Southern Gardening

There’s been a lot of attention paid to the matter of pruning, especially with the crime against horticulture known as “crape murder.” But we’re also in early spring, when many gardeners want to tidy up their landscape plants, and I’m no different.

This weekend, I removed a couple of large, overgrown junipers that the previous homeowner had planted. Feeling invigorated and empowered, I proceeded to prune back the small Indian hawthorn hedge along my front walk. And this is a warning to my foundation planting of boxwoods: You’re next.

In my travels visiting garden centers and greenhouses, I’ve been reminded of plants that we don’t grow enough in Mississippi. Dahlias are on that list.

I can’t decide if it’s because gardeners think these beautiful plants need an extraordinary amount of care or they’re just not aware of them, but we need to grow more dahlias.

Dahlias grow from bulb-like structures that resemble sweet potato tubers. They are easy to grow, and if you can grow tomatoes, you can grow dahlias.

After living in the North, I miss some of my favorite spring and summer plants as I now live in coastal Mississippi. Columbine is one I miss, as I love the way the flowers seem to be suspended in midair by the slender stems as if floating on a gentle breeze.

In my opinion, you need a columbine regardless of where you garden. Columbine can grow in Mississippi if you treat it as an annual because of our shortish springs and long, hot summers.

I enjoyed the warm spring weather while driving around south Mississippi this past weekend. One of the sights I noticed for the first time this year was the wisteria starting to bloom.

Wisteria doesn’t bloom at the first sign of warm weather. It’s one of those plants that waits patiently and is a good indicator that spring has officially sprung.

I’m always amazed at how high wisteria can climb into the tops of the trees, showing off how vigorous and aggressive these plants can be. As such, they can seem to be a little too much for the typical home landscape.

It seems that crape myrtles face a lot of dangers this time of year.

Many still face “crape murder,” or being butchered by having their branches improperly cut off at the same place every year. A novice gardener sees a so-called “professional” landscape company do it, so they think they need to cut their own crape myrtles in the same way. In horticulture CSI terms, this is a classic copycat crime.

But this column is about another threat to our beautiful crape myrtles.

Mother Nature has been teasing gardeners lately as the weather flips back and forth from warm, early-spring days to freezing temperatures and winter precipitation. I want summer to arrive!

This weekend kicked off the spring gardening season with the Garden Extravaganza in Biloxi. What a relief it was to browse the booths, checking out the latest in spring garden and landscape offerings and speaking with growers. I enjoyed the change from flipping through the big stack of garden catalogs and binge watching home and garden TV shows.

Through the column and television show “Southern Gardening,” I have the chance to share some of my favorite landscape plants with home gardeners all across Mississippi. And believe me, I have a lot of favorite plants depending on the season, flower color and more.

This week as I’m getting ready for summer, I’m thinking hard about purple coneflower, known botanically as Echinacea.

This past weekend really had me thinking about gardening and landscaping. It was an unseasonal 79 according the thermometer at my house, and I started to putter around the yard, trying to decide what needed to be done to get ready for spring.

Of course, I made a trip to see what plants were on the benches at the local garden center. But by afternoon, I had come to my senses. According to the weather forecasted for this week in much of Mississippi, we haven’t seen the last of winter.

With the cold winter weather upon us, are you thinking about planting annual color for the summer? It’s never too early to plan ahead, and thinking about the beautiful landscape you’ll have in the summer is one way to enjoy the dreary winter months.

One of the reliable summer-color plants I like the most is the petunia, and in my opinion, you can’t go wrong with Supertunias. Their selection of colors allows you to work with any color scheme.

There are a lot of different traditions and customs when it comes to predicting the weather. Just last week, we looked to that venerable weather creature, the ground hog Punxsutawney Phil, to tell us how many more weeks of winter before we can expect spring to arrive.

Cold winter weather causes changes in the foliage of many evergreen plants, including making them express new colors.

For instance, Japanese cleyera produces rich, velvety burgundy foliage along with bright red petioles. I really like the way the boxwoods in my landscape develop a warm, orangey-bronze, but if I had to pick my favorite evergreen for cold weather color, it would have to be nandina.

If you’re like me and most other home gardeners, you want shrubs to have multiseason interest and be versatile, beautiful AND low maintenance. This is no small list to consider when looking for shrubs at the garden center or nursery.

I may know the ideal shrub that has all these traits and is also a Mississippi native. Virginia sweetspire is perfect for the shrub border or woodland setting. In fact, Virginia sweetspire was selected as a Mississippi Medallion winner for 2011.

Many gardeners have their sights on the garden and landscape at the beginning of this new year. The mailman is fueling this garden interest with all the seed and plant catalogs being delivered. I spent a recent weekend looking through the 18 catalogs I already had and have ordered all of the seeds for this year’s vegetable garden.

Winter is a good time to examine landscape plants. With many of the deciduous plants dropping their leaves, it is easy to see defects and other problems, especially strange things growing on the landscape plants.

Extension offices all across Mississippi are going to be receiving calls from concerned homeowners about a moldy-looking, gray-green stuff on their plants. The cause for the concern 99 percent of the time is an organism called lichen.

Because we haven’t yet had much of what you would call winter weather in Mississippi, we’re seeing some earlier-than-normal garden activity.

I thought the one cold snap we had in December put the landscape to bed for the season, but since then, the bananas, elephant ears and canna have started pushing new growth in my coastal landscape. I know this is probably short lived, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless.

In the cold and dreary winter months, when color in the landscape can seem like an unachievable goal, gardeners need to rely on plants with features other than flowers to brighten the areas around our homes.

Last week, I shared my thoughts on the landscape potential of yaupon holly. This week, I want to tell you about another red-berried beauty. Pyracantha is a great choice for the home landscape, as its colorful berries can add beauty and interest to any winter landscape.

Winter is a challenging time in the landscape and garden. We’re limited in annual color options, and even my old favorites, pansies, may not be enough. That’s why we need to learn to rely on the backdrop of the summer, our landscape shrubs.

It seems these plants realize this is the season for them to step up and carry some of the load. You could call winter the berry season, as these red, colorful fruit are on display.

Some folks think winter can be boring in the garden and landscape. But just when temperatures start to drop, one of my favorite flowering plants decides to suddenly strut its stuff for all to see.

Wherever cassia is planted in the landscape, the tropical-looking flowers are sure to create winter interest.

The prolific winter blooms of winter cassia make it a show-stopping plant. The effect is heightened because the brightly colored blooms seem to appear out of nowhere. Winter cassia is also called Christmas Senna because it is commonly in full glory at this time.

In December, many gardeners look forward to taking a little time off from working in the landscape, but cool weather is a good time to apply a layer of mulch.

However, gardeners get some free help with the job at this time of year. I’m always in awe of the job that Mother Nature does mulching the landscape.

I don’t keep it a secret that I think pansies are the perfect plants for cool-season annual beds. They are really easy plants to grow, and they provide great color during cold winters.

The Matrix pansy is always a great choice because of the way it displays flowers high above its foliage. But lately I’ve been admiring the unique trailing growth habit of Cool Wave pansies.