Green Gardening with Ann Lovejoy

Preserving Winter Pussies

For many years, my family collected bouquets of catkins to celebrate my youngest son’s birthday in mid-January. Silky grey and soft as kittens, these fat, furry flowers came from an elderly western willow, Salix scouleriana, that liveds in our front yard. Nowadays, we have to wander further afield to glean our twigs, but it doesn’t take more than a few minutes of walking to locate a good-sized pussy willow blooming away by the roadside. Though this species is rarely grown in gardens, I think it is an ornamental creature, with felted, silver-backed leaves that make a handsome backdrop to a mixed border.

In the wild, scouler willows grow into graceful small trees (15-30′), but in small gardens, they are easily kept shrubby by regular thinning. If a young plant is cut back when planted, it will develop into a multiple-trunked shrub about the size of a mature lilac bush. The largest of the trunks can be removed every few years to maintain this compact size. Where room permits, several main trunks can be encouraged, resulting in a pleasantly shaped little tree clump.

Beware The Bouncing Branch

Like many willows, scouler willow trees are rather brittle of
branch, blithely shedding heavy older limbs with every wind storm. Scoulers pruned as shrubs don’t have this habit, which becomes a distinct liability when the trees are underplanted with perennials. Cutting scoulers back in youth may seem harsh, but it makes them better behaved–thus more lastingly welcome–in mixed borders.

Even mature trees can be cut back quite hard, as I long ago discovered. During several especially windy years, great chunks of my old scouler came down each year. They would invariably land on top of their most fragile neighbors, flattening many a promising peony and rose in full bud. The last such event was so infuriating that it reminded me of a sage old saying about the best sort of defense. Out came the hand saw and down came the last remaining major limbs. (I think that an elderly tree deserves to go down through hand-to-hand combat, rather than fall to the casual impersonality of a chain saw. After all, it took that tree years to grow so large. It’s only fitting that it should cost us some time and effort to cut it down.)

Know When It’s Time To Whack

Had that tree retained its lovely natural shape, such powerful
offensive action might not have seemed a good idea. However, frequent loss of limb had left our scouler willow less than lovely, so this radical pruning did no harm. In fact, a number of lusty side shoots were already heading heavenward. In an amazingly short time, the tree was rejuvenated, with healthy, shapely young branches replacing the rotting old ones.

Only a few nurseries carry scouler willows, but anybody who so desires can have as many as they like for the price of a drive in the country. Scouler willow is common along Northwestern roadsides (indeed, it grows all the way from Alaska to New Mexico). Keep your eyes out for the upright, shrubby plants which often decorate the verges of country roads. (Young scoulers cut back by road-clearing crews respond with lush growth that results in dense shrubs rather than airy trees.)

Watch The Roadside For Stray Pussies

For the next month or so, the scoulers will be very obvious, for nearly every twig is tipped with large and lustrous pussies. Indeed, I can’t understand why scouler willows aren’t common in gardens, since their pussies are larger and more beautiful than the horticultural pussy willows widely sold in nurseries and garden centers. What’s more, scouler pussies appear a good deal earlier than their foreign counterparts. Since most pussy willows are grown entirely for the beauty of their silky catkins, it seems curious to neglect this splendid native in favor of frumpier plants with fewer charms.

When you find a likely-looking candidate, whip out your pruning snips and thoughtfully relieve the tree of some of its excess twiggery. When cutting pussy willows for the house, we naturally want to take the most heavily decorated twigs. For propagation purposes, however, it’s good to include a few bits of green, rather than hard, wood as well.

Soft But Not Lishy

Small branches which are prime for rooting are described in horticultural terms as feeling firm rather than “lishy”. Such twigs are not rigid: they have a bit of give to them, yet aren’t so soft as to be swished about like ribbons. Actually, willows root with such alacrity that practically any piece will take. Old wood is usually difficult or impossible to root, yet some years back we stuck a dozen willow limbs as big as my arm straight into the ground and every one of them set roots and grew into trees.

When you get your bounty home, just stick your scouler twigs into a jar of water. Keep them on a sunny windowsill, and in a few weeks, you will discover many long, white roots. Plants rooted in water often need a bit of transition before placement in dirt, but not willows. Pot them up if you aren’t sure where you want them, otherwise you can place the young plants wherever you want them in the garden. Keep them moist for the first summer, but once they are established, scouler willows thrive in good soils even without supplemental water. Next year, you may admire the year’s first catkins without leaving home.

Knowing When To Let Go

The past decade has been full of challenging weather events, from massive snowfall, ice  and wind storms to heavy rain and flooding. Summers have been equally difficult, with cool, cloudy months giving way to sudden heat and drought.

All this is not news, of course, but the list is worth a moment’s review. What it all adds up to is remarkable and continuing stress for our plants. Even native trees and shrubs are affected by wild weather swings that ravage pampered garden beauties.

Resist Rescue Temptation

I get a lot of questions about how to resuscitate plants that have had more winter than they can handle. I know, it really is tempting to coddle frail, weather-worn plants. However, the result is rarely worth the extra work involved in garden rescue missions. First we modify the soil, perhaps root pruning and resetting a collapsing belle. We spread compost and top dress with aged manure. We add stakes to hold the failing stems upright, finally creating a web of ties like a cat’s cradle.

Perhaps we brew special blends of humic acids and kelp extract, adding a dash of mineral elixir and an aspirin tablet. Such a concoction may work wonders on tomatoes and roses (it does, in fact) but rarely suffices to restore a frost bitten tropical perennial. It may limp along for a while, looking awful all summer, but in the end, our treasure is clearly headed for the big compost heap in the sky.

Giving It All Up For Love

Does that mean we shouldn’t grow the borderline hardy plants we love? No, of course not. Love is always worth pursuing, and never wasted. However, after many years, I have come to feel that my time is better spent on cherishing hardy, independent plants that don’t need me very much. Plants that can’t take the highs, the lows, and the swings between are least painfully considered as annuals.

Some may be quite expensive annuals, but if you really love the look of a particular ginger or New Zealand flax, for example, you may consider their price as money well spent. For the cost of a fine dinner that lasts a few hours, you can enjoy a beloved plant for at least 6 months, and if we’re lucky, perhaps a few years. Pro-rated on a dollars-per-hour-of-pleasure basis, that costly plant is a bargain, not to mention the health benefit accrued in the act of planting.

An Annual Investment in Joy

Thus, we can face the annual task of removing the dead and dying with renewed strength and courage. While recycling expensive former plants into the compost heap, why not focus on past pleasure as well as pleasure to come. Yes, the plant is a goner, but wasn’t it lovely? And won’t it’s replacement bring you joy as well, should you choose to try, try again?

If you do replant, ask yourself whether a new location might give your fragile beloved a better chance to shine. For me, the issue is not longer whether I can coax a plant to survive, but whether or not I can successfully help it thrive. I no longer want to work so hard, and I get new and deeper pleasure from observing happy, healthy plants that joyfully make a home in my garden with very little input from me.

Tougher Loving

My new approach is still surprising to my dear Friday Tidies, the noble volunteers who have helped me create several acres of glorious gardens around our public library. We meet, as might seem clear, on Friday mornings all year round to keep these public gardens gorgeous. The Friday of the big snow this January was the first time in almost 15 years that we had to cancel, which says a lot for our weather karma.

My gallant crew is used to me going to great lengths to save often unpromising plants. For years, I used a wide, sometimes ridiculous range of tactics to keep plants alive that might truly be better off dead. Now, when asked what to do with this dwindling perennial or that faltering shrub, I am apt to say, “Oh, let’s just dig it out and try something else.” The Tidies eye each other nervously and rush away to do it before I have time to change my mind.

Comfort In Compost

I almost never do have second thoughts about such decisions these days. Some of my newfound peace with change and decay is probably due to having spent a year in mourning for the loss of my husband. A marriage that ends in death perforce brings the topic close to the heart. What I know now is that death is far from the worst thing that can happen to a person or a plant. I realize that my view of compost is perhaps a bit romantic (boggling as the thought may be), yet it really is comforting to think in terms of recycling, not utter ending.

Mary Oliver wrote a poem called Heron Rises From The Dark Summer Pond in which she thinks how unlikely it is that “death is a hole in the ground.” As I planted this week, I realized that for gardeners, a hole in the ground is not about ending but about hopeful beginning.

This year, I intend to move forward joyfully and fearlessly, looking back with love and compassion. Out with the old, gently and sweetly, making respectful room for something new. Onward.