In response to the question
about pruning ginkgos that was published in the Gardeners Information
Service page in the September/October issue, I would like to
contribute more information about keeping a ginkgo dwarf, or at least
shorter than normal.
In my rock garden I have a
25-year-old ginkgo that is 41/2 feet wide and 21/2 feet tall. The
trunk is five inches in diameter. When the original plant was eight
inches high, I began heading it back to create a multi-branch growth
pattern. Keeping in mind the need to keep a fairly balanced overall
shape, whenever a new stem develops four or five leaves, I then cut it
back to one, two, or three leaves. When the plant is dormant, I also
thin it out by removing branches at the site of origin.
My ginkgo specimen is now a
multi-twigged plant and quite attractive. It is very healthy and never
fed. When visitors ask if the plant has a name, I tell them it is a
“secateur dwarf.” I believe this technique can be successfully
used to keep many woody plants small, but the larger the plant is when
the pruning process is started, the more labor-intensive it will be.
Planted near the ginkgo is a
40-year-old Enkianthus perulatus var. compactus. In contrast to the
ginkgo, this compact shrub—less than two feet tall and four feet in
diameter—has never had to be pruned.
Nickolas Nickou -
Branford, Connecticut
I would like to say thank
you, along with a round of applause, to Mr. Deno for his research and
publications on seed germination. His work is very much appreciated by
those of us who grow our own plants from seed.
As Colston Burrell pointed
out in his article on hellebores in The
American Gardener last year (January/February), when
discussing H. orientalis we first need to make sure we are speaking of
the same plant. Hellebores sold with the name H. orientalis are for
the most part garden hybrids that should more correctly be called H.
5hybridus. Will McLewin, a British hellebore expert, has been
advocating this nomenclature for some time. What is carried in the
nursery trade as H. orientalis has long since lost most or all of its
resemblance to the species.
The true species H.
orientalis is coming back into the trade as interest grows in
hellebores in England, Germany, Australia and here in America. In a
few collectors catalogs you will now find both H. 5hybridus and H.
orientalis along with color selections of each due to the numerous
breeding programs being conducted today. There are good color forms of
each available, so I would suggest a trip to the library to browse any
of the books specializing in hellebores currently on the market. All
provide a wealth of color photos and information. A favorite of mine
is The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Hellebores by Graham Rice and
Elizabeth Strangman, published by Timber Press.
Plants and seeds of good
color forms of H. 5hybridus and H. orientalis are available
commercially. In addition to the sources listed in Burrell’s
article, McLewin sells seeds from his collecting expeditions and his
garden where his breeding program takes place. Helen Ballard also
offers many of the better color forms from her breeding programs.
Often individual collectors and growers are quite easily located and
contacted through the Internet.
The Christmas rose (H. niger)
sets buds above ground toward the end of January here in southern
Indiana, but no real bloom occurs until the latter part of February
and into March. The number, timing, and quality of flowers is very
much weather dependant. Dormant buds replace flowers damaged by hard
freezes and lack of snow cover, but there is always a show to some
degree.
If Mr. Deno saw H. niger
blooming in November, it was more than likely a different strain than
the one currently on the mass market. A strain of early-winter
blooming H. niger was in circulation some years ago but seemed to have
somehow gotten lost in the trade for a while. Of late, fortunately,
that particular strain seems to be more readily available once again.
I have H. niger in three locations in my garden. Two were planted in
quite poor locations back when I was a novice gardener. I feel the
reputation H. niger has gained for being a bit of a problem is more
myth than actual gardening experience.
Gene Bush - Depauw,
Indiana
Of the various hellebores
that I have tried in my Zone 7 Piedmont garden, H. niger has been the
most challenging. While it did not perform for me at all, in a
friend’s garden just 12 miles away, a single specimen planted some
five years ago has now become a large, shrublike species some two feet
in diameter producing some 30 blooms yearly. This plant invariably
blooms at Christmas time, its first flower generally opening on
Christmas Day. Frustrated at my failure, I finally consulted Don
Jacobs of Eco Gardens in Decatur, Georgia, who grows and offers a
variety of hellebore species and selections. According to him, H.
niger does not tolerate acid soil. While hellebores such as H.
orientalis, H. foetidus, and H. argutifolius will tolerate generally
acidic soils and grow well, as they have for me, H. niger will do so
only with the addition of generous quantities of lime.
I should also mention that
some lovely selections of H. 5hybridus are available from Jacobs,
among them a lovely pink, ‘Eco Frosted Plum’, which has continued
to increase in size and bloom regularly from the first year I planted
it.
Two good resources on
hellebores are:
Hellebores by Brian F.
Mathew, published by the Alpine Garden Society, Woking, 1989.
A scholarly and fascinating
six-part study on hellebores by Will McLewin and Brian Mathew was
published in The New Plantsman from 1996 to 1998. There is also a
short note on H. orientalis subsp. guttatus by Mathew in The New
Plantsman, 1994. vol. I, part 3.
Rekha Morris - Pendleton,
South Carolina
In response to Norman
Deno’s query about where good color forms of Helleborus orientalis
hybrids can be obtained, I would like to recommend the selections of
British hellebore breeder Graham Birkin. Birkin breeds for color and
has only recently offered divisions of his hybrid hellebores via
mail-order for American gardeners. His new Web catalog can be found at
http://www.hellebores.hort.net.
Birkin’s catalog is an
image catalog, so it may be slow to load for those with slow modems,
but it’s worth the wait to see all those gorgeous flowers! He offers
doubles and anemone-flowered forms as well as “blacks” and blues,
pink and red ranges, yellows, apricots, and whites.
Orders can now be placed for
delivery this spring or fall. A selection of his hybrids is also
available at the following American nurseries:
Russell Graham—Purveyor of
Plants, 4030 Eagle Crest Road, N.W., Salem, OR 97304. (503) 362-1135.
Catalog $2. E-mail: grahams@open.org
Plant Delights Nursery, 9241
Sauls Road, Raleigh, NC 27603. (919) 772-4794. Catalog 10 stamps or a
box of chocolates. Owner Tony Avent lists some of the dark forms under
‘Birkin’s Blacks’ in his online catalog. http://www.plantdel.com
Marge Talt - Potomac,
Maryland
My experience with H. niger
contrasts with that of Brian Mathew in his book, Hellebores. He noted
that the Christmas rose rarely blooms as early as Christmas and went
on to say that “it is not the easiest plant to grow and one seldom
sees good plants in gardens.” In this region at least, given
conditions to its liking, the common form of H. niger will, in time,
form luxuriant clumps elegant in flower and foliage—and yes, I do
have one clone that truly deserves the designation “Christmas
Rose.”
This selection was obtained
in 1978 from Wayside Gardens, which was then located in Mentor, Ohio.
This plant has bloomed as early as Thanksgiving—which may explain
Deno’s fall sighting—but it tends to flower with near clockwork
precision between December 1 and December 10 and is at or near its
peak for Christmas.
A much smaller plant than my
younger, later-blooming clones, it normally produces 12 to 20 flowers
a year. These are unusually large, to four and a half inches in
diameter, compared to four inches for the later-flowering types. Its
leaf segments are also distinctive in that they are only half as wide,
much less strongly toothed, and lack the occasional deep embayments of
the later flowering forms. These distinctive features suggest this
particular early-flowering selection may represent a separate genetic
strain.
Over the past 21 years, the
early flowering clone has produced only a single seedling. If typical,
this lack of sexual and vegetative vigor may help explain the scarcity
of this selection in cultivation.
George Phair - Potomac,
Maryland
