Cold Climate Gardening

In 1878, Sherman Stowell sold to Elizabeth Brockett 30 acres of land which he had earlier purchased from George Jennings. I now live and garden with my family on some of that land, which Jennings or Stowell, or perhaps Ms. Brockett, had cleared of trees to make pasture. The forest is growing back, but it’s not the same forest. For one thing, several invasive plants are now growing here, everything from Rosa multiflora to Lonicera tartarica. And where are the trilliums?

Call me a romantic or call me ecologically correct, but I’d like to restore the native flora to my parcel of land, land that was sown to timothy and grazed by cows. How does one go about such a restoration? For starters, you have to know what plants were originally growing there. I’ve taken an informal survey of our property and catalogued all the natives I’ve found. I mention trilliums because they bloom along the roadside further down our country lane. What will it take to grow them here?

Popularity: 20% [?]

When we last left our gardener, she had just received her Fedco shrub order, shortly after removing one and a half pounds of dock root from the spot where she wanted to plant her Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer.’

Have you ever had a gardening project turn into a Project? Heh. If you’ve been gardening any length of time at all, I know you have. And if you haven’t gardened much, well, your turn is coming.

The first surprise was when I opened up the box. The hydrangea was already partially leafed out. But, I fretted, bareroot shrubs aren’t supposed to leaf out until after they’ve been planted. (Obviously my plants don’t read the plant books, just like my babies never seemed to read the baby care books.) The Fedco catalog said nothing about what to do in this circumstance, but there were really only two choices: pot it up and keep it protected until all danger of frost was past, or plant it in the ground and hope for the best. I decided I might as well plant it, since the chances of my remembering to bring it in every cold night for the next 50 or so days was not very good.

Popularity: 8% [?]