Moving perennials or shrubs once they’re in situ can be daunting for a novice gardener. But when you are starting a garden or reinventing one, it’s almost impossible not to make the occasional planting error or realize that you’ve put something in the wrong spot. Yet many plants transplant well—some even require it as part of routine divisions—and the whole process is a lot less scary than you might think.
We asked Edward Flint, who is head gardener at Tidebrook Manor in East Sussex and worked for many years alongside Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter, for his tips on how, when, and why to move plants—and which you should leave well alone.
Here are nine tips to transplant shrubs and perennials:
How to Transplant Shrubs
Moving a shrub is always a risk; some will cope with the stress and trauma better than others but if you need to move it then there are some ground rules.
1. Water before digging. “Water the plant really well the night before and then reduce its canopy,” says Ed. “This will lessen the stress on the plant (balancing the top growth with the roots) but will also make it easier to maneuver the plant.
Above: Bare Root Beech Plants (Fagus sylvatica) make good hedging plants are available in various sizes for prices from £1.29 to £49.99 depending on size from best4hedging.
2. Be gentle with the roots. Try to dig the plant out with as much root ball as possible, cutting into the ground around 12 to 18 inches from the base, says Ed.
3. Plan ahead and root prune before transplanting. If you’re planning to move an established shrub then you can root prune the plant a year before by digging down in a circle around the base, which will lessen the shock when you eventually transplant it. But as a rule, says Ed, shrubby things or woody-based things tend not to move very well.
A steeply pitched lot can present a challenge for even the most seasoned garden designer. Many resort to terracing the slope to create flat ground to work within, but moving that much earth is expensive–and it deeply disturbs the site. We spoke to three garden designers who created diverse gardens on very sloped sites to learn how they handled this particular challenge. Below, these experts share their best tips, from figuring out what plants will thrive to how to keep the soil in place during establishment.
Use a “cover crop” to prevent erosion.
Above: Because of heavy invasive weed pressure, Refugia planted only grass species in the first phase of this project. This included seeding a mix of fine fescue and annual rye, before planting warm-season ornamental grasses like big bluestem, switchgrass, and little bluestem. Once weeds were under control, they added flowering perennials. Photograph by Kayla Fell, courtesy of Refugia Design.
When reimagining a residential sloped yard in Pennsylvania, Refugia Design Build first removed overgrown shrubs and a ton of invasive English ivy, leaving a lot of exposed earth. Knowing that preventing erosion would be key in the first year, they strategically seeded a mix of fine fescue and annual rye. “The annual rye served as a fast-germinating winter cover crop—a temporary tool that allowed us to get almost instant erosion control while waiting for the fescue to germinate and the rest of the plantings to be completed,” says landscape designer Amanda Branum, who was the design lead for this project. Branum notes they cut back the rye before it went to seed the following spring.
Pay attention to root structure.
California-based landscape designer Fi Campbell says she focussed on plants with “distinguished roots,” to hold the soil on the slope of a residential property in Los Angeles. In her climate, that meant native bunch grasses and Muhlenbergia (muhly grass), which have deep root systems. Campbell also used ground covers like creeping sages and coyote bush for stabilization. Shrubs, including toyon, manzanita, and various different buckwheat, help anchor the garden. Tip: Prairie Moon Nursery includes images of root structures for all the seeds and plants it sells, if you need help visualizing roots.
Above: A simple habitat pile tucked away in the meadow at Chanticleer. Horticulturalist Chris Fehlhaber built the stack around a center post. As the stack settles, gaps form around the post. “Bumblebees use this gap to gain access to the interior of the stack, which is likely relatively well-sheltered and dry, to make their nests,” he says. Photograph by Melissa Ozawa, from Habitat Piles: Turning Garden Debris Into Shelter and Sculpture.
Whether you call them snags or tree sculptures, dead trees are crucial to the ecosystem. According to the National Wildlife Federation, they provide habitat for a thousand species of wildlife in the U.S., including woodpeckers, bats, and squirrels. As the tree decays, insects, fungi, lichen, and moss move in, offering a feast for wildlife. As Smithsonian magazine reports, “Estimates suggest that one third of insect species in a forest rely on deadwood in some way—and these insects are food for other invertebrates, as well as birds and bats.”
Above: Wood “pavers” on Edwina von Gal’s property. She digs about three to four inches deep, embeds the tree slice into the ground, and then fills in the area around them. Photograph by Melissa Ozawa.
If you’re concerned about safety, remove any branches that pose a risk. Cut up logs and stack them into wood piles. Or slice 3- to 4-inch-thick rounds to create “tree cookies” to form into pathways, like von Gal does on her property. Tree cookies are especially good in high traffic areas or in places that have struggled to sustain grass or moss.
For smaller branches and other plant debris, craft habitat stacks or weave “dead hedges” out of branches. These areas offer shelter for small birds and other critters, protecting them from predators like hawks. (To see more examples of habitat stacks, read our story).
In a designated bin or a pile in your yard, add a mix of green materials (vegetable scraps and fresh garden cuttings) and brown matter (dried leaves, twigs, wood chips, and leftover soil). Each time you add green material to your compost heap, throw in some brown material to keep the pile fresh. If it starts to smell bad, add more “brown” bits. Turn the pile to speed up the process or simply let it be, to decompose gradually. You’ll know your compost is ready when it looks dark and crumbly.
Ludden also recommends mulching when planting a shrub border. “I would put shredded bark mulch down because it keeps moisture in the soil and prevents weeds, and it looks neat and tidy,” she says, noting that the shrubs don’t propagate themselves the way perennials do, so you’re not preventing growth. Mulching around trees and shrubs also reduces the likelihood that someone will run a lawnmower over their roots, but even better would be to plant a soft landing.
If mulching woody plants or trees, use arborists wood chips and be sure not to let the mulch cover any of the bark: The root flare at the base of the trees should always remain exposed. If you have existing mulch volcanoes, remove them (arborist Basil Camu of Leaf & Limb explains how in this video).
Vegetable gardeners may also want to mulch, says Ludden, especially if it’s something that you can till into the soil along with whatever is left of the plants at the end of the season.
Finally, McMackin says you can use mulch when you want to shift the soil composition. For example, if the soil is too basic, you might add pine mulch. “The change is not very serious, but it will start those processes,” explains McMackin, who says to think of mulch as an amendment you’re applying to the top, with the understanding that it’s going to be integrated and building soil in the future.
If you’re worried about weeds, plant more densely. Instead of maintaining a sea of mulch with plants in it, position the plants more closely together and let them naturally grow towards each other. For anyone worried about maintaining air flow, McMackin says, “That just wouldn’t happen in the natural world.” She notes that what is more important is to maintain healthy soil. In Garden Revolution, Weaner and Christopher note that you should also think about varied below-ground growth habits to inhibit weeds. And yes, you may have some weeds. “Weeding and watering are important in the first season or two until the perennials begin to fill in,” notes Ludden. “As plants expand naturally, and even seed themselves into open areas, weeds become less problematic.” (See The Garden Decoder: What Is ‘Cramscaping’? (And Why Is this Trend Here to Stay?)
You can also plant a “green mulch” or groundcover. Ludden has had success using Canadian wild ginger, ferns, and carexes, including Carex Appalachia and Carex pensylvanica as soft underplantings between larger perennials.
Above: European meadow sedge (Carex remota) is a durable green mulch. Photograph courtesy of Greenlee and Associates, from The Garden Decoder: What Is Green Mulch?
You can also mulch with clippings. McMackin suggests mulching with the plant matter from the previous season, noting, “[Plants] really want to be in a mulch made up of their own leaves and stems.” Diblik describes using a similar method in The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, noting that, “The litter is in much bigger pieces than if it were mowed, so we cut some of the stems into smaller pieces, so that they’ll fit comfortably around the plants.” He adds, “I must admit, the first time I did this it was difficult not to run for the rake.”
If you still feel the need to mulch, all the experts recommend swapping bark mulch for a local leaf mulch or compost. Leaf mulch or compost can provide the “neat” look that you may prefer without inhibiting the growth of perennials.
Another solution is to give your garden beds a mullet. When working in Brooklyn Bridge Park, McMackin and her team used a neat-in-front-wild-in-the-back look, which she calls a “mullet” approach to mulching. “We would rake out leaves in the first foot or two of the garden and then put a clean edge of mulch. Then you can get away with a wilder look in the back, if you do that.” If you can’t see yourself quitting mulch, don’t let it get too deep. McMackin says an inch or an inch and a half is all you should ever need.
My clients are often in love with gravel, or at least with the idea of gravel. But as a landscape designer, I have a love-hate relationship with the paving material.
The other day I visited a clients’ newly purchased house—and realized that the sellers had put pea gravel between the entry pavers to “dress it up.” Instead of neatly tucked between paving stones, the gravel was scattered everywhere, making for an uncomfortable walking experience. I thought: right material, wrong place.
Here are 10 things I wish all my clients knew about gravel:
After you decide to add gravel to your landscape, the next question to ask yourself is: what kind? Each type of stone has its own distinct look and textural appeal, and its own purpose. Your selection will vary regionally, so I recommend the first step should be to visit a local stone quarry to see what is available.
2. Get to know the three most common textures of gravel.
After you settle on a variety and color of stone, you will need to consider size and texture: decomposed granite, crushed stone, or pea gravel?
In a nutshell: Decomposed granite (or DG, as it’s known) is a powdery granite that makes a fine texture of silt and little rocks. DG is a popular option for paths and patios. Usually yellow-gold and fading to tan in color and relatively affordable. Crushed stone is probably the closest to the typical idea of what a gravel driveway looks like. This material is also used for patios, retaining wall drainage, back fill, and grading. Pea gravel is tricky because its name has the word “gravel” in it, but some note that pea gravel is actually a small and smooth river rock. See Hardscaping 101: River Rocks to learn more.
“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a famous proverb, precisely because it’s so true. If you need proof, look no further than the origin story of Dovetail Workwear.
The idea for a line of workwear tailored specifically for women, and made by women, emerged when landscapers Kate Day and Kyle Marie Summers were hired to design the Portland, OR, garden of their client, Sara DeLuca, an apparel designer. Kate and Kyle griped about their ill-fitting workwear to Sarah, who, as it turned out, had aspirations of revolutionizing women’s workwear. The connection was immediate and serendipitous. The three started designing stylish, functional, and durable garments for female laborers, from the skilled tradeswoman to the backyard gardener. In 2018, Dovetail was born. “Sara’s garden really is the genius loci of Dovetail—where it all began and the most OG of field testing locations for our products,” says Kate.
Today, we’re giving you a tour of Sara’s backyard, the garden that launched a clothing brand.
Above: What started as a water-break conversation about workwear woes on Sara’s back deck soon turned into a design challenge to make the perfect work pants for the modern woman. Pictured are Sara (left) and Kate, both wearing Dovetail workwear.
Sara had vision and bought her house in inner Portland after it had been abandoned for several years and sat on short-sale. After more than a year of meticulous renovation to restore its historic 1908 charm, she turned to Kate and Kyle to transform the neglected and overgrown mud pit (her backyard) into a sweet outdoor jewel box that highlighted the intimacy of the contained landscape, had ample space for relaxation, and, of course, offered visual beauty.
Above: A small lawn for Shasta, Sara’s dog, to roll around in.
The dream was to create zones that could evolve with time, spotlight the seasons, minimize water demands, achieve a balance of hard- and softscapes, rethink the approach to daily foot traffic between Sara and her brother’s house, and spotlight several visual focal points from and inside the house. Last, Sara wanted rain gardens in both the front and backyard living spaces (because: Portland). “We designed the garden in what we used to say was our ‘Portland Romantic’ style–lots of texture, touches of subtle color, a boulder-filled rain garden, and mixed foliage and forms to make it feel inviting and alive,” says Kate.
Above: Pacific Northwest garden staples—ferns and bleeding hearts.
Sara’s yard is a stellar study in considering how yards must evolve over time. Sara’s children were young when the garden was first designed, but naturally the family’s needs changed over time. “Kyle and I took cuttings from a neighbor to build a willow house that the kids enjoyed for years, which was eventually removed to create a seating and reading space,” says Kate. Similarly, the dry river bed in the back of the garden, supported by Fiddlehead Landscapes, who did the stonework, doubled as a place for the kids to climb and frolic, but once they outgrew playing outside, Kate added drought-tolerant plants within the rocks to enhance visual interest.
caption: “The big takeaway is that gardens are not static and how important it is to create zones that can morph and change over time to keep yards compelling and interesting,” says Kate. Here, she’s adding plants to the dry river bed, now that Sara’s kids no longer play there.
Growing up on a farm, Sara now has her version of a mini urban farm. She has native bees (mason and leaf cutters) visiting her yard, chickadees nesting in the birdhouse, and Shasta, her dog, who loves rolling in the grass. Plus, plants just grow more in the Pacific Northwest because of the lush rains and temperate winters. “Staying on top of pruning the crape myrtle, maple, dogwood trees, and several other bushes like the ninebark and flowering currant helps maintain their structure and health,” says Kate.
Above: Adirondack chairs in a corner invite lingering.
Over the past five years, Kate has continued to update Sara’s garden even though she now works full-time building Dovetail. “But I’m constantly evolving her yard, and equally as important, wear- testing our apparel.”
Hindsight is a wonderful thing: After you’ve planted, say, a tree in the wrong spot, everything becomes clearer and more crystallized—including where you should have planted it. Making mistakes is a vital part of understanding why a design works, or why a plant will thrive in one place but not in another.
When I started my garden from scratch ten years ago, I knew very little about actual gardening. My experience was limited to arranging a few pretty pots to have around the house, my plantsmanship was near zero, and I had very little funds to throw away on errors. Yet, that didn’t stop me from making them. Here are a few of the bigger mistakes I made when designing and planting a garden from scratch.
Photography by Clare Coulson.
1. Being impatient.
Above: I’ve learned patience the hard way. I can still be impulsive but nowhere near as impulsive as I used to be, when I thought nothing about pulling out shrubs without truly understanding their value—and I removed some real beauties that had been long planted.
Recently I’ve been working on a book, interviewing many landscape designers, and a commonality that emerges is that, in their own gardens, they all watch and wait. The time spent doing nothing more than staring at the garden allows them to observe trees, shrubs, and plants in all seasons. Watching and waiting also allows them to understand how the light falls in the garden at different times of year, how the weather moves through the garden, and how they themselves move through it—all of which will then inform their eventual garden design and planting.
2. Making the beds too narrow.
Above: Narrow borders rarely work—unless they are a neat monoculture that adds a formal note.
Without exception, I’ve made almost all of my borders wider over time where possible, and if I were starting over again, I’d make them even deeper. Generous borders are more impactful and allow bolder views across plantings and more complex compositions.
3. Planting trees too late.
Above: Maturity takes time and while perennials and most shrubs will bulk up fairly quickly, trees will take a decade to really have any presence—and several decades to reach maturity.
If you have space to plant trees, then make this one of your earliest interventions since they take years and years to mature. I wish I’d planted a field of trees or an orchard when I arrived at my garden; instead I procrastinated for years and my field is still a relatively blank canvas.
4. Not prioritizing soil quality.
Above: I had an obsession with flat spaces and neat lines when I started my garden, a habit I’ve since grown out of. But as a result, I moved topsoil from a sloping site to try and correct the slope. What I didn’t realize then was that I was removing the best soil. (See Your First Garden: What You Need to Know About Topsoil.)
Consider carefully your dirt. If you’re moving earth around or taking up turf, keep it in a pile to reincorporate into the garden as topsoil. When creating new borders, add as much humus-rich organic matter as you can into any planting areas—it’s far easier to do this at the outset of your garden-making, when you have room to work and make a mess. And if you are creating paths or borders with straight lines, then take the time to get them truly straight—a wonky straight line will annoy you for years to come.
Too bad soil isn’t dazzling like dahlias or sweetly fragrant like freesias, because gardeners then would be gushing over this dirty stuff instead of overlooking its importance. A successful garden starts with healthy soil. Good news is that you can easily buy quality soil at your local nursery or home improvement store; bad news is that even though it comes pre-mixed and bagged, you may find it difficult to figure out exactly which type your garden needs.
To determine which soil is best for your garden, you need to first understand that different plants thrive with different types of soil. Another factor to consider is how you plan to grow the plants—say, in a raised bed versus in a pot. Below, we walk you through some common growing scenarios and the type of soil most appropriate for each:
Use potting soil. This light and airy mix is specifically formulated for container gardening to ensure adequate drainage and space for roots to grow. Simply add potting soil to pots and then plant your annuals, flowers, small trees and shrubs directly into it. Tip: ideally, replace potting soil annually.
Use a soilless mix. These super light blends are perfect for starting delicate seeds and are usually a combination of peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite, and like the name implies, does not contain organic matter (soil) that could harm tender seedlings. A great peat-free option is Plentiful Organic Potting Mix, made from recycled paper, by PittMoss.
Many of us have destructive wildfires on our minds; so it’s smart to think carefully about your mulch choices, especially around your home and other buildings or wood structures. Of course most mulch is made from organic material so it is certainly flammable, but some materials are more so than others. In general, fine or stringy mulches ignite quicker. Pine needles top the list, as do shredded cedar bark and shredded rubber. The most fire-resistant choices are the inorganic types like decomposed granite, rocks and gravel. Pro Tip: Use fire-proof inorganic mulch materials within 5 feet of structures.
3. Mulch can be toxic.
Above: You will almost never go wrong if you use an untreated organic substance, like fallen leaves, as mulch. Caveat: remains of a black walnut tree. See below. Photograph by John Merkl for Gardenista, from Your First Garden: What You Need to Know About Raking Leaves.
No doubt that I love chocolate (maybe you do, too), so when I heard that there was such a thing as cocoa bean mulch I was intrigued—until I learned that this mulch, made from cocoa shells, is especially toxic to dogs. The lesson is to avoid using this mulch if you have curious pets.
Another questionable mulch is rubber mulch, which obviously is not organic so it doesn’t decompose or add anything beneficial to the garden. Plus, it can leach chemicals that can harm plants.
Free mulch can be acquired from tree or utility companies (yeah!), but make sure they’re not giving you the remains of a black walnut tree (boo!) as the toxic chemical called juglone in the tree can damage and even kill plants.
Last, dyed mulch—even that trendy black stuff—can be made with cheap dyes and from recycled treated wood like old decks, pallets, and crates that may contain nasty preservatives like creosote or chromated copper arsenate (CCA). CCA-treated wood can kill earthworms, beneficial insects, good soil bacteria, plus be harmful to people and animals who dig in it.
Spring is in the air, and for many gardeners, that means it’s time to start cleaning up the yard. But what if I told you that your garden beds will be better off with a little mess?
Leaving the leaves is not just for fall. Here are seven critical reasons to keep them on your garden beds as winter turns into spring, and spring into summer.
1. Protects good bugs.
Above: Leaf litter provides shelter and nutrients to beneficial insects like centipedes and millipedes. Photograph by Jim Powell for Gardenista, from 10 Essential Insects You Need in the Garden.
Leaves provide a vital habitat for pollinators like butterflies, moths, and native bees as well as other beneficial insects. All of them need a place to overwinter. They all come out of diapause (bug hibernation) at different times between March and May. Removing the leaves too early means you’re throwing out Luna moths, red-banded hairstreak butterflies, and leaf cutter, miner, and mason bees.
2. Provides free mulch.
No need to buy mulch. Leaves keep moisture in and weeds out just as well as wood mulch.
3. Builds healthy soil.
Above: Mulched leaves in a vegetable garden. Photograph by Sheila Brown via Flickr.
Leaves decompose over the course of the year and by doing so, they provide the trees exactly what they need in the way of nutrients…since they came from the tree. And when leaves break down in garden beds, they add to the soil structure that keeps your soil, and by extension, your plants happy.
4. Reduces pest issues.
No pesticides necessary when you leave the leaves, thus providing a home for beneficial insects that eat mosquitoes and other garden pests, such as dragonflies and crane flies. Native insects also attract birds and bats that eat mosquitoes. And leaf litter is a draw as well for opossums that love to eat ticks.
5. Decreases your carbon footprint:
Above: Fallen leaves gathered from the yard and placed in a garden bed. Photograph by jacki-dee via Flickr.
The methods by which many homeowners remove leaves from their property are often not very eco-friendly: Using a leaf blower contributes to greenhouse gases and noise pollution, and harms the topsoil as well. And if the leaves are placed in garbage bag and sent to the landfill, the leaves decompose without oxygen, producing methane gas. When you rake the leaves into your garden beds, the only energy you’re using is your own.
6. Contributes to a balanced ecosystem:
Above: Snowdrops love damp-ish conditions, and fallen leaves are great at locking in moisture. Photograph by Britt Willoughby Dyer, from Gardening 101: Snowdrops.
Leaves are not trash. They are an integral part of your ecosystem. They provide food, shelter, and nutrients. Your garden is not just a bunch of plants but an interconnected system in which all parts are equally important for its health. For instance, caterpillars are the only thing most baby songbirds eat. Keeping the leaves helps caterpillars thrive, which in turn helps birds in the spring.
You’d think choosing plants was easy enough—just find the ones you like, right? And for single specimens in a pot or a monoculture of, say. roses or hydrangeas, it is as simple as that.
But what about designing a border where plants need to relate to each other in a well-thought-out design? And what if you have a large blank canvas to fill with a whole range of plants. This is when it can get a little more complicated. For the third post in my column on creating A Garden From Scratch, I tackle how to figure out the kind of plants you might want in your landscape. Before you get too excited, let me clarify that I’m not talking about choosing specific plants here; this is about the bigger, long-term picture of how to put plants together in a space and why.
(To read my earlier stories in the Garden from Scratch series, go here, then here.)
Photography by Clare Coulson.
Above: Where to even begin? My cottage garden, photographed here in midsummer, is an ever-changing tableau of favorite plants and supporting acts that lurk in the background. It’s always good to remember when you start out that plants can be moved, replaced, or relocated and that the picture is never final or complete—there’s always something that can be tweaked or improved—and that is half the enjoyment of gardening.
1. Get trees in first.
Above: Early spring in my garden and there’s still not that much flowering, but the Amelanchier lamarckii tree provides starry white blossoms. By the time the spring bulbs really get going, the pretty bronze foliage of this tree will emerge providing an interesting contrast with the bright colors below. Additional structure here comes from the domed forms of Choisya ternata, hebes and Ilex crenata. In the distance, a lot of euphorbia.
Planting design is about a series of layers, from the woody plants, including trees and climbers, to the shrubs, herbaceous perennials, biennials, and annuals. Most gardens will have a mix of all of these types of plants to create a succession of interest throughout the year, and a balance of structural plants that will provide a backdrop to herbaceous plants that will flower and die back.
It’s logical to begin with the trees since they generally need the most time to mature. They are also arguably the most important thing to get right, being the least ephemeral. Incorporating some trees, or even a single specimen, can instantly ground a space, bringing strong structure, height, and impact—as well as, in many cases, year-round interest. For this same reason think very carefully before removing any mature trees or shrubs from an inherited space.
It’s the one place perhaps where it’s worth spending some money to buy something really beautiful—a trio of Amelanchier or Prunus multi-stem or specimen trees, for example, may feel like a big investment, but it will have instant impact, as well as blossoms in spring, lush foliage through summer, and then great leaf color later in the year. In winter its form has its own allure. Tip: Buy young trees—they are far more economical and will usually settle in faster than mature specimens. Buying bareroot plants also helps to keep down costs.
2. Invest in evergreens.
Above: Controlled chaos. There are a lot of frothy plants in this border snapshot including Valerian officinalis, hesperis, roses, Allium sphaerocephalon, catmint, and hardy geraniums. But the structure from clipped boxwood, hebes, and other foliage helps to ground the space and provide moments of contrast.
Another worthwhile investment: evergreen forms that will provide four-season structure. Boxwood would have ticked all the boxes, but now that these are under the dual threat of box blight and box caterpillar, few gardeners would take a risk with them. There are plenty of alternatives—yew, Ilex crenata, many pittosporums, rosemary, hebes, daphnes can all be grown into shapes that will provide permanent year-round forms and act as a foil to herbaceous plants. Deciduous plants like beech and hornbeam can also provide structure, too. (See Landscaping 101: Boxed in by Boxwood? 5 Shrubs to Try Instead.)
February is a weird month—far enough away from the year-end holiday festivities for them to feel like a distant memory and yet, with the dreary days, also far from the exuberance of spring. On some level, this month can have all the excitement of a waiting room. So what can you do while waiting for warmer weather? You can carefully prune.
February is a good time to prune because plants and their pests are dormant. Plus, naked branches allow you to see the structure of the tree or shrub. The reasons to prune are trimming for size and shape; removing damaged and diseased branches; and promoting new growth and blooms.
Need more reasons? Pruning can help with overall plant health by opening up the canopy to let in more light and air, both within the tree and for the plants below. You can also prune to reclaim overgrown areas of your garden. Your arborist or tree service can help with this for larger trees. Safety first, especially when using chainsaws.
Trees including ashes, walnuts, beeches, and lindens. When in doubt, ask your arborist. Don’t prune if the temperature will dip below 25°F, as it can damage the tree.
Certain fruit trees, like apples, peaches, and pears, also can be pruned, but require more specific knowledge. There are generally accepted principles for pruning fruit trees, and they focus on strength to bear the weight of the fruit, producing a good harvest, keeping pests away, and ease of harvesting.
Ornamental flowering trees, such as cherries and plums, need to be checked for black knot. February is the perfect time to prune it out, making sure to cut the affected limbs at least four to six inches from the growth and sterilizing the pruning shears in between cuts. Diseased plant matter should be thrown in the trash and not composted.
Evergreens generally don’t need pruning, but you may want to do so for space and shape. Just don’t cut into the dead zone, the brown area near the center of the tree where the branches have no greener. Why? If you do, you’ll end up with a hole, as there won’t be any new growth from this area. If you have an arborvitae, yew, juniper, cypress, spruce, or hemlock that needs a trim, now’s the time to do it.
Some flowering shrubs and bushes that can be pruned in mid-winter are butterfly bush, clethra, rose of Sharon, rose, panicle hydrangea, and beautyberry, but make sure you do it before new growth appears. Some of them, like roses and butterfly bushes, can be pruned back hard. For the rest, check with your cooperative extension office.
What Not to Prune in February
Maple trees should not be pruned due to the sap running. Maple syrup season starts at the end of February and runs through April. Check with your arborist for the best time to prune.
Shrubs and bushes that flower in the spring before the end of June should not be pruned unless you are okay with losing the flowers, since the buds are located on old wood. Pruning in mid-winter can remove the dormant buds and there will be no spring flowers. Examples are lilacs, magnolias, azalea, dogwoods, quinces, mock orange, and weigela. You can prune these two weeks after they bloom if needed. (Like with most of life, there are exceptions to every rule. Certain cultivars of hydrangeas, lilacs, and azaleas, to name a few, form blooms on both old and new wood and will still bloom if pruned.)
If you’re a gardener in the New York City area, you’ve likely toyed with the idea of taking a class at the New York Botanical Garden to stretch yourself in new directions—maybe even towards a new career. But if you’re anything like me, you never enrolled because while the garden is inspirational, it’s a big schlepp from where I live. Starting this winter, I and other distance-challenged gardeners may get our chance to study with NYBG after all.
NYBG’s Continuing Education program has just launched a new series of online classes that they are calling Plant Studio. Unlike their rigorous certificate program, these classes are “bite-sized” and offer a flexible schedule, with pre-recorded content dropped weekly via an online education portal.
Photography courtesy of NYBG.
Above: A classroom at the New York Botanical Garden.
Up until 2020, the NYBG had never offered online courses because the institution placed emphasis on hands-on learning. “We have over 700 classes, workshops, and lectures a year, and about 60,000 students annually,” says Kay Chubbuck, NYBG’s Vice President for Education. “The Garden had been very focused on hands-on experiential education up until the pandemic, which makes sense for a program that offers garden design and floral design.” But when the pivot to online learning inspired many non-New Yorkers to sign up for classes, NYBG was compelled to take another look at its course offerings. “We found that there was an even broader audience of people not just in the New York Tri-State area, but even globally around the world.”
Above: One of the five Plant Studio classes offered is called “Orchid Design.”
The Garden will continue to offer their in-person certificate and continuing education courses, as well as online courses that are taught live and synchronously via Zoom. What’s new are the five classes within Plant Studio. Chubbuck describes them as being targeted at the “plant curious” (versus the certificate classes for the “plant serious”). “They’re designed for people who like plants, may be curious about plants and always wanted to learn a little bit about landscape design or how to do a floral arrangement but didn’t have the time,” she notes. The classes are pre-recorded content and run two, four, or six weeks, but they are not fully self-paced—and that’s intentional, says Chubbuck. “These classes have start dates and end dates; the assignments have due dates. That kind of scaffolding sets people up for success. If there are no deadlines, it can be hard to really be motivated.”
Above: The Plant Studio classes are all online.
The team at NYBG settled on their first five Plant Studio classes—Plant Science, Landscape Design History for Beginners, Orchid Design, Container Gardening, and Pruning Basics—after surveying existing and potential students. The six-week landscape design course, for example, is an easier and abbreviated version of one of the Garden’s most popular Continuing Education classes. These courses are also designed to be season-less and non-place specific. “We wanted courses that could reach as many people across different planting zones, different time zones as possible,” says Chubbuck. For example, a class like Container Gardening, you can do anywhere. There’s also a hands-on element to some, like the Pruning and Container Garden classes, for which students will complete their own projects at home.
Above: Some Plant Studio classes, like the one on “Pruning Basics,” require completion of at-home projects.
Plant Studio also offers gardeners an opportunity to meet key figures in the garden, who don’t have time to teach a conventional class. For example, Marc Hachadourian, the Director of Glasshouse Horticulture & Senior Curator of Orchids at NYBG, co-teaches the orchid class. Registration for spring is open now, and Chudduck says we can expect another five classes to (hopefully!) be introduced before the end of the year.
As rain events have become more intense and more frequent, you may have noticed stormwater from the street flooding your property, rainwater from downspouts carving gulleys into your yard, or a wet patch that never seems to dry out. All of these issues can be addressed with plants.
Jeff Lorenz, the founder of Refugia Design in Philadelphia, is known for designing immersive, native landscapes, but he’s also developed something of a knack for creating gardens that effectively manage stormwater. Refugia’s style is naturally well-suited to the task: The native plants that they work with are good at Lorenz’s three rules of stormwater management:
Slow down stormwater, allowing the ground to absorb the initial surge.
Spread the flow of water across the surface.
Soak water back into the aquifer with the help of deep-rooted vegetation.
Above: Refugia’s garden for the Bryn Mawr Film Institute manages runoff from the roof and neighboring parking lot through a mix of diverse flowering perennials and grasses with a variety of root depths.
Plus, planting densely, as Refugia does, is a stormwater management trick in its own right. “Rain gardens seem complicated, and sometimes they are for good reason, especially in larger applications, but for most residential settings, just creating larger, more vegetated planning beds has a great impact on stormwater issues,” says Lorenz.
Below, he offers tips on how to have leverage your garden to help with stormwater management.
Photography by Kayla Fell, courtesy of Refugia Design.
Reduce your lawn and increase your beds.
Above: The site at Bryn Mawr Film Institute before Refugia’s landscape redesign. The first order of business was to reduce the “green concrete” of lawn and replace it with resilient plants with a variety of root structures.
“Reducing your lawn has a massive impact on stormwater,” says Lorenz. “We call it green concrete because it has very little absorption quality.” Consider expanding garden beds. Fall is a great time to plan for this, as you can pile up leaves on the part of the lawn you plan to turn into new beds come spring (see Why (and How to) Leave the Leaves). Two places Lorenze says you should definitely consider expanding your beds are where downspouts flow out, and anywhere your border beds are close to a low, wet point in the lawn. “Bring your garden bed out to incorporate that low point.”
Rethink how your care for your lawn.
Above: Refugia dramatically reduced the amount of lawn in this front yard, replacing it with plants that will help to soak rainwater back into the ground while simultaneously increasing biodiversity in the landscape.
For the lawn you do keep, consider tweaking your care routine. Let the grass grow higher and mow less often. “If you have a thicker, taller vegetation above ground, that’s going to help slow stormwater down,” says Lorenz. When it’s time to reseed, consider reseeding with fine fescues (and gradually transitioning the whole lawn), or if you’re open to a bigger change, replacing the turf with a full fescue or sedge lawn. Lorenze notes that in trials at the Mt. Cuba Center wood’s sedge (Carex woodii) was the best performing sedge lawn alternative for the Mid-Atlantic that can tolerate moderate traffic. (For more on this grass-like perennial, see Trend Alert: A Carex for Every Garden.)
Irrigate less.
Your irrigation might also need some rejiggering. “We discover a lot of properties that are always at a point of saturation because they’ve got these robust sprinkler systems that are keeping the ground wet,” says Lorenz. The ground loses its ability to absorb water in an actual storm, if it’s already saturated, but if it has the chance to dry out a bit and it has more absorbing capability. Dialing back your watering schedule will also have a positive impact by reducing the water your yard consumes. The ultimate goal is not to irrigate at all, says Lorenz, “We aim to make irrigation systems redundant, by using plants resilient in your area, that don’t require long-term coddling.”
