Hydrangeas, pink and blue

Our blushing Hydrangeas

By Amy McDowell

A Hydrangea’s color is as changeable as a chameleon. You may buy a Hydrangea with sky-blue blooms at the garden center that turns to pink in your garden. It’s a frustrating trait for gardeners intent on designing with a particular color. The Hydrangeas, though, are simply responding to their environment. A low soil pH (acidic) will turn Hydrangeas blue and a high soil pH (alkaline) will turn them pink.

Virtually all of the soils in central Iowa are alkaline. Areas where fallen oak leaves or evergreen needles collect and decay may be more neutral, but it’s unlikely that you’ll find any acidic soils with a pH lower than six in this area. And that means no blue Hydrangeas for our gardens. Plant a blue and it will convert to pink. (The whites stay white regardless of pH.)

Even if you go crazy mulching with pine needles or pouring on Miracid or Aluminum Sulfate, the plant’s response will be both mild and temporary. Not only are our soils alkaline, but our tap water is, too. A blue Hydrangea grown in a controlled environment like a pot is likely to turn pink eventually just because of the water.

So pink or white it is. At least we’ve got choices of bush, tree or climbing Hydrangeas. We can decorate our gardens with mopheads like Annabelle, lacecaps like Radiata, repeat bloomers like Endless Summer and White Moth and ornamental trees like Pee Gee and Pink Diamond. We’ve also got the white lacecap climbing Hydrangea and the deep burgundy fall color of the oakleaf Hydrangea.

Variations in bloom and foliage are ever expanding. Although its not hardy here, the new “Lady in Red” Hydrangea (zones 6-9) is red stemmed and red veined. It’s just a matter of time before hybridizers create something like that for our colder winters.

Don’t be blue when your Hydrangea blushes pink. We all must adapt to our environment.

Crabapples Add Curb Appeal

Crabapples add curb appeal to salt-box homes

By Amy McDowell

Two-story homes are immensely popular around the Des Moines metro area for one simple reason; homebuyers can get a bigger home for less money. They are much cheaper per square foot than ranch-style homes. After moving in, new homeowners struggle to landscape those boxy facades, and it’s common to see a ring of short shrubs (nearly always Spirea) around the home’s foundation. Unfortunately, that kind of landscape is out of scale with the size of the home and ends up looking chintzy. Some designers call that look “garnish around the turkey”.

A single tree in the front yard will aesthetically break up the tremendous bulk of the home and make it appear grounded. The tree’s canopy shouldn’t conceal the home in a dark leafy mass; it should be planted off center so it will not directly block the front door or any windows from the street.

Although a towering oak with rugged branches arching to shelter the roofline is the ideal tree for many reasons, oaks are slow growing and planted for future generations to enjoy. Go ahead and plant one, but you’ll also want to plant something that will grow faster. Plant an ornamental tree that will give your home curb appeal and help it blend with the landscape within a handful of years.

Crabapple trees are the best ornamental trees in Iowa. They are amazingly well adapted to our heavy clay soils and bitter cold winters. Tour the Arie den Boer Crabapple Arboretum at Water Works Park and you’ll see specimens that have survived many a flood. Trees that can survive floods are tough-tough-tough when it comes to living in clay soil. Crabapples bloom faithfully each spring in pink, white or red.

For 15 years, “Spring Snow” Crabapple was all the rage because it is fruitless. But being fruit-free isn’t all that important for the crabapple hybrids of today—they nearly all have tiny fruits that are retained long into the winter months. Mushy golf-ball-sized crabapples rotting in the grass are a thing of the past, thank goodness. New crabapple varieties are bred for rust resistance, too, so there no problems with ratty-looking foliage and late-summer leaf drop.

If your two-story home sticks awkwardly out of the landscape, plant a crabapple. They are hardy as heck, fast growing and beautiful bloomers.

Hummingbird Season

Create a hummingbird haven

By Amy McDowell

Faeries must’ve come into garden lore in part, at least, because of tiny hummingbirds and their graceful acrobatic flight. Tinkerbell’s nimble flight patterns and ability to hover must have originated with hummingbirds. Perhaps there’s even some genetic link between hummingbirds and faeries.

Attract these charming flying jewels to your garden and you will forever be enchanted.

Hummingbird Nectar Recipe

Mixing up a batch of fresh nectar is quick and simple. Stir one cup of sugar into four cups warm water. Boiling is not necessary, honestly.

Flying-saucer-shaped feeders are the best because they are the easiest to clean. The top and bottom discs snap together, and there isn’t a narrow bottleneck to scrub. Once every three to seven days, dump out the old nectar, wash the feeder with warm soapy water, and refill it with fresh nectar. The whole process takes no more than five minutes, and you’ll be rewarded for your effort with frequent visits from the tiny beauties.

Hang several feeders around your home. Male hummingbirds are territorial and will chase others away from a feeder. Although they feed throughout the day, I notice more activity in the evenings.

A blooming garden adds a buffet of natural flower nectar to the hummingbird diet. Here are lists of annuals, perennials and woody shrubs and vines that hummingbirds would love to find in your garden.

Annual hummingbird nectar plants

Four o’clock (Mirabilis), Dahlia, Gladioli, Fuschia, Impatiens, Nasturtium, Petunia, snapdragon, spider flower (Cleome), sweet William (Dianthus), Nicotiana, and Zinnias. Annual vines include morning glory (Ipomoea) and scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus).

Perennial hummingbird nectar plants

   

Monarda, bleeding heart (Dicentra), butterfly weed (Asclepias), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), ajuga, columbine (Aquilegia), coral bells (Heuchera), Delphinium, foxglove, Penstemon, garden phlox, red-hot poker (Kniphofia), salvia and hosta.

Shrubs and vines that attract hummingbirds

Trumpet vine (Campsis radicans), honeysuckle (Lonicera), azaleas, beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis), butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii), coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus), lilac (Syringa), quince (Chaenomeles japonica), rose of sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) and Weigela.

Ooooh lookey there!

Focal Points in the Garden

By Amy McDowell

The idea of creating focal points in the garden troubled me for years. I just wanted a garden to goof around in. (And if it looked good, all the better to impress others.) Adding specific focal points sounded like a demanding task. I wondered who’s stuffy idea it was that a garden needs a focal point, anyway.

Then one winter, whiling away the snowy hours with a stack of garden magazines, I noticed something. In the gorgeous glossy garden photos, my eye was always drawn to the single man-made element in the shot. Whether it was a birdbath, a bench or a statue, the photo would not have had the impact if it was just a garden bursting with plants. Playing a game in my mind, I’d picture the garden without the man-made item. I realized that without the “thing,” the garden would’ve never caught my eye. At last, I was beginning to understand how important a focal point can be in a garden.

Scouting out flea markets and antique stores, I bought every cheap milk can, metal watering can and wagon wheel I could get my hands on. Around every turn along the garden path, I’d tuck something in among the flowers. Often, the perennials—iris or goat’s beard or whatever—were so huge that the milk can or wagon wheel nestled into the flowers would nearly disappear. Just enough of it would poke out to create a subtle focal point. Visitors to the garden probably never realized what it was that gave the garden a rustic charm. The man-made elements throughout completed the picture perfect garden.

Anything will work—a pot, urn, sundial, gate, arbor, birdbath, bench, statue, fountain, wagon or antique plow. They say specimen plants can be used as a focal point. Although that sugary pink weeping crabapple tree may steal the show while it’s in bloom, the garden’s focal point may shift as the crabapple blooms fade and a clump of peonies or a climbing rose nearby bursts into color. Dark burgundy foliage on a Japanese maple or a purple smoke bush or the sparkling variegation or lime green foliage of a hosta can be used as focal points. But plants used as focal points are subtle and ever changing. I’m sticking with the simple man-made stuff that adds year-round accent.

Tried and true will reward you

Old-fashioned garden plants

By Amy McDowell

“I’d like to plant some low perennials over here in the shade,” my neighbor said, “but I don’t want any hostas. They’re too old-fashioned—like something my mother and her generation would plant.” Raising my eyebrows, I stammered for a couple of minutes before regaining my composure and coming up with a list of shade perennials for her.

Trends in plant popularity are puzzling. What makes some plants “in” and others “old fashioned”? Hostas are gems in the shade garden and it’s hard to imagine casting them aside as old fashioned. There are countless plants beloved by earlier generations that deserve space in our gardens today.

Twiggy old Hydrangeas (H. arborescens or paniculata) with cantaloupe-sized clusters of blooms are robust, reliable and trouble-free. Along the shady north side of a home or underneath the dense canopy of trees, Hydrangeas bloom faithfully and sucker to form a wide mound. Newer varieties are terrific, but their ancestors shouldn’t be forgotten.

Hedgerows of bridal wreath Spirea (Spiraea x vanhoutei) still frame the back yards of homes in some historic early 1900s Des Moines neighborhoods. Draped with tiny white blooms along graceful arching stems each spring, Spirea are pest-free and easy to love. Straggly in shade but dense and showy in sun, bridal wreath Spirea is great for a privacy planting around a patio.

Just as we disregard some delightful old garden plants, we sometimes trip over our own feet in a rush to snatch up the newest garden center offering. Unproven in our climate, the newest plants on the market can lead to failure and frustration. Daphne ‘Carol Macki’ (D. x burkwoodii), a darling shrub with fragrant white blooms, raged the Des Moines market a dozen years ago. Everyone planted them, and over the winter nearly everyone lost them. Daphne’s popularity fizzled out in a few years, after local gardeners realized she was a no-go for this area.

Every season, plant breeders, growers and garden centers offer new selections. Some become raging successes and some fail. Like anything new on the market, there’s always the possibility you’re buying a lemon. The plants of yesteryear, however, are tried and true and worth consideration anew.

Spring is plant sale time

Perennials dug from another garden transplant best

By Amy McDowell

My mom and I once happened upon a garage sale with dozens of perennials displayed in a hodge-podge cluster of dirty mismatched pots. The skinny white-haired man priced the plants at $1 and $2 a pot, and I started snatching them up by the armload. When he noticed my interest, he offered us a guided tour of his garden. It was a standard quarter-acre city lot bordered by wide lush perennial beds on all sides. The flowers overflowed their boundary-line beds into a couple of island beds surrounding a concrete birdbath with flaked white paint and a work area set off by splintered railroad ties that looked like the remains of a long-abandoned sandbox.

As I oohed and aahed over his garden, he offered to dig up a division of any perennials I wanted for just $1 apiece. Suddenly I was the proverbial kid in the candy store, buzzing inside and out at the possibilities. I asked why he’d be so willing to cut pockmarks into his gorgeous garden, and he said he was being forced to sell his home. He was positive that the buyers were planning to “bulldoze the entire place.” I offered him sympathy and he shrugged, squinted his dark eyes and hurried off to gather empty pots for my selections.

It was a cool August morning, but we were just hours away from the sweltering midday summer heat. The plants were in good shape, but I wondered how they’d fare later in the day. I abandoned our plans for a full day of garage saling and went home to plant my new babies right away. Despite their midsummer transplant, every one of them thrived in my garden.

In fact, garden-dug perennials almost always fare better than the tender young perennials sold in garden centers. It’s either because they come from established plants with mature crowns or because the transplant from garden soil to garden soil is easier on them than the transplant from lightweight potting mix to garden soil.

Slip an old bed sheet into your trunk before the spring plant sale season begins, and you’ll be all set when signs start popping up along the curbs.

Oooh, climbing roses!

Climbing Roses

By Amy McDowell

You can grow spectacular climbing roses in central Iowa. Look for those labeled hardy for zones 4 or 5. Zone 3 would be even better, but climbing roses that hardy are rare. I’ll share a few of my successes and failures.

Blaze – My first climbing rose. The cane winterkill was aggravating, and I wasn’t willing to wrap them in burlap or bury them to protect them. One glorious bloom season in seven years wasn’t enough for me, so I dug it up and gave it away. Soil and mulch around the base of climbing roses just protects the lower part of the plant, so most years I’d get blooms no higher than my knees. Blaze is a red rose that grows to 10 feet with protection.

Zephirine Drouhin – My first successful climber. Three years after planting, this rose rewarded me with large deep pink blooms. When the blooms first open, the fragrance is intoxicating. This rose was on the south side of my home. I mulched the base but never protected the canes in winter. The tips of the canes would sometimes die back, and one harsh winter they died back several feet. It still came through winters much better than Blaze ever had, and I was hooked on climbing roses from then on. Zephirine Drouhin is a rampant grower to 12 feet. The canes are thornless, and it will bloom beautifully in light shade, although full sun is best.

Paul’s Himalayan Musk Rambler – I put a simple metal arbor over the walkway to my front door, and dreamed of my guests floating to the door wide-eyed with wonder at the lovely climbing rose. After poring over the catalogs, I ordered two “Pauls” for the arbor. Pleased with my decision, I curled up with a brand new catalog that had just arrived in the mail. Panic flooded through me when I read their description of Paul—it said this rose has “sharp, grabby thorns.” The visions of my guests turned gruesome and tragic. Scrambling, I decided to plant the two Pauls along the split rail fence away from any paths. They have grown 30 feet wide along the fence, with long arching canes that rarely suffer winterkill. The blooms are such a pale pink that they look white from a distance.

Jeanne LaJoie – This is the pink climber I chose for the walkway arbor, and it consistently rewards me with small perfect blooms and minimal winterkill. Jeanne is much smaller in stature than Paul, barely reaching six feet. Clematis planted on the arbor fills in where little Jeanne leaves off.