Conducting a Garden Symphony

April 7th, 2005

   You probably noticed during last year’s rain-fed, steroidal-growth season that gardens don’t stay the way you want them.

   Plants grow. They flop. They spread where you don’t want them and don’t go where you do want them.

   Turn your back and gardens can get ugly in a hurry without regular and timely manicuring by you, the yard maestro.

   Come to think of it, gardening is a lot like conducting a symphony.

   Both involve much fine detail to keep track of.

   Both produce beautiful harmony when done well.

   Both require starting off on the right note or else what follows is a disaster.

   The only key difference I can see is that conductors don’t have to worry about groundhogs eating the woodwind section.

   As we tap the baton to open the growing season, now’s the time to dislodge those first possible bad notes.

   Start by whacking back overgrown shrubs and evergreens.

   Now’s a good time to make shaping and size-reduction cuts to most evergreens, such as arborvitae, yews, hemlocks, Douglas firs, junipers and falsecypress. These resprout after fairly sharp cutbacks and shearing… so long as you don’t go too crazy and cut back into bare wood.

   True firs, spruces and pines don’t like that kind of drastic action, so wait until May to pinch or snip off the new growth to control size.

   If you just need to thin out smaller branches back to bigger ones, that can be done now to any of the evergreens. All dead or broken branches should come off, too.

   Flowering shrubs that bloom in mid-June and later also can be cut back now, but wait until right after spring bloomers bloom to cut them. Example: Cut July-blooming rose-of-sharons now, but wait until after May-blooming lilacs and rhododendrons bloom to cut them. (See the list below for more examples.)

   A few woody plants are best treated as “cutback shrubs.” These can be cut nearly to the ground each spring, either to control size or to encourage attractive young stems. Examples: butterfly bushes, beautyberries and red-twig and gold-twig dogwoods.

   You’ve got two choices with overgrown hulks that are beyond corrective pruning.

   Young mistakes in the making or shrubs of manageable size can be dug and transplanted to roomier quarters. Now’s a good time to do this since we’re coming off two good seasons of root-encouraging damp soil. Just be sure to get as much of a rootball as you can handle, replant ASAP, then treat the moved plant as you would a new one.

   The second choice is to bite the bullet and remove those overgrown hulks. It’ll save you pruning battles and make the place look neater, especially if you replace the mess with something nicer and more appropriate for the space.

   Think of this as “editing.” Do it gradually. Resist the urge to rip everything out all at once and start all over with all little plants (unless you’re dealing with a hopelessly wild planting that’s been neglected for many years).

   While you’re thinking removal, take a look at the trees. Do you have any that were badly damaged by winter or by last year’s windstorms?

   Look for cracked branches, dead branches, splitting double trunks, areas of decay and/or “mushrooms” growing on trunks. Also look for leaning trees, especially if you see the soil raised from pulled-up roots.

   These are all signs that trees might need to come down – or at least need some cleaning out. Now’s a good time to do this and to replace hazard trees with better, safer ones.

   Now’s also the time to cut down any still-standing ornamental grasses (cut to a 2- or 3-inch stub) and to cut off the browned-out foliage from last year’s perennial flowers.

   Then think about how crowded your flower beds and borders were last season and which plants had a serious case of the “flopsies.”

   Overcrowded perennials can be dug up now, divided into smaller pieces and replanted at more generous spacing. I space perennials no closer than 2 feet apart and give some of the bigger ones 3 feet of space each.

   For flop-prone plants, get your stakes and cages in place in the next few weeks to contain them right out of the gate. Pre-emptive containing works a lot better than trying to corral floppers in August.

   Cut back Russian sage now to a few inches, and make yourself a note to shear back late-season bloomers like mums, sedums and asters once or twice later in spring to keep them from flopping in the fall.

   For really crowded beds, consider extending the beds by a few feet if you’ve got room. Then transplant to air out that cramped look while simultaneously cutting down on your lawn-mowing time.

   Edge all of your beds while you’re at it. This really gives a neat look to the gardens and fakes people into thinking you’ve got the yard under control.

   Go on a weed patrol to dig out weeds that are returning from last year’s roots as well as new ones that sprouted since last fall.

   Be sure to get roots and all, then put down a fresh coat of bark mulch sometime in the next two months. (Late April through early May is ideal.)

   If you want to give weed-preventing products a try, now’s the time to scatter them over the beds, too.

   Finally, fill in those gaps and bare spots with new flowers or groundcover plants so you beat weeds to the punch.

   You’ll still need to do some occasional trimming, weed-pulling and other maestro jobs to guarantee a show-stopping garden, but at least your first note won’t be a sour one.

 When to prune which shrubs:

* Can be pruned at end of winter/early spring…

Abelia

Barberry

Beautyberry

Boxwoods

Burning bush

Butterfly bush

Clematis (most)

Euonymus

Heather

Holly

Hydrangea arborescens

Hydrangea paniculata

Potentilla

Roses

Rose-of-sharon

Shrub dogwoods

Spirea (most)

St. John’s wort

Summersweet

 * Prune right after flowering…

Azalea

Beautybush

Bridalwreath spirea

Chokeberry

Clematis (spring bloomers)

Cotoneaster

Deutzia

Enkianthus

Flowering almond

Forsythia

Heath

Hydrangea macrophylla

Kerria

Lilac

Mahonia

Mock orange

Mountain laurel

Ninebark

Oakleaf hydrangea

Pieris

Pyracantha

Quince

Rhododendron

Sweetshrub

Viburnum

Virginia sweetspire

Weigela

Wisteria

Witch hazel