Pruning for character

Unless you’re a naturalist with squirrel-like tendencies, there will come a point when you find reasons to interfere with a tree. That’s gardener-speak for pruning; and the cruelest cuts of all are guided by caprice, popular trend, and the thrill of power tools (heavy will be your conscience). Beyond text book pruning for health issues—repairing storm damage, increasing air circulation and removing dead or diseased wood—is there a defensible purpose for altering the form of a woody plant that has history and legend, older genes than your own, and the capability to live on into the next century? Well, yes, if your intention is to reveal the essential character of a tree, and perhaps explore your own.

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The Holiday Message

Sir John Mortimer (1923 - 2009)The last weeks of the year are busy with getting and spending, and making jolly – all to mark the certainty of one year ending, another year beginning.  This is the time I look for distraction and amusement in contemplating the lives of interesting people, as they contemplate their own mortality.

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Mail from Indiana

Floating under plane trees on Canal du MidiMeeting strangers at breakfast is a challenging moment to expand one’s social network.  But sometimes it’s just the right time to make the best of new encounters, as it was one morning at a bed and breakfast establishment, when kindred souls recognized each other across a crowded breakfast table.  Alicia and Marvin enjoy an appreciation for French culture, which conveniently extends to cuisine, and herb gardens.

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Mail from the shores of Lake Ontario

Some years ago my friend Marilyn and I were members of the same Master Gardener group in Toronto—both of us “city” gardeners. Now Marilyn has a unique garden in a challenging location: directly on the shoreline of Lake Ontario in the Niagara region. Her home was built in 1835, and at that time functioned as The Whale Inn, a full-service inn for sailors arriving at the port that was directly at the bottom of her street. The separate entrance to the tap room (now a reading room) is still used, while the enormous kitchen hearth furnishes the current living room with toasty fires. And of course the house is pleasantly haunted!

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Gardener under the influence

Here is the list of challenging circumstances that have influenced my garden over the past 25 years: A persistent groundhog, several rabbits, stray dogs, an insane red squirrel, Japanese beetles, crowds of raccoons, a four-foot paper wasp nest, floods of chlorinated pool water (not mine), magnolia scale, fire blight, every kind of thistle—including Scotch (Onopordum acanthium), escaped mint, creeping buttercups (Ranunculus repens), yellow avens (Geum aleppicum), stinging nettles, fields of creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides), a sinking lawn, and now, coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara). So far, no toads raining down from the sky. Yes, it’s been a lot to deal with. But nothing influenced me more than the Hitachi EX200 house-wrecking machine. That was a real problem.

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