What Shall I Do?

A visitor stopped in the garden today wondering if I have a problem with little four-legged, cute, long-eared vermin of the much breading sort.  In fact, in my first spring in the garden, I had one little fella who nearly wiped out all my newly-planted vegetables and annuals!

Many homeowners face the same problem. This particular visitor continues to see her precious perennials disappear or become short nubs. "Is there anything a rabbit will not eat?" was the anguished cry. When rabbits are really hungry the answer is, "precious little."

So, what can you do? Well the good news is that there are several options:

• The Elmer Fudd Method: You can attempt to trap your rascals and put them in your annoying neighbor’s yard waaaaay down the street. The downside is, nature hates a vacuum. The rascal’s cousins will move in.
• The Rabbit Delight Method: You can plant a crop of something you particularly do not care about in a far corner of your garden. The rabbits might eat the trap crop and not your lovelies. I have seen violets work well for this task.
• The Nasty Stuff Method: You can apply various types of repellents, such as human hair, fox urine, moth balls and various pepper sprays. The downside I find is that, again, when rascal is hungry, forget the nasty stuff.
• The Walking Yummy Method: You can try an outside cat or dog. There are public gardens and nurseries across the country that employ such a method.
• The Alcatraz Method: The most effective method I have found is a simple physical barrier. One method is to place chicken wire fencing (buried at least two feet in the ground) around the most critical areas during the most critical times (when there is very little else to eat). Another method is to use milk jugs, two-litter or twenty-ounce bottles to cover individual plants over night. Also, you can try covering various plants with white sheeting over night.

Posted by Josh Steffen

Dianthus gratianopolitanus ‘Feuerhexe’ (Firewitch Cheddar Pink)

The German cultivar name of this long blooming perennial translates as “Firewitch.” I’m assuming the name is a tribute to its enchanting qualities and the blazing pink of its tiny frilled petals. The plants in the genus Dianthus are generally referred to as “pinks,” although they do bloom in many shades from ruby red to white. The name is actually derived from the old German word for Pentecost, which occurs about the same time the plants bloom in spring. "Cheddar" refers to the area in England where the plant (and the cheese) originated. As a group, they tend to be good plants for rock gardens and sandy well-drained sites in full sun. This particular variety keeps its fire under control with striking silvery blue foliage. Only 12 inches high, it can spread to form a tidy mound that may remain evergreen in mild winters. It was chosen as 2006 Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association, which is also the source for much of my information about the plant. It is said to be resistant to browsing by deer as well. Although these are all stellar qualities in a garden flower, the thing that transports this plant to the realm of magic for me is its spicy, compelling scent of cloves. You’ll find it planted near the path as you walk through the Flower Show theme gardens at the northeast end of the the Garden.

Posted by Ann McCulloh

When selecting plants for a garden site, quite a bit of emphasis is placed on flower color and plant size. Sometimes gardeners will be looking for certain fragrances or foliage textures. It is also good to step back and consider the overall form of the plant. Will the plant swell up like Star Wars’ Jabba the Hut as is the case with this blue spruce? When planting a young specimen, don’t put any other permanent plantings right next to it so that it has the room to develop those rolls of fat.

There is something mysterious about the Nootka false cypress form. I envision an old man in a cloak.  Or perhaps the creatures from The Village that the elders were so worried about.  Either way, I personally like seeing this specimen partially obstructed in a garden bed instead of standing out on its own. I guess that add to its mystery if it can be seen emerging from grouping of plants.

How about that giant octopus that grabbed the sub in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea? There are plants with similar tentacle-like forms that can twist their way through your garden. Just don’t accidentally get in their way while gardening. I have a giant limbed-up yew that is obviously going to grab whatever it can reach.

A weeping katsura can be a dead ringer for the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Can’t you just imagine the algae dripping off of him?

Okay, so it takes a little imagination to see these creatures in plants. But when abiding by “the right plant for the right site” rule, it is very helpful to step back and consider the ultimate form of your new selection.

These and many more sci-fi plant forms are on display out in front of the Cleveland Botanical Garden in the Campsey-Stauffer Gateway Garden.

Posted by Bob Rensel

When we see plant pests here at the Garden, we always try to use biological or least toxic means of control. So, when we came upon these sawflies on one of our small pines in the Gateway Garden, we knew the best control measure would be insecticidal soap. Soap is essentially potassium salts of fatty acids. Soft insect skins cannot tolerate soapy water, so the insects usually die fairly quickly once sprayed.

It’s important to inspect your plants and trees regularly. Pests like sawflies blend in well on the tips of the pine branches, so you may not notice them until you see significant damage to the tips. Sawflies also tend to feed as a group and can therefore do unsightly damage pretty quickly. Sawflies are actually in the insect order Hymenoptera, which includes bees, wasps and ants. They don’t sting, but they can be locally problematic on a number of different pine trees. Late spring is the best time of year to control them - when the larvae are young, soap works really well.

Posted by Cynthia Druckenbrod

Pictured below: European Pine Sawfly

This post is devoted to the Easter Egg Radishes ready to harvest in the Hershey Children’s Garden vegetable patch. I cannot wait to share them with some little green thumbs.

I often get the question: what are some easy, kid-friendly seeds to grow? Well, here is a short list:

• Sunflowers
• Any bean
• Corn
• Wheat
• Cotton
• Any squash, cucumber or pumpkin
• Watermelon
• Of course, radish

Now, why is the Easter Egg Radish one of my favorites? Well, first of all, the radish tends to mature within 21-30 days (so you can grow several crops in one season). Second, the seeds are large enough to handle. Third, the plants have large enough plant parts that you can talk about what grows above ground and what grows below ground. Lastly, with Easter Egg Radish, you never know exactly what color you are going to pull out of the ground. How cool is that?

Posted by Josh Steffen 

Slugs are an insect that I’d rather not see in the garden. I think they are destructive, slimy and disgusting. As a matter of fact, I can’t even look at my wife’s escargot in a restaurant, because it reminds me of garden slugs.

So, this is the time of year, I try to protect my susceptible plants from slugs. I would rather not deal with toxic chemicals and baits in my garden. And I have tried the beer-in-a-dish tactic. I found more slugs on the underside of the dish than were actually in the beer. So, I only caught a handful compared to the thousands that I know are out there in my clay soil. 

One control method that I see recommended a lot is hand picking slugs off of plants at night. I wonder if the people that write this actually go out at night and do this. 

The Ohio Extension Service has a nice fact sheet on slugs. But an easy control method not mentioned is sand. You can buy products like diatomaceous earth and sprinkle it around your hostas. But sand is cheaper and lasts longer. It has the same effect of creating a course or gritty surface that the slugs won’t crawl over to get to the plant. If I start to see slug damage on plants, I pull out the sand and sprinkle it around the base. If I do this early in the season, the plants then fill out and hide the sand from view.  It works for me.

Posted by Bob Rensel

I was very fortunate to help lead a recent Botanical Garden trip to Tuscany. While there, we toured many of Italy’s famous gardens: Ninfa, La Foce, Gamberaia, Villa Lante and others. It’s very humbling to walk amongst cypress trees that are several hundred years old or to wander through elegantly contoured boxwoods. I almost wish Cleveland Botanical Garden was located in zone 7- then we could grow those stately cypresses year round! The typical Italian style of these ancient gardens draws from a fairly simple palette of plants: boxwoods, junipers, cypresses, wisterias, lemon trees and roses. Of course, there are exceptions and some gardens have a more diverse collection of perennials. One of the more special plants we saw was an incredible white rose with a red center called ‘White Rock’. In doing a quick search, we’ve been unable to locate that particular cultivar here in the U.S. It may be that we will need to source it from Italy. If you know where we might find this unique rose, let us know!

‘White Rock’ Rose

The "Right" Place for a Rose

Whoever said that life is a bed of roses was loony. They clearly never spent any time working in a rose garden. Roses are a high maintenance plant, period. They require lots of attention, fertilizer, water and weeding (do not get me started about weeding among roses, ouch).

I think roses are ideal in a lovely mixed planting of shrubs, herbaceous perennials and annuals. I like variety and roses become a lot easier to manage when mixed in among other garden plants. If you’re not careful, a bunch of roses in the same place could be a smorgasbord for all kinds of pests. Spread your roses throughout a garden and watch your pest problems diminish (do not read as “gone completely”).  So, there you go. Now it is out. You know the "right" place for roses in the garden.

Posted by Josh Steffen 

 “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is let it rain.”  

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, 1807-1882

Rain is one of the great blessings of the Northeast Ohio region. This May we have enjoyed almost 2” more of it than last year! While much of the country (and the world) experiences chronic droughts that cause dire economic consequences, this area is sitting pretty, with fresh water to spare. It may be hard to appreciate this when roads are flooded and homes are damaged and destroyed. It’s important to keep in mind that many of these problems are the result of human activities like levelling and paving for development. Fortunately, people can be just as ingenious in solving problems as in creating them! And as usual, good design solutions for environmental problems often result when they are modelled on and work with natural systems.

A small-scale but very effective way to reduce flooding from runoff and over-burdened storm sewers is to create a rain garden on your property. There are a number of great resources online for siting, designing and planting a rain garden. Here at the Garden, we are simply trying out some flood-tolerant plants in a chronically wet spot in the Island Garden. We hope that the Monarda, Comfrey, Irises and so on will help take up some of the excess moisture, increase it’s percolation into the ground, and look good doing it!

Posted by Ann McCulloh

 Some of my favorite plants will reseed each year if the conditions are right. Sweet Alyssum comes back each year in my garden thicker than the last.  I am careful in early spring not to till or disturb the soil so the seeds can germinate. Then, by mid-May, I can dig up large clumps of the new seedlings and use them in other beds or in containers. It comes back so thick that it is an effective weed barrier. But I noticed that the purple-colored variety does not reseed as vigorously as the white. 

I use pre-emergent herbicides in some of my beds to cut down on the amount of weeding. But I skip the beds that have the plants I want to reseed. The lenten rose reseeds quite nicely in some of my beds. Even though it takes a few years for these seedlings to mature into flowering plants, it is worth the wait. These are expensive plants, so I welcome the additions. I skip the pre-emergent application in the coneflower beds as well. If an area has potential to fill in from reseeding, I tolerate all the weeding until it thickens up with the desired plant. 

Foxgloves, columbines, lavender and cleomes are all welcome reseeders in my garden. Others, like switch grass and sweet autumn clematis are too aggressive for me. Unlike alyssum, which reseeds just in the area of the parent plant, the sweet autumn clematis seems to have a wide range for reseeding. Being a climber, it must have a better opportunity to get caught up in the wind. New plants show up 30, 40 and 50 feet away from the original location.  It never ceases to amaze me how it can take hold under a large shrub and hide from me for a couple years.  You have to admire its persistence, even if it is not a welcome reseeder.

Posted by Bob Rensel