Plants

This past month was a testimony to perfect weather creating brilliant leaf color in the fall. What if you could take those big tree favorites in a smaller more columnar version? Hybridizing a plant is when you cross pollinate different parent trees to combine desirable traits in characteristics like tree size or disease resistance. Hybridizing is such a huge practice among nurseries that smaller trees are easier to come by.

In my travels as a camper in Vermont, there was trip a where experienced usually older campers, also know as ‘trippers’ were ‘invited’ to go on Long Trip. Each year the route of the trip was different depending on the weather and strengths of campers involved.

Every time I go to the nursery in the spring, I slowly pass the zinnia section and try to decide whether I want to chance buying zinnias, and potting them up for my back terrace. Every single year they have gotten powdery mildew, withered, slowly died or just looked ugly after a few weeks.

Every once and a while my husband hands me an article from the New York Times or Washington Post that has great ideas for my blog. The one he most recently pointed out, however, made me grimace and feel a twinge of guilt.

In my busy days as a landscaper, I had one large estate where we developed dozens of different gardens or “outdoor rooms”. One outdoor room was along a driveway that wound through the property. It was sort of like an outdoor long wide hallway. All plantings were deer resistant. Flowering shrubs included rhododendron, clethra and itea.