The Newsletter for Lazy Gardeners

Hi gang - let me start with a rather large mea culpa. I have only (1) spring in the nursery business, (2) spending most of March on the road giving talks in Toronto, Philadelphia, Washington, Virginia Beach, Long Island and a few points between, (3) an old sailboat that demanded new varnish and paint this spring, (4) too much travelling to the nursery every week, (5) a new garden, (6) becoming a student again (technical writing course) and (7) a few other personal committments that ate up my time so I haven't been a regular correspondent.

I thought you'd like to see a few articles - even if I can't do a lot of question answering - just to keep the information flowing.

Interesting Link This Issue

One of the most interesting things I've discovered moving to the city is that squirrels are everywhere (including my garage with the stored "stuff" but we won't discuss that now). If you're trying to feed birds, you want a Yankee Flipper. This bird feeder has an adjustable spring loaded perch that the birds don't trip but when a squirrel puts his weight on it, the perch starts to rotate very fast. In trials, I couldn't stop the rotating perch with my hand, it was that powerful. And the video with squirrels flying off is just too funny for words. Check them out by clicking here and entering the words "Yankee Flipper" in the site's search engine. There *will* be one in my garden this summer. I don't necessarily want to feed the birds, I just want to watch the squirrels fly.

We Get Questions

I'm glad to answer questions for readers. If you have a question, it helps if you ask them in this way:
1) Hit return on your email browser to get the right email address.
2) Please **delete** all the newsletter text so I don't get it all back and have to hunt through it for your text.
3) Give me your location. The answer to a question often is determined by where the garden is located.
4) Have patience. I'll answer as many as I can in the newsletter but there's way more of you than there is of me and I simply can't get to them all. I'll do my best

I confess while I normally try to answer a bunch of questions in this space that I'm a bit overwhelmed with work and figuring out the html to format the questions is a bit beyond what I can do right now. So, I'm sending out an article or two over the next few newsletters (easy to do) and will start answering questions again shortly.

In case you wanted to see how I set up my book on designing and planting a perennial garden to bloom all summmer, I put together a webpage that describes the contents of the book.

Shorter Sedums

One of the hardiest plants in any North American garden is the Sedum or stonecrop. If you have ever seen a member of this plant growing in the wild, poking its head out of the most inhospitable crack in a rocky ledge, you would immediately know why it earns its common name. It does grow as a crop in stone walls or in a hint of soil on a rocky ledge where it is baked by summer heat and frozen solid by winter’s icy blasts. This is a great plant for any beginner who can kill almost any plant; you can’t kill this one.

Well, maybe you can if you plant it in clay soils where it will get too wet during the winter. Remember that this plant wants excellent drainage and will rot if kept too wet. For this reason, never plant them where they will receive regular irrigation. Benign neglect is the rule of thumb for successfully growing this plant. Fertilizer is an unnecessary luxury. Sedums want the hot sun and it seems that the hotter and sunnier, the better this plant will grow. The interesting thing is that most of the creeping sedums will also grow nicely in part shade although deep shade is beyond them. Give any one of the approximately 400 species a shot of water during the heat of July when blooms are forming and it will thank you by producing a profusion of blossoms. I’ve never bothered to deadhead sedums but if you were a little compulsive you could. I just allow these fast spreading plants to do their own garden “thing”.

And grow they will. This is a fast growing plant that spreads by running across the ground or sending out seeds. One plant, Sedum acre, is considered a common weed in most agricultural area and once introduced is almost impossible to eradicate from the garden. It has wonderfully bright yellow flowers and is quite attractive but it sends out hundreds of seeds and propagates so easily from a single leaf node that it is almost sinful. Nurseries still sell it but it really should be banned. Any of the creeping sedums are easily propagated by taking three inch cuttings and rooting them in a glass of water. If a friendly neighbour has a clump of a particularly attractive variety, a simple cutting or two will be enough to start your own clump.

Use the creeping sedums in rock gardens or as border edging plants. Remember that this is a creeping plant and will be overtaken or shaded out by taller, more aggressive plants in the perennial border. It is also being used extensively in perennial container designs now that perennials have moved into gardening patio containers. And troughs or potted collections of sedums are quite attractive in their own right without the distraction of other plants. Their succulent leaves range from dark greens through blue tones with reddish bronze or variegated tones and the leaves are often hidden in their masses of yellow, white or pink or reddish-pink blossoms. Sedums tend to be evergreen although they do turn a bronzy-red during the winter. In most gardens where I’ve seen Sedums featured, they do look rather stunning when mass planted with big areas devoted to each variety. And hardiness is not an issue with these plants unless you live a long way north in a zone 3 or colder.

I have grown quite a few low-growing Sedums over the years but if I had to choose a few to find for a new garden, I would likely start by searching for these interesting examples:

Sedum ‘Bertram Anderson’ is a low growing burgundy coloured form with purplish red flowers in July and August. This is an excellent growing plant that is only four inches tall but easily spreads to eighteen inches wide in its first year.

Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ was one of the first “purple” leaved varieties I grew. The leaves are not really purple but there is a purple tone to the bronze leaf that is quite interesting. It has, what are described in catalogues as “dusky” pink flowers. I’m not sure what “dusky” means but they are a bit on the dull side rather than bright pink. ‘Vera Jameson’ is six to eight inches tall and forms a clump about twelve inches across in its first year.

One plant that does have a brilliant pink flower is Sedum ewersii ‘Rose Carpet’. Sometimes sold by its European name of ‘Rosenteppich’, this plant is gorgeous whatever its name. Blue green leaves form a non-spreading clump approximately twelve inches across and six inches tall. The fall flowers are held above the clump and are well worth waiting for. This is an excellent plant for creating fall blooms in a rock garden where spring blooming plants are the norm.

There are several variegated leaved sedums that deserve a place in the garden. One of my favourites, and perhaps the most reliable variegated sedum, is Sedum kamtschaticum ‘variegatum’. You can call it Russian stonecrop if you like but I like growing this plant both for its heavily variegated leaves as well as its pink flowers. The flowers reach eight inches tall on a plant that spreads twenty-four inches across.

Another excellent plant is Sedum spurium. This red leaved variety also has a variegated form that has excellent leaf colouring but tends to be a tad weaker than the species. Both have pinkish to red flowers – hence the common name ‘dragon’s blood’ and both are low growing, spreading varieties with heights of six inches in bloom and eighteen inches across.

Do enjoy a few of these different sedums this summer; you’ll find them quite easily in your favourite garden centre.