As I watch the hydrangeas shriveling in the heat of the last
couple of weeks, it took all my willpower to not want to just turn the
irrigation system up and letting it rip all through the day and night, but it
doesn’t work. Sure, the hydrangeas would have been happy, as the word hydra is
in their name for a reason, but I’ve killed more evergreens by overwatering
them most people would ever admit to.
When it’s the middle of summer, most people are talking
about color and flowers and blooms and few want to discuss the intricacies of
tone on tone green, but evergreens are awesome, and although, I too was once a
“gotta have it if it flowers” kind of a gal, I’m learning the value of foliage
that persists.
I am a huge fan of the Mahonia plant family, so naturally I
have tortured and killed a great many. This member of the Barberry family has
the bang-up potential to do it all. All species have great looking pinnately
compound leaves – like hollies on steroids that purple with age in the
winter, fragrant, almost lemony scented yellow flowers that perfume the early
garden, cool looking berries that persist through the summer and fall and
they’re shade tolerant. Woo hoo. They even resprout from old wood, which means
you can prune them as hard as you want to without having to stare at old stubs
for the rest of your life. They’re meant to be no fuss, but mine, well, mine
all died hard. I think the reason is that the shade I was tucking them into was
underneath fairly mature trees so maybe it was too much shade and then of
course they got too much water and the drainage wasn’t right, and maybe there
wasn’t enough humus, or something else I’ll never understand. But I’m not
giving up.
The one I’ve killed
the most is the Oregon grape (M.
aquifolium), which is meant to become a six-foot tall slowly suckering
shrub. It is supposedly hardy in zone 4 so I’m bummed that it keeps quitting on
me. I also tried the hybrid, Mahonia
x media. These are the earliest
flowering, and for the time it lasted, my ‘Arthur Menzies' was a rock star. Two foot long
leaves arching out under enormous electric lemon yellow flower racemes each
standing a foot tall. It was crazy beautiful, but it too perished although it’s
hardy to zone 6. Maybe it needed more acidic fertilization, or less, or it
needed singing to, I just don’t know.
The Mahonia is actually a perfect example for me of the indefinable
nature of gardening. Four of my neighbors have Mahonias, I actually sold and
installed one of them, and they are all as happy as can be, which is how it
sometime works in gardening. In my Mahonia killing soil, I have agastache that
grow to be five to six feet tall. At my neighbors houses they’re all in the 3-foot
range. We all live within ten square acres. My rhodos? Dead plants walking! My
neighbor’s? Happy as clams. It’s just crazy, but that’s how gardening works. In
my back yard I can dig down in one spot and hit sandy soil that is so bereft of
organic matter it’s criminal, and then move three feet over and hit a hunk of
clay. Just to add insult to injury, I have no problem growing the
Mahonia’s nearest relative, the evergreen barberry (Berberis x
gladwynensis 'William Penn') so I really think I should be able to grow at
least one of the Mahonias, and I have my eye on a beauty at Marders.
Now that I have my deer fence almost perfected I’m thinking
of sneaking in a few of my favorite evergreens, the variegated Euonymus japonicus 'Silver King.' I love evergreen euonymus, and used
to sell them by the truckload as they are fast growing, really tough, glossy
evergreens that shear beautifully and are super, super easy. Unfortunately,
they are also deer crack cocaine, so much so that we maybe bring in 5 or 6 of
the large shrubby plants for the entire season. It’s terrible because they were
such an enormously useful family plants. Happy in the sun or part shade,
tolerant of poor soil, from groundcover to climber to midsized shrub, they
worked in every yard. And although “Silver King” really wants prefers a little
more sun, I would work it in to every garden I did, just because the white
variegation worked with every single garden I designed. I miss this plant, as
well as it’s upright cousin Euonymus japonicus
‘Green Rocket’ which although not variegated, had a very interesting columnar
form that I also used to great effect in mixed gardens for affordable winter
interest and for narrow hedging. I also loved the pure green Euonymus japonica
‘Manhattan’ and it was my go to plant for framing steps and covering
foundations. Alas, to plant too many of these glossy beauties is tempting fate,
so I’m going to just sneak in a couple, but if you don’t have deer, you really
need to look into this family of plants.
While I’m tempting fate, lets talk hardy gardenias. Although
fairly new to the trade in our area everyone is excited to try these plants (regardless
of the fact that they too are supposedly hardy only to zone 7 according to the
plant god Michael Dirr) as the scent just about knocks you off your feet. I’ve
seen at least two different varieties and I know that it’s my duty to bring both
home and plant them in my gardens so I can report back to you on how well
they’re doing, but the last few winters have been ever so easy so no one really
knows yet if we’re all just wasting our time. That said, if they do survive,
they are a great glossy green before they flower, so would be a nice addition
to our winter interest evergreen collection.
Of course part of the joy of being a plant geek is the need
to try new plants and to push planting boundaries. I don’t know a single plant
geek in my area who hasn’t tried at least once to grow a spring blooming
camellias. I myself planted three ‘April Remembered’ last fall so that I could
see them when I looked out my writing window. I’ve had other camellias follow
me home but it was hard to judge their hardiness when the deer kept browsing
them to the ground. After the ice storm at the end of the winter, one of my plants,
disappointingly, dropped nearly all it’s buds, but they all made it through
fine. Now granted, it might have been smart of me to wrap these camellias up
for the winter, both for protection from the snow, and to prevent the snow from
weighing down and breaking the branches, and if you are up for that, more power
too you. I, unfortunately, am a lazy gardener, so nothing at my house gets
coddled. Like I say, do as I say, not as I do.
Besides, we might be heading for zone 7 out here, as when I
was a kid, no one had crape myrtles and now they are everywhere, and thriving.
I could fill this paper with other evergreens that you could
incorporate into your garden, but I think I’m going to stop here, although I
must mention the Umbrella Pine (Sciadopitys verticillata)
since I’ve wanted one for years. Umbrella pines, as the Latin points out are
not actually in the pine family and have been in existence for over 200 million
years. I figure once I have this and a dwarf Gingko tree I will have a good
representation of living fossil species, although if I want to corner the market,
I’d need to add a Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) and a Sweet Gum
(Liquidamber) and perhaps get an Orycteropus afer to walk on a leash next to my
seething mass of dachshunds. I’m
not sure who would be unhappier about the situation, but my money is on the
aardvark.