I’ve experimented with new plants, well, new to me, and I find some are also a bit too much. Snow in summer (Cerastium tomentosum) makes me ridiculously happy when it’s in bloom. Then that delight is overshadowed with frustration as it spreads and spreads. If I had a tough hillside, where I didn’t need to worry about this non-native plant escaping, perhaps I would feel elation as it crawled about at will. However, in our side gravel garden it begs to be ripped out. On the plus side, if you want to work out some aggression or frustration, taking a heavy editing hand to this plant may make you feel better. And, as it is an overachiever, enough will survive and carry on, keeping the garden looking nice.

I am waiting with bated breath to see how generous our Penstemon digitalis is in the back garden. In our front garden we have Penstemon ‘Husker Red’ which is quite the re-seeder. Too much for my liking. But again, we have great soil and no mulch, so any plant that wants to reseed, can and will. Will the native Penstemon follow suit? Spring will tell.

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There may be a time, when the human hand needs to take the reins and refocus the more natural gardens. This is the case for our office garden. I let things do as they pleased last year as a bit of an experiment. What I learned is that with our wonderfully rich soil, everything likes to grow and grow well. Some native plants set roots in our garden and looked fine for a month or so but were not always in keeping with what we want the garden to be long term. For example, iron weed volunteered well, but often in areas that felt crowded, and they were not in keeping with the neighboring plants. There’s nothing subtle about this plant and that doesn’t always work well in a garden plan. A lot of judicious pruning kept many iron weed volunteers in a better relationship with neighboring plants, and they still bloomed to the pollinators’ delight, but do I want to have to worry about Chelsea chopping iron weed throughout the garden? I think not.

Visitors who are already enamored with planting for nature and are more relaxed than formal with their garden’s design, rejoice in our lush, intermingled garden that dances to its own rhythm. But those that are still getting used to not having boxwoods clipped into unnatural shapes find it’s a little too much to take in, to digest, and to appreciate. So, a little re-work is in order.

This spring I’ll do some heavy editing and then plant substantial areas with the same plant. I want to bring the garden back to a more legible state for new gardeners.

If we are to entice those who have never planted with nature, the garden needs to be more approachable. It needs to be more of an example of what a garden planted for nature can look like in the home landscapes. Legibility is key. Inevitably, when giving a garden talk, a comment is made that the public gardens of famed designers are spectacular, but don’t translate to the home garden. Envisioning the gardens of the High Line in the front yard is a bit of a stretch for many. Famous public gardens are much like a couture fashion show: amazing to behold, but not representative of what most of us will find in our wardrobe.

I believe the goal of our gardens at the shop and the public spaces we adopt should be to deviate enough from expected landscape norms to entice but still be approachable enough to inspire homeowners to rethink their own landscape and gardens.

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“In a hot, cement, heavily trafficked area, you can now see a slice of beauty. This garden illustrates how even small spaces can be an oasis for nature,” shares Peter Wimberg.

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Penstemon Digitalis

What started as plugs last fall was a sea of tubular flowers, swaying in the breeze this spring. The white blooms against the early green flush of the spring garden were striking. The bees delighted in the flowers. The seed heads are interesting and will lend winter interest to the garden. I’m not sure how readily it reseeds, so we’ll deadhead some to be on the safe side.

Dill

Could this be the best $4 spent? Perhaps. A host plant for swallowtail butterflies, this plant has been a lovely contributor to the pollinator garden. It does re-seed, which is nice, but can be overwhelming for new gardeners or those with loose soil because the better your soil, the easier it is for plants to re-seed. Fortunately, the young plants are easy to spy as soon as they emerge, and with our loose garden soil, editing unwanted plants is a simple task. Ours are incredibly tall, almost to a ridiculous degree. It’s common for dill to reach four feet. Our stand has taken that as challenge, often surpassing the six-foot mark. The plants in our gardens are volunteers – the offsprings from the original plants installed three years ago. I don’t need all the plants to go to seed, and some of the volunteers are in areas of the garden where a six-foot-tall plant would look quite odd. Therefore, we deadhead some and Chelsea Chop others to create a more aesthetically pleasing garden. Care is taken to allow several to flower and go to seed to ensure a new crop next spring.  

Native Pachysandra

What a treat this plant has been. What started as the tiniest of plugs last year, in an area that we can’t amend to the degree I would like due to tree roots; these native plants have excelled. It’s a calm plant, not one to stop you in your tracks, but its foliage is worth noting and the tiny white flowers are charming. It would look divine snuggling in amongst the Pennsylvania and Appalachian Sedge. And for the record, our native sedges are thriving in our shade garden. Evergreen, easy to tidy up should you choose to do so in the spring, these native sedges are easy to grow, offer interesting flowers and seeds, and are ideal for those considering a matrix shade garden planting style.

Asclepias tuberosa

This plant has been quite curious this spring. I know to be patient with this native as it is very slow to emerge, but what I didn’t expect is to find new plants emerging as late as July first. Going forward, I will always keep their space in the garden reserved, even into summer. I would hate to assume its demise in late June and add a plant in its garden spot when now I know there’s the chance it will begin to emerge in July. Because our gardens are on the lush side, keeping a few spaces open, while we patiently await the Asclepias to emerge will matter not.

Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’

I’ve had nothing but success with this plant. Easy to grow, thrives in the sun, attractive to bees, stands through winter, and spreads very politely via stolons, this plant is on the top of my list.  If you deadhead, it will bloom again. If you don’t deadhead, some will still re-bloom. And if you are a hands-off gardener, the stems and seed heads stand to offer winter interest to the garden. You really can’t go wrong with this plant.

Mountain Mint

The Perennial Plant of the Year is recommended with a word of caution. In areas of our landscape that are not blessed with rich, loose soil, it seems to remain rather tight and tidy. But, in areas where we amend the soil, it can take over with reckless abandon.  We edit a fair amount of the plant each year to prevent it from steamrolling neighboring plants. What does this mean to you, the home gardener? If you have been working your beds, your soil is likely conducive to plant expansion. I would not plant along a fence line – your neighbor may not relish this aggressive intruder.  If you do have the ability to keep this in check, or the room to let it roam, the bees will be forever in your debt. This is by far one of the most popular pollinator plants in our garden.

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Photo: image: Rain Water Run Off, 2021

The post The not so dead, dead hedge. first appeared on Wimberg Landscaping.

I recently spoke to a head volunteer at the Piet Oudolf Detroit garden, and of course our conversation found its way to getting our hands in the gardens once again. While I had a clear, sunny day, my Detroit friend was gazing at garden beds blanketed in snow. She shared that this was not a bad thing. It was the cold, after all, that would allow them to carry out their late winter- early spring garden tasks.

As the Detroit garden features a wonderful selection of bulbs, they must cut back the garden, otherwise the early spring blooms would be lost amongst the still-standing grasses and spent perennials. The garden is cut back, with material made into small pieces to rest gracefully on the garden’s surface. Hollow and pithy stems can be left somewhat standing or taken to a different area of the garden. When this happens, the stems are not chopped, but left in their entirety so that insects can make use of them this coming season.

The clean-up is timed with the temperature of the garden’s soil. When it’s still frozen, walking about the garden will not harm the soil or creatures residing within, such as ground nesting bees.

The objective in any garden task is to do no harm.

In our area, the weather is such that the ground is likely not frozen. As I write this, last night’s snow may have created a lovely winter view from our windows, but the soil is soft, even squishy in parts. We, unlike our northern gardening friends in Detroit, should not be in the gardens just yet. We need to wait for another freeze of the soil, or until the soil dries and warms up a bit before we start our spring tidy up.

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It only takes one weather event, one pest, one disease to wreak havoc on our gardens. And why is this? Simple! We tend to plant monocultures. A walk around my neighborhood reveals a depressing number of the same shrubs repeated street after street, block after block. Boxwoods, Taxus, burning bush, and Otto Luykens are the shrub du jour. Although the number of Otto Luykens is quite diminished thanks to the aforementioned winter weather event.  The first question is why? Why the allegiance to just a handful of plants when in our area we have an incredible, some would say overly daunting, list of plants that would be quite at home in our gardens? Second, I wonder why don’t we want anything new to look at? Wouldn’t it be nice to come home to a front landscape that is distinctly and unabashedly unique and a reflection of the owner? One house’s front garden could be adorned with white flowering plants, the next a short matrix meadow, and the third an English cottage garden gracefully spilling over the front walk. If we are all so unique why are our gardens so homogenous?

A resilient landscape begins with plant diversity. The more plants you add to your garden and the more diverse the plant offering, the more resilient is your landscape. For one, an event will only harm a few plants, not the entire lot. Second, the more beneficial insects and birds we invite to the gardens, the more nature will handle the eradication of unwanted pests. In other words, the good bugs eliminate the bad bugs.

If you’re to do anything this year in your garden, consider how to add more plants. Consider how to expand your plant offering to create a garden that is resilient, beautiful, and supports nature. This can be as easy as reclaiming the areas of mulch in the garden beds and giving them over to new plants. It may be adding a second row of shrubs of a few varieties to the privacy planting to introduce flowers, berries, movement, and textures. And it may be as easy, although a bit of muscle will be needed, as removing the invasive groundcover, and adding beneficial plants.

Be overly generous with your planting this year. Give your landscape the armor it needs to defend itself against weather events, pests, and disease with a wide variety of plants.

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Next on my resolution is to re-read my Piet Oudolf books. His books are exceptionally well-written with delicious photos to help soothe over our gray, cold winter days. It’s just the garden tonic we need.

Next on my resolution list is to add more native plants. Native plants are well represented in my gardens already, but adding more will do no harm. In fact, it will do a lot of good for supporting the native bees and hummingbirds. If this will be your first resolution to plant native plants, may I suggest Asclepias tuberosa. It’s compact, easy to grow, adored by the monarch butterfly and her caterpillars, and pairs well with Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’.

My next resolution is to give myself permission to remove plants I simply don’t like. Are they still healthy and in good shape? Sure, but I still don’t like them. Your yard is only so big. Your garden is most likely just a part of your yard. That doesn’t leave a lot of space in which to create and experiment: to bring into your personal garden world plants you delight in seeing. If that shrub is just there, because it’s always been there, but you can’t remember why or ever even liking it, do away with it. Life’s too short for plants we don’t love.

And speaking of life’s too short: it’s too short for boring gardens. If your garden fails to bring you joy spring through fall, perhaps even in the winter: if your garden isn’t always changing, offering new blooms and textures throughout the year, if it isn’t luring you outside, even when you’re busy, overwhelmed and juggling too many plates, then your garden is boring. When it comes to what’s around us in our day-to-day, we don’t have a lot of say. Our office may be dull, the drive to work uninspiring, the market too busy, and the laundry room full of dirty clothes. The one place we can make beautiful, where we can have all the color we desire, where butterflies and birds want to hangout and contribute their own pops of color is our garden.

My final resolution is to add more blooms to the garden. I want to see something in bloom from the first hints of spring, when snow still clings to shady garden corners, to the late fall when the first hard frost threatens. I resolve to have more blooms.

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Presented by Wimberg Landscaping

Nurseryman and garden designer Piet Oudolf is the leading figure in the New Perennial Movement. Oudolf’s designs employ grasses, perennials, and bulbs to create plantings that masterfully carry the garden through the seasons. You may be familiar with his work, which includes the Lurie Garden, The High Line, Battery Park, and the Oudolf Garden Detroit on Belle Isle.  His attention to designing with the entire plant, from its emergence in the spring through winter and into early spring, creates landscapes that are equally enthralling in the winter as they are in the height of summer bloom. This philosophy of garden design creates habitats to sustain nature, including our native insects and birds.

TICKETS

Wimberg Landscaping is dedicated to promoting planting with nature. To that end, 100 percent of the proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the Civic Garden Center’s ReRooted program. ReRooted is a unique seed-saving and plant propagation program that focuses on species of native plants indigenous to southwest Ohio.

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Q: Pam, what is Forest Bathing and how is it different than taking a walk in the woods?
A: This is the question I’m most often asked. Forest Bathing is an evidence-based practice where participants are guided in meditations during a slow walk by a certified guide to calm the body and mind. We begin by turning our phones off and sharing an overview of the practice. Participants are then invited to begin their gentle walk, focusing on nature elements to reawaken their five senses – the sound of birds, the scent of the earth, the texture of tree bark, and the patterns on leaves and flower petals. Many of the participants are used to walking briskly outdoors, and not stopping to appreciate the details in nature. For many, finding quiet time with their thoughts – being able to push external distractions and running to-do lists aside – is difficult. A traditional, brisk walk may be physically rewarding, but the mind and body are still unsettled. Forest bathing teaches us how to slow down and be present with nature for restoration and rejuvenation.

Q: How did you begin practicing this very intentional way of being in nature?
A: I love that you use the phrase ‘in nature.’ I’ve always enjoyed being outdoors, but during the pandemic I was looking for a way to feel more grounded, centered, and focused.  I’ve been an executive coach for 15 years and wanted to find a practice that I could also share with my clients. I was introduced to the practice of forest bathing at the Cincinnati Nature Center in 2021 and decided to earn a certification that included studies in the United States and in Japan.  This evidence-based practice that started in Japan in the 1980s is growing rapidly – even medical and psychological practitioners are writing prescriptions for patients for time outdoors through programs like ParkRX and Nature RX here in Cincinnati. There’s extensive research supporting the positive impact nature has on our mental and physical wellbeing, including lessening anxiety and depression symptoms. Just 20 minutes in nature can lower our blood pressure and pulse, give us more clarity, focus, and a sense of calm and hopefulness. This practice has taught my clients and me the profound benefits of spending quiet time in nature.

Q: How did you make the decision to incorporate Forest Bathing into designing meditation gardens?
A: This past year, several of my forest bathing participants asked me to come to their home to design a meditation garden to continue their forest bathing practice. I work with a lot of very busy parents, professionals, caregivers etc. who don’t always have time to visit a park.  These gardens are designed to allow people to step outside their door any time of day and find a peaceful place where they can close their eyes, take some deep breaths, and relax. Each Forest Bathing mindfulness garden will reflect the needs of the client whether it’s a place to decompress at the end of the day, honor a loved one, or have a place to connect with small groups of friends.  I’m really excited about working alongside the landscape designers at Wimberg Landscaping and leveraging my training in Forest Bathing to create custom mindfulness spaces for our clients.

Q: If a homeowner has a meditation or healing garden inspired by the Forest Bathing practice, how will they undertake the practice if you are not there to guide them?
A: I begin the design process by walking the property with the client and a Wimberg Landscaping designer. We discuss what meditation elements they would like incorporated into the existing or new garden: where they might like to have a “sit spot” or special bench, if they want a water element, wind chimes, a labyrinth, special colors, or scents in their plants. There are many plants and forest bathing element options available depending on how people want to use their space. Once the garden is created and installed, I guide the client through their practice in their garden. Specially placed markers with meditations or a set of cards will guide clients in their forest bathing or meditation practice when they are on their own.

Q: Who do you see benefiting from Forest Bathing or mediative gardens?
A: Everyone can enhance their wellbeing by spending quiet time in a garden or green space. During the past three years, I’ve guided very diverse groups of people including Covid nurses, teachers, executives, high school students, physicians, groups of friends celebrating a birthday, families, and special interest groups. Some are feeling burned out at work, some want a unique healthy way to spend time in community, and some are overwhelmed with the constant pull of electronic communications. Artists can use forest bathing to clear their mind of distractions so their creative process can take hold. I’ve led corporate walks for teams before they began a strategic planning or brainstorming sessions, and professional groups gathering in a friend’s backyard to experience a deeper connection to themselves and each other.  That’s the beauty of our forest bathing gardens – they create a setting where we can all strengthen our sense of wellbeing, find peace, and a connection to nature.

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