Instead of cutting an unwanted tree to the ground, you can girdle the tree near the bottom, cut off the top canopy and have your own little feeding ground of bugs for our fine feathered friends.

Although you may not want this bird treat front and center of your yard, the woodpecker you hear drumming for bugs at 6 a.m. is well worth the ugly factor.  If the tree falls after time, it can only do so much damage because its canopy is gone.

In January and early February, I drive by crews of landscapers bundled up in the cold, weed eaters spiting out gas fumes and roaring as blades whack down evergreen lirope and ornamental grasses.  Areas that had thick green foliage are reduced to dirt or thin mulch.   Graceful grouping of grasses that bent and rustled in the wind are now sawed off stubs.

“Not yet!!” I cry as I pass by and try to keep from swerving off the road. It’s still cold!

Although it is necessary to cut both of these back to encourage clean new growth, I prefer to wait closer to the time when tender new shoots are just about ready to come up from the bottom of the plant, say late February or early March.  Let’s try to keep the “ever” in evergreen as long as we can.

When doing designs this time of year client’s get stuck on wanting evergreen- everywhere. An argument that I make is that much of the strength of gardens is what it gives you in structure this time of year.  If your garden looks great in the winter it looks great all year long.

Take for example this European Hornbeam tree. When there are no leaves, it serves as strong vertical accent and is holding its leaves even in early December. It is often used in hedges for its strong screening ability with or without leaves.  It has a non invasive root system which makes it great in the patio setting. If you drive down Carytown you will see them in the tree lawn.

Hornbeam

This Weeping Katsura’s fabulous in any season. In the winter you get its arching branches. Then in the spring emerges a caramel scented, heart shaped leaf that is purple red in color. It turns to blue green and then orange in the fall. As if this isn’t enough, it has tiny red flowers in March. What’s not to like?

Weeping Katsura

The Heritage River Birch has a copper and black bark that gives a real texture to the garden in winter. Its long tendril of branches in the upper canopy blows with the cold wind.  It can withstand the harshest conditions if it is wet or dry and takes very little maintenance. Their leaves turn bright yellow in the fall.  Through hybridization they now have a rapid growth rate and are inexpensive to boot.  We often plant them in triads to get something going quickly when there is an empty palette.

Heritage River Birch

Red berries on the Winterberry bush and cranberry colored berries on the Aronia are a bright spot in a bare landscape.  They hang on for months if the birds don’t get them first.

Winterberry Bush

Aronia

Grasses have a personality of their own when the wind blows.  Many cultivars have a different winter color.  They stay with us till late winter when you cut them back for anther round of seasonal change.

Grasses

Finally the Red Sunset Maple in this case makes a lovely triad of the repeat shape. Snow lightly sitting on each branch in the winter gives an artistic sketch in the landscape.

Sunset Maples

I must admit that around this time of year I am looking far and wide for original ideas for winter pots.  The trick is I want winter pots to be…

• original with something more inclusive than pointy Christmas trees and pansies,
• have evergreen plants with shades of blue green, lime green and deep green, if possible,
• something the deer don’t eat,
• something you don’t have to water, and
• Something with bright cheerful holiday colors!

Here are some ensembles we tried this season.

The blue green plant in this pot is a perennial called a euphorbia-robbiae. The acuba gold dust (tall in the back) and some rainbow moss in front add the different hues of green to the palette.   These can all take it shady and be planted in the ground in the spring.

The soft textured tassel fern is one of my favorite.  This combined with the delicate tricyrtis sininome perennial is lovely.

The third pot sits as a centerpiece to a large cutting garden.  It must always look fabulous and different, especially when the perennial garden looks vacant and cut back in the winter.   The plants here include ornamental cabbage which surrounds the center planting of rosemary. Burgundy heuchera also interlaces with the cabbage while a white blooming  Shasta daisy variety called “Leucanthemum aglaia” tops is off!

Here are some of my favorites that do well in this area.

Monkshood- Aconitum arendesii

This perennial is an old fashioned one with violet blue hooded blooms.

It is beautiful in a border or as a flash of color in a flower arrangement.

After a few years, the slender stalk with glossy green leaves stands up on it’s own without the aid of a small stake.

It is toxic. So grab your puppy when she starts to gnaw.

Japanese Beautyberry – Callicarpa

This is a shrub that flowers in the summer, but its real punch in the garden is in the fall, when purple or white berries form.

The berries alternate along each stem. The birds gobble them up after all other food is gone.  The growth habit of the overall plant is not ball shaped, but more like a fountain of water with a relaxed flow. Deer have eaten part of my branches once or twice in early fall, but nothing dramatic (as of today anyway).

Cardinal flower – Lobelia

I remember seeing this flower when it was on the conservation list in the early 70’s.  I was at a girls’ tripping camp, and we were portaging canoes through a fog along the Rapid River in Maine. The cold air off the river met the warm air of August and a dense mist was around us.  There along the river in the midst of brown leaves and pine needles was a spot of red. I’ll never forget it. These flowers like it wet and have the advantage of attracting hummingbirds.  They can bloom from mid summer through the fall.  Hybridization has made them available in blues and purples with green or dark red leaves.  The upright flower makes them a vertical perennial that can stand 2-4 ft high with maturity. They spread in size and poke up in all sorts of places in your garden.

Pink Muhly grass- Muhlenbergia capillaris

Wow!  Talk about a bang for your buck! I planted this in my meadow by accident.  I had pulled another type of grass from a nursery row and got 5 of these by mistake.  So, I did what any self respecting gardener would do and bought 7 more!  Then I had to make another garden bed, just for them. These get about 3’ high with maturity,  have fine thin leaves that hold up on their own, are drought tolerant, move beautifully in the wind, and are deer proof.  What else do you need?

Here are pictures of plants that still look good after the hottest summer in history.  Keep this in mind for plantings next year.  All of them have needed watering once a week with 100 plus temperatures. In late August, at least they still look good.

Blue Daze

I often used this sun loving annual as an under planting in pots.  Blue is a cool color for hot summer days. This client requested that they be used as a solid planting in her pots.   No dead heading was required.

Perennial circle

In the foreground is Nepeta or Catmint which we use as a feature on the edge of the four quadrants of a circle garden.   The yellow Coreopsis is a July blooming perennial.   The   Geraniums in the pots bring in a lovely bright spot of red. Yarrow, Salvias and Veronica bloom earlier in the summer. This needs water twice a week but at least it still looks good at the end of the summer.

Vitax tree

This tree has been hybridized in 3 colors of purple, lavender, or pink.  It thrives in the American west with brutal desert conditions and no watering.  It is often mistaken for a large butterfly bush.  It can tend to send a lot of suckers at the base, but easy pruning can create a nice looking trunk. You get great repeat color all summer long.

Joe pye weed

This plant is not for the formal garden. Its strength is in the more expansive garden where you need a big impact.  In the back border of properties it can provides privacy and encourage a wealth of butterfly and bees to come visit.

Limelight Hydrangeas and heliopsis

These hydrangeas stand high as well as hold their color in the hot sun.  What else do you need with 6’ expanses of lime white and yellow?

When I first heard the term “white garden”, I wondered how you would ever develop a garden with white blooms and variety.  As I dealt with more and more plants over time, I saw first hand that the palette is huge for whites.  Lime green, blush pink, ivory, creamy yellow, white with pink streaks, white with purple blotches-all these colors count as white.  Flower shapes include great variety with the daisy, trumpet, orchid, bell shapes and flower cluster.

If you are looking at your lawn these days and saying, “It was so beautiful in the spring!” don’t despair.

• Crabgrass  flourishes in heat and has a thicker blade. It stays lower to the ground.
• Bermuda grass (wire grass) has a thinner blade and floats upwards above the lawn. Its root system goes eighteen inches deep, and it re-seeds easily.
• Nut sedge- generally likes it warm and wet from your irrigation system. It grows back quickly after a mowing and looks like a tall thicker grass. It is an annual which can be treated (and is) each year, but it just goes dormant in the soil comes back every year.
• Funguses like it warm and wet. We try to anticipate this each year, but it never goes away, but hides in the soil.
• Completely yellow lawns- are either dormant or dead.  If there has been no water on a lawn and it is brown – it is dead. But if you have been watering your lawn and it is still yellow…it could just be dormant.

Acadia National Park was featured on the “Today” show this week, so any doubts about  blogging our visit to the Asticou Gardens while there in June for my daughter’s college graduation were dashed aside!  If the Today show can do it…so can I!

Last year we looked at pictures from the Thuja Gardens which are located down the road and up the side of the mountain from The Asticou Gardens. A more sheltered spot is down low and tucked against the hillside nearer to the village of Northeast Harbor.  The ocean is across a two lane road just a few hundred feet away.  As you drive around a bend in the road you see the small lake and lots of moss and lawn. When you start your walk you can feel the cool breeze off the water.

Take a break from the 102 degree days we are feeling this summer and walk through these pictures with me.

So much thanks to my creative family members Fred Miller who took the landscape pictures, and Kristin Reed who took the stunning picture of the ferns with the Blue Globe Allium floating above.