Month: May 2015

Fall 2012 – Sale Plants

We’re pretty desperate to repopulate our slope with plants of various sizes. We’re aiming for a balanced mixture of  small trees, shrubs, perennials and groundcovers.

When we order plants, we try to order a lot, and then plant them in various spots we think they might be happy, and then see how they actually work where they were sited, over time. It’s good to order numbers of things also, since not all will survive.

The fall is a great time to pick up plants on sale. Each fall, I try to hit the big garden places and pick over what they’ve got left. Twice, I found Clethra alnifolia (summersweet) this way. Otherwise, clethras can be pretty expensive. In fall of 2012 I also acquired:

1 Sweet Autumn Clematis – W side of nursery area
1 Phlox Paniculata Eva Cullum – garden phlox – mid slope, close to “lawn”
1 Vaccinum Macrocarpum “WSU” American Cranberry – W slope dappled sunlight
3 Monarda didyma “Bee Balm” “Fireball” – slope E side, closer to pond

Junipers and Arborvitaes Instead of “Lawn”

Teeny tiny young arborvitaes and junipers are planted in what used to be a “lawn.” It hadn’t really been a lawn of grass. Though it was kept mowed most of the time, calling it a lawn would have been stretching it. We don’t really need a lawn there, anyway. The turtles, snakes and groundhogs seem to prefer the plants, also!

evergreens photo
Former “lawn” now planted with evergreens

Looking Across the Slope Toward the East in July, 2012

To the left of this large willow, we discovered another small (and non-invasive!) shrub. You can barely see the tiny young groundcover junipers. In the lower right is a variegated red twig dogwood I got for a great price at good ‘ole Costco.

photo of slope
Most of the huge tree and shrub invasives are now gone from the slope. Friendlier, native plants have been planted in their place.

Native Birch Tree Grove Planted Over Knotweed Area

From the first big plant order, we sited 3 Betula nigras on the slope, over the area where the knotweed infestation used to be. I hope to add more in the future, of these beautiful NE native trees. They’re just whips in this photo; see the round circles of mulch around them:

photo of young river birches
Betula nigra planted over former knotweed area

Little Bluestem, the Slope’s Best Friend

Little bluestem is a beautiful, native grass that turns many colors, not just blue. When I found out that its roots can go down as much as six feet, I started planting them on the slope, to help with erosion. The only place I’ve been able to find them around here is the Garden in the Woods. Here’s one of the first batch, newly planted, by the highbush blueberries.

photo of little bluestem
Taken from the middle of the slope, looking east, little bluestem and highbush blueberries

You Can Never Have Too Many Wood Chips

Our first pile of wood chips went right into our front yard. A friend had given us some magnolias, redbuds and dogwoods. Still in their pots, I buried them in the wood chips, where they successfully overwintered.

The second big pile of wood chips we scored from a tree person was placed in the back acre, which we now owned. Now we had chips closer to where we needed them the most, where the ground was flatter. There are only a few little areas on the slope where wood chips work as mulch, without washing away in the rain.

photo of landscape
Wood chip pile in back acre was a great asset. This was the year we finished renovating our entryway, kitchen, great room, powder room and laundry room, so we still have the darn dumpster. It’s been there so long, it’s on Google earth!

Real Mulch for the Slope

I called around, trying to find the exact right kind of mulch for the slope. It couldn’t be wood chips, because they’d just wash away in the rain. It couldn’t be fine pieces, either. Instead, I found the biggest, most irregular pieces of bark, that would sort of hook onto each other, and stop from sliding down. It was hard to find mulch that hadn’t been treated with color, for a reasonable price.

We had an entire team of guys come over and help us plant all the plants we ordered, and also do some weeding and mulching.

It almost looked too manicured. I actually prefer a more naturalistic design. But at least the knotweed was being kept at bay (not to mention the bittersweet, multiflora, tartarian honeysuckle, autumn olive, grapevine and spurges).

photo of east slope
The largest shrub next to the terra cotta urn is a willow we left there; it likes that spot, because that’s where water goes down the slope. The other four larger shrub/trees are gray alders (alnus incana). I have many good things to say about them, one of which is, they fix nitrogen in the soil. (Our neighbors towed away their sunken backhoe soon thereafter!)
photo of west slope, mulched
This photo shows a couple of other willows taking advantage of a wonderful site. The infamous black tarp is still down (between the big white rock and the dumpster). I have no idea of what the other largish plants are. The landscape team probably felt sorry for us, and wanted to leave something standing. In the top left corner is a blue spruce I got for a great price at Costco. The bittersweet vines choking the trees have been cut as much as possible, however, large fragments of them are still left hanging in the trees. To their right, there are mulch circles for the 3 river birches, just whips at the time.