Monarda and Nepeta

Welcome to spring!

It seems warmer temperatures across the entire east coast have broken the back of old man winter. I don’t expect him to give up all that easily and I’m looking for another snow drop or even two but the bulbs are starting to shoot in New York City. Here in my garden, I still have two feet of snow but have high hopes the warm rains expected today will bring me into the next season after winter here – mud. Yup, mud season is a delight on the farm although without dogs or kids this year I expect keeping the kitchen clean will depend more on my willingness to take off my boots rather than the dirty feet of others.

I’ll be talking in Philadelphia at Waterloo Gardens on Saturday March 29th if any of you are in the area. I’m also going to be speaking at the Lowes Garden Center in Ohio and the RBG flower show in Hamilton in several weeks from now. Do drop up and say “hello” (met several folks at Hicks on LI last week) :-)) Nice to be able to put faces on email addresses!

I’m working on the perennials web site this week and for the next little while. I spent the last few weeks working on my next book proposal (and that’s now done) so now I can focus on the web. There’s already a few new articles posted (one on Heuchera – one on ornamental grass) with a bunch more slated to go up in the next few days.

I’ve also set up a way for Canadians to order some of my books and those will be installed as well in the near future.

I also started scanning new photographs into the website so I can start putting pictures with the articles. So, I have high hopes for the site and I’ll keep you up-to-date. Any suggestions are of course welcome (even if I can’t implement them right away) :-)

My New Book is Out! :-)

Here's the link to get my new book at 30% off the bookstore price!

Perennials All Season

I'll be constructing a page in the next few days to tell you all about the book but in a nutshell - it tells you how to get your perennial garden to bloom all summer long. Not only are there growing tips, there's design instructions and plant choice suggestions.

If I do say so myself :-) - it is a great book! :-))

We've got 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 know you said the damage is done after you can see it, (damage done by the dog peeing in the yard), but here is my problem: I watered the urine and such, but now that spring is here, and the snow has melted away, the area where my dog "goes" in the yard is a bit yellow compared to the rest of the (newly sodded) yard. I don't think it's dead, but is there something that I can add to the water to give it a "boost" in neutralizing the urine? It just doesn't seem to be enough to just use water. I have a larger dog that urinates a lot. Please help if you can! Michelle

A: Well the damage has been done for sure. :-( Get out the compost and the seed for top dressing – mix several handfulls of seed into several handfulls of compost and spread the mix over the yellow areas some time in the next few weeks after the buds start to swell on the trees. This means its warm enough for the seed to germinate to refill those areas. The compost will help to rebalance the soil microorganisms and resuscitate any barely breathing grass plants. If you don’t add seed to the mix, you’ll find weeds will germinate there before grass can re-establish itself.

I think that’s all the help I can give without actually coming and doing it myself. :-) (nope, I don’t do housecalls) :-)

* * * *

Hi Doug! I'm so happy you decided to continue your newsletter! I live in zone 5/6 - Philadelphia, PA. Last week I went to the Phila Flower Show -- another beautiful showing (although I would have preferred less tropical and more plants I could include in my garden). While I was there I purchased some Curly Red Willow which I was told is actually indigenous to Pennsylvania. Any growing tips? Right now the branches are in a huge vase and I hoping that it roots. A separate unrelated question has to do with corn gluten on the lawn. Last year we were spreading the corn gluten on the lawn this time of year -- however this year having such a cold winter -- should I wait? Many thanks for any help you may have the time to offer!

Beate

The willow will likely root – plant it in a sunny site or part shade and hopefully one where there’s a bit of damp soil. Willow shoots root fairly easily. Do change the water every few days – keep the ends of the branches wet while you’re doing this. Scudsy water isn’t good for rooting or for smelling on the windowsill.

Corn gluten is always applied when the forsythia are in bloom. Whenever those guys go to yellow in your neighbourhood is the correct time to apply any pre-emergent herbicide like corn gluten. For the newcomers, see my other website at www.simplegiftsfarm.com/marticle.html for an article on corn gluten and how it works to prevent weeds from germinating.

ps. nice to be back – thanks Beate. :-)

* * * * * *

Somebody asked about the best book for shrubs and trees. The single best source is the “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants” by Michael Dirr. I’ll have a link to the book within the next few days up on my site. This is the standard reference text used by most of the hort trade.

Those of you who are looking for advice on which shrub to plant where – will find it in spades in this book

News Releases and Interesting Sites

Northern consumers may be asking for a new "NoMow" grass. The creeping blue and centipede grass mixes grow to 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 inches with no mowing in a year. "After 15 or 16 years of cross-breeding grasses, I finally developed a short-growing, deep-green grass," said Sherry Andow-Jansen, grass researcher and NoMow Grass developer. The slow-growing variety does best in full sun, but can handle some shade. http://www.nomowgrass.com

I note that centipede grass is a Southern grass and is not hardy in the north - don't get your hopes too high if you live where it gets cold. However I thought you might find this of interest.

From My Garden to Yours

Two of the most delightful plants in my perennial border are quite fortunately two of the easiest to grow. They combine to give early summer and mid to late summer blooming and have a place in all full sun perennial borders no matter whether the gardener is a beginner or a dedicated expert.

Monarda, a plant that is also known as beebalm, bergamot or sometimes Oswego tea was named for Nicholas Monardes (1493-1588) a physician and botanist living in Seville, Spain. The common name bergamot comes from the resemblance (at least to somebody’s nose) of the plant fragrance to the bergamot orange. Beebalm comes from its ability to attract and apparently soothe bees while Oswego tea was used because of its use by North Americans as a tea drink. If you read the list of ingredients in Earl Grey tea now, you’ll see Monarda listed on the packaging.

This is a plant of the full sun perennial border. The blooms are mostly on the red-violet side of the colour wheel with occasional dashes into whites and pinks. Varieties range in height from twelve to a full thirty-six inches but all bloom from mid to late summer. Mulch will keep the soil cool and evenly damp and this is the most important growing tip for obtaining a good bloom on this plant. If you find the center is dying out, dig up the dead areas and enrich the soil in these areas with compost. The outer shoots will quickly recolonize the well-composted soil. Monarda is a spreading plant and will colonize its neighbours without remorse or regret. A sharp shovel in the spring will limit its aggressiveness and the resulting offsets can be shared across the fence with neighbours. The Monarda x didyma hybrids are the most common ones found in garden centres and these are among my favourites. Newer varieties include: ‘Dark Ponticum’ a new mildew resistant variety is 36 inches tall with deep purple blooms. ‘Gardenview Scarlet’ is another tall, mildew resistant variety with scarlet blossoms. ‘Jacob Cline’ is again, mildew resistant with large red flowers. ‘Marshall’s Delight’ – a Canadian introduction – is a slightly shorter form at 30 inches but with extremely good mildew resistance and hot-pink flowers. If you need something shorter, look for ‘Petite Delight’ with its lavender-pink blossoms and mildew resistance all packed into a bushy one foot tall plant.

As you can tell from the above listing, newer varieties have been bred for mildew resistance. This tells us that many of the older varieties would get mildew very easily and the plants could quickly become unsightly. I’m replacing all my older varieties with these newer, larger and more brightly coloured varieties to reduce the problems of disease in the garden. This is one case where newer is definitely better. I would recommend you clean up plant debris in the fall as the leftover stems and leaves can shelter mildew spores over the winter. Mildew is the only problem that sometimes bothers these plants – particularly in a hot, dry summer.

The early blooming half of this combination is Nepeta or more commonly known as catnip. Before you turn your nose up at this herb, you have to understand the flower breeders have been working their magic and this is now an excellent garden perennial. Interestingly enough, cats generally only bother plants that have been bruised and releasing the distinctive fragrance of this member of the mint family. The old garden saying, “If you set it, the cats will eat it. If you sow it, the cats won’t know it.” is true. Nepeta varieties range in height from one to three feet tall and they all do best in full sun or very light shade. They bloom in early to mid summer in shades of whites and blue-violets. Like Monarda, they grow best in a well-drained sandy soil but one where adequate amounts of water are available to produce blooms. Mulching and applying compost every spring will keep these plants alive and blooming for years. One of the things that always confused me was that N x faassenii is a sterile garden clone and is the classic 18 inch tall, pale lavender blue garden plant. How the botanists decided to name other plants after this sterile clone is beyond my understanding but they have. My recommendation however is not to try starting your own seed labeled with this name as the resulting plants have always been poor performers. I would purchase named hybrid varieties (and have) choosing from the following good ones. “Blue Beauty’ is 18 to 24 inches tall but is a long blooming variety. The flowers are a deep lavender-blue and don’t require staking. ‘Bramdean’ is well shaped – not leggy at all - and has lavender blue flowers for an extended bloom time. Shorter varieties of N. racemosa - a twelve to eighteen inch tall plant are worthy of garden space: ‘Walker’s Low’ has dark mauve flowers and has been extremely long flowering in my garden. ‘Arctic Blue’ is similarly long flowering with its soft powdery blue flowers while ‘Little Titch’ is mauve blue and extremely ground-hugging. N. grandiflora is my favorite Nepeta. It grows to 36 inches tall in my garden and with a bit of support from nearby plants, stands upright to give a wonderful display of blue-violet flowers. N. x sintenisii ‘Six Hills Giant’ is perhaps one of the best garden plants in this family. Its deep violet-blue flowers are quite spectacular on eighteen to twenty four inch tall plants. N x hybrida ‘Dropmore Blue’ is an excellent Canadian introduction. At 12 inches, it is among the longest blooming Nepeta and its bright blue flowers are excellent in containers. These two plants thrive together in the garden and lend both fragrance and blooms to the gardener. What else can you ask for?

The Last Word

"As new and strange plants were brought by curious-minded people into gardens, a real difficulty in the matter of providing them with names arose. Many of us today are amused at the seriousness the botanist attaches to mere names. Sometimes we wish most devoutly that he coin less tongue-twisting names, but what we suffer at his hands is as nothing compared to what the would-be student of plants in the early eighteenth century endured. For example, Acer Americanum, folia majore, suptus argenteo, supre viridi splendente, floribus multis coccineus is the way Miller in his first edition of his Dictionary set forth our common Red Maple, which Linnaeus later dubbed Acer rubrum."

E.H. Wilson If I Were to Make a Garden

Back to Back Issues Page