Hug a Tree

A Gardener’s Refuge

By Amy McDowell

“Sometimes I walk into my front yard and I can feel all my trees just vibrating love.” --Oprah Winfrey.

I was delighted to read that, for I have felt that same powerful energy emanating from trees. It’s like a buzzing in the air that you can only sense when you are alone and your soul is quiet and peaceful.

Once while I was attending a horticulture conference, a speaker told the crowd—perhaps 700 of us—to go home and hug a tree. My first reaction was a light smile, and then a lift of my eyebrows when the speaker told us he was not joking. Seriously, he said, hug a tree.

Determined but feeling bashful, I waited until the next day. Although my back yard was pretty well isolated from the neighbors, I stepped out timidly and glanced around. A gorgeous white oak was the closest. I looked up to the canopy of branches and my breathing slowed. I felt a deep, sincere reverence for all living things and the fantastic energy that connects us all.

Touching the rough bark, I wondered whether the tree sensed my presence. I know that it did. Reaching my arms around, I hugged the tree and rested the side of my face on the trunk. Tears of emotion surged suddenly and crested at the edges of my lower eyelids. I released the tree and took a step back, breathing deeply. It seemed my slow breaths drew not just oxygen, but a quiet energy into my soul.

I urge you to go outside and hug a tree. Shrug off those trivial “I feel silly” thoughts and instead think about yourself and the tree. Try to take in the reach of that tree—its branches extending into the heavens, and its roots stretching out from the trunk to a distance two and a half times the height of the canopy.

Gardening is about recognizing our alliances with all things. Abandon your fantasies of gaining control and welcome a new harmony into your garden.

Build a pondless water feature

Burbling Water in the Garden

Six simple steps to a pondless water feature

for less than $50

By Amy McDowell

Water features add motion and sound to the garden, drawing both people and wildlife. The garden pond’s wave of popularity in the past decade makes the old standby water feature—the birdbath—unexciting and stale. Birdbaths add an architectural element to the garden, but the stagnant water evaporates so quickly that it’s hard to think of them as a true water feature.

With little more effort and expanse than a birdbath, you can add a water feature with moving water and a large reservoir that won’t run dry quickly. It is a ground-level feature with water burbling over a pile of rocks. The materials cost less than $50, assembly takes just a couple of hours, and birds will love it.

Materials:

   18-inch round plastic tub

   21-inch round metal grill

   Small submersible pond or fountain pump

   2-foot rubber tubing or PVC pipe

   Safe outdoor electrical source

   2-3 dozen rocks, fist-size and smaller

Six simple steps:

1-      Dig a hole large enough to bury the plastic tub up to its rim. Set the tub inside and backfill with soil around the outside.

2-      Set the pump in the center of the tub, using rocks to keep it upright if necessary. Run the cord to a safe electrical source, but don’t plug it in yet.

3-      Connect the tubing or pipe to the pump’s discharge so it rises straight up in the center of the tub to a point several inches above the rim.

4-      Place the metal grill on top of the tub with the tubing running up through the center of the grill. Bend the bars in the center of the grill if necessary.

5-      Stack rocks on top of the grill, concealing the empty tub below, the tubing and the grill. The rocks will be higher in the center and taper off to ground level at the edges.

6-      Fill the tub with water and plug in the pump. Rearrange the rocks so the water burbles over them.

Keeping a Garden Journal

The invaluable garden journal

By Amy McDowell

My garden adventures—all of them—are documented.  Even the time I accidentally splattered myself with the slimy guts of two dozen plump four-inch tomato hornworms. Eew. Yes, it was gross.  Gardening is messy, but I learn things all the time.

I record everything in my garden journal. I now have about fifteen years’ worth of helpful and humorous lessons documented. I wrote about waiting three years for the first bloom on my fragrant bourbon rose, finding a baby deer in the woods behind my home, and the thrill of seeing a dog-tooth violet bloom for the first time. There are crazy and delightful stories like the time masses of praying mantis hatched in my car when I left two egg casings on the warm dashboard. I have a record of the time a ground squirrel nearly drowned in the whisky barrel and the time a raccoon was trapped under the heavy bowl of the large antique bird bath after he accidentally tipped it over on himself. I documented every deer sighting, hawk sighting, and screech owl.

My journals include recipes for homemade hummingbird nectar, deer repellent, insect spray, and even rooting hormone. I sketch and chronicle ideas I have tried, such as the homemade scent dispensers for fox urine to repel rabbits, and I jot down ideas that I have seen in other gardens, such as using cardboard boxes for rose cones.

The practical side of a garden journal is to record the botanical and common names of new plants I put in. I sketch where I planted them, and sometimes even document where I bought them and how much I paid. Sometimes they grow beautifully, and other times they die off. It is helpful to read through old garden journals and remember the successes and failures.

My journals are an invaluable archive of my joys and blunders in the garden. My lesson about hornworms is that when you go about ferociously plucking them from a datura and stomping them to goo with your right foot, the guts will spurt far and wide—all over your left leg. Later you will look down and wonder, “What is this green crusty stuff all over my pants? – Oh, sick!”

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.