Work with What You've Got

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.

 

 As one that has worked in the plant nursery industry, I can guarantee there are thousands of plants from which to choose. There are right plants and very definitely wrong plants for you. The phrase, “right plant, right place” means just that. An experienced nursery professional can steer you to the right plant for your location, skill in maintenance and time you want to dedicate to its care. The perfect choice is one that will not create a lot of work for you and eventually become such a monster that it overwhelms you and the spot it is planted in.

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