66: Columbine, John Robinson, Oak Seedlings
Leslie: 00:11
Welcome to Into The Garden with Leslie on NewsRadio WINA. This show is sponsored by Colorblends Bulbs and Dos Amigos Landscaping. I am Leslie Harris and our plant of the week is the Aquilegia but you may know it as the Columbine.
I'll be chatting with John Robinson, who is my new helper with the podcast and also a keen gardener and also a super nice guy and the playlist is about what to do in your garden this week.
I'm actually recording the first and last parts of the podcast a couple of weeks early until I get back from Dixter and then a quick trip to Connecticut to squeeze the babies. If you were to pose a question in the coming weeks, please be patient with the reply because I'm going way early on these bits. Or if something amazing and noteworthy were to happen closer to drop time, please excuse me for not mentioning it.
Let's see what would shake up the gardening world in such a way. How about if somebody finally achieved the elusive blue rose? Oh no, no better if somebody tried to say that they had a blue rose and cultivation but it turns out that they were just using that horrible blue dye that Costco puts on white orchids. Now that's intrigue for you.
Thinking ahead so much about our week with Great Dixter as I record this, it's about a week away. Marianne Willburn and I have been comparing notes about what to pack. Anyway, lots of rain in the forecast there but you know what they say there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing choices. Also, I know I will want Siri to help me remember a ton of things that we're learning that week, but I'm going to need to go old school so that I don't look like I'm addicted to my phone or TikTok or something. So I bought some of those pocket notebooks in which to madly scribble when Fergus Garrett drops, pearls of wisdom our way and then of course the paper will get rained on. Well, this should be interesting.
The plant of the week is the Columbine also known as the Aquilegia vulgaris but I think we can stay with the common name on this one. It's pretty well known. This is an early spring blooming perennial that I think of as being short lived but generous with its offspring. So once you have it established in your garden, you will keep it.
It has oversized Clover-like foliage that grows in a clump sort of springing from a center stalk. I remember being so proud of my 10 or so year old boy when he asked me one time, “Why was I not pulling the clover weeds” and I said “Where?” And he said “Right over there” and he pointed to some new Columbine seedlings. They look very much like Clover when they're small and I was gob smacked that he even knew that weeding was a thing, much less than one might weed clover, much less that he knew vaguely what Clover foliage look like because at that stage of his life, I thought he only cared about the Civil War and lacrosse.
Anyway, the foliage is a gray green and because leaf miners sometimes move in you may notice that the leaves have a pattern of well, insects mining, it shouldn't really hurt anything and it is an interesting look. In April and May tallish like 2 to 3 foot stalks shoot up and you get these nodding bell like flowers. From a distance, it's sort of not unlike comfrey or blue belt but much larger and more complex because you have the sepals in the middle surrounded by 5 petals and then bract like things sort of shooting off of them and then these 5 spur parts of the petals shooting behind. It's a really cool arrangement.
One of the common names of Columbine is Granny's bonnet, and I totally see it. Granny's big powdery Polleny nose is sticking out in the middle of her round face of 5 petals and the bracks of the bonnet and the Spurs are like 5 ribbons tied behind her head. So that bonnet is going nowhere. Even in a stiff wind. Granny is very cautious of the weather. If you see a cultivar where the bracks are a different color than the petal. Then you see the bonnet even more easily. Some cultivars are double, so that means Granny's face is kind of wrinkled, or maybe we just say it has a lot of character. I love to buy the doubles every once in a while and I think my favorite is called Nora Barlow, who is hot pink with white tips. She sounds like a librarian, but she looks like a diva and in reality, Nora Barlow was neither. She was an eminent British botanist and the granddaughter of Charles Darwin but back to the Columbine if you did had the flowers. I am reading that you get a second bloom. I really had no idea. I always let it go to seed. I'm certainly going to try that this year on a big stand of them that is right outside of my kitchen door. So I can keep an eye on it and see if they really do that.
My M.O. on that has always been to let them go to seed and if I see that the flowers look tired and disagreeable as the summer goes on. I cut the stalks and I walk around shaking old flowers where I might want new plants to be next year. Mine are all crossed and related now but the two strongest colors that I have in my collection are either a very pale pink or a strong purple. I'm lucky because they really look good together if that is how they happen to pop up. If I want a fancy specific cultivar like Nora Barlow, I would start seed or buy a plant but deadhead it to keep it going strong and keep it as it is instead of mixing in with my collection. If your clump of Columbine foliage looks tatty as the summer goes on, the fix is easy and satisfying. Just gathered up like a ponytail and cut it off. Fresh green growth will come again soon.
Columbines will flower in the shade. So I like to scatter the seed in the woodland bits of my garden. They make a pleasant surprise poking up through an Azalea. They flower well in shade but even better in sun. If the foliage gets a little sunburn, just cut off the ponytail, as I mentioned. They'll grow in lots of different types of soil, but not truly wet soil. They're deer resistant and they grow in a big zone. So it's three through eight. So again, I'm reporting on the Columbine that I like the Aquilegia vulgaris, which is native to Europe, but noninvasive and in fact, it often feeds our native hummingbirds.
The one I really should be liking is the Aquilegia canadensis and that of course, is native to North America and that is why I should like it more but you know, I've mentioned on the show recently how much I love McDonald's but not its colors. Yes, well the native Columbine is red and yellow but I should start it in the woods anyway and see how it looks. In my aesthetic. Purple really helps red and the red of the native Columbine isn't like, fire engine red, it's softer, perhaps with my increasingly bad eyesight. If I squint just right. It will seem like a very deep pink but I know I like our plant of the week the Aquilegia vulgaris, or common Columbine. So maybe you try it in your garden.
06:13
This is Into The Garden with Leslie on NewsRadio WINA kindly delivered by Dos Amigos Landscaping and ColorBlends Bulbs and coming up we're going to be talking with John Robinson, gardener, photographer, father, husband, handy guy and my new helper on this podcast.
Welcome back to Into The Garden with Leslie and today we have a very special guest and you've not heard of him because I had not heard of him before a month ago when he rescued me and he answered my plea for help with the Into The Garden with Leslie podcast but he's not just a audio editor. He is a magical gardener and you just wouldn't believe what's going on in this garden. We're going to get into that in a minute. His name is John Robinson and I'm so excited to talk to him today about his garden.
Hi, John.
John: 07:01
Hi. How are you?
Leslie: 07:01
I’m fine. Tell us-- Actually, tell people because I think it's kind of a cute story as to why you and I even got together.
John: 07:07
Yes, I was-- I've listened to your podcast at least since the Doug Tallamy episode.
Leslie: 07:13
Which is a good episode.
John: 07:14
Which is a great episode and I was listening to your podcast, pulling weeds in the garden, and heard your call for help, your plea and went inside and I said to my wife-- I said, Oh, my favorite podcaster is looking for help and I described what you're looking for and my wife’s like, well, you should send her a note and so here we are.
Leslie: 07:41
And so here we are, and John lives two miles away from me. He already had listened to the podcast. I was just hoping to get just anybody like this is gardening. Let me explain to you what I'm crazy about but no, John is crazier than I am about gardening and I just went to his garden for the first time. He's a busy guy. He's got his own business. He's a photographer. He's got a family, children but what is going on in his yard? Let me just read you the list of things that are-- I just saw in this yard.
We have a rain garden. We have raised beds for cutting vegetables and only lavender. Just only lavender?
John: 08:15
Well, you got to have a lot--
Leslie: 08:17
Of lavender. We have a firepit, a picnic table, ducks, chickens, hoop houses, a children's garden within which there is a Zen garden with the proper tools to be Zen. Those little forks and-- I don't know, rakes and stuff. There's a reading knock and some-- And beautiful plants and I don't-- How do you have time for all this?
John: 08:37
Well, thankfully, quarantine has been very generous in giving me plenty of free time but I'm a tinkerer. I like to be outdoors. I try to live outdoors as much as I can. I don't want to have nothing to do. I don't want to just sit around. If I'm outdoors, I'm usually hand in the dirt or hand-- Busy hands working on some sort of project.
Leslie: 09:00
Just finished this beautiful chicken coop. I'm looking at this and I knew because I was talking to him on a Friday afternoon. He's like, Oh, I'm trying to finish this chicken coop. I'm like, well, this is a kit right? And he goes no, I designed it. It was beautiful. I mean, it had hardware like better than the inside of my house. It was gorgeous.
John: 09:15
Well, it's made out of all eastern red cedar. The wood does a lot of the heavy lifting in the beauty but it was a fun little [Phonetics]
Leslie: 09:24
It was gorgeous. Alright, I'm sure people think that like I thought and I still do that you're a magical creature. How do you put bread on the table? Because you know, I'm not paying you much.
John: 09:33
Sure. Well, other than my podcast millions. [Crosstalk] I am a working photographer. I run my own photography business and I partner in a food marketing business as well. So I take a lot of photos for restaurants, wineries, breweries, and then I photograph families events, I photograph a lot of weddings.
Leslie: 09:58
A lot of weddings. So a lot of joy, a lot of kisses. [Crosstalk]
John: 10:01
A lot of joy. I get to be with people on their best days, usually [Phonetic]
Leslie: 10:03
What's the best part? And this is regarding podcast, but this idea just for a question just popped into my head. Like, what's the most fun thing at a wedding? Because they're always OK though. Is it the vows? Or is it this? Or is it, when they throw the bouquet? What's the most fun thing to photograph or video?
John: 10:20
It's usually when the ceremony is over when the couple has officially been wedded and they turn around to face everyone and just that moment of joy.
Leslie: 10:33
Beaming [Phonetic]
John: 10:34
And completion of like, it's sort of, OK, now it's just a party.
Leslie: 10:38
Yes.
John: 10:39
But also, we're like, we just did it and it's real and like it's over.
Leslie: 10:44
Yes.
John: 10:45
And it's sort of that moment where the roller coaster has been building all day and then finally, they get to throw their hands up in the air.
Leslie: 10:51
That is so cool. I bet that's a great moment.
John: 10:54
It's a great.
Leslie: 10:55
Alright, so let's get to your garden. How did you learn to garden? When did you start? Why do you know so much? You know more than I do. I’m a little threatened. What is going on?
John: 11:03
Well, I came to gardening, like I come to probably most things in my life through my stomach. I like to eat. Like I said, I'm a food photographer. My family had a big vegetable garden when I was growing up and so I knew that the quality of like, produce coming out of your garden is just so much tastier upon our own house, and I was like, I really want to grow a delicious tomato. So I put up a raised bed and my wife was like, ‘Oh, that's a perfect garden’ and I was like, well.
Leslie: 11:39
Yes, we're not done here.
John: 11:40
I added a few more raised beds and over time, it's about like 400 square feet now. So that's how I ended up gardening. Through veg, I kind of ended up being like, well, now I need to attract pollinators.
Leslie: 11:52
Sure.
John: 11:53
And officials. So I started adding, I guess what you would call ornamentals, wildflowers, that sort of thing and like I said, I tinker. So I added more beds and more beds, and then added the rain garden next to the vegetable garden and haven't really stopped.
Leslie: 12:11
Stopped? Yes, we don’t stop.
John: 12:13
So here we are and then yes, the rain garden kind of got me interested in native plants and see how those can create habitat and build back an ecosystem that was basically just a flat patch of turf grass.
Leslie: 12:28
When you first got there. I'm actually familiar with this property and I went for the first time today, and I'm standing in John's backyard looking at what I knew, he had told me he had bought the extension of his backyard. In other words, the side yard of a neighbor who lived on an adjacent Street, the street behind and I'm like, OK, I know that's coming. I know he's bought this thing and I thought it was a project that you were just beginning but I'm looking at these beautiful paths hardscape, organized tables, chairs, reading log [Phonetic] I’m like I've been here before and sure. This is a former client of mine, dear Roxanne Booth. She and her husband bought this property for their newly professional graduated daughter, Morgan, who and I went to sort of help Morgan to understand how her little spot could be more organized and attractive, but not high maintenance, because she's a busy young person and meanwhile, Roxanne said to me, and there's this wonderful family who lives in back who bought the side yard and they're going to do all these things and I'm like, that's really cool and then I went about my day, because I wasn't thinking about it until today. Like six, seven months later. I'm like, Oh, you're that awesome family that did that thing and bought that place and there were tons of invasives. Right?
John: 13:38
There was a ton of work on removing invasives. So Morgan's house, the man doing the work there, had a dumpster and he was done using it and he was like, you guys can throw anything in the dumpster you want. We ended up throwing, filling a whole dumpster with just porcelain berry vines [Phonetic]
Leslie: 13:57
Oh my God.
John: 13:59
Anybody who’s dug those out and dealt with those. How much digging and how much work it is they're strong enough and elastic enough to not be able to just be easily pulled but they're also brittle enough that if you pull hard enough they break in, then you have to dig out the rest of it. So yes, that was a labor of love and that was the first months of owning that extra property of just pulling and unveiling what was underneath the previous owner had been a fantastic gardener and so we could start to see some surprises in this spring. There's been coming around [Phonetic]
Leslie: 14:37
I mean, we were just poking around today. He's been wise because, he’s a young man, but a good gardener already and he was able to leave things that he wasn't sure that would come and he was showing me this one bed and he's like, oh, there's a Trillium. I didn't plant that. That was there. Instead of just like OK, let's clear this and start new. Let's clear what we know is bad and leave the rest.
John: 14:59
Right? Yes, I mean, it's like an adventure in your own like little space where you sort of can see what the previous gardener was thinking because there's sort of shapes to the plants that those shapes of beds don't exist anymore and even the Trillium came up through that, 18 inches of berm that raised.
Leslie: 15:18
Oh that was the berm that you dig?
John: 15:20
Yes.
Leslie: 15:21
Oh, my God.
How did you do that?
John: 15:23
Who knows? I mean, that's kind of what's thrilling and interesting, is to see what's coming back and to see how it was and see how it kind of wants to be and go with it.
Leslie: 15:35
Yes, this is Into The Garden with Leslie on NewsRadio WINA. We're talking with John Robinson, who is my new BFF because he's helping me out with my podcasts and also because he's a crazy mad gardener and he has things that I only dream about having. How much fun with your two children who are-- Tell us about your kids and then tell us about your ducks and your chickens.
John: 15:57
Sure.
Leslie: 15:58
They go together. Right?
John: 15:59
Yes, they do. Well, I have two daughters. One, six, and one is nine and they are fantastic. They are obviously-- Anyone who has children and a garden knows that that is a challenge but also a joy because they see things in a way that you don't and then I have been a chicken keeper for almost a decade and we just got two ducklings right around Easter this year. They are they're growing fast. They're getting big.
Leslie: 16:30
I got to see them in their little duckling playpen.
John: 16:32
I know they're very sweet.
Leslie: 16:34
They’re very sweet.
John: 16:34
Very sweet. They're in their awkward teen phase where their fluff is falling out in there. Their feathers are coming in but they're very sweet.
Leslie: 16:42
And what's the goal with them? What was the decision making process behind? OK, we had chickens. Now, we do ducks. You know what we’re thinking.
John: 16:48
Yes. Well, I-- We have a somewhat of a wet property. I have a lot of snails and a lot of slugs and ducks are fantastic at caretaking, taking away the slugs in particular. They love a little sluggy snack. That was-- My hope is that for one thing and I mean, I love animals. I love birds and the girls had never raised. We had raised chicks many years ago but they had never raised little tiny animals. It was a fun thing for them to get to be a part of.
Leslie: 17:22
But you have dog-- A dog.
John: 17:25
We have a dog.
Leslie: 17:26
And cats.
John: 17:26
Yes.
Leslie: 17:22
How do they-- How does everybody get along?
John: 17:28
The dog is actually-- Well, the cat is easy because he's an indoor cat. We-- Birds outside. We don't want to murder any birds and the dog is easy. She's a shepherd. She helped us raise our first batch of chicks. She got very used to having little animals around. She'll even be-- If there's a rabbit in the yard or she'll be-- She'll gently sniff at it but its pretty much-- We'll leave it alone.
She does-- As a shepherd she does try to round up the chickens sometimes with-- Chickens aren't always a big fan of-- We get a puff of feathers and a lot of clucking sometimes if they're scared off but in general the other animals seem to get along OK. Yes, it's mostly peaceable kingdom.
Leslie: 18:16
It looks like it it's just very-- It's very Zen over there including the little Zen Garden which is about-- I don't know, 20 inches square.
John: 18:23
Yes, that's pretty small.
Leslie: 18:24
Yes, but a small amount of Zen is good. There's a stream that runs through it and when I was there doing my consultation, not knowing John, seven months ago now. I just looked down at that stream. I’m like, Oh God, what a mess. I mean, it's just full of-- As things go, it’s just full of invasives and wild and that sort of thing but now that lower property-- Your original property is adjacent to it or only the lower?
John: 18:46
The lower that-- Yes, the secondary one.
Leslie: 18:47
The secondary one is and you built a staircase, you made it accessible for kids, ducks, you, fish, what's going on?
John: 18:53
That’s right. Yes. We had thankfully—Actually, the booth family helped us clear out all the gunk and junk and mess and got rid of, again, more porcelain Barry, Japanese honeysuckle, English ivy, privet, your favorite and I've put in probably about 30 or 40 different woody species and about 200 individual plants in there and then slowly adding in the herbaceous layer of natives and the girls have loved playing down in the creek. We pulled up some privet and uncovered a sandy beach basically.
Leslie: 19:32
Wow.
John: 19:33
Yes, it was growing in sort of an S curve, overhanging this little beachy area and we've made a little staircase, a little too. It's simple, just a little narrow concrete staircase down the banks so that the girls can go down and play, throw rocks and chase minnows and actually we've seen raccoon prints on the stairs. They-- Clearly everybody's using the right of way.
We do-- I mean, [Crosstalk 00:20:06]. Yes. Well, the ducks are-- Have just started to be able to swim. They are a big fan. They like to duck under and--
Leslie: 20:16
[Crosstalk 00:20:16]. Can they handle the stairs? Because they're still-- They're not fully grown so they can hit.
John: 20:20
They’re surprisingly Spry. They're probably only maybe a foot tall, maybe a little less but no, they're pretty spry.
Leslie: 20:27
And so they just get themselves down there?
John: 20:29
They'll get themselves down there.
Leslie: 20:31
[Inaudible 00:20:31].
John: 20:31
They’re a little-- They were a little hesitant to go down the stairs at first. They don't mind going up but thankfully, our girls are happy to snuggle in down the stairs sometimes too.
Leslie: 20:41
This is Into The garden with Leslie on NewsRadio WINA and we're talking with John Robinson, who is my new audio editor so we can make as many mistakes as we want and he will edit them out and he's a fantastic gardener and it's just been a pleasure to get to know him and to see his property. How did you teach yourself to be this proficient with plants?
John: 21:00
Like with most things, I go down rabbit holes.
Leslie: 21:06
Internet, books?
John: 21:07
All of the above. I usually start with a book or two and that's how I started with chickens. It was one book that we actually gave to my mother in law on a Christmas and I spent of course all of Christmas morning--
Leslie: 21:22
Reading it.
John: 21:22
Reading it. I was like, well, Sarah-- That's my wife. We're getting chickens whenever we own a house. We-- I think we were still renting at that point in time but yes, gardening, vegetable gardening, I think it was-- It might have been Ira Wallace's book about gardening in Virginia. Vegetable gardening in Virginia and she lays out just-- It's sort of an index, basically. This plant however--
Leslie: 21:46
She was the one with the heirloom seeds.
John: 21:48
Right. Yes.
Leslie: 21:49
I've been thinking about getting heirloom. [Crosstalk 00:21:50]. Yes, on the show, we should get her on.
John: 21:53
Hey, Ira if you’re listening--
Leslie: 21:55
Hey.
John: 21:56
Yes. That was a very informative book but it wasn't a very experiential textured book. I'm old. That was when blogs were cool. I read some gardening blogs and a lot of-- Started listening to podcasts. Hey, Joe, and--
Leslie: 22:14
Is Joe gardener, one of your--?
John: 22:15
Joe gardener is one of my go to [Crosstalk 00:22:16].
Leslie: 22:16
Yes, I’d listen to him. I mean, and I'm not as much into veggies but he's got some really good-- And I quote him often on the show that he's got some really interesting sustainability ideas and guests on and plus, it's a well-produced show.
John: 22:30
Yes, and then I guess-- I mean, through vegetable gardening, I became focused on building soil and building soil health and learning that really. Lawns don't really do that and they certainly don't build habitat or ecosystem. Yes, I've expanded a lot since then.
We have a lower property which you've seen that floods a lot in heavy rains as it moves towards the creek and so I made a rain garden in there and that, of course, when I was researching that, looking into that, the best practices there were all native plants basically and so I've learned a ton. Read Doug Tallamy read and now I have oak trees everywhere. Little babies, but they're still there and yes, I just sort of every opportunity. Like I said, I tinker. So every opportunity to have a new project and learn something new. I try to take it.
Leslie: 23:20
And what's the teamwork? Like Does Sarah garden? Does she have time? Because she has a less flexible job.
John: 23:24
She has a full time job. Yes, she is a counselor. She has a little less time to do the brass tacks but she's definitely--
Leslie: 23:34
She likes to--
John: 23:34
She likes to design. She likes to know what it's going to look like. She likes to have spaces. She's [Crosstalk 00:23:41]. I was going to say the reading nook was first.
Leslie: 23:44
Cozy looking.
John: 23:45
Yes, the reading nook was for her.
Leslie: 23:46
Right next to the lavender raised bed.
John: 23:48
The lavender’s for her too maybe.
Leslie: 23:51
Yes and bluebird box.
John: 23:52
Yes, bluebird box is for her too. That was our spring edition. We had seen some bluebirds, male and a female fluttering around, looking like they were thinking about moving in. I knocked together a bluebird house and--
Leslie: 24:06
Sure enough.
John: 24:08
They moved in.
Leslie: 24:08
I saw them this morning.
John: 24:09
Yes, she seems to be sitting. The bluebird mom seems to be sitting on a clutch. We don't-- We haven’t wanted to bother her but yes, she's-- We're hoping knock on wood that we'll have some little bluebird babies soon.
Leslie: 24:21
Oh, it's so exciting. I’m just thrilled with how much is going on in this very, not big property.
John: 24:28
No, we have less than a third of an acre.
Leslie: 24:29
And that's including the new bit.
John: 24:31
Correct. Yes.
Leslie: 24:32
Yes and I mean, when people say I don't have room to garden, they should come and see John's garden.
John: 24:37
Yes.
Leslie: 24:37
Yes.
John: 24:37
You're welcome. Come on by.
Leslie: 24:39
It's very enchanting. I want you to tell the listeners that part as we're walking down in-- The back is where it's mostly happening although the front is very charming. There's a beautiful Japanese people and somewhat looks like Monarda growing along the fence and-- But it's not a like a proscribed like formal bed but it looks, it's going to be a great flowering, so tell them why that's there.
John: 25:00
Yes, there's some Mothra, there's some Monarda, some mountain mints, and some-- I forget which one but it's a Helianthus. It's the one of the native ones. When we moved in, I didn't have a weed trimmer, a weed whacker and I could not-- We had this very steep area between our driveway and a chain-link fence. Couldn't get a mower in there and so it was growing up just in turf grasses going to see, going to pot and somebody from the city or maybe a grumpy neighbor or something sent us a note from the city that said we had illegal weed growth and we needed to remediate that or pay a fine of some sort and I think it's 18 inches, might be 24 inches of grass, I forget exactly.
Leslie: 25:51
I have not gotten noticed because--
John: 25:52
Well, I was going to say you're able to manicure.
Leslie: 25:55
Too neat.
John: 25:55
Yes. I ended up just tearing out the grass, putting in sunflower-- The first year was sunflowers, the mammoth variety, and Zinnias Cosmos. The sort of that the showy annuals that you think of in like a meadow setting and ended up with eight foot tall weeds instead of 18 inch tall weeds. I've since transitioned to the perennials, the native perennials but it was my way of saying, hey, look, we have some beautiful weeds here instead of--
Leslie: 26:29
Instead of but yes-- But I'm not mowing.
John: 26:30
Yes, exactly. I'm still not going to mow it but--
Leslie: 26:33
I'll talk about no-mow may as I go through each week and my grass is simply getting taller but I've gotten some other information on it, something that informed me just to comment quickly as I was driving from John's house to mine and I’ve just past fresh springs pizza. I'm passing a lawn that might belong-- Those buildings that might belong to the like the Jefferson Scholar thing for the university or it might be a private house so I can't quite decide, going 30 miles an hour thinking about a million other things and like, Oh, they're not mowing their lawn. Oh, but look, they mowed just that front strip and so a mower had taken-- A skinny mower had taken two or three passes or a wide mower and taken one and it was almost like saying to the city, hey, dude, we're mowing here. We're just not mowing the whole thing because we're not. Because we want a meadow and I just thought that wow, that's an easy trick to say to neighbors or city or whatever.
HOA, you have to deal with like, we're on it. We're just not on it in the conventional sense that you might want us to be on it but somebody's gardening here. Somebody's doing something here.
John: 27:31
Yes, the showing intent I think is-- Helps ease a lot of worried traditionalists.
Leslie: 27:37
And nobody wants to live next to vagrants, right? We’re not doing anything. All right. Is there anything that I could ask you that you thought I wanted to be asked that and she hasn't done it?
John: 27:48
I don't think so. Can I ask you a few questions?
Leslie: 27:51
Oh, sure.
John: 27:52
Because I feel like as a listener, I want to know-- We always want to know us listeners out there. We want to know how you got into gardening? What was your first garden? What was it?
Leslie: 28:01
Well, I think some listeners probably do know this and I do say it in my talks a lot but I was not interested in anything except for sports and boys and that now I’m married, I’ve found my boy for 40 years and we've had a little boy and he's a baby and he's asleep and we moved into our first house. I have a bit of energy but I did stop working because I just-- I could and I thought well, this will be fun and so everything's arranged in the house, paid the bills. I've made the dinner. I've done laundry and what are these plants out here? Let's go see about them and I've heard you can and I go to the library, get a book and like, let's dig this up. This looks like a hostel. I think this is a hostel. Let's make two hostels. It says in this book that I could do this and I did it and I just-- It's just like, this is fascinating. I feel good. It's exercise. I'm learning. I'm outside. I'm saving money or spending money. Depending on the whim. I can divide this. I can't divide that and I really want it and I just love it. It just-- It makes me very happy.
John: 28:58
Cool.
Leslie: 28:58
Yes. Anything else?
John: 28:59
No. That was a big one.
Leslie: 29:02
That was the big one. All right, good. I'm glad you asked John but I'm really glad that most of the questions were aimed at you because this is more about you but I am so excited to have John with me and it just makes it more fun like anything and he actually said this, like, I like to work as on a project with a team and now we're going to be a team and it's really fun. You guys out there who didn't answer my call for help. You should be jealous.
John: 29:29
Losers. I win.
Leslie: 29:32
He wins. This is Into The Garden with Leslie on NewsRadio WINA and coming up in a minute, we'll be talking about what to do in your garden this week.
Welcome back to Into The Garden with Leslie on NewsRadio WINA sponsored by Dos Amigos Landscaping and ColorBlends Bulbs. I am so grateful to John for coming on board. There's a bit to doing this show and it's so fun to work with somebody on it, especially since he shares my enthusiasm for spreading the good word of gardening but I had no idea until I went there, what a gardener he is.
Hey, I had a couple of great questions for the show this week from Sue Batani on bud blast on peonies. I had never heard of bud blast. She had lots of great blooms but on plants that were in the same bed some of the buds were very small and dark and hard about the tip of an eraser. I've seen that before but on others there was like a whole cluster of buds that wilted at the stem. I definitely experienced the former situation and I just always attributed it to plants, new plants, plants that were in too much shade, plants that I had not divided well or just thrown around a little bit and they're like going to be mad at me and not bloom very well but whole clusters of buds wilting at the stem that would sort of freak me out.
I mean, in a mile, what's going on with my Peony sort of way, not like zombie apocalypse freakout which would be completely different. I found a good article on my favorite source Missouri Botanical Garden M-O-B-O-T mobot, sometimes I say and it could be culture, could be lack of water, could be late spring frost sapping the buds, but why just some of them in that bed because she said she had other great ones in that bed?
It could be botrytis which sounds technical and difficult and scientific, therefore, in the category of this gardener who barely got to her science requirement for her bachelor's degree, not even being remotely useful to anybody in terms of comprehension definition, certainly not amelioration. Sue and I would both love to hear from you if you have any ideas on what the issue could be? Because clearly I'm not being any help.
And from Katherine Dugan, who sadly lost a 250 year old red oak in her yard this year in an ice storm. All of a sudden her shade loving plants are in a tanning bed and that's an issue because you know that some of them are going to fry but I told her to wait and see because some don't mind sunrays as much as you think. Plants always surprise us. Well, they surprise me anyway. I think it's worth the wait to see what does well in the new sun situation but she's shopping and planning for shade for the future and her question was, if she chose a native tree that is not the straight species but instead a hybrid. Is that just as good? Great question. I shot it off to the best source Doug Tallamy, and he answered thusly.
Hi, Leslie, in case of oaks, I don't see why Katherine would have to go to a hybrid across between two species or cultivar which is a genetic variant of a single species because most of our native oaks are sold the straight species and that would be my recommendation. Best, Doug.
That's clear, right? But the plot still is a little thick for me or maybe it's just me being a little thick. The tree that Katherine is lusting after is one that I've had my eye on too and it's the Regal Prince oak. This is a hybrid oak but because it is a cross between the Quercus robur which is the English oak and the Quercus bicolor which is a native to the United States oak, half of his genes are non native and that will reduce insect use, says Dough, but the lovely thing about this plant is that it's a vestigial shape. In other words, it's like a column. In other words, it could fit in a lot of peopl’s, small gardens and even though I don't have a real small garden, I love that shape in my garden, like a punctuation mark among lower shrubs.
People are scared to plant trees that are going to grow 100 feet in their garden. That's a big tree. Have you ever heard of the Chinquapin oak? That's the Quercus muehlenbergii. It only gets to about 20 feet and apparently it starts producing some very delicious acorns very early in its life.
I mean, according to research of animals being interested. Not this animal, I have not tasted the acorns. I probably have about 10 Little white oak seedlings in my garden right now and three or four years ago, they would have been ripped out by me as soon as I saw them but my plan this year is to start a little grove of them in the back corner of the yard. It's shady. Very shady, actually, but baby oaks. Probably all baby trees are programmed to grow in shade in their early years or else how else would they ever get up into the sun? And trees are supposed to be social. I shall start a friendly little cops. A baby oak community should be fun.
Back to Katherine's question or actually the answer. She thinks that she's going to go for a white oak which is apparently the best tree that you could do and maybe a couple of those regal prints and then maybe a little Katsura which is a beautiful tree.
Remember, you're going for native plants in your yard and that's a really good thing to do but it's also fun to get things that you really love and gardening in all forms, with the exception of like herbicides and pesticides and invasive aliens. Gardening in all forms is a really good thing.
What am I doing in the garden this week? I have to imagine because I'm recording so early. I should be on weed patrol for sure. Oh, I'm going to plant the lovely seeds that Sharon Burnham of garden vitals down in Roanoke sent to me.
Sharon is a garden consultant and listener and she heard me say that I liked the early yellow spring ephemeral the Eranthis hyemalis or the winter aconite and she kindly sent me some seeds. Thank you very much Sharon.
What else? I'm going to get the watering routine very efficient like streamline like this is how you do because I need to catch up Jeff to do it a few times while I'm away and I want to make it simple.
Some of the early Daffodil foliage is ripening pretty well and there's this fancy cultivar that grows very poorly near my front door and I want to shift it away. It's quite an early one, and it's called replete and for me, it is replete with foliage but not with blooms but the blooms are gorgeous.
I'm going to move some around the yard to see if I can find a place where the bulbs are happier and I get better flowers. I should deal with my silly bolted arugula. I popped some in my mouth that had flowers on it already. Oh, my Gosh, what a jolt. That stuff gets really peppery.
What else? I'm harvesting lettuce from along the front walk and I'm considering replacing them with low mounting peppers for which I have seeds. I generally grow cheerful annuals of some sort right along there but I certainly haven't gotten any yet. I wonder if I'll miss the color. I think I might and do I love peppers? I mean they’re fine so many decisions to make and gardening.
Oh speaking of color, you may be amazed to know that in a fit of trying to push my comfort zone, I chose crazy colors for my front wall this year. There's a low wall in front of our house and some clever gardener years ago, carved out holes on the top just big enough to pop some pansies are Viola's over the winter and I generally grow a heat tolerant annual in the summer, like lantana, or Madagascar, Vinca or something like that.
Well, I was at a nursery and these lantana spoke to me with words like this. You never have colors like us in your garden and we are extremely bright and showy. So please buy us and so I did. We're talking about a bicolor lantana and the softer of the two colors is bright orange. The other one is this deep pinky orange that actually could be classified as red. I mean, what was I thinking? I was thinking, dear listener, that I should stop being so close minded and branch out into crazy colors but those poor plants have been sitting, waiting to be planted for about three and a half weeks now and every time I walk by them, I feel anxious and just a little bit nauseated. I can't pull the trigger. Abby's going to take them away, and they're going to end up in the garden of some person who is far more daring than I and I'll end up with white or purple or soft pink or something as per usual, such a shameful story. I have no guts.
It's haircut time for all the fluffy boxwoods and this is the one time of year where I share it with my lightweight and super sharp Okatsune shears but I probably won't take the time at the same time to reach in and thin it. That thin it thing certainly needs to be done but I can do that one almost any time of year and I'm a little pressed just now for time. My little tiny box garden is so low and so that's a bend over for a long time issue. I tried to do it in like 10 or 15 minutes stages, engaging the old core as best I can and when my back says cease, I toddle off and do something else for a while before I resume and lastly, I'm really enjoying my various alliums.
It's so easy to see where they're doing well, because I see multiplication in some happy spots but in others, I see depletion, such as gardening, it's probably the soil is just too much clay and not well draining in those spots.
I love the way the tall Allium poke out among the lower growing perennials and even my Annabelle foliage out in front and those lows should bear the ones that are like low but really big. Like, I don't know, 10 inches across and they look like fireworks. They're very cool. Oh, it's a good time to say ColorBlends is a third generation bulb company offering top size flower bulbs directly to ambitious residential gardeners and landscape professionals at wholesale prices. I am ambitious, and I buy all my bulbs from ColorBlends every year.
This was fun. If you have any questions or comments or corrections, please reach out to me at Instagram. I am Leslie Harris, LH or go to my website. That's lhgardens.com. When you go there, please have a look at the blog that accompanies this podcast and add your comments. Oh, if you've commented on my blog, I had crickets for so long that I never looked to see if anybody had come in and now some people are commenting. I'm starting to look and please excuse my lack of response, I will happily look more regularly and thank you for contributing.
Also, consider buying me a cup of coffee to help support the podcast and John, now that you know him. I've been enjoying lots of lovely reviews of into the garden with Leslie and here's what I want to share from Brad of garden evolution, who's actually going to be on the show this summer. You should follow him on Instagram if you don't, he's funny and very inspiring. It's at Garden evolution.
He wrote, I’ve been listening to Leslie since the beginning and I have to say it's one of my favorite podcasts to listen to and I look forward to it each week. Relatable content for the everyday gardener and love learning more with the plant of the week. Must listen.
Thank you, Brad. Very kind. I really appreciate that. I'd like to thank our sponsors, ColorBlends bulbs. I named the show into the garden with Leslie because you know why I'm really into my garden and I want to get you into yours and I'll see you next week but here's the secret. You're going to hear me next week, but I will have been at Great Dixter all week. Not doing a podcast just soaking up gardening goodness in the present. I can't wait to tell you all about it.