 |
The Evening Scholar: URBAN GARDENING 
Two Big Trends in Urban Gardening --
Container Plantings and Neighorhood Adventures
This Evening Scholar program offered the perfect dual presentation to prepare alumnae for Spring. Just click on the presentation title to get to that section of the page.
“Container Gardening for Urban Spaces” included:
- Container Planting Tips
- Design Advice
- Plant Trends
- Design Demonstration
- Hands-On Potting Experience.
“Neighborhood Gardening Adventures” included funny stories that cannot be reproduced, but we can share the “Neighorhood Gardening Tips”.
Finally, we want to keep the gardening conversation going. We have at the bottom of the page Alumnae-to Alumnae Gardening Advice and Adventures -- a place to read the wisdom and tales of other alumnae or add your own.
Container Gardening for Urban Spaces
 Using containers for gardening is the perfect solution for people with limited or problematic soil space. Container gardens can grace a patio, balcony, deck, rock pile, benches, roof-tops, window-boxes – almost anyplace. They can give dimension, variety, whimsy, and depth when added to land gardens. They provide life to tabletops and ledges.
 The presentation was given by Vicky Weis of Rush Creek Growers (W4727 770th Avenue, Spring Valley, Wisconsin) and Joan Westby and Maggie Bezanson of Leitner’s Garden Center (945 Randolph Avenue, east of St. Kate’s by about a mile and a half – 651-291-2655).
 After the presentation, they invited everyone to get their hands dirty by assembling their own pot of assorted plants, with the extra touches of pussy willows and ribbon. Joan and Maggie urges you to get personal advice by visiting them at the Leitner Garden Center, while Vicki, who is a grower and supplier, suggests that you visiting her Web site: www.rushgrow.com. For instance, to aid your winter dreaming, go to the Rush Creek Growers interactive Plant Picker site, jot down your desired plant characteristics, and see what plants pop up: http://www.rushcreekgrowers.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.search/index.htm
Vicki demonstrates an important growing point about delicate flowers while Joan provides some texture and height for the pots that alumnae are designing to bring home. Special thanks on the photos to Mirjana Mataya, an enthusiastic middle school gardener and assistant to her alumna mother.
NEW PLANT TRENDS FOR CONTAINERS
Here are the plants Vicki recommended if you want to dig into the new trends. To get the full experience, you can find the photos and additional information for all the plants noted below at:
http://www.rushcreekgrowers.com/index.cfm
/fuseaction/plants.main/index.htm
The New Tropicals
Many gardeners are now going for the “jungle look” in their containers and in their ensemble of containers. These tropicals often grow high and fast, requiring a great deal of sun and water. Because of their height, they can be susceptible to wind damage. They are wonderful for defining edges, softening corners, and surrounding one with leafy, lofty, color and often-chartreuse shade. Vicki loves chatreuse! Here are her picks:
- Alocasia (Elephant Ears)
- Brugmansia (Angel Trumpets)
- Cannas (all kinds!)
- Cordyline (Red Sensation – red spikes)
- Musa “Rojo’ (Banana plant)
- Phormium (New Zealand Flax)
Succulents
These desert plants often are generally small with puffy-looking leaves and stems, storing water internally. They require little water and care, but they can add color and texture. They are easy to grow and great for tabletops. Here are the succulent picks:
- Crassula (Princess Pine, looks like little trailing green braids)
- Didelta Dawn (silver foliage)
- Echeveria (Topsy Turvy, like a silver canna bloom)
- Sedums (Ogon –chartreuse; Cape Blanco – perennial, yellow flowers; rupestre – like little pines; Angelina –trailing chartreuse with yellow)
- Sempervivens (Hens and Chicks)
Vibrantly Colored Blooms
These plants all share brash, bold colors to sprinkle in with other plants.
- Abulitons (Flower Maples – hanging Chinese lanterns, a topiary tree, part shade)
- Alonsoa (Fireball – blooms like snapdragons, full sun to part shade)
- Arctotis (Flame—daisylike in orange; Wine – silver foliage with maroon flower)
- Begonia (Bonfire—native to the Andes)
- Cuphea (Flamenco Samba, Flamenco Rhumba, Flamenco Tango)
- Gaura (Bijou Butterflies –foliage is rose and green)
- Dahlia (Happy Singles—chocolate foliage with bright orange scallop-daisy flower)
- Lobelia (Fan series – great for attracting hummingbirds)
- Laurentia (Beth’s Blue – very pretty blue)
- Lysimachia (Walkabout Sunset)
- Oxypetalum (Heavenborn
- Rudbeckia hirta (good for transition to fall containers)
- Salvia (Mystic Spires Blue—good for transition to fall containers)
- Talinum (Kingswood Gold – good for transition to fall containers)
Fabulous Foliage
Colorful leaves provide a lovely backdrop for other plants with dynamic blooms. Look for foliage with interesting shapes and growing patterns. These elements, plus the colored leaves, offer a feast for the eyes long after flower blooms have been deadheaded.
- Alternanthera (Purple Threadleaf, Summer Flame, Gail’s Choice – don’t overwater)
- Begonia (River Nile – crinkly chartreuse, Benitochiba – bronzy pumpkin colored, Fire Flush, Wineuma)
- Calocephalus brownie (twiglike and silver)
- Coleus (very bright, different from each other, beautiful and easy to grow)
- Euphorbia cotinifolia
- Manihot esculenta (Variegata)
- Melianthus major
- Salvia argentea (silver-leaves, like lambs ears)
Stunning Herbs and Edibles
These are tasty and colorful additions to any pot. They are great to mix with bright annuals.
- Santolina
- Sages (Golden, Purple)
- Lavender (Goodwin Creek – can work with low light)
Perennials and Shrubs
These have the great advantage of not needing to be purchased each year!
- Astilbe (Perkeo – blooms quite a while, with good foliage)
- Oenothera (Lemon Drop – some trailing with bright yellow blooms and long needle-like foliage)
- Dianthus (Neon Star – silver grass-like mounded texture with pretty flowers)
- Huecheras (many kinds, such as Stoplight – red veins with green leaves, or one with maroon-chocolate with pink specks on leaves)
- Hostas and Ferns
- Woody Shrubs – Hydrangea (Quick Fire), Deutzia (Chardonnay Pearls), Caryopteris (Sunshine Blue)
Annual Grasses
Annual grasses, both native and nonnative, are growing in popularity because of their ease in care and their tall structures, which add height to containers.
- Rhyncheltrum (Savannah – lime green with purple blooms)
- Pennesetum (Moudry—misty purple, many blooming heads)
- Uncinia rubra (Firedance – red/purple spikey shape – beautiful!)
| CONTAINER GARDENING TIPS
- Be creative with your containers – you can use anything that can hold dirt and a plant, discarded buckets, boots, pots and pans, old bathtubs, toilets or sinks, an old spring mattress with pots lodged in it, bicycle baskets, etc.
- Try to match the plants with the mood and shape of the container.
- When deciding upon the plants you are going to use, consider the mood you want to set and the time of day and lighting in which you will witness it most often – with a cup of coffee or glass of wine? Consider the color choices – vibrant or soothing, “hot” or “cool”, subtle or brash?
- Compare the blooming times with your summer schedule -- If you have a major midsummer vacation trip, plant spring and fall bloomers. Or succulents, which need less care!
- As in any garden, pick plants that fix your sun/shade situations. But remember, containers are more flexible – they can be moved if the lighting isn’t right.
- Mix edibles with your bloomers – tomatoes or purple climbing beans with small annuals (moss roses, Johnny-jump-ups; mix herbs with tall bloomers.
- Consider planting small perennial bushes and small pruned trees in large containers for height and then adding a variety of lower flowers and variegated leafed plants at the base.
- Small citrus trees pruned well can be fragrant and lovely year round. Just bring inside before the first cold snap and don’t put out too soon.
- Mix a number of different plants into one container with different heights and types of leaves and flowers. You can also add sticks, ribbons and other whimsical items. Try to have a variety of upright, trailing, semi trailing and mounding plants for design texture to your container plants.
- You can give a finished look to your container garden by using moss to cover the exposed edges of the dirt. This also prevents splash back of water and dirt when watering.
- You can stop rabbits with a new product: “Liquid Fence”.
- Replace soil every year, and don’t use soil from your garden – get a mix adapted to containers. Sand is a good addition for succulents.
- Add fertilizer periodically. There is Daniels Organic Fertilizer for those who don’t want to use chemicals. For edibles – only use chemicals labeled for this use!
- If you bring your plants in for the winter, check them for bugs and mites. Wash the leaves or use some kind of method to eliminate a home infestation.
 
Maggie uses a variety of plants to design an ensemble. Then she adds pussy willows and ribbon,and advises everyone to wet a little moss and add it around the edges for a finished look.
Two more samples of the gardening delights of the evening.
 |
Neighborhood Adventures
Teresa Askew '80 has had numerous years of experience gardening in her St. Paul neighborhood.
Through a series of funny stories, she shared thoughts about how gardening can help to bring a neighborhood together (and cause some wars if you aren’t careful and tolerant of your neighbors -- even if they build the “Garage-Mahal” over some pink ladies slippers or fall in a sink hole!) Gardening can also reduce the crime rate by engaging potential juvenile delinquents in weeding and tomato eating.
Neighorhood Gardening Tips
- Choose the right space for your garden. That may mean taking a jackhammer to alley cement to create some edge space for live and lovely things. No doubt these live and lovely things will start conversations from passersby.
- Amend your soil with compost and other soil food, especially if your soil (not dirt!) is hard as a rock or riddled with chips of cement.
- Beware of sink holes when you are doing landscaping. They can swallow you up! If you find a sink hole, invite all your neighbors in and take photos. Maybe even start the barbeque.
- Take advantage of idle neighborhood kids and ask them to help garden – and share all your plant wisdom with them.
- Have a block party so you can talk gardening – it can even get radical Democrats and Republicans chatting together about their tips and favorite plants and disaster stories.
- Take note of your lighting at different times of day before buying your plants. Remember the shade producers of neighbors’ garages, sheds, and trees.
- When neighborhood maples send out their millions of whirligig seeds, make sure you rake them up and pull up the little volunteers before they volunteer to take over your garden.
- Gardening is a drama with no guarantees and no definite plot line. It’s survival of the fittest with continual surprises, disappointments, and delights. Gardening on a small scale can be as exciting and challenging as a large plot, and as beautiful.
- Work together with other neighbors to plant and care for public spaces.
- Beauty brings neighborhoods together. So does the sharing of extra vegetables, fruit, herbs, cuttings, bulbs, perennial thinnings, etc.
| Alumnae-to-Alumnae Advice and Adventures
The sharing of urban gardening tips and stories has just begun. Let us know yours by emailing us, and we'll post yours.
|
Related Links:
LifeLong Learning
NEWS AND FEATURES
|
|
|
|