Colorful, elegant, refined, dramatic, sophisticated, and playful: garden designers gather these sorts of accolades and more for their summer annuals displays.  But they don’t “own” the patents on beauty.  Making a beautiful and effective groupings of annuals is entirely within reach of even humble ol’ you and me.

Let’s look at three basic “tricks” used by even the most intuitive of professional garden designers, and then illustrate them with some container plantings now on display in Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Sun Patio in the new Inspiration Gardens.  When we’re done, I think we’ll choose our summer flowers with brighter, keener eyes.

“One” is to follow the color wheel, and choose a palette for flower and leaf.

Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Violet; that’s the color wheel.  Easy.  Now, “Google” a color wheel.  Colors run in the R.O.Y.G.B.V. sequence around the wheel.  What’s directly across from, say, red?  Green…and that makes complementary dyad with red.  Starting with red, what other two colors are equidistant around the wheel?  Yellow and blue…and they’re a complementary triad with red.

Any dyad or triad selected from the color wheel like this is a guaranteed match!

Be careful with a few things.  If in doubt, don’t mix “saturated,” or intense, colors with pastels.  For instance, a pastel pink impatiens with bright yellow marigold is a color clash.  Also, if in doubt, don’t mix warm and cool colors.  Warm (towards the sun) and cool (towards the moonlight) can work together, but avoid them until we are sure of our "eyes."

Use white flowers to frame or “dot” your color palette; white often adds informal cheer, and dilutes color intensity.  Use black/dark foliage to frame color palette; black adds drama/elegance and strengthens color intensity.

“Two” is to consider plant structure and form, and choose harmonious suite of shape and texture.

Use leaf variety to accentuate our color choices, and to help give our containers gesture and flow.  Whaaat?  Look at the accompanying pix.  Dark, broad leaves inflame the greens and the reds; ultra-violet leaves rise dramatically like midnight  flames.  That is gesture and flow.  If all leaves in a container are similar size/shape, they look "busy."

“Three” is to remember plant needs, and to choose plants that grow well together.

This is easy with annuals.  Most annuals like full sun and plenty of water.  Pelagoniums (geraniums), verbenas and marigolds are a few dry-land rule-breakers that come to mind.  For instance, pelargoniums develop yellow leaves if heavily watered alongside canna.  And—ahem—as we can see in the pic, I broke this rule on the Sun Patio!

Color acts on us physically, biologically, and psychologically. Complexity!  Harmonious interaction of texture and form have been debated surely since the days of Lascaux Cave Painting, and the discussion is still lively today.  That’s right, our One-Two-Three design rules are a beginning…without end.

And please visit our Sun Patio to see some well-designed summer annuals plantings.  Colorful or dramatic, or both?  I do know they set the garden afire!

Posted by Mark Bir

P.S.: I’ll make this a continuing series…if you show interest.  Hey, lemme know.

It’s a simple enough job to sit down at my keyboard and tap out another profile for one of our garden plants. The resultant blog would be tidy, professional, factual, and a total bore. What, with access to a library full of plant books upstairs and Google at my fingertips, to write such a piece I would feel like I am plagiarizing all sources in one swoop. It is a written form of vegetative propagation, perhaps? “What’s the point of being redundant,” he repeated.

So with this week’s (er—month’s) blog entry, I am going to attempt to not-so-much brief you, dear reader, on a common flower growing here at Cleveland Botanical Garden, as to put that plant into specific and particular context.

Meet ‘Mandarin Twist.’ (Shake hands here.) Mandarin Twist is a brilliant orange-blooming cultivar of the so-called calendula or pot marigold, Calendula officinalis. This once-native of the Med is classed as a hardy annual, which in Cleveland means that it behaves pretty much like a regular old annual. Start it from seed in a cold frame—easy—about April Fool’s Day, and plant it outside a week or two before Memorial Day. A fortnight after an early planting, ours began to bloom…and bloom and bloom. Now, pot marigold is widely reputed to Peter out when the temperature soars. But even with our recent July fire days, our Mandarin Twist has stayed true to the colorful course. What have I done to aid and abet? I deadhead ours with snippers down to the next leaf nodes once a week. A little fertilizer high in the last two numbers every third week (or-so), some supplemental water recently, and that’s been it for care. No bugs, no rusts or molds or other phyto-FUBARs have found ‘em here. Flowers galore.

It’s in the aster family, and sets copious seed, so if you want to be a seed-saver, just let some of the August blooms stand for seed. Might put mesh bags around ‘em soz they don’t make birdfeed. Although it is a cultivar, Mandarin Twist is not too far removed from its wild progenitors, so I’m betting they’ll breed near to true, with a few interesting variations popping up in your seed flats, as well.

Inspect Mandarin Twist at Cleveland Botanic Garden in the sunken garden between the library and the Japanese Garden. Find it rising in a mass from behind the central stone bench. Can’t miss it, like sparks issuing from a fire. It is framed by dramatic contrasts that punch-up the orange heat: 1) a low foreground of across-the-color-wheel black sweet-potato vine and purple alternathera (pow!); 2) bold “N” exotic canna leaves like stage curtains to either side (bif!); 3) inky pools of shadow in the background (wham!).

Calendula is doubtless a common annual, but one that I feel is underused in our fair city. Go orange, give ‘Mandarin Twist’ a try. BTW, the name “Calendula” has a curious etymology. But I’m not gonna tell you…gotta Google it yourself!

Posted by Mark Bir

I’ve been able to twice sneak up on a chipmunk in my backyard while he was on the birdfeeder and pet his butt. Watching him turn around, look at me, freeze for one second, then FLY off the birdfeeder isn’t why I do it. I have a thing for chipmunks. I think they are adorable. And it bothers me why so many homeowners with gardens don’t like chipmunks. Many go beyond not liking them; I’ve known some people are convinced the chipmunks in their yard are conspiring against all of their bulbs, lettuce, flowers and shrubs in a strategic effort to completely denude their landscape. These people are convinced that chipmunks lie in wait, watching for daffodil planting time. Once the bulbs are planted, these same folks know — they just KNOW — that these 5 ounce beasts then pounce on the freshly turned soil to devour every last bulb within microseconds. So these people seek to destroy this enemy of their estate by any means possible.

This is all wasted energy and time, in my humble opinion, as well as the authors of Living With Wildlife: How to Enjoy, Cope with, and Protect North America’s Wild Creatures Around Your Home and Theirs. I have personally owned this book for over 15 years, find it incredibly useful, and was very pleased to see we have it in our very own library.
 

Here are a few reasons why we can all just chill out about chipmunks in our yards: 

1. The natural diet of chipmunks consists of acorns, nuts, berries, and seeds. They readily climb up on birdfeeders

2. Most chipmunks find the taste of daffodil bulbs yucky and don’t eat them.

3. I guess chipmunks may go after crocus or hyacinth, but I’ve got lots of them in my yard and lots of chipmunks and have had zero problems.

4. Chipmunks prefer to live in brush or wood piles, or will burrow underground. The burrows typically do not harm landscape or structures. If you have extensive burrows in your yard you probably have moles which are not NEARLY as cute.

5. Chipmunks are not as prolific as a lot of people think. Chips have 2 litters of 4-5 babies per year. Compare that to mice (8 litters of 4-7 babies/year) or voles (10 litters of 4-5/year), and it’s not so bad.

And really, let’s keep this all in perspective. This book was put out by the California Center for Wildlife, so there are sections on living peacefully with bears, mountain lions and moose. At least we aren’t fighting those out of our Cleveland yards, right?
 

Some scientists predict an increase in natural disasters as a result of global warming. But somehow I think something else is responsible for all the volcanoes I see erupting in my neighborhood.

‘Volcano’ is the term coined for that mound of mulch that folks pile around a tree this time of year. Even though all the credible references advise against this, it somehow seems to be very popular. I drive through developments in which landscapers have generously heaped the mulch into a nice pyramid around every tree.

After spending a fair amount of money on new trees, you would think a homeowner would want to protect that investment. One of my neighbors recently built a series of volcanoes around the trees throughout his yard. It looks kind of cool, but just like Mount Vesuvius, these volcanoes can be deadly. That pile of mulch heats the base of the tree and holds moisture up against the bark. Not only does this encourage pests and diseases, but the tree responds by sending out new roots into that pile of mulch. Instead of spreading outward, these new roots grow inside the pile and over time can girdle the tree as they expand.

The International Society of Arboriculture recommends mulching tree root zones to help retain moisture in the ground and act as a weed barrier. But to avoid decay, disease and pests, ISA calls for mulch to be kept one to two inches away from the base of the tree. So a good gardening practice after mulching is to go back and sweep away any that might have piled up on the tree flare.

The trees will thank you.

Or What the Heck Did I Plant?

I love old-time gardeners. They are a wealth of knowledge through decades of trial and error. One thing is for sure: gardening is a learning process. Smart gardeners track what was planted, what was successful, what failed. The challenge for me is how to record and store this hard-won information.

I always give a little chuckle when I see bookstores carrying garden "journals." The idea is to sit placidly in your garden, sipping a tall glass of lemonade or ice tea, writing what gardening activity you just completed. Some journals are just lined notebooks with a nice cover. Other journals are more organized, for instance, by seasons. Now, if you are like me – and I sincerely hope you are not – you are extremely busy, and time to record what you planted, what you removed, or what weather conditions just experienced is not available. Who has the time, right?

In the Garden, Home Connections and Helping Hands

May is all about flower gardening in Hershey Children’s Garden. Our programming emphasis centers on mathematical concepts of counting and classifying. We are offering stories like Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert as an opportunity to add some color to a child’s garden visit.

We started painting the garden this month with our May Day weekend celebration last Saturday. Children participated in creating May Day baskets, filling the baskets with fresh garden flowers and dancing around the May Pole. If you did not make out this past weekend, it is okay. We are making baskets for flowers every Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. this month. If you are busy on weekends, come on Wednesdays and participate in Nature Tales Story Time at 11:00 a.m.

Your family could provide some helping hands this Saturday from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. You can make a flower arrangement during our Blooms-To-Go program for some person in the community whose needing some flower cheer this Mother’s Day. You make the arrangements and we deliver to one in need.

Lastly, there are many things you could do at home with your little one to plant your own rainbow. One idea is to plant a cutting garden in a pot or in the backyard. A cutting garden is planted with flowers especially suited for flower arrangements which you cut and use. Plant easy to care for flowers such as: marigolds, zinnias, annual salvias, sunflowers, cosmos, bachelor’s buttons, geraniums, roses, poppies, irises and so many more. You and your child can care for the plants, cut the flowers and create wonderful artwork! Come and see what we plant in our cutting garden this month.
 

Tale One: Big Tree, Big Axe.  Cleveland Botanical Garden has a row of maturing, healthy Norway maples (Acer platanoides) growing along East Boulevard.  And we are cutting them down.

Actually native to Norway and across northern Europe, the Norway maple has a detailed association with humans.  If never a lumber tree, it has long been valued for fine carpentry and horticulture.  In early 1700s Italy, Antonio Stradivari probably made the back boards for his supreme violins from Norway maple.  By the mid 1700s Norways had crossed the Atlantic to appear in Colonial seed lists; there is a 1756 record of one being planted in Philadelphia.  Norways were popular in 1800s New England as garden fancies (curiously, all our trees came from English nurseries, where Norway maple is non-native, so we have no wild provenance on  U.S. stocks).

But it took Dutch elm disease of the 1930s to bring the Norway maple to its current prominence in the northeastern U.S.  This disease that devastated our native American Elm (Ulmus americana) created a huge void in our street tree population, a void that was filled by existing nursery stock in the form of the Norway.  And it was a good elm substitute, for it was found to be easy to commercially re-propagate in a hurry, to transplant well, to grow vigorously on site, and to have tremendous tolerance of urban environments.

But the Norway also makes impenetrable canopy shade, throws copious fertile seed, and chemically inhibits competing seedlings. This suite of traits both “good” and “bad” soon helped the Norway become—you guessed it—a woody weed.

So here at the Garden, we had three Norway maples removed (I can’t say “felled” since they were hoisted up from their stumps and craned out of the garden) the week before last.  In the coming years, more will be removed.  And we already have a plan for the sunny slope they are leaving behind.  Our Woodland gardener has selected a swath of flowering shrubs, small trees, ferns and wildflowers to grow and thrive in this space.  The emphasis is on native plants, but there are exceptions; the design is naturalistic, but with an artistic gleam.  So watch this space with some anticipation.  Coming soon are flame azaleas and rosebay rhododendrons, native silverbell and spirea, hay-scented fern and fragrant sumac; a hillside painting in the sunshine.

Look around you.  If you have an ornamental maple in your yard with burgundy, bronze or chartreuse foliage, it is a Norway hybrid.  I don’t loathe the Norway so much as respect its potential.  Like all weeds, to me it is half-terror, half-teacher.

Tale Two: Big Tree, Small Axe.   Cleveland Botanical Garden has a nice Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) at the edge of the Restorative Garden, and right now it is dropping twigs damaged by a girdling beetle.

The flat-headed longhorn oak girdling beetle (poss. Oncideres quercus) probably won’t kill the tree.  But over the past few years of infestation it has already disfigured its twigs, by inducing hundreds of haphazard, zigzag re-growths.  And I have been taught by experience that one tree stress often invites others, which add up to sometimes deadly arithmetic.

This beautiful little creature wears wing covers that look as if they are made from hammered lead, and sprouts segmented, elegantly curved antennae that extend from flat head halfway to pointy tail.  It leads a peculiar and particular life.  The little twig tips littering the ground today were fashioned last autumn into nursery chambers by the adult beetles.  The adults chewed “girdling” rings into their twigs, and then laid a few to a few dozen eggs under the bark of each of their outrigger twigs.   The adults soon died, but their eggs hatched within the twigs, and spent the winter as larvae, nestled and safe up in the tree.  With this spring’s winds and rain, the girdled—and killed—twigs are now snapping free from their moorings, and falling to the garden floor.  And it is down here that the oak girdling beetle larvae begin to feed for a few weeks, eating their nursery walls.  They then pupate, again in their original twig chambers.  By mid-summer, the flying adults will hatch, eat some green wood, mate, and girdle more living chestnut oak twigs to complete their annual life cycle.  I will collect some twig tips, keep them contained, and see if I can capture one of the hatching adults this summer.  If successful, I will post pictures here.

Common in Ohio, I see evidence of the oak girdling beetle every year in chestnut oaks, white oaks (Quercus alba), and bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), too.  Bur oak twigs snap off a few months from now; is the wood perhaps more durable, or does bur oak bear a different species of beetle?

If you have girding beetles living in your oak, don’t fret.  Tend to the tree’s general health and it will withstand the infestation.  Don’t compact your oak tree’s soil or cut its roots, and don’t mulch it too heavily.  Prune damaged wood that might invite secondary disease.  And collect and destroy all the fallen twigs, so removing the next generation of beetles in the process.

Oaks have co-evolved along with a host of voracious native insects.  For their half of this never-ending pull-and-tug, oaks manufacture an array of tannins and possibly lignins for chemical defense. Nevertheless, an oak un-blighted by apple gall wasps, oak leaf rollers, or girdling beetles seems unusual to me.  They must be generous trees, and surely the flat-headed longhorn oak girdling beetle is fortunate for this bounty.

There you go: Two Cutting Tree Tales; Or, What I Saw In The Garden.

Posted by Mark Bir 
 

Now here is a fascinating twist on the same old story.  We find a noxious weed running rampant across our landscape, doing its evil and “blah, blah, blah" — but lo — it is not all bad.

Meet the bad Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum). This beast of a weed has a playbook full of dirty tricks: running, re-propagating rhizomes; wide soil and salt tolerance; no pests or diseases; canes and leaves that grow fast and tall to crowd out native plants.

“But wait!” Meet the good Japanese knotweed. This beauty of a weed may also have a good heart: powerful, “age-reversing” anti-oxidants; resistance to some cancers; protection against heart disease and diabetes; cholesterol reducing properties; Alzheimer plaque-blocking properties.

So what’s the real story?

Knotweed has a human history more subtle and complex than “weed.”  It begins back in its native land, where Hu Zhang is the epithet for powdered knotweed root in traditional Chinese herbals. For centuries, it has been prescribed as an analgesic, diuretic and expectorant, to treat bronchitis, jaundice, and hypertension. Western medicine has recently isolated and identified a powerful antioxidant from the entire plant as the probable active ingredient in knotweed. This fairly small, 14-carbon organic molecule has no common name, so we’re stuck with “trans-resveratrol.”  But I am going to practice pronouncing it, because it’s the same heart-healthy stuff found in red wine at the crux of the French Paradox, but at 80 times the concentration.

Knotweed synthesizes trans-resveratrol as a sort of botanical immune response to fungal and bacterial pathogens, even making larger quantities in moldy springs.  The chemical apparently acts to absorb harmful free radicals released during knotweed’s argument with pathogens.  This is why trans-resveratrol intrigues us moderns, for it displays substantive ability which hints that it may transfer well to the realm of human health and disease.  Its appeal leaps beyond fringe healing to find interest amongst some of the best minds practicing conventional medicine.

Current knotweed research is probing trans-resveratrol’s capacity to interrupt free-radical cascades in the electron transport transport chain of cell metabolism, to block carcinogenesis, to interfere with plasma LDL and its role in atherosclerosis, and to indirectly activate our sirtuin genes and so mimic the inhibitory effect of caloric restriction on aging. And that’s just some of it. Phew.

Here is where the story leads us to Cleveland Botanical Garden. Lately, we can find the asparagus-like shoots of Japanese knotweed bunched at our market stands, for sale as a tonic comestible.  And since last September, the Garden and I have been providing modest technical assistance to Lynne Thompson of Ohio Magazine, to forward her research for an April, 2010 article exploring knotweed as a constituent of a healthy cuisine (www.ohiomagazine.com/Main/Articles/Asian_Invasion_4153.aspx).  It is a good article; good work, Lynne.

“Technical assistance” has amounted to me attempting to grow some knotweed indoors to produce an out-of-season winter shoot crop.  Lynne wanted to bake a knotweed pie!  So, being a hungry man, I wild-collected seeds and rhizomes, and potted both in our working glasshouse.  But this was to little avail, for both propagules (hi-falutin’ word for germinate-able tissue, be it seed or shoot or root) were already locked into their seasonal dormancy cycle.  The seeds simply sat. The rhizomes sent up weak sprouts and leaves, which lingered but did not grow in manifest until February.

No pie. Lynne’s article went to press, complete with a tantalizing description of knotweed pie, but still, no pie. Being a determined girl, Lynne convinced me to nevertheless help her see this project through, go out this spring and harvest a pie-worthy mess of knotweed.  After I agreed to round two, she cleverly added, “and do you know where we can find some of the stuff?”  Deciding my continuing promise of pie was worth this new effort, I quizzed the Garden Green Corps staff, who just happened to have some knotweed growing on their Fairfax Urban Learning Farm (http://www.cbgarden.org/Green_Corps/Learning_Gardens.html).  For a small inferred bribe involving chocolate or alcoholic beverage, I was soon granted privilege to escort Lynne there on a harvesting expedition.

Knotweed season is well upon us, so after a flurry of phone tag, we hurriedly set last Friday morning for the big harvest.

Lynne brought along a surprise guest.  “Hi, I’m Mike,” was his unpretentious-as-a-howdy greeting for me.  It took Lynne to explain that it was “Mike” as in “Dr. Michael Roizen,” director of wellness programs for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.  If serendipity was my sensation at shaking hands with this man whose wellness books are dog-eared on my library pile (this handshake alone makes me 1.3 years younger), I was also unsurprised that he was curious to see knotweed in situ.

The harvest went without incident, aside from giving me the pleasure of watching two informed and intelligent people express such optimism for this weed that mostly causes me and my peers to hyperventilate. It was refreshing and instructive.  Seeing them with their open eyes has prompted me to ponder anew the ecological/social dialectic between weeds and people.  Without trying to put too-fine a point on it, it has given me intent to see weeds not as the enemy, not as bad or good, but simply as living things put out of place. If we have made knotweed into a weed with a capital W, it seems to me that it would be a second slip to destroy it with no consideration for its unknown potential.

Trans-resveratrol may not prove to be the fountain of youth that we hope it to be, but the lesson is still true.  Knotweed, having interacted with us for generations across continents and societies, teaches me about us as much as about itself. 

And to me, that’s the real story.  Knotweed isn’t so easy to loathe, after all.  We need to control this weed, and we especially need to control ourselves.  Villain and healer wearing one mask, I look at Japanese knotweed and see myself in the mirror.

It was nice to meet ya, Mike.  And if you see Lynne, please tell her I’m still waiting for my knotweed pie.

Posted by Mark Bir

We have a new visitor to the Garden.  But this one has six legs, mandibles and compound eyes, and is most unwelcome.

The viburnum leaf beetle (Phyrrhalta viburnii) is here, and we are in danger of losing much of our flowering viburnum collection to its hunger.  Why is it such a problem?  Because the “VLB” has been introduced inadvertently to North America without any of its natural checks and balances, and so is free to chew its way through our wild and garden viburnums.  Not only that, it comes with a one-two punch, since both the larvae and adults feed on viburnum leaves.

A European native, this inconspicuous brown beetle—1/5” long—was first noticed in Canada about 1947 (possibly it was a hitchhiker on garden viburnums shipped from overseas].  VLB has since been making its way through the east; in 2000, it was verified in western PA and parts of Ashtabula County; by 2008 it was verified in Lake and Cuyahoga Counties.  We found it on some of the Garden viburnums this summer.

What is a gardener to do?  We could slather our viburnums with potent organophosphate insecticides, which would certainly kill VLB, along with all the other local arthropods, good and bad in the same basket.  We could do nothing, be totally organic, let the beetles have their way, and supplant infested viburnums with different flowering shrubs.

Or we could choose a hybrid approach.  If we made the effort to study VLB/viburnum interactions, we might then be able to design a modified organic control plan that selects mechanical and biological controls, but also permits least-toxic chemicals when absolutely needed.

Sounds like a pretty good idea!  Let’s walk through the hybrid “education and action” plan that we made for our VLB infestation.

As these things often go, VLB has learned to favor our smooth-leaved viburnums, especially arrow-wood (Viburnum dentatum), over the hirsute varieties it had back home.  Maybe it’s like eating nectarines instead of peaches? A Garden walk-about confirms this, so we decide to focus on arrow-wood, and simply monitor other viburnum varieties for VLB. This saves us effort and possible pesticide use; if other viburnums begin to show VLB damage, we’ll adjust protocol.

We also decide to provide complete cultural care to all our viburnums, to reduce their overall stress and so help them survive VLB.  This is a simple matter of composting and mulching in spring, and irrigating during possible summer dry spells.

Next, we consider the VLB life cycle, since it will help us discover when the beetle is most vulnerable.  VLB lays eggs by drilling into viburnum first- or second-year branch tips in early autumn; the eggs over-winter under the bark and hatch by early May; the larvae eat leaves, and then crawl down to the soil to pupate by early June; the adult beetles emerge by early July, eat leaves, mate, and complete the annual cycle. VLB presence is  betrayed by two identifying clues: "sewing machine" egg scars on dormant twigs (see photograph); buckshot feeding holes in the leaves starting in late spring.

Well, what is the best stage to arrest VLB?  We decide to go after the eggs, since they’re easy to catch!  A mechanical control method will work.  So, right now in early April, we are tip-pruning egg-laden young twigs from infected arrow-wood plants, and away from their future feeding bushes.  This is a good choice, since viburnums respond well to pruning, and will not suffer a loss of vigor.

In our highest visibility gardens, where viburnums need to be cosmetically perfect, we will forgo tip-pruning, and choose from two chemical control options.  First choice is an April spray of summer horticultural oil, which is essentially liquid candle wax.  Hort oil is topical, smothers the eggs, and does minimal harm to beneficial arthropods. Second choice is granular imidacloprid, a synthetic nicotine that is applied to soil and translocated from the roots to the young leaves, where it kills the feeding VLB.  Used like this, it also doesn’t harm predatory beneficial insects.

We will attempt to get by with just the early spray of benign hort oil.  If this is unsuccessful, next spring we’ll go for the nicotine.

Oil can also kill the larvae, but timing is more finicky.  Killing the adults requires stronger broadcast chemicals, and by their advent it is too late anyway to prevent leaf damage by the hungry spring larvae.

There it is.  We studied the plant and the insect, and used what we learned to pick a suite of smart, safe control methods for our VLB infestation.

There’s a name for this approach to pest control.  It is “Integrated Pest Management,”  or (here comes another acronym) IPM.  Local biological systems are kept intact, to buffer against future pest explosions.  Plants are grown with the grace of their unique nature in mind.  IPM views the garden as a whole, and not merely as a game board of plants vs. enemy insects and diseases.

The threat to Ohio’s wild and garden viburnums is real, and may even prove devastating.  Please monitor your viburnums for VLB damage, and be ready with IPM thinking.  Integrated Pest Management: control the pest without crushing the garden.

—I better get busy, I think I just heard that new visitor calling my name…”CHOMP!”

For more on VLB, check these websites:  http://ohioline.osu.edu/sc195/013.html, http://www.hort.cornell.edu/vlb/html   

 Posted by Mark Bir

Our Monthly Theme

April is all about earth care in Hershey Children’s Garden. Our programming emphasis centers around helping young children identify their common connection with and respect for other living things. We are offering stories like The Lorax by Dr. Seuss as an opportunity to discover that we are a part of the same planet.

Today, we hosted our first Nature Tales Story Time under the tree house. The leaves emerging from winter sleep and a gentle warm breeze moving daffodils in full bloom provided the perfect setting for over thirty participants listening to a story and creating flowers with their hand prints. Come next Wednesday at 11 a.m. to hear another story and learn about what we could do with our "garbage" besides through it away.

There are many things you could do at home with your little one to help them connect to their world. One idea would be to plant a pollinator garden, butterfly and bee friendly, and draw pictures of what comes to visit the flowers. The Garden has a number of examples of plant material just right for such a project. We are happy to show you what plants you can plant in your Cleveland yard. Another idea would to go for a walk through Hershey Children’s Garden or a park. See if you can find examples of the food chain taking place (a bee visiting a flower, a rabbit eating grass) and draw a picture of it. Whatever you decide to do with your child, encourage them to talk about what they are seeing and doing, what is around them. Show them how you are caring for the earth.