The Vagary of my Winter's Garden

     I imagine it as shimmering, frozen dream scape.  Visitors enter through a valley of columned temples built from glossy blue ice, the capitals burnished with silver Acanthus leaves.  At the entrance: curving colonnades, enswathed in long curtains of pure white snow.  The roads are paved with clear Pentelic marble, winter sun flashes across its polished surface like diamond dust. 

     To find my garden you will need a map written in botanical ink, on fine linen, and a well-fitted horse and carriage, fleeced with Prussian blue cashmere cloaks. The route is challenging, but treacherous only if embarked upon by day, for it is the richly colored bands of twilight that will reveal my garden's secret location.  
     Those who seek this place at the wrong hour will be imperiled by hoary winds that blind and kill. An incautious traveler will stumble upon frozen corpses tossed like marionettes from shattered, upturned carriages.  Let this be your warning. 

     Look heavenward to see the clustering stars of Orion's astral belt.  The indigo sky, immersed in celestial light, assures you that you are fortunate.  The rose-smeared horizon guides you westward, toward the long, crystalline shadow of a high, slender obelisk.  As you pass the hallowed monument, pause to read the inscription carved into its four sides:  "memores acti prudentes futuri." Mindful of what has been done, aware of what will be.

     
An icy forest of stalactites sprouts like dangerous trees as your carriage approaches the garden's gates.  Make haste!  Your horses have grown weary; the frigid cold has begun to settle upon your skin. Ultramarine lichens bloom upon your boots as winter's dangerous blood commingles with your own.
     The gates, adorned with tendrils of frost, sing on their heavy hinges.  Only the invited can pass--guardian spirits, wisps of chill and fog that flit like ghostly birds above an icebound landscape, refuse all others.

     Walk the length of the wide courtyard until you come to a stone archway at the end of the farthest wall.  Enter the tunnel.  Hear the the snap of ice above.  Your footsteps echo softly in the inky darkness.  You see a wooden door in silhouette, draped in a curtain of icicles.  
     Pallid moonlight ushers you through the door to Winter's Meadow, a roaming space where ice and snow glitter atop gentle hills and gossamer blue creatures nestle in the crooks of snow blasted spires.  
     Continue north to the grotto.  Ice-clotted water spurts from the mouths of lions, spilling into dark basins that reflect sapphire clouds.
     The footpath divides near the misty gray mouth of the Woods of Thorns.  On the left you see a mysterious, naked statue of Ereshkigal, the Crone Goddess.  She gazes fiercely downward, her Lapis Lazuli eyes cold and severe.  On the right you see a slender evergreen, its boughs heavy with snow.  A high-roosting owl studies your presence.
     Beneath the trees the air is hushed.  Suddenly your cloak is snatched away.  You twist back but the cloak is out of reach, savagely pierced by thorns.  Warmth envelopes, comforts you in genial arms. 
     The path tumbles downward, curves and takes you to the river's icy edge.  Across the slippery white banks, surrounded by a grove of fat pines, the Temple of Ice rises from its alabaster foundation.  

    











     
     
     

     Be patient.  Soon the ferry will arrive to take you across the dark, swirling waters where you will climb the tall stone steps to the temple's honeycombed doors.  Before you enter, take a moment to study the frieze above your head: mighty oak's winter buds, enclosed by a twisting chain of thorns.     
     Through the ice etched doors is the Chamber of Light, blinding at first.  Behold a solitary, colossal tree adorned by garlands of emerald moss, rising from the room's meridian.  Rivulets of glassy water trickle down its fluted bark, pooling in valleys between stained, knotted roots.
     High limbs broadly reach, buttressing the walls.  A densely plaited canopy of twigs weaves the roof impenetrable to wind and snow. 
      Seduced by the desire to sleep and dream you lie upon the spongy ground.
     Awake to the baritone breathing of horses and a sharp chill.  Gather your cloaks now; shield yourself from the frozen atmosphere.  Look around. See that you have been spirited back to your carriage.  The sky is decorated with dawn's violet ribbons.  A winter moon rises in the east, a crescent of pure white.
         It is time to make the journey home.

Six Naughty Garden Plants

     In my last post I discussed the familiar topic of trouble-makers in the garden, plants that spread aggressively, crowd and displace more favorable plants.  Mostly we describe these types of plants as invasive, but just because a particular plant is good at reproducing or colonizing on your property does not automatically make it invasive.  More than once I have overheard a gardener calling a plant invasive simply because it established well and prospered while other beloved plants nearby diminished.  This is not the correct definition of invasive.  Sometimes a plant is simply a space hog and will out compete its meeker neighbors.  In the wild, these plants would not be growing next to each other in the first place.
     A truly invasive plant eventually becomes so prolific that it dominates.  It may seem to stop at the boundaries of your yard--the fence, for example, but without effective physical barriers it will find its way off of your property and escape. Invasive plants often "naturally" form a monoculture--a single species crop--that requires diligent control management.  
     To the casual observer, many invasive plants do not appear to be problematic but to the skilled eye it is often quite easy to notice invasive characteristics in a plant simply from personal experience and a little reading.
     Let's take a look at six common ornamental plants that can cause regrets.  All of these selections are popular and easily found at almost every nursery and big box store across the United States.  The plants I discuss here are not native to the North America (with one exception) and it should be mentioned that although not every non-native plant is considered invasive, the worst offenders are non-native. 

Chameleon plant

     1.  Chameleon plant  - Houttuynia cordata.  Native to Southeast Asia.  Planted here as a ground cover due to its rapid growth over large areas, especially where there is ample moisture.  The abundant amount of water and fertilizer that we apply to our gardens and yards gives it an extra shot in the arm.  Like many ground covers, Chameleon plant at first seems the perfect thing for a spot we wish to see "filled in" without a lot of hassle.  Unfortunately, Chameleon plant's stolons plow through soil with tenacious speed, forming a colony so dense that it successfully engulfs a garden in a few years, taking no prisoners.  Anything not rugged enough to stand up to it will soon be smothered.  Digging helps it to reproduce by chopping its roots, and its tough, waxy leaves provide resistance to herbicides.  Categorized as "difficult to control" by the Global Invasive Species List.

Verbena b.

     2. Verbena bonariensis.  A very pretty, slender-stemmed purple flowered plant that is native to South America.  Extremely popular as a summer annual or tender perennial all over the world (now considered a weed in the islands of the South Pacific).  Verbena b. spreads by seed (volunteers) anywhere it can.  The home landscape is ideal for its domination:  many cultivated areas where the soil is often worked, including all flower and vegetable beds.  It also loves gravel paths and walkways, or wherever there is a bit of grit between rocks and pavers.  Nectar-loving insects adore Verbena b., which makes it appealing in the garden especially because the flowers can rise four to six feet--no bending down to observe the butterflies.  The seeds will move great distances and volunteers are soon found in huge numbers all over your property, year after year.  Fortunately it is not too difficult to pull by hand and it responds well to herbicide control, but once established it truly becomes a nuisance.   Presently on the invasive species list in Washington State.

 Bishop's Weed

    3.  Bishop's Weed - Aegopodium podagraria (aka gout weed, snow-in-the-mountain, ground elder, and herb gerard). Native to Asia and Europe, Bishop's Weed is a favorite landscape plant because it thrives in shade--an extremely common complaint of homeowners who are flummoxed by lack of sunlight on their property.  Like Chameleon plant it spreads underground, in this case by stolons, and just as aggressively.  The Invasive Plants Atlas lists Bishop's Weed as invasive in six states including Michigan.

Common Periwinkle

     4.  Common Periwinkle - Vinca minor.  Native to Europe and Western Asia.  Another ground cover, Periwinkle will thrive in partial shade and moderate moisture but is surprisingly resilient.  Again, the American tendency to heavily water and fertilize enhances its already aggressive nature in the garden.  Planting Periwinkle beneath large shade trees is a common practice, as mistaking it for a good solution to erosion control (even the nursery retailers advertise it for this purpose).  Because of this it ends up in woods and dunes where it forms a dense mat that excludes native vegetation.  Very difficult to pull and tends to readily bounce back from herbicide damage.  Invasives.org lists Periwinkle as a severe threat in South Carolina.

English Ivy

     5.  English ivy - Hedera helix.  Native to Europe, Western Asia and Africa.  Known for covering old neoclassical buildings on college campuses, English ivy is diabolical in its ability to grow horizontally and vertically.  It invades garden beds,  hedgerows, fields, woodlands and swarms tree trunks, eventually pulling them down.  On the forest floor it prevents other plants from germinating by casting dense shade.  English ivy can cause serious poisoning in humans and animals if ingested.  Control English ivy aggressively with herbicide sprays.  Cut the trunks near the ground and cover the fresh wound with herbicide.  An area that has been invaded will require more than one year of intervention.  The Plant Conservation Alliance's Alien Plant Working Group lists English ivy as an ecological threat.

Obedient Plant

      
6.     Obedient Plant - Physotegia virginiana.  Aka False Dragonhead.  OK, to be fair, I am including this attractive flowering perennial to the list.  It is native to North America and widely distributed across the U.S.  In mid-late summer it is erect, tall--four feet--and bursting with medium pink flowers.  Obedient plant, unlike the previous five I have mentioned, is not an ecological threat but it is a threat to the gardener with limited space, which is most.  Obedient plant forms large colonies, swiftly. After all, it's in the mint family, need I say more?  In short, it's a space hog.  If you like your perennial beds neat and contained, I recommend that you do not plant it.  Pulling Obedient plant is moderately effective but root sections easily break off and regrow.  Stay of top of it by both pulling and selective herbicide use. 

Shane VanOosterhout is The Passionate Gardener.  

For more garden inspiration, you can follow him on Facebook. 

So Cute When They are Little

Chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata)

     In the beginning we are innocent, like small children who don't know better.  Leave it alone, we tell them, it's dangerous. 

     Every gardener begins anew, full of big thoughts and plenty of hubris.  A plain patch of yard will be transformed. There will be a shining garden, perhaps several, bringing beauty to the suburban kingdom, right along the back fence. It will be a new Eden, without snakes. 

     Some will dive in, unaided by design, while others will toil over the physical details--how tall, what hue, when does it bloom?  Either way the soil is mercilessly torn into ruts and then smoothed as if preparing to build a new section of highway.  Flat and uniform, we think, proud as can be.

     Next, green things are planted in the soil, placed in threes (we heard somewhere that's a good rule) and are quickly attended to with gluttonous amounts of water and fertilizer. 

     The first year we are hopeful, the second year brings anxiety: will they come back? Then we have a few pleasant years of watching the garden fill in.  Around now, a new word has entered the gardener's lexicon:  invasive.  Suddenly we despise a plant we thought we loved.  We watch in horror as it begins to appear everywhere and evade our every attempt to hold it in place.
     Remember the "ground cover" that came in a four inch pot and was so innocent then?  To call anything a ground cover is almost intoxicating to hear, it sounds like an anti-dote for every tough landscape problem.  Can't get shrubs to grow there?  You just need a ground cover, problem solved.  
     Or, problem created.
     Sometimes invasive plants come from well-meaning friends.  Gardeners love to share and too often they share the worst of the worst:  here, I have a lot of this, why don't you have some, too?  Or you saw it at a nursery under a sign that advertised, "Grows in shade!"  All too soon you learn that it grows literally everywhere.       
     Guess what? Garden centers are mostly not concerned with what happens to a plant after you buy it.  Just because a plant has a fiendish desire to conquer the universe does not mean that the grower or the retailer gives a fig. Only if gardeners stop planting it will they stop selling it in the first place.
    Once a garden is established (a slippery word, for all gardeners are Thomas Jefferson at heart), there are plants we wish we'd never put in the soil.  But the deed is done, and the gardener is now faced with what to do next.
     In my next post I will talk more about how a plant acquires its reputation as an invasive, and I will name some of the worst offenders out there.  I will also give you some tips on how you can fight the enemy, and I will provide suggestions for making better choices when adding new plants to your gardens.
     

The Un-Green Truth of the American Lawn

Nearly 5,000 square miles of the United States is sheathed in ornamental turf grass.  What a tragic waste. To care for it we use billions of tons of natural resources. 10,000 gallons of water are used per summer on the average 1,000 square foot lawn.  That comes to 7.9 billion gallons of water used per day on landscapes.  5.2 billion dollars is spent on fossil-fuel derived fertilizers for lawn.

For decades the lawn care industry has marketed the idea that lawns are "good" for the environment.  I still hear the argument that vast acres of turf provide carbon sinks and produce oxygen.  While this is relatively true, the comparison is apples to oranges.  The woodland that once prevailed in that spot--rich in biodiversity, home to countless ecosystems--is profoundly better for the environment than a monoculture of non-native, input intensive lawn. 

Americans at the local level appear to making some sane decisions regarding the regulation of phosphorous fertilizer--a known pollutant of surface waters--in home lawns.  While this is progress, banning phosphorous in lawn fertilizer should have come decades ago, and does not begin to seriously address the many major ecological problems caused by stripping out forests to put in housing and then surrounding them with sterile lawns.

There are still widely held attitudes that a home with anything less than a water and fertilizer-drenched, weed-free lawn is a sign of irresponsibility.  But when a homeowner is not legally permitted to plant a native meadow in his front yard and does not care to spend precious income on mowing, watering and fertilizing, what then? Those who attempt to plant alternatives to ornamental turf grass are regularly fined and punished by misguided ordinances and neighbors who insist that a well-kept lawn is the only correct way to property management.

We need to begin to radically change how we view and define "landscaping." Somehow we've come to equate, without question, environmentally unsound practices as defacto homesteading.  Questioning and challenging these unsustainable practices sometimes unleashes suspicion, mockery and even outright hostility toward those who oppose the standard lawn.  Therefore, it is our job to lead through education and the re-writing of needlessly restrictive ordinances.

It is also officially time to re-evaluate the fantasy of the lawn, and to begin to see it as an indulgent vanity of past ignorance.  In its place we will bring back the native plants that offer real value by contributing to the local food web and do not require fertilizers, pesticides and underground irrigation systems.

Once we see with our own eyes the return of now rare butterflies, moths and once-common songbird that eat them, when algae blooms in ponds and lakes are no longer annual events, we might actually have the opportunity to see our beautiful country the way the pioneers did--with utter awe at the natural beauty that now, 250 years later, is a pale shadow of its glorious past.