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The Garden Club |
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Featured Plant
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This is a plant of outstanding winter and early spring interest with its twisted branches and late winter pendulous catkins. The corkscrew twisted branches are clothed in lush dark green foliage in spring and summer. It gets big -- up to 10' wide and 10' tall. Well suited as a specimen plant. Especially dramatic in an oriental garden. Every Harry Lauder's Walking Stick was propagated from a single plant that was discovered in an English hedgerow in the 19th century.
Use
Branches for Indoor Decoration |
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Garden Club Questions & Answers |
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Question: We’re
going to re-landscape our house this spring. Do you have any
thoughts on how to select a good landscaper? My neighbors had
some work done last year. They weren’t particularly happy and I
don’t think it looked really good either.
In general my experience, only the largest jobs require a formal landscape plan and too much money is often spent on plans and too little on high quality plants. If you already have a plan, be sure to get a second opinion from a knowledgeable “plant person”. Many landscape designers do a great job at design and a poor job of plant selection. Finally, you will want to take all the precautions that you would take in contracting for any home improvement work. Question: I was thinking of forcing some branches this winter. Is it too early? What type of branches do you recommend that I force?
Answer: It’s not too early to force early spring blooming shrubs like Forsythia, Witch Hazel, Pussy Willow, Quince and Harry Lauder's Walking Stick. I suspect that you should wait until early February to force later spring blooming branches such as apples or cherries. You should cut the branches and keep them in water in a dark cool place for a week or until the buds start to swell. Then they can be moved to a warm, sunny place. I recommend you crush the bottom inch or so of the branch stems before placing them in water. This helps the plant take up the water. Question: We’re going to have the woods behind our house thinned. The tree service gave me two quotations. One includes stump grinding and the other for just cutting the trees to the ground. Do you think I need to pay extra to have all the stumps ground out?
Answer: Grinding out the stumps has several benefits. If the stump is ground out you can plant in the exact same places where the old trees were. But unless you desire to plant understory trees, shrubs and perennials in the places where taller trees were, I wouldn’t spend the money for stump grinding. A thinned woodland garden is supposed to look natural; the cut stumps actually add to the effect. In an informal woodland garden, you usually have good flexibility as to where you can plant --especially if you are trying to achieve a naturalistic effect.
Stump grinding usually prevents any suckers from re-growing. But, many types of trees will not sucker from cut stumps. You can always spray those that do carefully with an application or two of Round-Up. In short, unless you want to plant a lawn in the thinned woodland, stump grinding is usually not necessary. Question: I have hemlocks in a shady area for screen, but the little white insects were so bad and the plants have gotten so scraggly that I had them cut down. But now I miss the screen. The area is partially shaded and I’m having trouble coming up with an evergreen to replace the hemlocks. What do you suggest?
Answer: In a shady spot there are no evergreens that will provide screening as well as the hemlocks did when they were healthy. Norway spruce is a possibility for a lightly shaded area. Viburnum pragense is an outstanding choice, but it matures only to 10’. Rhododendrons, American hollies and upright yews are all possibilities, but they are all slower growing than hemlocks. Only American holly will ultimately achieve the same size as the hemlock. American hollies will thrive in a heavily shaded place but the foliage cover will be thin.
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