Dirty hands, iced tea, garden fragrances thick in the air and a blanket of color before me. Who could ask for more?
~Bev
Adams, Mountain Gardening
When editing a new-to-you garden, it’s good to
take a step back and see what is there that you can use and what you absolutely
don’t want. In my case, a wisteria and a
laurel had to go. Both didn’t have the room to grow to their mature size where
they were planted and both would require a lot of pruning.
I have grown wisteria before. It is lovely. It
requires a hard prune back to its main branching each year in late winter to
keep it in check. Also, Wisterias often won’t bloom unless the new growth
curling tendrils are cut off. Every 2 weeks. All summer long. The plant puts its
energy into the new growing of leaf and vine. But you want flowers so you need
to redirect that growth back into the older wood to produce blooming cells that
will lie deep in the older woody stems until the following spring. The wisteria
here was on an arbor, 8 feet high over a gate. The house was on one side and a
neighbor’s fence on the other. It only had about 10 feet width of freedom to
climb and reach. Not nearly enough for a wisteria. And I was not about to get
out my ladder every two weeks to climb up to keep the tendrils cut off.
Then there is the Laurel. Laurels grow fast, flowers
for a short period of time and sets seed with abandon. It was clear to me by
its location that it was planted to provide a quick privacy screen. Laurel can
quickly grow to heights over a 2 story house and easily as wide. The previous
owners had kept cutting it down to a height of 6 feet in a weird flat shape
about 8-10 feet wide. It also had old damage which could eventually allow in
insect damage and rot.
Its seed
drop was in a radius of 10 feet so was sprouting seedlings far and wide, and
clearly would do so every year. It created plants that were already 2-3 feet in
diameter, growing under the nearby wood deck. Selecting a laurel for this
application in this location meant sweeping seeds off the deck every spring and
early summer as they drop, constant weeding of its seedlings, and removal of
deck floor boards to get to the plants that will sprout and grow underneath.
The title of this post could have been ‘right
plant, right place” but, “Work with What You’ve Got” is the rest of the story
about the Wisteria and the Laurel.
As for the wisteria, since its branching structure
was entangled in and held up by the arbor above the gate, I cut it off at the
base of the trunk to kill the branches. I did use a non-selective chemical
herbicide to spray on the base of the trunk to kill the root. I don’t want it
coming back and without spray it will sprout again. You can also kill a
wisteria root by keeping the root area wet. Wisteria don’t like wet feet and
will eventually succumb to root rot, but it will take more time and a lot of
water.
Then I trimmed away all the leafy stems, leaving
the nice branching framework overhead that to me is attractive.
I will plant a more demure flowering vine at the
base and it will scramble up the old wisteria branches, so I don’t have to
provide any twine or wire support to give it a leg up. Its already there.
I will choose a clematis from pruning group 3 that
will grow fresh vines from the root each spring. Clematis from this group bloom
in late summer and are the easiest to keep maintained and fresh looking. All
the annual cleanup it will require is cutting it back to 12-20 inches (30-50
cm) or so from the ground each spring just as you see new growth beginning. The
delicate vines will naturally die away in winter and will be easy to pull down
and put in my compost pile. No weekly tendril cutting, no annual selective pruning, no ladders involved, and
likely a longer bloom time than the wisteria.
There are hundreds of Clematis varieties to choose
from. The important thing to remember is that they are divided into 3 groups,
depending on best pruning methods for each. Their pruning group number will be 1,2
or 3. This number is also a good indicator of when it will bloom. A google
search will give you links to a lot of great sites that will explain this
further. I really like Lee Reich’s article in Fine Gardening Issue 90 “Pruning
Clematis”. Just try to choose the plant from the pruning group that will make its
upkeep easiest for you.
Now over to the Laurel. It is a self-supporting
tree trunk, and I wanted to keep the branching structure to use as a trellis.
After cutting off all the leaves and small branches I left only the largest
branches in what I think is a nice looking structure.
Then I scored the trunk at the base, all the way
around with a wood rasp to cut through the thin bark, thus cutting off the
plant’s ability to transport nutrients and water up the tree’s vascular system.
That will kill all of it above the cut, much like a deer will when he destroys
the bark all the way around a tree trunk with his horns. This is a form of
girdling the tree. Since it is a laurel, it will sprout from below the girdle,
so I did also spray the stripped area with chemical concentrate herbicide. I
don’t like using chemicals, but there are instances where it is the most
effective way to achieve the result you want. The methods I choose are always to
use the least amount of chemical possible. In this case, rather than spraying
all the leafy growth and waiting for the whole thing to die, I only sprayed in its
most critical areas, the fresh cuts, and let the trees vascular system take it
down to the root.
I did all this 2 months ago and have seen no new sprouting,
so I think it worked. This Laurel provided a small amount of privacy for us and
the neighbors, so to get that back I have planted 2 Star Jasmine
(trachelospermum jasminoides) at the now girdled base. The poison in the root
of the Laurel will not travel through the soil and affect the Jasmine or any
neighboring plants. The jasmine will scramble up the trunk and branching left
behind to provide an evergreen screen that will waft wonderful jasmine
fragrance from July to August for both us and our neighbors. I can’t wait to
see it fill in and enjoy the aroma in the warm summer breezes.
So that’s the rest of the story. A damaged and way
too big laurel has become my Jasmine trellis and a high maintenance wisteria has
also become a trellis up which an easy to maintain clematis will grow. By doing
selective cutting and removal, I kept the structure from old, overgrown plants
that were very high on the time-consuming maintenance list, on which I can grow
new selections that are better suited to the spaces in which they are planted. That
is how “right plant right place” gives the gardener more time to sip iced tea in
their garden, enjoying the fragrances and the flowers, rather than just a lot
of annually repetitive hard work.
Cheers!
In Bloom in my Garden Today: Sedum,
Dianthus, Lavender, Agastache Anise Hyssop, Rose, Hydrangea, Nepeta, Salvia,
Lobelia, Daisy, Knifophia, Cuphea, Geum, Fuchsia, Hardy Geranium, Potentilla, Asclepias,
Gladiolus ‘Boone’
(heirloom 1920’s), Lysimachia ephemerum (non invasive loosestrife), Oregano
Authors photos
