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| #4 - 3 Step Lawn Fertilization | |||||||||||||||||||
| #5 - Right Plant in Right Spot | |||||||||||||||||||
| #3 - Rose Certificates and Gift Cards | #6 - Preview of Coming Attractions | ||||||||||||||||||
| #7 - Begin to Repair Lawn Turf Now | |||||||||||||||||||
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Right Plant in Right Spot
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| When it comes to trees and shrubs, what you read can be very accurate and at the same time not accurate at all – Confused? Let me explain. There are many garden books about various trees and shrubs available to you, the landscape designer, and the landscape architect. Books are a great source of information but only if they’re written accurately to a particular area, especially regarding a plants favorite soil type and exposure to summer heat and winter cold. Other accurate information should include a plants overall growing size. One of the best books for plant information is Michael A. Dirr’s “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants”, a 1,187 page book that covers over 1600 plant species and 7800 cultivars. It has been updated four times since its original printing. Mike, who resides as a professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia in Athens wrote this |
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| book to include all hardy plants in all the various weather zones and soil types across the country. Mike provides the reader with all the information about a given plant that can really help a person select the right plants for his or her area of concern if they are familiar with where the plant wants to grow in terms of moisture, soil, exposure, and weather zone. Where am I going with all of this? Recently, there was a community news letter distributed to all the residents of that community. Included in this news letter was an article about a local nurseryman’s favorite evergreens for the Cincinnati area. A lot of the information in this feature was taken from Mike Dirr’s book. The information was accurate in its content, but short sited to the planting conditions many of us actually have. Case in point, some of the recommended plants want to be planted in rich moist, well drained soil, a condition few of us have. There are plants that like full sun, but how much shade will they tolerate? Will they grow in just morning or afternoon sun? What about tree shade when the leaves drop, in the fall, the area gets full winter sun. The number one reason a plant fails to thrive is choosing the wrong planting location. Please remember the three most important ingredients to happy plants; location, location, location. I would love to have a dollar for every white pine planted in this area that lived less than 10 years. It’s the same with firs that hate our summer heat. Let’s make a commitment. As we prepare for the 2012 growing season, commit to examining the landscape for all the real, natural conditions that exist, select the right plant that grows well in the selected areas and then you’ll have happy plants and happy residents. |
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