The main drag through our neighborhood is lined with Bradford pear trees and it's beautiful when in flower. Stinky, like dead fish, but pretty if you can get past the odor. Unfortunately, they are our neighborhood's harbingers of Spring. The trees were planted approximately 18 years ago and I'm guessing were bought for a song by the developer. They're common and it's always concerned me. Even more so now that my neighbor's gorgeous pear trees in her front garden have succumbed to fire blight and will have to be removed. Their invasive nature has landed them on the Illinois Invasive Plant List. In other words, choose something other than a pear. Ironically, the callery pear (Pyrus calleryana), from which the Bradford originates, was brought over from China in an attempt to thwart fire ...
Search Results for: trees
Going Native One Plant at a Time in My Backyard
I've partnered with the National Wildlife Federation's Garden for Wildlife program for this post. All thoughts are my own. If you asked me 20 years ago what a native plant was, I probably would have said it was anything I couldn't kill. Which pretty much summed up my awareness. In the beginning, I was like a kid in a candy store with little plant knowledge but wanting one of everything. It was purely superficial and based solely on flowers. I quickly learned that the one of everything approach results in something more like a weed patch and less like a garden. I'm still trying to control that impulse, but I've also learned that my tastes have shifted. I still want beauty, but my definition of it has changed. For me, beauty encompasses all that my garden attracts. From the tiniest ...
Root Bound Tree? Try Root Washing Before Planting
Spring is overwhelming. There are a million things to do in the garden, not to mention all the family stuff. One daughter coming home from college. The other about to graduate high school and playing lacrosse all over the Chicago area. Everything's a blur right now. Then I decide to plant a new garden complete with a Tina dwarf crabapple. Restraint is not my strong suit. It should have been a quick planting job. The tree was small, container grown in a 10-gallon pot. No big deal. So I dug the hole, slipped the tree out of it's home and realized this "quick" job was about to get a little more involved...and dirty. Not hard, just time consuming and time is limited right now. But I want to do this right. Trees are an investment, something you hope will last for many years, not just the ...
Callery Pear Is the Unfortunate Harbinger of Spring
It's that time of year when you're hungry for green, searching for reassurance that spring is near. The Callery pear tree delivers in late March/early April in the Chicago area, peppering landscapes and swallowing fields and woodlines. It's everywhere and a clue to it's invasive nature. It's the first glimmer of spring we often see in our area and when I worked for a tree nursery several years ago, the most common question I got from customers this time of year was, "What is that beautiful white tree I see everywhere?" And then... "Do you sell it?" People couldn't get enough of it and when you don't know much about trees, it's easy to give into the squeakiest wheel. It seems like a safe, reliable choice. Don't fall for it! BIG mistake. In an effort to bring awareness, I covered ...
Save Your Money, Sow Seeds Instead!
If you're like me, you've been buried in seed catalogs for the last few weeks, completely overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of possibilities concealed within those flimsy pages. I've since buttoned up my orders, mostly. There may be a few more stragglers in there but for the most part it's done and I'm really excited because I had a great experience last year creating a beautiful, layered new border mostly from seed that cost me about $20. Some were direct sown, while others like the Prairie Sun rudbeckia, were given a headstart indoors to get a jump on the season. I like instant gratification, especially after a looooong winter. The dry, full-sun area around the patio was screaming for a do-over. It was a long narrow border of Walkers Low catmint which has the not-so-attractive ...
Autumn Leaves are Lovely, But Acorns Fill My Heart
A few days ago, I was listening to a podcast and the conversation touched on the change of seasons and the way each is marked by the things we associate with them. Winter snow. Spring daffodils. Summer tans. Autumn leaves. While colorful leaves are the quintessential poster children of fall, it is the acorn that marks the arrival of autumn. Something about that little brown oak seed with the tan beret takes me to another season of my life, the one marked by the frenzy of small children. When my girls were small, keeping them occupied was challenging. Never one to plop them in front of the TV for hours, I looked to the outdoors for entertainment. That's not to say I wasn't grateful for the respite that a Disney movie offered from time to time. We played in the rain, built snowmen with ...
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