Wisteria can be very fragrant, the scent reminds me of orange blossoms. It can drift across the garden on warm, spring days.

Pruning aggressively is key, but always with a thoughtful eye. eventually, these tiny branches on this three year old specimen will mature into thick, trunk-like branches, making what was once a lowly vine, a stunning tree-like specimen. Pruning can occur throughout the year, but to endure blooms, it is best to prune heavily just after flowering.

The post Training a Tree Wisteria appeared first on Growing With Plants.

A VINTAGE METAL COOLER IS PLANTED WITH HIGH-ELEVATION MOUNTAIN TOP PLANTS

THE PLANTS HERE ARE A MIXTURE OF ALPINE PLANTS FROM SOUTH AMERICA ( THE OXALIS ON THE LOWER LEFT) TO LEWISIA, ON THE LOWER RIGHT NAMED AFTER MERIWEATHER LEWIS, SO A BIT OF MONTANA.

MANY OF THESE COOLERS CAN BE FOUND FOR LESS THAN $20 ON EBAY, OR A LOCAL YARD SALES FOR $5.00, ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE SLIGHTLY RUSTED, AS THIS ONE IS ( DOUBLE INSULATED, THE RUST OFTEN ONLY OCCURS ON THE OUTSIDE LAYER). JUST DRILL HOLES IN THE BOTTOM EVERY THREE INCHES TO ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE DRAINAGE.

A LAYER OF GRAVEL IS ADDED IN THE BOTTOM, WHICH MAKES THE COOLER HEAVY, BUT IT IS NECESSARY.  TODAY, MANY ALPINE PLANTS CAN BE FOUND AT YOUR BETTER LOCAL NURSERIES, BUT YOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY MORE INTERESTING ONES FROM A SPECIALIST GROWER.

 Alpine plants can be a broad term, if you are not too adventurous, you can simply use sempervivums or succulents, which will perform very well in a container like this, but if you want something more authentic, then you can mix in some rare or interesting alpine plants ( try ordering from Wrightman Alpines, or check out next Saturday’s giant alpine plant sale at Stonecrop in Cold Spring New York, where on Saturday, April 28 from 9:00 am until 3:00 am, the 5th annual North American Rock Garden Society plant sale occurs.  Some of the finest growers will be there, and they could even help you recreate a scene from your favorite mountain range ( The alps, Aspen, the Cascades, the Bitteroots).

STICKER HELP WITH THE LOOK, BUT CURATE THEM CAREFULLY – THIS IS THE FUN PART. SEARCH ONLINE FOR STICKERS ON EBAY OR START COLLECTING THEM FROM YOUR FAVORITE RESORTS, MOUNTAIN BRANDS OR SOMETHING THAT MATCHES YOUR LIFESTYLE.  TRY ASKING FOR THEM AT YOUR LOCAL MOUNTAINEERING STORE, OFTEN THEY ASRE FREE. THEMES CAN BE  AS STYLISH  AS VAIL, AS POSH AS PONTRESINA, SWITZERLAND, OR AS EXTREME AS, OH, I DON’T KNOW, THE  XGAMES.

The post Up-Cycling A Vintage Cooler into an Alpine Trough appeared first on Growing With Plants.

A WALK AROUND THE GARDEN, CAN RESULT IN UNUSUAL MATERIALS FOR HOME-MADE WREATHS. THIS ALPINE WREATH WAS CONSTRUCTED WITH CLIPPINGS FROM ALPINE DAPHNE SPECIES, ERICA, HEATH, DWARF RHODODENDRON, REINDEER MOSS AND MINIATURE SHRUB CLIPPINGS.

 Commercial wreaths can be so boring. On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, my father would take us on hikes into the woods to collect Holiday greens. Armed with large, musty burlap chicken grain bags that said “Blue Seal Feeds” on them, each of us would search for Kalmia, white pine, ground pines and Gaultheria ( oh, so illegal now!). Once home with our spoils, we warmed up with hot chocolate and mom’s date nut bread, as dad prepared the living room floor with drop clothes. We would spend the night, making garlands, wreaths and berry bowls marking the official start of the Holiday season.

Clippings in the Alpine Wreath include miniature berried shrubs, dwarf alpine willow, and various lichens and mosses.

Fresh olive greens make a Mediterranean statement, and a unique wreath for a New England home, since olive trees cannot be grown outdoors in zone 5. My annual December pruning session so that the larger plants in tubs will fit in the greenhouse provides enough olive, rosemary and bay laurel to make a few of these sweet wreaths for our home, or for special gifts.

The post Botanical Wreaths from the Garden appeared first on Growing With Plants.

PLEACHING A TINY HEDGE OF PINK-FLOWERED ROSEMARY, MAKES AN INTERESTING DESIGN ELEMENT FOR A DECK OR TERRACE

 Mid summer is a great time to start cutting for potted topiary trees or to train existing topiary. This year I am trying a few different things, and the most exciting is my project called Pleached Rosemary Hedge, which I am growing in four window boxes. Pleaching trees or shrubs, is a classical training method that usually involves weaving branches or trimming and training a series of trese or shrub to create what is essentially a raised hedge. What I am doing it bringing it down in scale – really down. I am not sure what I will do with my tiny hedge, but it is portable, since I am growing it in window boxes, so at the very least, it will look nice on the railing of the deck, or along a walk.

THE TWO LARGE TOPIARY TREES ON EITHER SIDE OF THE GREENHOUSE ARE BAY LAUREL TREES, AND THE TWO SMALLER TOPIARY TREES ARE A ROSEMARY ON THE LEFT, AND A WESTRINGIA ROSEMARIFOLIA ON THE RIGHT.

THESE SMALL ROSEMARY TREES ARE IN NEED FOR A TRIM, IN FACT, A TIGHT TRIM ALMOST BACK TO THE MAIN STEM. WHY? BECAUSE A DENSE INTERIOR BRANCHING WILL GIVE YOU A TOPIARY THAT IS MORE FULL, AND LESS LIKELY TO SPLIT.

A FULL GROWN ROSEMARY TOPIARY, HERE, A WHITE FLOWERED FORM IN A TALL CONTAINER THAT I KEEP ON THE WALK. THIS IS ONE OF A PAIR, AND IT WAS STARTED FROM A CUTTING THAT I TOOK TWO YEARS AGO.

 Training topiary trees is not hard, you simply need to find a plant that will grow woody, and one that can be cut back hard, for frequent trimming is key if you want to achieve a tight globe.

This more unusual plant, a Dyschoriste hygrophylodes will make a very interesting topiary subject, because it will have violet blossoms like purple petunias.

 One common mistake with young plants that you want to train into topiary, is to trim them too early, this is especially true with tropical plants, like this one, and even Myrtles or Rosemary – Of course you want to allow a central leader to become the main stem, which you will tie gently with twine or even better, real raffia, to a sturdy non-metal stake. Then, don’t trim off the horizontal branches too early, for they are necessary to the plant to photosynthesize, and to provide nutrients to the plant. All too often, I have seen people pot up a rosemary cutting, then they strip off all of the foliage leaving just the very top. What happens is that the plant then goes into shock, and growth slows down. Finding the perfect time to trim off the horizontal branches on the trunk is key, but a good rule of thumb is that while in training mode, keep at least two thirds of the foliage on the main stem until your plant reaches the height you want, and then when you snip the main leader off, you can start removing the growth on the main stem up to where you want the globe, or globes.

 Tie the main stem gently to a bamboo cane or pole., and leave enough foliage on the plant so that it can still gather nutrients to grow on, faster. You can always remove these leaves later as long as the stems are still not woody.

The post Topiary and Pleached Potted Plants appeared first on Growing With Plants.

Other containers I am potting up include the regular stand by’s, Abutilon, Brugmansia and the like, plus a few new small tender shrubs and tropicals like these. On the left, a dwarf Ruscus aculeatus ‘Christmas Berry’, or Butcher’s Broom which should be loaded with red berries in the autumn that will accent the green glazed ceramic container perfectly.

  On the right, a  Berbidgea schizocheila, or “golden Brush ( see image below from Logee’s site). The orange blossoms of this ginger relative should look nice with this new brown glazed pot.

The post Planting Containers – Cool Specimen Plants appeared first on Growing With Plants.

A concrete Chesterfield Sofa? Oh yes, not leather, but a real chesterfield cast in concrete, created by Steve Jones for a British concrete company, Gray Concrete. I am reminded of Rachel Whiteread, the UK contemporary artist who casts the negative space of objects, but this if far more useful ( and probably more affordable). It even has a coin cast behind a pillow for authenticity. This is a piece of garden furniture any man would appreciate. Next? A cast big screen tv anyone?

The post Garden Folly appeared first on Growing With Plants.

I really enjoy keeping and training various topiaried tender trees and shrubs, in the temperate greenhouse in my garden. Here, in my studio, I am giving some of the Myrtles a trim and clip, before returning them to the glass house where temperatures are colder, and moist. Nothing kills a Myrtle faster than the combination of winter dry air indoors, and a lack of water, which is what I will undoubtedly do. The same goes for Rosemary, of which, about a third of my topiary’s are.

This past September, I took cutting from the various topiary trees I keep, so that new ones can be started, since there comes a point when they outgrow their size, and the sphere’s become either too dense, or grow out of scale.I’ve let a number of Rosemary topiary freeze this autumn, since they seem to outgrow their form faster than Myrtles. Other Genus are kept in the greenhouse until they bloom, for they require different treatments, such as Citrus, Westringia and those plants in the legume family.

The post Holiday topiary get a trim for the new year appeared first on Growing With Plants.

Born and raised in New England, I had grown accustomed to the Berry Bowl, a traditional craft which was simple, inexpensive and beautiful. It’s been difficult to research the history of the Berry Bowl, but what little I could find, explained that colonial women would gather woodland plants in late autumn and early winter, and arrange or plant them in moss, also from the woods in a glass vessel, which would undoubtedly be something they had arround the house, such as a fancy glass, or a canning jar. Essentially, this was a terrarium, which would last for the entire winter indoors, in a cold house, reminding them of the summer woodland. The plants in Berry Bowls are strictly limited to a few species, all grow in New England, and near my home in Massachusetts, and they include the Checker Berry ( which tastes like wintergreen), rattlesnake plantaoin, ( Goodyera pubescens), with it’s white and green netted foliage, a native wild orchid and Partridge Berry ( MItchella repens) a vine which creeps along the forest floor and whose vivid bright red berries are most decorative once the leaves fall off of the trees, between October and Christmas.

The Berry Bowl Reinvented with cultivated plants.

When I was young, I was quite active with the Worcester County Horticultural Society, a very active and prosperous Horticultural Society ( now transformed into Boston’s premier Horticultural center, the Tower Hill Botanic Garden). In the 1960’s and 1970’s, I was very active in competitive classes in the Society’s annual exhibitions, and the Holiday exhibition was most competitive, with classes to enter in such things as Della Robia swags and wreaths’ ( think- old Della Robia paintings, or better yet, Xmas decorations at Colonial Williamsburg with lemons, oranges, other citrus, pineapples and greens), and classes like Pomanderballs ( clove studded citrus), and most competitive, the Christmas Tree decorating section, I don’t know what I was thinking competing against garden clubs and private estates, but even though I was out of my league, and 30 years younger than everyone else ( I think most joined these old societies for the cocktail party opening events,- I mean, founded in 1856, china in the old kitchens with the seal of the society on them, cocktail trays,…) but since I could not drink yet, it was the Berry Bowl class which I would enter, which at least would get me out into the woods for a week searching for the perfect Goodyeara or even a Pipsissewa ( Chimaphila maculata) if I was lucky to tear out of the ground. Not unlike truffle hunting, each competitor had their own secret source for such rarities. I still can;t look at Richard Jordan, another local boy who, in a year with no sign of a Rattlesnake Plantain in a 20 mile radius, would show up with a massive glass brandy snifter with three stunning specimens, claiming the cash prize of $6.00 and the treasured State Rosette.

My New Berry Bowl Experiment.

Today, things are different. I can’t imagine collecting wild orchids and ‘secret sources’ for Partridge Berries’ from the ‘wild’, although not all on the endangered species list, most of these plants are, or should be protected. So in my search for a replacement, I am trying some experiments. All the same, I have some rules, such as, keeping the same aesthetic and a similar species list, with substitutions. Here is my first attempt which I tried yesterday. Moss from the woods, and instead of Partridge Berry, I used some cuttings that I took of the Japanese evergreen Ardisia, which I grow in the greenhouse, and combined this with a relative of the Goodyera orchid, another ‘Jewel Orchid’, (Sarcoglottis septrodes), which I selected for it white veined foliage.
I used a glass vessel that one would place a pillar candle in, a sort-of hurricane glass, in which I placed a layer of pebbles, a tuft of Sphagnum moss, since the Sarcoglottis will need moss and not soil, and then I used the root ball of the Ardisia which is composed of mainly Pro Mix, a commercial soiless mix intact, but placed deep into the moss. The entire surface was then covered in a tuft of moss, and in that, I planted a cutting from a Rabbit’s foot fern ( in place of the Rock Polypody, which would have been easy for me to ‘collect’ from the granite boulders in the woodland behind my house, but irresponsible, to do so, none the less. I feel pretty great with the results.

Everyone loves a soil test kit for Christmas. Double click the image to see the caption, ahhh…..the 50’s.

The post Rediscovering the Craft of Berry Bowls appeared first on Growing With Plants.

The post Pleaching Hornbeams appeared first on Growing With Plants.