’s a fast spreading thyme with no scent or flavor, but it makes a very attractive soft carpet of hairy grayish foliage topped by bright pink flowers in summer. Wooly Thyme thrives in dry well-drained locations that receive full sun. It is a hardy evergreen that grows 2 - 5 inches high.

You could also look at Wooly’s cousin, Creeping Red Thyme, valued for its fragrant foliage and a profusion of beautiful red flowers all summer long.

Another possibility: Pennsylvania Sedge Grass, a good groundcover that could be a good choice if you have any damp shady areas under tree canopies.

But again, most groundcovers aren’t particularly suitable play areas for small children. In addition to harboring critters and insects, groundcovers can conceal rocks, stones and sharp twigs that can injure little bare feet and legs.

QUESTION: “When is the best time to plant weeping willows? I have approximately 80' span of yard that is extremely wet and hope the willows will assist in absorbing some or most of the moisture.

“How far apart should I plant the trees? I do not have any pipes or drains nearby to worry about the roots of the trees interfering with. Also, can you suggest any other trees that would do well in very moist soil? I have a fairly good sized yard 80' wide x 150' deep.” – Brenda Anderson

ANSWER: You should be able to begin planting around the latter part of March. It is important to remember that the willows won’t actually absorb the moisture in the ground. It is simply that they will tolerate the damp soil. If the ground is soggy wet, it may be trial and error to get them established. Should there be a period where the soil is drier, you might try scheduling to plant at that time.

I recommend the Weeping Willow Babylonica, the best and most beautiful of the green weeping willows, in my opinion. They grow to a mature height in the 30 to 50 foot range with a spread just as wide, so they need to be spaced about 30 to 50 feet apart, and are suitable for zones 4 – 9.

There aren’t many trees that grow happily in consistently wet ground. However, true weeping willows, bald cypress, red maple, river birch, green ash, swamp oak and willow oak are known to be tolerant of moist soil. But, as I mentioned, with soggy ground, it may take several tries to get them established.

The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, including archived columns, visit www.landsteward.org

Call 811 before you dig this Spring

So you’ve decided to plant a couple of trees in your landscape this weekend. What’s the worst thing that could happen? An aching back? Blistered hands? Not even close!

How about swinging a pickaxe, hearing a clang and getting drenched with a geyser gushing from the water main you hit? Or maybe pulling back the lever on your rented Bobcat and realizing you’ve just ruptured a gas line or torn up a buried electrical cable?

It’s safe to say that any of those could pretty much ruin your weekend. You would also earn the wrath of your neighbors whose utilities were cut off until crews could repair your damage, and it’s likely you’d be responsible for the cost of repairs and possibly even open to legal consequences.

You might think that the hole you are digging for that new tree isn’t deep enough to cause a problem, but that can be a dangerous assumption. For one thing, some utilities might be closer to the surface than you imagine.

Additionally, you have to remember that tree roots can go deep and wide as the tree matures, and planting over or close to underground utilities is like burying a green time bomb that can dislodge and break lines many years in the future.

Fortunately, this is a problem that has a very simple (and free) solution.

All you have to do – BEFORE you dig – is call a single 3-digit phone number: 811. When you call 811 from anywhere in the country, your call will be routed to your local One Call Center. Local One Call Center operators will ask you for the location of your digging job and route your call to affected utility companies. Your utility companies will then send a professional locator to your location to mark your lines within a few days.

Utility companies have offered this service for many years, but with so many companies with so many phone numbers spread across the country, there was a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Hence the start of a national one-call service and a unique phone number, 811.

Some homeowners believe the 811 service is solely for contractors but that is incorrect. Utility companies are just as happy to mark their lines for your DIY projects as for professional excavation jobs.

I should add that, even if you hire professional contractors to build that new deck or fence on your property, don’t assume they will call 811 before they begin work. I recommend that you ask the contractor if they have already done so, or you can simply call 811 yourself and tell your contractor that you’ve made the call.

Within a few days, you’ll see some little colored flags or lines of colored paint criss-crossing your land, indicating what lies beneath. Here’s what the colors indicate:

• Red – Electric
  
• Orange – Communications, Telephone/CATV
  
• Blue – Potable Water
  
• Green – Sewer/Drainage
  
• Yellow – Gas/Petroleum Pipe Line
  
• Purple – Reclaimed Water
  
• White – Premark site of intended excavation
  

As you can see, white paint or flags are used to indicate where you or your contractors are planning to dig. It’s a very good idea to mark the dig location before the utility locator teams come out. But be sure you use only WHITE markers to avoid any confusion!

While the marker teams are looking down, you should take a few moments to look up. Overhead power and telephone lines are so much part of our lives that they almost become invisible to us.

But a tree planted under or close to an overhead power line can be a major problem. Before you plant a tree anywhere near overhead lines, double-check the possible mature height and canopy spread, and if necessary err on the side of caution and plant it a little further away.

Special thanks to Alecia White, representing The Common Ground Alliance, for reminding us that more than 256,000 underground utility lines are struck each year in the U.S. If you’d rather not be part of that statistic, simply call 811 so you’ll know what’s below before you dig.

The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, including archived columns, visit www.landsteward.org