Botany Buddy

Alright, I admit that I am a sap for cheesy music (as well as the good stuff) and I have a weakness for great song writers.  Writing a great song is so similar to designing a great garden that I just can’t help it. Today it’s Billy Joel.  I have been writing in app speak for about a week straight without blogging, and breaking out the Greatest Hits was a sure fire way to get me back to my native tongue.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love the challenge of trying to hone together information into perfectly worded phrases designed to interact with on another on a technical level.  Writing an interactive book is actually great because it reigns in my run on sentences and teaches me to speak without analogies and innuendos.   However, is it me trying to change myself to try and please you…or is it me?  I think as long as I continue to be myself that I will come through in the end.  That is the key to writing a great song.  Finding the best in all of us, learning to bring it out and bring us together with the most efficient use of words, patterns, rhythm, is at the heart of music, writing, gardening and all the arts.

One of the key things I have learned to do in all of this is not change me and to be myself.  I learned a long time ago as a designer that when I did my best work, I let myself come out and tried to blend it with the essence of my clients and the space we were working in.  The same is true with plants.  Plants do their best for us when we put them where they want to be, not where we can make them do what we want.  As gardeners, too often we ask this of our plants and our spaces only to change ourselves too in the end.  By butchering them and controlling them to the point that they are no longer who they want to be (people, places, or plants) they cease to be the things we love and become all to unfamiliar.

So while we sit and reflect this winter and lust over catalogs to find the perfect plants for the prefect spots, let’s remember that the perfect plant is the one that can be who it wants to be and bring out the essence of the space and ourselves in the process.   If we do this we will get the gardens we want because those spaces, our needs, and the needs of the plants that will live there will bring us the diversity we crave.  If we don’t we will just ruin all the things we love about each other and our love of gardening.

We’ve all been in that bad relationship, and as designers in our desire to create and be something different we can make the greatest mistake of all  “She’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden.  Then she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while your bleeding but she’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be.  Blame it all on yourself cause she’s always a woman to me.” Sound like something we’ve all done to a shrub or two.  How often have we done this?   When will we learn that our plants, clients, spaces and selves are what and WHO they are.  Only when we learn to respect that and learn that we have to live together will we achieve that love we long for one another.    If we don’t we will just ruin all the things we love about each other and love of gardening.  So when we think of ourselves as gardeners let’s think of ourselves as cheesy songwriters.

“So don’t go changing to try and please me.  You never let me down before…Don’t imagine your too familiar and I don’t see you anymore…I would not leave you in times of trouble.  We never could have come this far…I took the good times.  I’ll take the bad times.  I’ll take you just the way you are.”

I saw this headline out of the Telegraph (UK) today: “Garden Centre Tells Men to Make Wives ‘Feel Special’ With a Clothesline“. If it hadn’t been attached to a tweet decrying the backlash, I actually would have thought, “What a great idea!”.  Of course once the retail chain was attacked for their callousness, they admitted their insensitivity and apologized; claiming that it was meant to be in jest and their catalogs were known for such dry humor.  ”Humor?” I thought…I was dead serious.  This is the kind of gift that would make my wife feel special.  In fact, such a gift has.

Three years ago, my wife started begging me for a clothesline.  Now being the obsessive compulsive designer, this was not quite jiving with my vision for the garden.  I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but the other reason was to being the obsessive compulsive one I also insist upon doing the laundry.   That way I know things are hung and folded the way I want, when I want.  A clothesline would about to add some serious effort to my weekly ritual and at a time of year when I need my rituals the most.  It also was going to add chaos to my rituals as suddenly the ability to complete my tasks was about to be controlled by the weather.  As a gardener it took me decades to get over this weather thing,  and I wasn’t looking forward to this inner struggle again.

However, we are “homestead gardeners” and in terms of our homestead palet, and our need to be green, She had a point that it did fit in.  So fate had it’s way and one day my fence guy (who like the article is from England) was here to install a beautiful new Three-board fence for our new extended goat pasture.  You see at the very front of our front yard and lawn is not a cul-de-sac for everyone to view our house from, but instead a series of three mini-pastures for us to rotate our goats and poultry through so they can “range”.  This new beautiful fence was to go right at the end of the lawn framed by two large White Oaks to take your eyes across the pasture over the valley and up the mountains on the other side to frame our view, and it does this quite well.

So after months of avoiding the clothesline and trying to buy off my wife with the fence project, The day had come to install the fence.  When James (the fence guy) arrived we had our usual chat and caught up on various projects before he drove down across the lawn to unload the materials for his guys.  They had been picking through the rock for a day already to dig the wholes so I thought I would stay away so they could complain to James and he could do his thing.  As I headed back to he house I didn’t even look at the materials as I have known James a long time and trust him with every bone of my body.  Back at my desk I looked out the window and to my surprise my wife was down there with him climbing in the back of the truck.  It turns out once he had unloaded our materials left in the bed of the truck were 2 (qty) 4″ welded steel “T’s” that he had removed from another job.

I knew I was in trouble.  My wife spent three years living in a mud hut in Africa in the Peace Corps and she is a very resourceful and determined person.  The game was on, and as James looked up at me in the window, a giant grin came across his face as he quickly lowered them down from the truck.  The last thing he wanted to do was take them home and have to put them up for his wife.   So there you have it…my wife was getting a clothes line and she was “Feeling Special”.  So for Valentines Day the gift that year that we can actually remember is my sanding those posts, painting them green, and setting them in concrete to string those lines.

Truth be had, I love that clothesline, and I love my wife.  It is an integral part of our homestead garden that sits centered between those Oaks right in front of that fence.  When the clothes aren’t on it, it looks more than appropriate with the goats behind it, the vegetable garden to one side and the woods to the other.  When the clothes are on it they add life to the landscape and their play in the wind exudes the freshness of the nature that surrounds us.  I have to say I love aesthetically arranging the clothes on it, and hanging them just right to prevent wrinkles from the pins and to get them to snap just right in the breeze so I don’t have to iron my linens.  This addition was perfect for my Monkish tendencies and our lifestyle.  That clothes line does make my wife “feel special”, and it makes me feel special too!

Anyone who doesn’t thinks that clotheslines can be romantic or make a spouse “feel special“, probably has problems enjoying a fine piece of chocolate or a tomato picked minutes before slicing.  The feeling of a fresh linen shirt touching your skin right off the line and the smell of fresh air that permeates it is one of the finer things in life.  Sliding between line dried sheets that don’t wreak of fabric softener as the cool breeze of night air drifts in through the window is one of the greatest “Rights of  Spring”.  Never mind all the environmental benefits that come along with it, If you can’t see how a clothes line can make on “feel special” than you must just have a hard time feeling yourself.

My wife is a landscape painter, and you can see her work here.   In the spring she opens the studio door and paints studies of the view.  One of my all time favorite pieces is this one of the clothesline.  If this doesn’t embody romance, then you must need a little more in your life.  It is not uncommon in the states to find people fighting for the “Right to Dry” as exclusive neighborhoods with soulless landscapes have banned them with their covenants.  My recommendation to you is if you do want to make your wife feel special get a clothesline, and try doing the laundry for her every once in awhile too.  It might just make you feel special too.

I am hoping to make this a fairly short post today.  I really need to focus on some plant profiles for our library but keep finding a need to come back here.  My father uses to say I never had a thought I didn’t verbalize, and not only does this seem to have been inherited by my daughter, it seems to have infiltrated my blog.  Some people tell me I need to learn how to create quick little plant profiles that I can just throw up as quick posts, kind of like what we have in our app.  However if you have been following me you know this is not in my blood.  Even in the app I had to have room to talk about why and how to use each plant and even why and how each filter and tool was designed.  Maybe that’s because my degree wasn’t in horticulture but rather Philosophy.  Gardening and landscape design have been my life, but metaphysics has always been my guide.

I find great comfort in this blog.  As I write about plants and design these apps, it is much like designing landscapes.  There are goals we need to accomplish, needs we need to meet, processes that have to occur, and even maintenance to be done.  In the end it is just like a landscape plan, there has to be a design, the pieces and plants have to fit just right, the materials have to be found and it has to work.  The end product I hope is something that provides the user a sense of place, brings out the essence of the individual parts, and makes their lives better just like a good design.

What is missing from the first app is the exploration that gets to occur between me and my clients.  I don’t get to know them over dinner and drinks, and I don’t get to tell them my stories or theories like I do in person.  Likewise they don’t get the same type of interaction with me and the feedback is not the same as sitting in their yard and staring in awe as the garden comes to life in spring.  Let’s face it a 2 x 3 inch screen isn’t conducive to my ramblings.  This blog gives me a place to do that and your blogs and feedback have also given me a way to get to know some of you.  I can already see the results in the things I am creating now.

There is no shortage of “How To” information on the web, and there is not shortage of machines and “money makers” out there recycling it.  When I moved from design to this I didn’t see it as a change of course.  I saw it as a chance to expand my horizons.  My biggest fear in all of this was that I would lose that one on one bonding with my clients and the ability to have those “Why To” discussions.  One of the great things about our medium is that we can always continue to grow.  Just like our gardens we can always add more plants, try new methods and meet more people.  Yes we can even touch people’s lives.  Whether you use technology to build up a wall and run from people or to lay it all out for everyone to see it up to you.  For me, life is a discussion, and I am a “Why To” kind of guy.  I am just glad that I am finding through this so many of you are too.

Since I started Botany Buddy and have been writing content for all of our upcoming applications, I have become somewhat addicted to reading all the old print trade magazines as well as blogs.  It seems like one of the hottest topics is and always has been lawns and the use of turf grass in design.  I have seen those that despise turf of any kind, those that don’t mind it as long as it is 100% organic, and those that think declaring your manifest destiny with acres of perfectly manicured turf is a symbol of the American way.  I hate to say it but you all my just be right, because what is actually the right thing to do may be dependent upon the situation you are in.

I always like to take nature as my guide.  Having spent the last five years designing and creating covenants for “sustainable” conservation properties, I have struggled with this dilemma myself and have come of with somewhat of a guide for decision making.  Like with everything else, I use nature as my guide.  If there was no place for grasses in our environment I seriously doubt we would have had the prairies, savannas, and wetlands to begin with.  All three of these situations are nature’s home to grasses, and they have very specific roles in the habitat of our wildlife and ecosystem as a whole.  Other than grazing,  The main roles of grass in all of these situation are erosion control, water filtration, and play.

Erosion control is pretty easy to understand, and there is a reason all best management practices in construction require very stringent seeding or sodding processes.  Once we killed the prairies, the winds blowing across the prairies would create the dust bowl and we learned this lesson the hard way.  Once grasses secure and protect disturbed soil the roots and thatch of the grass naturally convert the exposed subsoil into nutrient rich topsoil.  If you have ever lived in a brand new subdivision you see the emulation of this natural condition for the first ten to twenty years of its existence.  If you have lived and gardened in a 100 year old neighborhood you have enjoyed the benefits of the nice rich soil this process leaves behind.  Even in the woods, the herbaceous layer of perennials and in some cases grasses serve this same function.  The process of growing, dying back, and returning to the soil is emulated in our own lawn as long as we leave the thatch in place.

The other place grasses are most prevalent are in wetlands and river bottoms.  besides holding up the blooms of the beautiful wildflowers flowers for us to see better, grasses also are a vital filtration device for the water that flows through them.  This can be the same in our yards.  Running your storm water across a lawn is far better for the environment than channeling it in river rock or piping it to a storm water inlet.  Running water across 30 feet of healthy turf can remove 90% of the sediment and pollutants the water carries.  However this only works of you aren’t using even more pollutants to take care of the grass.  If managed responsibly, turf is actually one of the most ecologically friendly ways to manage surface water and drainage.  In the end the damage done poor drainage can be far worse than anything you can do with a lawn.

The final natural use of grassy areas I like to call “Play”.  If you have ever had the chance to see Elk emerge from the forest after an afternoon rain to engage in their courting rituals and graze you know exactly what I am talking about.  The same can be said for buffalo or deer, and it is not unlike watching  my daughter play games in the front lawn with a bunch of her friends.  The need for wide open spaces and battle our sense of claustrophobia is not only natural to us but most other species as well.  No matter how unnatural some can make a lawn look, wide open grassy spaces are very much a vital part of our natural landscape.  Unless a landscape is completely wooded they can look very unnatural without some form of lawn.  I have seen plenty of gardens planted to the gills.   Without a hint of negative space in the form of a meadow or lawn and they can look just as unnatural as a lawn.  Ground covers can provide this effect too, but if they grow lower than weeds it is impossible to keep them healthy and if they are aggressive enough to keep them out they are usually an invasive species.

In short the challenge to designing with lawns isn’t whether or not to do it.  The amount of sunlight and ability of the environment to support grass will determine that.  The challenge is finding the methods of installation and management that get it established quickly, and do more to benefit nature than we do to harm it in the process.  To guide you through these decisions I have put together this summary.  This in not a “How To”.  There will be an app for that.  Think of it as a “why to”…or to not.  I think you will find your answers come naturally and they will do more to help you succeed than any four-step program you buy and your local retailer.

Turf Grass Installation:

If you are looking for a traditional lawn, the two most common methods for installation are sodding and seeding. With soil preparation sodding typically costs from $1.00-$1.25 per square foot.  Seeding Usually Costs $.15 to $.25 per square foot.  However, this is very deceiving when you consider what it takes to achieve establishment.  To get seed to establish into a lawn in a landscape takes an average of 3-4 applications of herbicides, preemergents, and fertilizers per year.  It also usually requires at least one major aeration and renovation if not more, extensive watering, and frequent overseeding.  It also takes more water to establish the seed, and to maintain it in the hottest times of the year because it has less of a root system to support the blades.  This is just for one year, and it actually takes two full years of diligent, chemical ladent maintenance to beat the lifecycle of the weeds.   That is only if your timing is prefect and you don’t miss a beat.  Otherwise it can take longer.

There is no doubt that sod farms water incessantly, and pump tons of chemicals into the soil.  But the space that they pollute is limited.  They will typically get twenty or more harvests out of the same piece of ground.  They also tend to harvest and recylce their water and as a result are becoming more and more conscious of the the nitrogen levels and especially herbicides in it.  Due to the intense methods and irrigation, sod farms also produce a harvest ready turf in six to twelve months vs. two to three years.  This means it takes at the most 1/3 the chemical usage to achieve the desired thickness as it does to seed a lawn.  They are also strictly strictly regulated when it comes to run-off whereas homeowners are some of the biggest polluters with with their fertilizers running off right to the street and into the storm water system with no riparian buffer at all.  Numerous sources can be found to cite that homeowners use 10 times the number of pollutants on their lawns per acre than agriculture does.  This should make us think twice about how responsible we are.

Turf Grass Maintenance:

Mowing: The most environmental damage that results from lawns isn’t from having them, but rather how we take care of them. There are three main things to look at in the care of the lawn, mowing, fertilizing, pest/disease and weed control, and watering.  While treating pests, diseases and weeds directly contributes the most toxins to the soil and water, how you mow and water contributes to most to how much treating you need to do.  There is now greater deterrent to all of these other problems than having a healthy lawn in the first place.  Remember all of these other problems occur when what you trying to grow in the first place is weakened by not being allowed to do what it wants to do naturally.

Almost all turf grasses are bred from naturally occurring varieties that grow between six and twenty-four inches in height.  Now most of them have been bread to have thinner blades and can no longer hold themselves up naturally, but the closer we can allow them to get to that six inches the more they can do to take care of themselves and their space for us.  Other than specialty turfs like zoysia (which set you up for failure anyway), most common turf grasses shouldn’t be mowed shorter than three inches and should be allowed to grow at least two before mowing.  Not only will this make the grass perform better, but it will get tall enough to keep most weeds out, or at least hide them.  Your mower also pollutes, but that is a topic for another blog, hopefully the price of gas is starting to make you aware of that.

Chemical Treatments

Fertilizing: The two most common chemicals applied to lawns are fertilizers and herbicides.  Even organic chemicals, especially fertilizers, can create runoff if over used and pollute our streams.  Chicken manure is organic, and a great fertilizer, but you don’t want you well head next to the chicken house.  The best deterrent is to only use them when absolutely necessary.  Too often people throw down nitrogen every time their lawn looks a little yellow or brown.  Some times it just needs a simple trace mineral like lime or iron, or it just plain needs a break because it is too hot or cold out.  The only times that the need for nitrogen can be very obvious are in spring and fall when the grass is in prime growing season and it is still having problems.  Keeping grass growing in 100 degree temperatures is just as brutal as trying to keep yourself going and sometime we both just need a break.

Herbicides: Weed control is the second biggest polluter in lawn care.  It is also probably the easiest battle to lose.  That is why I recommend not even trying if you don’t have too.  My personal lawn is a mix of fescue, bluegrass and rye, but it also has some oxallis, nutgrass, and clover.  These weeds don’t get large enough to kill out the turf grass, and they provide fodder for the rabbits that keeps them out of my veggie patch.  When they go dormant in the fall, their thatch also creates a nice medium for overseeding the fescue that is slowly choking them out.   If you do have to treat something, only spot treat it, and only bother with things that can actually get big enough to kill out your grass or is a seriously invasive species like honeysuckle or crown vetch.

Pesticides and Fungicides: Aren’t used as often as other chemicals but can be just as dangerous to the water supply and wildlife even in smaller quantities.  Once again the question here is why bother.  Yes grubs will bring moles that tear up your yard, but grubs prefer clay and the moles help aerate and break it down.  Grubs also provide food for wildlife like wild turkeys and robins.  Treating fungus can slow down the organic processes needed to actually let your lawn and soil improve by itself, and the pesticides can kill the worms that provide the best fungicide and aeration of all.  Most of the problems you would treat for in the first place you can’t spot until the damage is done.  It is easily repaired with over seeding in the fall, and most disease and insect problems will usually run a natural course and disappear within a year.  In the end preventative treatments can do far more damage to your soil than the actual problems you are treating for, so think twice before applying or don’t apply at all.

Watering: I recently did a post on watering titled:  Plants Are Like People: Water With Love Even If It’s Tough. All of the same rules I go over there apply to turf.  A healthy turf can’t use more than an inch of precipitation a week, and should never be manually watered more often than once per week.  If you follow the instructions on the previous post you can get away with hardly watering at all.  We just came off of one of the worst droughts in the history of the Southeast, and in those years I never had to water my lawn more than once a month during the summer because I used the deep fall and winter  watering described in the previous post.  Also the taller you let your grass get the deeper the roots will grow.  If the roots are three inches deep, and you have watered deep enough to reach all the roots, you should be able to go three weeks without watering.  There are some common sense things you should do to prevent runoff like not watering the street or your driveway, but nothing is better for the environment than eliminating the need to water at all.

To wrap things up, lawns represent a vital part of our natural ecosystem.  They serve functions that are vital to wildlife and nature as well as our nature as human beings.  As long as we take nature’s cues on when to use them and don’t try to grow them where they don’t belong or want to be there is nothing unnatural about them at all.  What is unnatural is what we have been doing to them.

There is a dirty little secret in the gardening business that there are three things someone will spend 500 times what they spent on the plant on the supplies to grow them:  tomatoes, roses, and grass.  Next time you are in a garden center or big box store, look around and see what they have dedicated their space to.  Successful gardening is about getting plants to grow for us so we can focus on finding, growing and new plants.  If a lawn doesn’t do more to take care of the space it occupies either you are doing too much for it, or it shouldn’t be there in the first place.  There are natural uses and needs for lawns, we just have to take nature’s cues and think naturally about what we do with them.

Whenever I start talking about landscaping with nature people start to get all squeamish and think “Oh no…another weedy looking woodland garden.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good woodland garden.  Real ones hardly even require planting.  What I am talking about is using nature as your guide in design.  I have been designing landscapes for over 20 years now, and the last five I have been blessed to do most of my work in the nature of the Southern Appalachians.  However, before that I spent fifteen years designing several hundred gardens in the heart of the city and the heat and cold of the Midwest.  Even in the most unnatural of places I learned that the more you emulate nature, the more beautiful things will be and the easier they will be to take care of.  After all, nature is beautiful and it does a good job of taking care of itself if we don’t screw it up.

There are some key things that nature does itself that when you look at the greatest of landscapes you will always find.  I could never squeeze everything into one post, but there are some key things that if approached from the outset will make the rest fall in place.  If we take nature’s lead on how it designs and plants its gardens we are bound to succeed and it is bound to be beautiful.  What I will explore are the main aspects of landscapes, how nature creates them and how we can emulate them.

The first thing that nature lays out in a landscape is the flow.  To understand this we have to understand that in nature and in the landscape it is the water that determines flow.  Where the water goes in nature so does the wildlife.  The migratory patterns of the birds and the animals are all tied to the water and their need to get to it.  In the garden it is people that flow, as well as the birds and animals that visit…including our dogs.  I like to make my paths and walking areas follow the drainage in the garden.  In high traffic areas I will make stone paths or place stepping stones inter-planted with “steppable” plants or ground covers.  In open areas, if I have grass at all, I will take water across it as well.  As water creates the valleys and flat areas in nature, doing this in the garden serves the aesthetic need of making the garden look like it was meant to be there.

As for the animals in the landscape people tend to take the easiest possible path, and so does water.  From a practical standpoint, the water won’t washout your beds or puddle and breed mosquitoes.  It will create moisture along the paths were smaller plants that require more water go, and it will dry out other areas for evergreens and shrubs that are more sensitive to water.  Animal migration can also create flow in nature and the garden.  The two most prominent animals in your landscape are dogs and mailmen.  Dogs are like the deer and other animals in the landscape that create migration paths that don’t follow the water.  If  I have a dog in a landscape, I will always leave a little maintenance path behind shrubs along a fence.  This allows them to patrol their landscape and creates airflow behind the shrubs so they don’t die out on one side.  With a privacy fence I also like to leave a small strip of lattice along the bottom to let them see out and increase air flow.  As for mailmen, I can’t remember the last time I did an urban landscape that didn’t have a path for them to go door to door.  Not only does it keep them from trampling the plants, but it gives an excuse to pull down the height of a house with the plantings without adding so many plants it looks unnatural.

Nature has two main types of scenery that you encounter, and so does any good landscape.  Olmstead called these the pastoral and the picturesque.  The pastoral are the wide open sceneries that allow you to get lost in the sunset and your mind to escape.  It brings out the grandness of the landscape.  In urban setting everything is usually boxed in and strictly defined by property lines.  These pastoral scenes don’t often occur naturally so you have to lead the eye to them.  The easiest way to do this is use tall things closer to your gathering areas to screen the neighbors beside you and taper down your heights to the corner where you can see the furthest.  Always make sure that what is in that corner is shorter than what is just behind it outside of your yard and this will lift your eye back up and create that escape.  The tapering of heights to the furthest point will also create a sense of perspective making your space seem larger than it is.

The picturesque are those scenes where your eye gets stuck and you are looking at a space like a framed picture that creates a scene.  In nature this may be a giant boulder you walk up to on a hike.  You get stopped in your tracks then totally engrossed in the lichens, ferns and wild flowers growing from its cracks.  Its becomes like an entirely different world to explore inside of another.  The same can happen in your garden by planting in the cracks of a wall or having a collections of planters or a piece of art on a fence.  Even a planter next to your door where that gutter makes it hard to grow anything else can have the same effect.  One thing to be sure of is to repeat the elements in that planter in the landscape around it.  By splashing a few of the impatiens in the pot on the ground around it, it will tie it into the rest of the landscape.  It will be just like the ferns that grow on that rock that also grow on the ground around it and lead you down the trail and on into the forest.

Plant diversity is crucial to any healthy natural environment and also any good garden or landscape.  Diversity comes in many forms.  What I am going to focus on here is the layers of a landscape and how they are dispersed.  Nature creates this diversity and uses the plants to care for the space and the animals in it.  So should you.  I like to relate the levels of the landscape to music.  Good music has always found its roots in the rhythms of nature and so does any good art, especially a natural one like landscape.

These rhythms come it two forms.  The first rhythm can be found in the layers.  Nature, good gardens and great music all have an upper, middle and lower range.   In nature this is made up of the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants.  Neither nature nor a garden is in its complete form without all of these.  The trees provide the canopy and determine the amount of light and moisture hitting the ground, soil type and everything that will grow below it.  The trees create the homes for the animals and the home for everything below it.  Think of them as the ceiling and walls of a room.  Just like nature does, when designing plantings you should always start with the trees because they determine everything else.

The mid range is the shrub layer, and can also include smaller flowering trees.  They provide food for most of the wildlife. They also also create the depth of the landscape, just like midrange creates depth in music.  The shrub layer will do the most to take care of space for you just like it does in nature.  When you come across an thicket of huckleberry in the woods, it always looks perfectly groomed and placed as though it has been meticulously pruned even though man has never touched it.  Besides creating depth in terms of space and layers they also create new spaces to discover behind and around them providing for a sense of discovery and surprise.  This layer is not only rich in space creation.  It is rich in performance as well because these plants provide elaborate flower, berry , fall color and bark shows that create a tapestry of their own.  Not only do they provide the most fodder aesthetically, they also do the most to feed the birds and other wildlife.

The low range is the final layer.  In music it is the base that rolls along, providing the rhythm for everything else and fills the voids of the down times.  In plantings it is the herbaceous layer.  I would hardly consider a tuba or tympani to be similar to a Hosta or Astilbe, but they are.  If played properly they both are a delicate presence in the back ground that emerge and steal the show when everything else is down.  In the garden and nature the perennials quietly hold the ground while the mid range shows off all spring, then they tactfully take their turns showing off their color as the flowers of spring fade away.  Then they roll into a crescendo heading into fall only to step aside for the finale of the trees with fall color.  They are the fabric that holds the ground in place and takes care of the space for you.  Then they give you that little extra right when you need it.

Along with the layers all good music, nature , and gardens have rhythm.   The patterns in all great music, art and gardens can all be traced to those of nature.  The arts and particularly music really exploded in the last century when people stopped trying to create things just for the sake of creating them and started looking for inner meaning.  The rhythms of  jazz embody this and the greatest artistic nod to nature of all has to be syncopation.  When gardeners realize that everything doesn’t have to spaced in 4/4 (formally and perfectly symmetrical) that is when their lives get easier, and much richer.  Trying to make a garden embody a rigid structure is like trying to make a marching band embody dance.  It is next to impossible and everything has to be completely lined up all the time.  It is even worse in a garden because  it is even harder to make a plant do what you want than a teenager.

Plants need to be spaced to move you through the garden like the rhythm in music.  Then they will move you through the garden like music moves your feet.  Syncopate it…Put the weight of plants in one place to provide structure where you need it, but then repeat it tapering off in the direction you want the eye to move.  If you plant five in one place, plant three a little bit over from there and maybe more even a little further over.  This is how nature does it and it will intrinsically add depth to the aesthetics of your garden, and the movement to keep it interesting.

Nature doesn’t plant in intertwining plant sausages so why should be.  Think of the sausage method like the landscape at McDonald’s, it may be showy, but it has about as much depth as the food they are trying to sell.  I would much rather sit down to four hours of French cuisine with depth and rhythm that feeds my soul as well as my body.  Nature doesn’t plant its flowers in blocks of 300 only to be ripped out and replaced three times a year.  It plants them where the weeds would grow to take care of the space so they can dance with one other and the other plants in the forest to provide the richest show possible.  Out of the symbiotic relationships the ecosystem creates to grow emerges an equally complex combination of  outright beauty.

I could go into many other areas where nature is the best guide.  You could use materials that are native to your region.  Be it plant or rocks this always provides a sense of cohesiveness.  There are all kinds of great cues to follow when using water in the garden.  However, what I wanted to do here was help you learn to take your cues from the world around you.  Draw from not only from what makes nature beautiful, but what makes it work, and let it guide you in your own garden or artistic endeavors.  We have to quit creating gardens for the sake for feeding them, and start creating them to feed our souls and the world around us.  Most importantly when nature has created them for us, we need to quit screwing them up.

Having grown up in Northwest Missouri, where the winter winds of the plains from Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas converge on the bluffs of the Missouri River like three tornadoes of ice converging into one, I learned to appreciate anything in the vegetation that glowed with warmth.  In the surrounding landscape it was the golden tones of the fields laying fallow, especially when they sparkled from the frost glistening in the sun.  In the sky it was the amazing sunsets as far as the eye can see even after a long day of nothing but cold blue skies that seemed as if you were peering into ice.  On the highways it was the oasis that always formed about a half mile ahead of you on the road and what appeared to be steam rising from the asphalt that was the only thing absorbing the sun since there wasn’t a tree in sight.  The warmest memories of all were of course inside, with the smell of what some would call “farm food”.  The pot roast on Sundays, fried chicken on Saturdays, and of course spaghetti on Wednesdays.

However, when you arrived at someone’s home, it was usually one of the coldest sites of all.  In the midst of the pastures would be the perfectly green lawn.  The houses would always be white, to not show the dirt blowing off the fields and gravel roads, and they would be perfectly adorned with a straight row of yews, or junipers tortuously pruned into a shape they were obviously not supposed to be.  Green it would be, even in the evergreens with hedgerows of White Pine, Junipers, or Arborvitae perfectly marking the borders of the lawn.  Someone might occasionally get crazy and throw in a prized Blue Spruce (assured to have lights at Christmas), but when you needed that blue the most, it always seemed to look green if not brown from the burn of the winter winds. 

Quickly in my career as a designer I had to overcome this hurdle.  Being a plantsman first this wasn’t hard.  I grew up in nurseries, so my challenge as a designer wasn’t finding plants to use, it was learning how to restrain my pallet.  One thing I learned early on was that it was hardest to make a landscape look great in winter.  However, if you could accomplish that, making it interesting the rest of the year was a piece of cake.  I am not talking about using all kinds of colorful evergreens that look like they came out of a crayon box.  I love interesting conifers, but not when the color overpowers the essence of the plant.  So in this post I thought I would focus on plants with interesting barks.  Conifers are too easy.  The following plants are some of my favorites, but by no means all that I use.  They are also a mix of native and non-native varieties, but none should be invasive.  What they do have in common is a sense of warmth and life they can invoke in the dead of winter.

Betula (Birch):  Betula nigra (River Birch) is probably the most common.  There are several varieties of the species including ‘heritage’.  All have the indicative papery tan exfoliating bark.  They also are usually multi-trunked with a few large leaders reaching for the warmth of the sun and small horizontal branches wisping out from the sides . The vertical structure of the trunk makes it move in the wind and provides a nice contrast to the broad, heavy and  horizontal branching of  Spruce and Pine.  My favorite Birch is actually Betula populfolia ‘Whitespire” (Japanese Whitespire Birch).  It is a white or “paper” barked variety that has proven to be borer resistant.  The parent plant is now almost seventy-years old and remains borer free.

Cornus sericea (Red Twig Dogwood):  This is one of the few shrubs with colorful bark in the winter.  It is also native to much of the United States.  This plant has a bright red twig in winter that can be seen from a distance but isn’t overpowering.  The vertical branching habit makes it feel more like a grass or thicket plant than a shrub, but the fullness makes it work well for a border or foundation plant.  The plants are a lush green in summer with a nice white flower and prolific white berries birds love.  Along with this you must include Cornus alba (Variegated Red Twig Dogwood).  It is very similar to Conus sericea, except it has a variegated leaf.  This species can be prone to anthracnose but the variety Cornus alba “Ivory Halo” seems to be disease resistant, and keeps a more compact form than other varieties.

Hydrangea quercifolia (Oakleaf Hydrangea), and Hydrangea anomala var. petiolaris (Climbing Hydrangea):  Both of these plants have a birch like bark that is exquisite in winter.  The Oakleaf Hydrangea looks great against evergreens or lawns, and another interesting feature is that if you leave the flowers on they will dry in place all winter.  This almost makes it look like it is in bloom.  Climbing Hydrangea is wonderful on a fence, and especially brick walls.  The bark really pops out against brick.  It also has a very fibrous attaching root that give it an almost Gothic feel compared to other vines.  It is also a self attaching vine with makes it even nicer.

Physocarpus opulifolius (Ninebark):  There are two predominate varieties of this plant ‘Diablo’, a purple leaved variety, and ‘Dart’s Gold’a yellowish leaved variety.  Both have a Birch like texture in winter.  If left alone they grow very vertical and develop a thick trunk like structure.  They seem to max out around six feet in height and four feet in width.  This makes them great to tuck behind low growing evergreens and if left natural will look almost like a very small Birch.  Ninebarks are extremely hardy, fairly fast growing, and drought tolerant.

Acer palmatum ‘Sangu Kaku’ (Coral Bark Maple):  This plant his a vivid pinkish coral bark in winter.  It can almost take on an orangish tone.  The tree itself is very delicate and rarely exceeds twelve feet in height.  It has a ferny maple leaf and wispy texture.  It does not develop the distinguished branching habit that other Japanese Maples do, so it does look good as a stand alone specimen.  However, it is fantastic tucked into evergreens or against a foundation.  The only downfall to this plant is that it is prone to winter kill.  Winter watering will cut down on this, but expect it to develop some dead wood in winter that will need to be removed in the spring.

Lagerstoemia indica (Crepe Myrtle):  There are dozens of varieties of this plant in production.  It comes in all sorts of colors and sizes.  The trunks are usually clumped and have a blotchy exfoliating bark, rather than papery bark like a birch.  Many people think of them as trashy because they drop flowers and seed pods constantly and sucker which makes them require pruning to keep nice trunks.  Regardless, with all of that, it sure looks good most of the time and especially with its late summer bloom and winter bark.  Both features shine at times when other plants are lackluster.  On top of that it can survive the abuse of just about any parking lot in the south.

Acer griseum (Paper Bark Maple):  This is a very underused and overlooked tree.  It averages about 25-30 feet in height, so it can be used for shade on a patio, a specimen in the lawn without killing out the grass, or as an ornamental in a foundation planting.  It is not overly showy.  It doesn’t have an amazing flower or incredible fall color, but it is classy.  The fall color is nice, and the foliage is very clean and green in the summer, but this plant is sought for the bark.  It is a favorite of collectors.  Sometimes I compare plant collectors to book collectors.  If I were to compare it to a book you just had to have on your shelf it would be Catcher in The Rye.  It is not a huge tree, but does she rextremely well written, reliable as a recommendation, full of inspiration and bound to create memories.

Platanus x acerifolia (London Plane Tree) and Platanus occidentalis (American Sycamore):  These are two of the great majestic trees of urban parks everywhere.  They are messy, and drop limbs, leaves, and seeds all of the time, but the mess is worth it.  They are extremely hardy, pollution and drought tolerant, and capable of living in swamps.  There is not much this plant can’t take, but what it gives is irreplaceable.  The bark of the London Planetree exfoliates on the lower portions of the trunk.  The American Sycamore is reversed and exfoliates on the upper trunk and branches.  Both create very tall and open canopies making them ideal for street trees.  As their branches cross the road they create the feeling of a nave.  Given the space of a park, where they can be 100 feet from the next tree, they can form a cathedral unto themselves with branches hanging all the way to the ground 60-80′ wide.  When it comes to habit, they can rival the grandest of any Oak, but what makes them stand our is that glorious white of the bark exploding in winter.

I am sure I have left out plenty of others, like some of the Poplars, Tree Lilac, Ironwood, and countless others.  After all, I need to leave something for later.  I am already craving the cold walks amongst the Sycamores in the valley through the thick fog of winter, and winter isn’t even here yet.  I need to leave something for January when we are really sick of winter and dreaming of spring.  Hopefully these will just give you some motivation and help you think outside of the box of the evergreen hedge.  There are lots of options for winter interest when it comes to evergreens and even grasses, but when it comes to design, working with bark requires a subtlety the invokes class.  Most importantly since barks encase the heart of the tree they also exude the warmth of their essence, something we are all about to need.

Of course, all of the trees and shrubs profiled in this post may be found in Botany Buddy’s Tree and Shrub Finder for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It’s that time of year again.  I’ve cleaned out the tube bird feeders, hung a couple new suet feeders, and I have already had on ripped down by the bear.  I always like to wait until winter is really coming to start feeding.  Primarily because I like to let the birds “Free Range” on wild flower seeds and the summer fruits and berries in the garden.  I like the thought of them helping with the natural cycle of scarifying and dispersing the seeds the way nature intended.  I also like not having the bears visit everyday, especially with my daughter playing outside by herself all summer.  This is a luxury we have living on a rural mountainside that we didn’t have on an urban street corner.  Not that the bears are the threat that some of our neighbors were.  They are more akin to urban raccoons that scavenge their way around on garbage day and pilfer your bird feeders.

Being in a natural setting is a blessing in so many ways, but one of the greatest is the flora for the fauna that already exists naturally. There are hoards of native shrubs that adorn our woods and one of the reasons is that the birds love them so much and help to spread their seed.  This time of year really makes me appreciate where we are, but it also reminds me of our urban garden where we worked to bring native varieties into the garden to bring the birds with them.  One of our prouder moments was when are daughter chose “peepepper” as one of her first words.  He was the first neighbor we got to know on the mountain.  He lived in the four story highrise in the woods next door that largely resembles a dead white pine.  Of course his name eventually evolved to woodpecker, and now she boast a better knowledge of the neighbirds than myself.  Of course this started with books, but my wife’s iBird app has helped as well.

So as I see the return of the flocks, I have been wanting to spread the joy of the season and share a list of plants that would help bring some good neighbirds to you.  I am going to limit this list to natives that transfer well to an urban setting.  However, there are plenty of hybrids and commercial varieties that do the job too.  I thought I would start here because I like to save those varieties for places where natives just won’t grow.  Going native first is one of the first rules of sustainability.  What I have chosen are the five palnt families (Genus) with the widest selection of bird friendly varieties I could find.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should give you a great place to start with your plant and bird searches. 

Pinus (Pine):  There are dozens of native pines that make great trees for birds.  Pinus Strobus (Eastern White Pine) is the most commonly planted in the United States, but for smaller varieties in residential gardens some other native options include Pinus aristata (Bristlecone Pine), Pinus banksiana (Jack Pine),  Pinus Bugeana (Lacebark Pine), Pinus Resinosa (Red Pine), and Pinus monophylla (Pinyon Pine).  These pines are all more moderate in size than the White Pine, but still maintain a natural feel in a formal landscape.  This makes them ideal for urban or residential situations. 

Pines provide food for birds  in a variety of ways.  The cones of pines open to release as many as 12,000 seeds per pound, usually in winter when the other smaller seeds of wildflowers have been eaten.  The bark also harbors lots of insects that make it a favorite for woodpeckers. As the interior branches shed they provide copious amounts of small twigs and needles to build nests, and their evergreen needles provide protections from the cold winter winds.

Juniperus (Juniper):  Juniperus communis (Common Juniper), Juniperus monosperma (Oneseed Juniper), Juniperus occidentalis (Western Juniper), Juniperus scopularum (Rocky Mountain Juniper) and Juniperus virginiana (Eastern Red Cedar) are the most common native varieties in the continental United States.  Between these five you can find a native Juniper almost anywhere in North America.  All of these varieties have been cultivated into varieties for landscape use that can be safely used without worrying about reseeding invasive offspring.  If seed stock does emerge it will come out as one of the native varieties.  There are some hybridized varieties that could revert to something else, so if trying to stay native stick to cultivated or native varieties only.  

Junipers produce berries throughout summer, winter, and fall that provide a great source of food.  They also have a nice evergreen shell that provides protection from the wind.  Junipers provide great cover from prey. As the growth on the interior of the plant sheds it dries and stays in place becoming extremely prickly.  This makes it less desirable for thin furred animals such opossum and weasels to come after the nests.

Viburnums:  Viburnums are a favorite of landscape designers because they are extremely hardy  They also produce nice flowers, foliage and berries and provide some great fall color.  Some are even evergreen, and the flowers are often extremely fragrant.  However, they are usually somewhat of an unknown to beginning gardeners or casual retail nursery shoppers.  Native species include Viburnum dentatum (Chicago Luster Viburnum), Viburnum prunifolium (Blackhaw Viburnum), Viburnum rufidulum (Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum), and Viburnum trilobum (American Cranberry Viburnum),  All of these plants have abundant flowers and berries and can be kept as large shrubs or small trees in any landscape.  The birds love them for the berries and their height is achieved with fairly small horizontal branches that are great for perching but don’t hold the weight of predators making them a nice place for birds to hang out.  There are also many cultivated and hybridized non-native varieties that are not invasive.  If for some reason a native option doesn’t work for you, I would not hesitate to explore those options.

Cornus (Dogwood):  Everyone thinks of Dogwoods as the spring flowering tree, however they also come in some naturalizing and shrub forms as well.  Cornus florida (Flowering Dogwood) is a sentimental favorite for gardeners with the pink and white flowers at Easterand red berries in the fall.  However Cornus racemosa (Gray Dogwood) makes a great naturalizing thicket of about 12-15 feet and produces a nice white flower in May and June and a waxy white berry birds love.  Other varieties include Cornus alternifolia (Pagoda Dogwood), Cornus drummundii (Rough-leaved Dogwood), Cornus nuttallii (Pacific Dogwood), and Cornus sericea (Red Twig Dogwood).  The Rough-leaved and Red Twig Dogwoods provide a shrub form and the red twigs provide great winter interest.  All of these plants have wonderful landscape value, as well as make great naturalizers.  They all have reliable berries for the birds, provide nesting habitat, and add aesthetic value to add to any garden.

Prunus (Cherry):  The Prunus (Cherry) family covers more than the cherries we eat or the flowering trees we see in spring.  There several shrub forms and not as showy trees that can add subtle accents to the landscape, as well as habitat and fodder for birds.  Prunus virginiana (Chokecherry) comes in several forms and varieties and is a great alternative to some of the hybrid and grafted tree-form varieties.  Prunus caroliniana (Carolina Cherrylaurel) and its Asian counterpart Prunus lauroceasus (Cherry Laurel) make great evergreen shrubs, providing both protection and berries as well as a nice evergreen foliage for the landscape.  Prunuis subhirtella (Weeping cherry) is a nice pink flowering native that drops small berries mid summer. Prunus besseyi (Sand Cherry) is a great naturalizing shrub with small white flowers and black berries that are low enough to provide fodder for foraging birds like pheasant and turkey.  Finally, Prunus americana (Wild Plum) is probably one of the most common fruit bearing trees and can be found in almost all states east of the Rockies.  Of course there are other varieties as well, but as a family, Prunus may provide more food for the birds this continent than any other plant family.

There are countless other plants and plant families that I could include in this list, and look for more to come.  For now, these families provide the most variety in terms of native trees and shrubs to bring in birds, and they adapt well to the urban and residential landscape.  All of these plants look great, when used in the right place at the right time.  But when it comes down to it nothing brings out the beauty of a plant better than when it gets to do what it was born to do….be a part of nature. 

Of course, all of the trees and shrubs profiled in this post may be found in Botany Buddy’s Tree and Shrub Finder for the iPhone and iPod Touch.