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Four
Questions
To
Ask A
Plant
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Back in the days of the dawning
of the age of Aquarius, a favorite pick-up line for
young people in the singles scene was, “What’s your
sign?” The question, of course, was referring to
the other person’s astrological sign, and the
standard reply would go something like this, “I’m a
Virgo, how about you?” This exchange of personal
data provided precious little usable information for
either of the parties to the conversation, but it
did serve as a way of gauging the other person’s
interest in exchanging further, and hopefully, more
useful information—like names and telephone
numbers. Before any of these chance encounters
turned into any type of “long-term” relationship
there would likely be many more serious
conversations where more substantive aspects of
compatibility would be discussed.
It takes many questions to
determine your compatibility with another human
being. I, for example, forgot to ask about her
interest in Nebraska football some thirty-something
years ago, so I spend most autumn Saturday
afternoons by myself, but I digress.
Fortunately it takes only four
questions to determine your compatibility with a
landscape plant that you are considering buying.
In order of importance, those four questions are:
1. Can you grow in my soil?
2. Can you survive in my
climate?
3. What’s your season? And
4. How big will you get when
you grow up? |
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But homeowners don’t buy plants just to see if they
can survive in the climate and soil of the
homeowner’s landscape—they buy plants to create
visually interesting and attractive landscapes.
And if the visual interest and attractiveness of
your landscape is important to you, the question you
need to ask plants before you buy them is, “What is
your season?” A plant’s season is the time of
year—the season—during which it is most
attractive. How a plant looks when it is at its
best is really what you are paying for when you buy
a plant. You’ll get the most for your money is that
visually attractive season is long, and if it is
compatible with the seasons of our region—short,
unpredictable springs and falls, long and
predictable summers and winters. In other words,
“summer” and “winter” plants tend to have long and
attractive seasons in a Wyobraska landscape.Most
homeowners are not accustomed to thinking about the
“season” of a plant, but a plant’s “season” is
perhaps the single most important factor in
determining both what plants to use in your
landscape, and where to locate them in your
landscape in order to get the most visual enjoyment
out of them. Many common and widely sold landscape
plants are “spring” plants—plants that are visually
attractive in the spring season, but not necessarily
the rest of the year. The only reason that spring
plants are so widely used in landscapes is because
most homeowners shop for landscape plants in the
spring.
There is unfortunately little information available
about the “season” of |
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Previous Articles
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
Want A Water Conserving Lawn? You might already have
one-
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Creating Long
Term
Tree-lationships April 24
Bigger, Bolder, Brighter,
Better—and Back In The Landscape May 01 & 08
Hardy Shrub
Roses
May 15
Another Look
at Native Plants
May 22
No Child
Left Inside
May 29
June
is Tree Care Month June 05
Summer Blooming Shrubs
June 12
Roses Are
Red.....
June 19
The Plants They will be Talking About Next Year at
the Garden Walk
June 26
Busy Summertime Gardens
July 03
Cutting Your Lawn Down to Size
July 10
July 17
Insect Paranoia
If It Will Grow In Wyoming...
July 24
Rain Gardens
July31
WyoBraska Native Grass & Wildflower Lawn
August 7
A Real WyoBraska Peach?
(Fruit Trees) August 14
Fall is for Planting
August 21
A Recipe for Enjoying Autumn Landscapes August 28
Seeing Red in your Landscape
September 4
2007 Articles
2006 Articles |
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We have been taught to think that the only real
important question about a plant’s compatibility
with our landscapes is “Can you survive in my
climate?” But cold hardiness (and now heat
tolerance) is, in my opinion, not the most important
question to ask of a prospective plant.
Wyobraska’s residential and commercial landscapes
are filled with plants that are perfectly
“cold-hardy” but which struggle to grow in the
region’s under-developed landscape soils.
Some standard soil amendment
practices are advisable prior to planting almost any
landscape plant in Wyobraska, but there are still
many commonly sold and well-known landscape plants
that fail to thrive even in properly amended
Wyobraska landscape soils. Unfortunately there are
no comprehensive lists of which plants will grow
well in Wyobraska landscape soils, but there is a
growing body of knowledge among the region’s
landscape professionals and avid gardeners on this
subject. My experience is that if a homeowner asks
the question “Can you grow in my soil?” about a
plant that they would like to use in their
landscape—they will now be able to get a good answer
most of the time.
“Can you survive in my
climate?” is still a relevant question when getting
to know a prospective landscape plant, but it now
has a new twist. It used to be that the only point
of this question was to determine if a plant could
withstand the cold temperatures of our winters. But
now, for a few plants, the question is also asking
if that plant can survive the heat of our summers.
One of the reasons that this question is not quite
as important as the other two is that information
about climate adaptability is readily available and
widely disseminated. Most plant tags already
contain this information, so the question is easily
answered.
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landscape plants. But there is
an easy way to find and buy the “summer” and
“winter” plants that make for attractive Wyobraska
landscapes—buy them in summer and fall.
I have seen it work time after
time, when Wyobraska homeowners shop for landscape
plants in the summer and fall they tend to be
attracted to those plants which are at their visual
peak during this time. Two to three years later,
these homeowners are pleased with their landscapes.
The final question that should
be asked of every landscape plant is, “How big will
you be when you grow up? It’s hard enough to space
plants so that they have room to grow when they are
so small when you plant them. It’s even harder when
you don’t ask them how big they will get when they
grow up. This information is readily available on
most plant tags. My rule of thumb when placing
plants in a landscape?—always place them a little
farther apart than you first think you should.
Ask your prospective landscape
plants these four questions before you take them
home and you’re certain to end up with a groovy
landscape.
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