41: Red Twig Dogwood, Steph Green on Christmas Containers, and pruning

I gathered the few Red Twigs I have (remember, it’s a new garden, and I keep sawing on them each winter) to make these foraged arrangements.

Photos courtesy of East Coast Garden Center, Millsboro, DE

This week on Into the Garden with Leslie, I garden-splain about why I whisk away all foliage from the perennial borders at the front of my house. You could say I am “borderline” defensive in my explanation, but perhaps that’s because I am more and more cognizant of how beneficial it is to leave things for winter. So lucky to have a large yard, most of which will be wild and unkempt all winter—some of it all year. 

It’s interesting to think of garden maintenance as ‘selfish,’ but I will be true to my aesthetics in the places where it makes me happy. It’s my garden on our planet. I hope you enjoy your garden on our planet the way you want—neatening and fussing a bit, leaving a bit for the birds and other beasties, and never feeling like any chemical is needed to help make it better for you. Because it’s yours, and ours, and it’s theirs (the beasties who wouldn’t want the chems). 

Plant of the Week

The Red Twig Dogwood is one of the most Christmas-y of all plants, and now that Thanksgiving is over (9 hours ago as I type this) we are moving on to the next event, people! 

This plant is native to much of the US, and it can grow in damp soil, which makes it a great choice for rain gardens created to help with runoff (I should do an episode on those…)

I grow the Cornus sericea, which is lovely in spring, fall, and of course, winter, but it is a bit of a green blob in summer. Four season interest is easy to achieve if you go for the Cornus alba ‘Elegantissima’ or ‘Bailhalo,’ which is pictured at left in tempting four season detail. 

This plant is so willing to be propagated that I wager half of my snips for my containers will root over the course of the winter and become new plants. All they seem to want is to have the soil that is holding them in place kept a little moist. 

And another tip is that, like roses, it’s good to prune out the old and leave the new. In terms of roses, newer branches will carry more flowers. In terms of Red Twigs, newer branches will simply be more red. 

And Christmas-y!

Guest

Steph Green is a frequent flyer on Into the Garden with Leslie, having talked us through container gardening more generally in Week 22 and then refreshing summer containers in Week 32.

It’s another change of season, and we need more Steph! She walks us through the how-to’s of putting greens together, including a tip I had never employed before I heard it from her—mounding up the soil to help show off even higher elevation for your thriller! Whether you buy cut greens or walk around your backyard to cut what you already own, fresh is best. Don’t forget that you can use an anti-desiccant spray or dunking solution to get greens to last for months.

Steph has lots of hacks to get some glitz into the mix easily, such as buying inexpensive, non-breakable (best for wind risks) balls, nicking out the hanger bit, and getting out the glue gun to jam a pick in—she makes it sound so easy, and it can be!

Steph makes sure we know that if the traditional colors float your boat, go for it, but don’t be afraid to turn away from just red and green toward something fresh and different.

For the cohesive and sophisticated look, match or at least share elements of all decor in sight—the wreath and the urns at the front door should speak to each other in color and/or texture, and if there are swags or garlands in the picture, add the same elements to them.

Steph brought up the talented group called The Hunt Country Gardeners because she is ‘obsessed’ with their use of food as decor, and not in the straight-laced Williamsburg way. If foraging is your thing, these folks take it beyond the backyard and may actually be foraging at the farmer’s market.

At the other end of the spectrum, she cited Verve Home Furnishings, the vintage store in Richmond. Lots of her clients use these exuberant (‘visible from the moon’) wreaths, and in order to tie them in, she needs some intel on the look. I mean, their tagline is “Just the right amount of wrong.” Nailed it.

And it’s not just Richmond that can get in on it. Verve is on Chairish too.

The Play List

I talk about pruning a lot in this section, and that’s ironic because fall is the one time of year when you generally want to hold off on that. But then again, we need holiday decorations, so snip away. Don’t you love conflicting gardening advice?

A Steph Contained Creation: the balls and pine cones aren’t just sitting there. They are attached to ‘picks’ or wooden sticks that anchor them into the soil below. 

Hungry? Look at this loveliness from The Hunt Country Gardeners.

Verve: You can’t argue with the energy!

Why is this image so tiny? I don’t know. I’m a gardener,

not a website expert. Clearly.

So how to reconcile these concepts? ‘Snip’ is the operative verb here. My crew and I ‘snipped’ all of the material you see in the photos to the left in order to decorate client containers.

Miscanthus puffs (take care using those if that plant is invasive in your area, or get out the hair spray to keep them in check), Magnolia foliage, Nandina berries (ditto with hair spray) or any kind of evergreen can add to the merriment.

I go over rejuvenation pruning, which is so harsh that it’s the sort of pruning you do only if you are willing to part with the plant if it dies. Most woody shrubs jump back to life after a hard prune, but if you are willing to take the chance on that, you should also be willing to replace the plant if it fails. AND, rejuvenation pruning is best done in winter, which is probably when I will chat about it more with you.

But snipping is fine, as is shaping things up that were previously hidden by a season’s worth of herbaceous perennial growth, a la my green meatballs in the front border, seen at left.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

For gardeners close to me—I will harp on this in week 42—central Virginia is quite low on water at this stage, with little rain in the long-range forecast, and this will matter for new plants and evergreens.

New plants—that’s pretty obvious. They need the wet stuff to get settled in.

Evergreens—they slow down in winter but do NOT go dormant, continuing to transpire (think of that as the botanical ‘perspire’) all winter. Your established ones are probably fine, but I will be lugging water to my new and precious ones, as I did finally put the hoses away.

Listen

Just a tiny bit of torture from me, and lucky for you, most of the singing is from Johnny Mathis, because it is indeed Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas.

40: Anthony Bellomo Arizona Cypress

Plant of the Week

Don’t you love the blue of this evergreen? Can’t you imagine snipping some to augment an actually green wreath? And the Arizona Cypress, or Hesperocyparis arizonica, complements fall foliage beautifully. When I was doing up fall or Christmas containers for clients, this little fellow was always one I fell for, but like many potted evergreens on sale in nurseries at this time of year just before the cut trees take over (Christmas is coming!) he will end up being 50’ tall and a slim-ish 20’ wide. I have 3 in my garden: one in a good spot with room to grow (and looking very intentional and color-coordinated with the blue bridge), and two wedged into quite small and silly spots. So the question is: do I move them, or let them age in place but never grow, under the care of my hand pruners?

Hmmmm, time will tell…

The Arizona Cypress makes a beautiful contrast with fresh green in spring, steps slightly into the background but still adds a layer of texture in summer, makes all the fall colors brighter in autumn, and is a joy in winter. Not locally native (its home is SW US and Mexico) but not at all invasive—maybe it’s one you should try if you live in zone 7-11. Sorry to my Yankee pals—maybe I will snip some for you at Christmas time.

One of my formerly pot-sized Hesperocyparis arizonica ‘Carolina Sapphire’ wedged into a spot it can’t stay, but I love the color for now. 

This guy! From landscape architect to shopkeeper but a gardener the whole time.

Guest

Anthony Bellomo appreciates the years he put into designing large public spaces as a landscape architect and believes that experience serves him well when concentrating on smaller scale and more personal beauty in his new shop Orangerie in Millbrook, New York. He gets to sell the plants and aesthetic he really cares about, taking care that visitors get a visual delight and a shopping experience for deep pockets and conservative budgets alike. 

From Orangerie, he runs a design studio that allows him to tap into his LA background, while the personal garden that he shares with Christopher Spitzmiller at Clove Brook Farm is a constantly creative oasis for both of them. And dogs. And chickens. And geese.

I’m convinced. Going to drive up from Greenwich with my daughter next week!

Above: Anthony’s design offerings via Orangerie Garden.

The Play List

Do we feed indoor plants over the winter? No, actually—just let them hunker down and get through it. They don’t grow that much in winter, and there’s no reason to encourage an activity that, cellularly speaking, they don’t instinctively take on. Thanks, Kim!

What’s the best way to avoid walking back to the shed for yet another tool? I find I can get almost all of what I want to get done by strapping on my hand pruners and soil knife. But I can’t seem to keep the shovel and shears strapped on, so it’s back to the shed I go for those. Thanks, Becky!

What’s the best bucket or trug to use? My go-to trug is the Red Gorilla trug. I have tried the standard 5 gallon bucket, but it’s too narrow—I like to toss from afar, and the handle isn’t comfy if you need it to carry water. I have tried imitation trugs, but they don’t last long. Red Gorilla makes the best one. And they don’t even sponsor me! Yet. 

• Stow your hoses and turn off the outdoor taps for winter

• More bulb planting

• Leaf patrol 

And lastly, get ready for Christmas! Steph Green will be back to help us plan in episode 41. 

Listen

Christy Wilhelmi takes 8 minutes to clearly and scientifically explain the difference between compost and fertilizer in this YouTube video. I took almost that long to make a hash of her explanation on this week’s pod, so maybe take your 8 minutes and go there instead. 

39: Fall Fiesta, Erin the Impatient Gardener

Plant of the Week to Eradicate

The Burning Bush is SO not the plant of the week. Pictured below, it has so much fall beauty that it is actually still sold in some nurseries. If you were to see it in a nursery, far be it from me to recommend strident indignation, but if you would politely (kindly, even) inform the buyer (perhaps leave a note for him or her if some wide-eyed cashier, definitely hired for retail skills instead of horticultural prowess, gives you no hope of comprehension) that the Euonymus alatus is an alien invasive that is taking over native plant habitats. 

Such a beautiful no no! The Burning Bush won’t be able to hide in your yard at this time of year. Seek and destroy. Please.

Plant of the Week to Celebrate

On the other hand, Acer saccharum ‘Bailsta’ Fall Fiesta, would be more of a ‘seek and procure’ plant. It has amazing fall colors of yellow, orange, AND red. Native to the northeastern U.S., these well-formed, fast-growing trees are what drives peepers to book the B&Bs a year in advance. Choose a place in your yard carefully, as it grows to 50 feet.

Gorgeous.

Guest

Erin Schanen the Impatient Gardener lives in southeastern Wisconsin, and she has a wonderful garden blog. She is very knowledgeable and shares garden goodness on Facebook, Instagram, and her YouTube videos. Erin and I had a wide-ranging chat from garden styles to native plant theories—she sort of sees it the same way I do: any plants at all (well, maybe not alien invasives) are better than just a lawn. But she doesn’t seem to suffer from guilt like I do, which would be much more freeing. I need to look into that.

She plants tons of natives, though, and recently designed a naturalistic garden that she described for us in pretty good detail on the pod. Here’s a recent YouTube that she posted about augmenting the garden with spring bulbs. She thinks she planted too many. I think you can never plant too many, so our slightly guilty complexes are reversed on this topic.

One of the many things I loved about talking with Erin was her great attitude. No stuffiness, no rules—just experimentation, learning, fails, and fun. Here’s an example: a video entitled Four Plants that Look Terrible in my Garden Right Now.

The Play List

Divide a perennial: Shovel it up and slice it into 2-3 pieces using your soil knife or your shovel. If it’s really recalcitrant, jump pogo style on the shovel. Re-plant a third and spread the other bits around. Remember, big groups of plants are often more attractive than the polka dot look.

Plant a tree: Small is good, not only for the patient and thrifty gardener, but for the health of the tree. Dig a hole 2-3 times as wide as the roots but no deeper, and make sure there are no roots wrapped around the trunk that would strangle it later. If it’s Ball and Burlap, remove the twine, remove the wire, and remove as much of the burlap as you can. Planting a tiny bit too high (it will settle) is always better than too low. The tree needs to breathe where the trunk flares out.

Plant some bulbs: Check out last week’s blog and pod for more.

Use your compost: Not so much, right now… I mean you could, but with all that free top dressing falling out of the trees, you may just want to let it sit and cook a while.

Drain and store your hoses: do you think that including this in the list for several weeks now will FINALLY inspire me to do that? Fingers crossed.

Listen

Simply classic: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s Autumn in New York.

And Autumn in Charlottesville isn’t too shabby.

38: Ajania pacifica, Sister Sue Ann, Bulbs

Plant of the Week

The final curtain is about to go down in terms of blooms in my garden, and the last up to the plate, ready to steal the show for the game-winning touchdown is the ultimate buzzer beater. If you are still reading after all that silliness, you must be interested to know that the Ajania pacifica is a very, very late-blooming perennial! Hailing from Asia, like most of my guilty garden pleasures, this compact, front row performer sits quietly all season with its subtly variegated foliage. I do a pre-prune or two, but may not need to, as I have never seen it flop. It wants full sun and drier-than-not average soil. After behaving itself all summer and into the fall, little cute dots of yellow joy visit me! The common name of Silver and Gold is very apt.

Guest

When Sister Sue Ann from Delaware comes on the show, I try to play the expert to her normal gardener status. While my expertise is never all that impressive, we always have fun! And, truth be told, I have planted more bulbs in my life than the average bear, so I felt pretty confident on this topic. 

When— really anytime from September through December, before the ground freezes or your cute toes might. 

How deep— about 2-3 times the size of the bulb. Go deep for those huge Alliums, but there is not much exercise involved in planting crocuses and Glory of the Snow, which are tiny.

Where— most bulbs come from Central Asia or the Mediterranean—places with really good drainage. Except for one of my favorite late ones, the Camassia, avoid boggy soil and try for full sun. 

How— That depends on the look you want. You can plant a LOT of bulbs very quickly by using a big shovel, stabbing down, flipping the soil up, shoving the bulbs in, and then just letting the flap of soil close over the top of the bulbs. If you want the formal look, get a soil knife or even an auger and go one at a time, 2-3 inches apart.

Critters?— The only ones that are well and truly critter-resistant—both for the bulbs in the ground and the flowers in spring—are Snow Drops, Daffodils, and Snow Flakes (Leucojum). They contain licorice, I mean Lycorine, which is toxic to animals. For the others—do your best, and there are peppers and sprays which can help protect. 

See the silver? See the gold? Riches of autumn loveliness.

Stock photo shamelessly stolen from Unsplash.

I got an email that was titled $20 for 20 million acres and that got my attention! Doug Tallamy and Michelle Alfandari are raising money, in a most tempting way, to try to get the word out about the Home Grown National Park! Go have a look and sign up, and part with that tiny amount for an excellent cause. Even if it’s not the amazing real estate transaction it sounds like, it still feels good to participate!

Hey, I forgot to keep going with the compost info… In Week 34, I talked about how to get the kitchen stuff collected without inviting fruit flies and threatening your marriage. In Week 35, we got the goods out to the tumbler and added carbon in the form of the WSJ. This week, I talk about how to get the stuff out of the tumbler and into a regular compost pile. So simple that I don’t need a photo:

1. Wait until you will need a shower anyway (you don’t feel really clean when you do this step). 2. Take an old handleless shovel and scoop it out of the tumbler. 3. Bury it in a ‘real’ debris compost pile, and you will never know it was ever banana peels and coffee grounds. It’s like magic! 

Next week, I will talk about what to do with compost in the garden, but if you want more info on how easy it can be, don’t forget to listen to Margaret Roach’s interview with Cary Oshins that I mentioned in Week 36. 

The Play List

Plant garlic and shallots— it’s the perfect time here in central VA, and I am going to put them in my front ornamental border for kicks, a la Brie the Plant Lady!

Leaf control— control leaves on the lawn and on any little plants you still want to see, but also try to restrain your volume of leaf control—rakes are nice. 

Killing frost— it’s funny how just a few degrees can make a difference. Last night, it got down to 32 here, and some of the more exposed coleus is toast, but others aren’t and all other annuals are fine!

I am talking the talk, but not yet walking the walk (this week!!) of draining and storing hoses.

Listen

To me! As if you haven’t done that enough, but if you would like to hear my presentation to the All Hallows Guild of the National Cathedral about getting Frederick Law Olmsted into your garden, go here. It’s too late for him to visit you, unfortunately, but he and his son had some good ideas about landscape design that you could take advantage of!

37: Oakleaf Hydrangea, Lizzie Fox of The Rose Press Garden, Brooklyn bridge Park

We got caught up on some rain here this week, which is great as I still feel like we are behind. Also, when I run around and divide and shove perennials this way and that the day BEFORE we get 2.75 inches, hey, I don’t have to get out the hoses. 

Plant of the Week

After choosing non-natives for several weeks in a row, I am happy to have a bit of reprieve by having, this week, the eminently native and simultaneously awesome Oak Leaf Hydrangea. This is a real 4 season winner: bright green promising foliage in spring, white-to-pink flowers in summer, Cra-MAZING wine dark foliage in fall, and exfoliating bark in winter. There can be bitty ones like ‘Pee Wee’ and ‘Little Honey’ (don’t grow the latter for flowers, but instead for lime green foliage), great big ones like ‘Alice’ or medium sized ones like ‘Ruby Slippers’. Who thinks of these names? I think that would be a fun job.

Photo courtesy of Cleveland.com

Guest

Lizzie Fox is wowing the UK with her fresh new approach to selling seeds. They aren’t for veg and they aren’t for old people—well they certainly can be, but one must be young at heart, because it is so joyful to open a beautifully packaged selection from the The Rose Press Garden! She is also a quickly growing force on social. Her Instagram is so cheerful and her videos teach you how to deal with whatever beautiful seeds she sends you in the mail and more. No doubt this thing will continue to grow, as Lizzie’s enthusiasm and knowledge is encouraging people who may not have known ANYTHING about gardening to give it a go. Her most watched YouTube is literally How to Plant…a Plant!

Lizzie and I talk about her business model and why it’s so important to get Into the Garden (you know, I pretty much agree!) and to encourage others to. And, they don’t have to be pensioners to do it!

Lizzie Fox of The Rose Press Garden

The Play List

I mentioned the impact of lighting your garden in the pod, and here is some science on it. It definitely should be carried out thoughtfully because of how it can throw off wildlife. Have a look at this Science Daily article.

• Pruning in general: not right now for big jobs unless the branch is dead, diseased, or will whack you in the head.

• Terra cotta and other ornaments that may get battered about by temp changes. Bring the fragile bits indoors.

• Cut back what you want but mind some of the woody ones—sage, thyme, lavender, perovskia (russian sage), and some people say mums—as they prefer to be left alone until late winter or early spring.

• Weather—Time to drain the hoses? Mind the frost warnings.

• Bulbs—plant away, but Sister Sue Ann and I will have lots of tips next week!

• Think about your containers and annuals in the border—it’s up to you whether you put in your fall or winter displays now or wait. Seems silly to remove perfectly good plants, but then again, a sudden freeze before a dinner party or house guests, and you have one more thing to do…

• Cut away annuals in beds instead of pulling to leave the soil intact.

Listen
I had such a lovely time listening to Tom Christopher’s interview with Rebecca McMackin on the October 20 Growing Greener podcast. Rebecca is the Director of Horticulture at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the park is a completely man made nature-palooza! Old piers on the previously disreputable East River now support an ecosystem that would be enviable anywhere, but especially in one of earth’s most urban environments. Just goes to show, if you build it, they will come!

Believe it.

36: Anemones, Chisty Wilhelmi on Compost, and more Compost

Last week, I wrote about being on the brink of the change of the season; this week, I question why my flip flop collection still occupies prime real estate in my closet.

It’s getting real, people.

Honorine Jobert, in all her glory!

Plant of the Week

If you have listened or read for a while, you know I struggle from a serious but treatable native plant guilt complex. How do I treat it? By heralding native plants in this section of the Blog & Pod at least as often as I succumb to the temptations of the Asian beauties. But, gosh, it’s been a while. So this week, I atone for my sins by double dipping on the POW.

1. The Japanese anemone, starring right now in a garden near you. Japan is in the name, but it actually hails from China, and I really hope that doesn’t mean it’s not twice as non-native.

But what a beauty—tall or short; pink, dark pink, light pink (oh c’mon, just pink), or white; with its charming little buttercup-like flowers… The gold standard cultivar (literally award winning—Royal Hort Society and Perennial Plant of the Year) is ‘Honorine Jobert,’ which was discovered in Verdun, France in 1858. It seems that by just being that beautiful you end up with an elegant name. I assume this because my requisite 10 minutes of dedication to a google search yielded no additional theories.

1. The Anemone virginiana, or Tall Thimbleweed, is a similar plant. It blooms in spring instead of now and has no cool girl cultivar name, but is really very pretty.

And I’m not just being hypothetical about this one—I am actively shopping. And not just because I already have lots of Japanese anemones. It’s because I really want it!

Apropos of nothing except that I said I would put it in the show notes, if you are interested in becoming a Master Gardener with the Piedmont Master Gardener group, go here to learn more about their introductory meetings on October 26th and November 3rd. 

Guest

Christy Wilhelmi is a wonderful resource for small space vegetable gardening who hails from California, has her own podcast, Gardenerd Tip of the Week (oh, hey, I was a guest on that last month— see?), and an adorable and informative website too. Last time I had her on, we talked about a variety of garden topics, and this week we stayed true to form in terms of not sticking with one topic… we touched on composting, fruit trees in small spaces, no-dig gardening, and even mini meadows.

Christy reminded me of a YouTube on Ruth Stout I watched years ago. Stout was born in 1988 and for years used typical plowing, commercial ferts, and poisonous sprays to raise her vegetables because that is the way she was taught. But one year, the guy with the plow simply didn’t show up and she started treating everything like asparagus, as in, ‘can’t you do your thing without me having to work so hard?’ You have to watch the video; it’s mesmerizing.

The Play List

~ If you live in a colder climate, take away anything that is bumming you out, and leave behind anything that is not, including leaves and seed heads. 

~ You may be planting bulbs, or you may be able to wait until close to Christmas!

~ Remember, no big pruning now—your projects can wait until things are dormant.

~ Mow your leaves into your lawn, or ask your lawn gentlemen or ladies to do that for you.

~ Remember that you should be able to control the volume and intensity of leaf clean up at your home! Talk to whomever is doing that, even if it’s yourself, and see if you can’t dial it back or down a little bit.

~ If you have a water feature, you may have to net it at this time of year because of the falling leaves. This year, I’m going to let mine go a little bit and hope I don’t gum up the pump too much. Birds need to drink in fall too!

Listen

In this podcast, I talk about Step 3 in my compost routine. Step 1 was to collect garbage in the kitchen, neatly and cleanly without odors or pets (fruit flies); Step 2 was get your sealable container out the door and someplace sensible before Step 1 doesn’t go as planned. Step 3 is to take those accumulated sealable containers and dump them into a tumbler with some copies of the Wall Street Journal (but any carbon source will do—paper bags, leaves, the Washington Post). The point of Step 3 is to make it so that what was recognizable as food to critters will evolve not to be so.

All of this is great info (oh for sure!), but you will be truly informed if you listen to Margaret Roach’s podcast A Way to Garden, where she has a low key conversation with the U.S. Composting Council’s Cary Oshins. And yes, there is a U.S. Composting Council. Oshins has the professional chops to be able to inform us about all the science, rules, temperatures, and ingredients, but instead he gives a totally freeing and relaxed talk about how you can do this a bunch of different ways and still achieve the two main goals: to keep nitrogen out of landfills (hence less in terms of methane > greenhouse gases > climate change) and to feed the soil on your land to grow more wonderful plants, be they food, native ornamentals, or Asian guilty pleasures.

35: Rex Begonia, Marianne Willburn, The Soil Knife

Do you feel it? It’s happening here. True, it almost hit 80 today as I wrote this, but only for an hour or two. Blankets, fires, cuddles are coming! And coming inside? Plants. I have been dipping, scrubbing, inspecting, finding the right sized saucers, and my glass porch is beginning to take on a lovely jungly smell with all the tenders I am bringing inside.

The ones that I am most interested in making it through the winter under my care—and that’s scarier than any Halloween movie—are the Rex begonias.

I mean. How fun is this foliage? I collected some tiny specimens from Milmont Greenhouses last spring, mainly for a client at that time who had a charming shaded courtyard full of containers, and what do you know? Some ended up in my containers. 

I love this plant with its fleshy stems full of promise and with foliage that has so many patterns and shapes. Even a snail shape!

Now it’s just a matter of getting them all inside, and though I said on the pod that I would have it done by Thursday night, that was, indeed, magical garden thinking. Some of my tropicals and tenders will have to get through a few more nights outside. But no matter! The problem with my procrastination would normally result in a lovely looking plant having to stress out and adjust to indoor temperatures once we flick on the furnace. But my plants, most of them, anyway, end up on my glass porch, which is just above outdoor temps. So the stress of going from the 50’s to the 70’s won’t happen for me. If it will happen for you, you may want to try to avoid it.

Guest

Marianne Wilburn—in her second of what I hope are many visits because she is so fun to talk to—gives us the low-down on bringing plants in for winter. As the author of the book Tropical Plants and How to Love Them, Marianne is well-versed on all of her multitude of charges, and she has a ton of them! In the pod, she quickly walks us through what we did last spring: getting them outside. I’m a tough love slacker on that too, and sort of just say “get out, good luck.” Then, we drill down on the strategies of getting them ready to come back into your house. Avoiding the hitchhiker beasties that also want to come in, making it easier on yourself in terms of care (making sure you can SEE the mister, that way you may actually USE the mister), and understanding how some plants may not even want to be a part of your life over the winter, but would instead rather be forced into dormancy and checked on a couple of times. These are all things Marianne helps us to know more about.

Marianne Wilburn in her tropical paradise

The Play List

Got a cute photo from Mary Wright Baylor of the DC area. She liked the tips that Steph Green provided in Week 32 so much that she sent in a photo with a fall refresh that she had done on one of her containers. Look at the wonderful arrows! (Below). She used ‘the c-word’, chrysanthemum, very well indeed. Charming—the arrangement and the feedback! She made my day and Steph’s too, as of course, I passed it along.

I used some of those tips on a couple of mine too, but there is still more to do. Hard to know (when it is still in the 80s), whether I should jump right to pansies and cabbages or fill in with all those coleus I have rooted recently. Probably a bit of both is the way to go.

Next Step for the Kitchen Compost

In last week’s Play List, I told you how I collect the garbage and am usually successful in getting all the kitchen scraps out the door before we get the eewww factor going too strongly and before ‘pets’, i.e. fruit flies, come join us. Then where does it go? Those little sealable half gallon containers end up in the garage, waiting until they get to about 8 or 10 in number, and then they are emptied into my tumbler. I used to just settle for the anaerobic fetid mess in the tumbler knowing that I would later add that to my regular pile and the N and C would even out. But since I started adding some brown, in my case the WSJ, it has really helped the smell as you are walking by the tumbler and the outdoor ‘pet’ population, too.

Nothing really wrong with those critters outside, but if you don’t have a lot of space and you are not loving them, adding the brown layer really does the trick!

Eeewww don’t get too close. But it actually doesn’t smell bad.

Enjoy your garden while this glorious weather lasts

• Make a note of pruning jobs wood on shrubs and trees— the work should wait now until the plant is dormant. A few snips are fine anytime.

• Order or BUY your seeds. A bird in the hand—I stopped by Stranges in Richmond after speaking to the Ford’s Colony Garden Club in Richmond and came away with about 3/4 of my heart’s desires at their generous seed racks.

Listen

I recommend leaves falling again this week, but here’s a recommendation of a different type: my favorite tools. Let’s start with the soil knife, which is a trowel, weeder, bulb depth measurer, and if you wear it on your belt like I do, a badass accessory, too! The bright orange plastic helps you find it more easily, and I added the green tape to keep mine straight from the crew’s—back when I had a crew.

Sister Sue Ann often gets alarmed when I wave it too close to Ginny while filming a Tuesday Tip. But Ginny doesn’t seem to mind.

34: Chysanthemums, Sister Sue Ann and Fall Gardening Chores (fun)

From Unsplash by Yoksel

It’s finally feeling a little bit like fall, and the shorter days are signaling to plants that it will soon be time to snooze. Bright fall colors, decrepit summer perennials, switching to bourbon at cocktail hour, and pansies on the shelves at the nursery are all signs.

But still plenty of action in the garden. Don’t forget you can use the dahlias with shorter stems to float in a pretty bowl with some water. Delicious. And you can have some dried beauty in your house by putting Hydrangea stems in just an inch of water and letting the water evaporate over the course of a week or two. As the Brits would say, it works a-treat!

Plant of the Week

The chrysanthemum, as sold in (half) spherical ubiquity at this time of year, is not something that I personally go for, but one of the many beautiful things about gardening is that there are no rules, and if you like them, I will leave them on the nursery shelf for you! Those round fellows do look pretty good in a classic urn, and if you have that urn in the shade, it takes care of my other charge against them, which is a disappointingly brief bloom time.

Now that I have registered my complaints, on to their many qualities! The chrysanthemum is an easy perennial, but depending on the cultivar, it can get the flops if it is not pre-pruned a couple of times over the summer. I employ ‘stadium’ style pruning (here’s an article I wrote for Fine Gardening Mag that shows it better): cutting the front of a patch severely, less so in the middle, and only a bit in the back. The stems become more stout and strong with the pruning, and this helps with support.

Colors span the entire color range and include the pumpkin spicy rusts and browns that evoke the season. They ask for nothing special in the perennial border except for their exuberance to be edited, easily done, and in pretty full sun. You don’t even have to do that pre-pruning bit, but it does help maintain order.

And speaking of pruning, check out what the real experts can do with them in these photos from the Longwood Garden Chrysanthemum Festival.

Guest

My little sister Sue Ann and I chatted this week about all things fall gardening. What’s growing, what’s going on by, what to do, and what not to do. And, there was talk of breaking the 10th Commandment—what is your neighbor growing that you covet?

Instead of plants, my goal is to improve the fall look in general by grouping a few fall bloomers together so the borders won’t look so spotty/dotty, which is what happens if a standout purple aster has nothing to play off of except green masses of perennials gone by.

Aster ‘Jin Dai’ flopping fetchingly by the stream.

Sue Ann wants to get started with some asters, and I can help, especially with the Aster tataricus ‘Jin Dai,’ which is getting a little out of bounds for me.

And the mums—the garden border is where I love them with their natural look, and since they are spreaders but easy to pull, I will put them on the list for her too.

The Play List

• Order your bulbs (have you heard this one? :).

• Divide and move perennials BUT only if they need it (dying out in the middle?) or you want to. You can NOT do that, or wait and do it anytime before the ground freezes.

• Bring your indoor plants back indoors, (inspect, wash, get a saucer, don’t forget terra cotta absorbs water, so don’t put those on wood floors) and wait to listen to my chat with Marianne Wilburn for much more on that topic next week.

• Start thinking about seed ordering.

Coffee, veg, and in that paper towel are crunched up egg shells. I do that to get them cooking— egg shells take a while to break down.

Think about your leaf removal this fall. Does your garden need to be neat as a pin? Can you or your landscapers adjust the volume/use rakes sometimes/leave the leaves on the gardens? Do get them off patios and the lawn, but think about your other spaces: what good habitat leaves make for nature, and how good they are for your soil. Also consider your eardrums and your neighbors’.

Compost tip: I don’t like ‘pets’ (fruit flies) in my kitchen, so I use a re-sealable half-gallon tub for all kitchen scraps except meat, as Ginny would not be so pleased without her tidbits. I have a bunch of these bins, so when full, I take them out to the garage to wait for me until I am in the mood to dump them into my tumbler. More next week…