Garden features
“And every man shall sit under his vine, and under his fig tree …” (Micah 4:4) To my mind, there is nothing as desirable and visually inviting in the garden as the features variously known as arbors or pergolas. Whether they are attached to the house (see photo) or freestanding, these structures add something captivating to the garden: One wants to go there. Porches have their advantages — such as screens! — but they lack the enhancement of the plantings that embellish an arbor or pergola. Climbers such as wisteria or roses provide scent as well.
The comprehensive Bartlett Book of Garden Elements (Bartlett & Bartlett; David R. Godine) mentions the difference between arbor and pergola: “The words arbor and pergola are often used interchangeably…. They tend to serve the same function … but arbors are smaller and simpler in design, and therefore more versatile.” Think classical when you mean pergola, think rustic when you mean arbor. Think about adding one or the other to your garden.
Lilacs like cold
These are dry, chilly times in this compressed spring season. Hydrangeas and roses all over the Island are showing the results of cold shock to their pruned canes. The frost bottoms in the State Forest reveal precisely where cold air settled, trimming those scrubby little oaks back for the umpteenth time in their long lives.
Yet Island lilacs apparently loved the cold winter and cool conditions at bloom time, sparking renewed interest in their value as easy, beautiful plants that demand little and give much.
Breeding and hybridizing has given the lilac buyer a great deal of variety to choose from, compared with the days of old-fashioned mauve or lilac Syringa vulgaris (common lilac), and the older French hybrids. Yellow-y, washed-out foliage has been improved, deep leaf color being considered preferable. Bloom time, from early to late, has been extended, both in “common lilac” types and in the class called late lilacs, including S. xjosiflexa or S. prestoniae. Nonsuckering or moderately suckering forms are also available.
Double-flowered forms have been around since the work of the Lemoines in the 19th century; however, now forms exist with more than four petals in individual florets, and ones with extremely large florets, such as Syringa xhyacinthiflora ‘Clarke’s Giant’ and S. ‘Sensation,’ have been bred.
Still fine plants, many traditional, old-fashioned lilacs eventually become quite towering, eight to twelve feet, bearing their flowers skyward. Therefore, compact introductions will please those who want their lilac flower heads more at nose level or who have less space. However, these tall shrubs make excellent privacy hedges in open sites with good light, something I hope the potential Leyland cypress buyer will consider.
Because lilacs love cold — special cultivars have been bred for warmer climates — much great hybridizing work has been done in Canada, Russia, and countries of the former Soviet Union. ‘Nadezhda’ and ‘Krasavitsa Moskvy’ are two stunningly beautiful, widely available Russian lilacs.
After years of chicken and geese misconduct, a couple of lilacs bought a decade ago, as “tubes” from Forest Farm, Williams, Ore., bloomed for the first time this year. Tubes — small plants — are the most practical way to buy shrubs where freight is a factor, but one must be prepared to wait. Forest Farm offers a wide selection of lilacs at forestfarm.com.
More specific lilac information may be gathered from Lilacs (Fiala & Vrugtmann; Timber Press) and the Manual of Woody Plants (Dirr; Stipes Press), or online from sites such as Select Plus International Lilac Nursery, Quebec. Deadhead lilacs now; flowers are passé, and the spring’s dry conditions left behind particularly unattractive, bright brown panicles.
Birds eat caterpillars
In the years of the previous serious fall and spring cankerworm outbreaks, with concurrent outbreaks of forest tent caterpillars as well, the weather was warm, and spring came early. The caterpillar protein glut, needed by nestlings for growth, was timed wrong; caterpillars were too far ahead when migratory birds arrived.
It seems to be a heavy caterpillar year so far, but if I understand the phenology correctly, it should be a great season for birds too, because this year the birds are here. The caterpillars are delayed, perhaps by the cool average temperatures, so it should be feast time for birds. Please keep hungry baby birds in mind when you consider poisoning caterpillars through spraying.
In the garden
Ornamental garden tasks at this time include watering recently transplanted or divided plants, and mulching, in addition to weeding, staking, and deadheading. But it is also now or never for the “Chelsea chop,” cutting back or pinching certain perennials to retard bloom times and create bushier, stocky growth that needs less staking.
After the June solstice, the light changes and puts plants into a different mode of growth, that of preparing to flower and seed, or preparing tissue for next year’s flowers. Plants that benefit are those such as platycodon, chrysanthemum, phlox, aster, sedum, and salvia.
Prune spring-blooming shrubs that have flowered, and correct for crossing branches and overall shape. New directive for bearded iris: Divide immediately after flowering, not in September. Replant with tops of rhizomes exposed and pointing toward sun, fans away from it.
Do you think it is warm enough to plant out the heat-loving dahlias? Pinch out growing tips of dahlias after the third pair of true leaves. When planting taller types, plant the support stake at the same time as the plant or tuber. I learned to use bricks to protect low-growing dahlia types, from Margaret Knight’s piece last year about gardening with hens.
Keep bush beans coming by planting shorter rows every two weeks. Bush beans make one of the most freezer-friendly vegetables, and after stripping the plants for harvest, they can be pulled, and some other later-maturing crop planted instead.
Correction: I recently learned that, contrary to my source in my last column, Hildene, Col. Lincoln’s home with the peony gardens, is in Manchester, VT, not Manchester, NH.