Don't forget white blooms!

Too many gardens lack white-blooming perennials, annuals, and shrubs. Gardeners seem to dismiss white, considering it a non-color, and I can hardly blame them. The nursery industry is so hell-bent on creating bloom variations of blue, red, yellow, green and the rest that plants with white flowers are rarely promoted. Add to it the fact that those useless color wheels published in every gardening book don’t include white, and one can see why many gardeners overlook the purest of all colors.

If your garden strikes you as a blurry, jazzed-up mess, you’re not using enough white. Take a look at these photos of just two of my white bloomers in show this spring. Far and away, they have been the two most dazzling and lovely plants in my garden.

Don’t buy plants that are sitting on an asphalt parking lot or roadway.

The photo alone gives me the heebie-jeebies. There’s a reason real nurseries have their potted plants and flats sitting up on tables inside a controlled environment, or, if outside, resting on dirt or gravel. Temporary plant sellers—any outfit that sells plants for only a few months out of the year, just to make a buck—aren’t equipped to do the job right.

So you see scenes like this—plants sitting on asphalt in blazing sun, the soil and roots cooking into a level of stress from which they probably won’t recover.

These temporary retailers—big home improvement box stores, hardware stores, coops—typically sell the same old basic plants that have been boring good gardeners for years, so why even bother shopping them?

I could have used this photo for another entry of Don’t DO That …

Don’t buy red geraniums!

Don’t landscape to reflect suppressed childhood demons.

My thanks to the comrade who e-mailed this photo, taken of a landscape in the Twin Cities suburbs. After studying it for a long time I finally concluded the guy was not meaning to create what he, quite masterfully, created. Then I had this sudden urge to go smoke a cigarette.

In general, use just a few more shrubs than this, will ya? And stay away from geometric shapes that, uh, leave little to the imagination.

Don’t DO That Bonus!

To make up for how upset some of you guys get when the updates are a lousy few weeks late, here’s a bonus:

Don’t assume the tree you plant was properly dug at the nursery.

Question: Why did this crabapple tree die?

Answer: Look closely at the picture.

This was a 2” balled-and-burlap tree planted this spring by yours truly. Even though properly watered and cared for after planting, it never leafed out, never developed new root growth, and never overcame transplant shock. Two months later, the tree was dead as dead can be.

When I yanked it out, I immediately saw the problem—the tree had been mechanically dug so that the root ball, wrapped beneath the burlap and twine, contained six inches of excess soil on top of the shoulder roots.

Haste makes waste! And makes the Renegade Gardener admit that even I realize gardeners should do as I say, not always as I do. I warned readers three years ago on this site that they should always check for excess soil in container trees and BB. I thought I saw a little flair where the trunk emerged from the ball, but was mistaken. The shoulder roots—which should have been planted just barely below grade—were another six inches down.

With all that excess soil covering the roots, the roots didn’t get enough oxygen or warmth to spur immediate secondary and tertiary root growth, essential to the tree’s success. A few straggly roots emerged (see photo) above the shoulder roots, in a doomed attempt at hanging onto life, but those came from spots on the trunk that normally, in a year or two, would have produced above-ground suckers.

Always scrape the nursery soil from around trees before you plant, and don’t stop until you find the shoulder roots!

Dear Nursery Industry: Don’t make bizarre plants just for the hell of it.

Echinacea ‘Doppelganger.’

Here you see one of the latest, the must-have plant of the year: Jackson & Perkins’ Echinacea ‘Doppelganger.’

Lordy mercy my. Don’t you nursery nerds have enough to do trying to make plants flower alternating petals in orange and black? You actually think we wanted this Frankensteinian monster? What are you doing in your plant propagation labs, whipping up batches of LSD and testing it before you turn to the matter at hand? Please, PLEASE return to making an even smaller, more vapid version of that worthless ‘Stella de Oro’ daylily.

I love the press release that came with this photo; it refers to ‘Doppelganger’ as a “fascinating” Echinacea with “double-decker blooms.”

Well, mass murderers are fascinating. Hey, Jackson & Perkins: ‘Doppelganger’ doesn’t look pretty, you morons, it looks DISEASED!!!

Or put more sincerely, there’s more to taking advantage of fall color change than planting maples and oaks. I always give an extra nudge to using perennials and shrubs—in addition to trees—that reward the landscape with their ability to perform an autumn magic act.

Glancing around my humble half-acre, I note the following:

Hosta ‘Halcyon’ – I don’t know which I prefer, summer, when it’s blue, or fall when it's—not.	Fothergilla major ‘Mount Airy’ – Fragrant, white, spike-like flowers in spring, dark green foliage in summer, and then fall, this!
Parthenocissus tricuspidata (Boston Ivy) – Always reliable.	Rhododendon ‘P.J.M.’ – True, four-season foliage.

Betula szechuanica ‘Royal Frost’ (Royal Frost clump birch) – Dark burgundy leaves in spring and summer, strong yellow tones in fall.

Sure, there are shrubs that add zilch to the equation in fall that are so stellar either in bloom (lilacs) or mid-season leaf (hydrangeas) that they are worthy of space, but don’t ignore the importance of fall leaf color when choosing shrubs, or perennials.

Additional Good Shrubs for
Fall Color

Berberis (Barberry)
Diervilla (Bush Honeysuckle)
Aronia (Chokeberry)
Cornus (Dogwood, except Ivory Halo, which looks like hell by about August anyway)
Corylus (Hazelnut)
Cotinus (Smokebush)
Euonymus (Burning Bush)
Spiraea (Spirea - most varieties)
Rhus (Sumac)
Viburnum (most varieties)

Additional Good Perennials for
Fall Color

Euphorbia polycroma (Cushion Spurge)
Aruncus aethusifolius (Dwarf Goat’s Beard)
Geranium (Cranesbill - some varieties)
Polygonatum (Soloman’s Seal)
Euonymus fortunei ‘Colorata’ (Wintercreeper)