Reprise About That Oasis

Bench: One tree I had to kill in our garden

I received many, many emails regarding my invitation to visit our garden. One among these lovely replies included a question from my friend Lois Bousquet about a dying tree.

I have killed my share of trees and other plants.

One of the reasons I went back to school to get a landscape design degree included the adventure of the plum tree. The classes included a good deal of botany and plant knowledge.

When Woody and I bought our house, it had the remains of a very nice garden which had been neglected for several years. I knew nothing about gardening other than what my grandmother had taught me about pruning roses and what my dad taught me were weeds.

Have pruners. Will travel.

Since my Dad had an iffy heart and had been told not to bend over, I had became one of his three weeding and pruning hands. (I’m not certain brothers Al and Jim loved this as much as I did.)

In the garden that Woody and I bought, there was a Thundercloud Plum tree. That type of tree has flowers, but not fruit. These are ornamental fruit trees.

The tree probably had been planted in 1936, the year our pseudo-Tudor cottage was built. The plum tree had a horizontal branch big enough for a swing and, as ornamental plums do, it was tangled enough to be ugly all winter and not too gorgeous the rest of the year.

All around town there are plums tangled from bad pruning.

I set about making it pretty by climbing inside and pruning out the tangle in the way I would prune an old rose bush.

Here is a photo of a green-leaved plum tree of about the same age as our used to be. Someone once pruned this poor tree from the outside.

You've seen it. The fellow who loves his hedge trimmer tries to make the tree roundish like his hedges.

The result is that frightened tree hormones put out a signal to grow in every direction possible.

My pruning from long ago, seemed to make our Thundercloud less ominous, and gave some nice structure to the tree, but our plum still showed the stress of living in bad dirt.

The well-pruned Thundercloud plum in NE Portland..

Here is a photo of a plum tree in Portland that is pruned nicely. This is about the age of the plum I was trying to prune.

Notice that all the branches that cross each other have been taken out.

Some suckers have been left to become branches. (Suckers are those branches that come straight up from a branch after you do a lousy pruning). Most suckers have been cut off.

There is air and sunlight coming into the tree. This tree is a pleasure to see and very healthy.

However nicely I may have pruned our plum, it didn't like where it was living. The dirt in our newly purchased garden was such solid clay that during a very, very heavy rain, Woody dug a post hole for a fence and the sides of that hole did not budge. They remained as stiff as if they were a fired clay pot.

Bad soil? Solid clay? I thought I had a plan for that. I believed I knew everything back then. Well, I was pretty young. The young know all. The old know there is a lot to learn.

Here is Woody and grandson out where they'd rather be.

Woody and I had an agreement early on that he would mow and edge the grass (75% of the land around the house). I would take care of the garden.

I encouraged Woody to take the grass cuttings and dump them in the garden. I would work them with manure and other additives into the solid clay soil.

Changing the soil proved to be a long-term project and at first there was very little positive result. Then, one spring I got the idea to help the vegetative matter make air pockets in the soil by adding sand. Everyone told me the sand would merely disappear from our garden and reappear in China, but I added it anyway just to see.

The sand remained long enough to give the vegetative matter a chance to decompose and sink into the soil. as it sank into the soil, it followed the sand that was indeed disappearing.

I did the sand for three springs and never had to do it again. The next post holes we dug had to be done on a dry day. The soil became friable enough to collapse into the hole. It also became more air-filled. And that was exactly what was needed. Right away, most things began to thrive, except my shoveling leg and the back attached to it.

Unfortunately, around the plum tree, I allowed the soil and the grass cuttings to build up. Eventually, the additions to the soil grew in the area around the tree. The vegetative matter rose to about eight inches above the area where the tree entered the soil.

A tree with mulch and dirt piled up on the stem.

The ornamental tree began to put out real plums. I thought plum production on an ornamental tree was a sure sign that things were going well.

Later, I learned that this was a sign the poor plum was staggering toward demise. Ornamental fruit trees put out fruit only in a desperate move to replicate themselves.

Five years after I entered into my soil building plan, the plum tree died and had to be taken out. No more lush plum flowers. No more swing. No more shade from the southeast corner.

Same tree with mulch pulled away from stem and root.

I belatedly called Oregon State University extension division, described my plum history and learned the truth. I had caused this problem. Trees breath in that area where the stem flanges out into the root system. Cover that area up and slowly suffocate the poor tree.

Rehabilitate your soil, but don’t let any of those additives – mulch, decomposed organic matter like grass clippings, and, manure – don’t let them build up around the trunk.

Don’t let these soil improvements suffocate any of your hard wood shrubs either.

Soon after learning this, I enrolled in a landscape design program where I got to become part of a team that planted an arboretum on a college campus. I learned what helps plants live and what kills them. I learned how to identify plants new to me, how to plan a garden that takes their real-life habits and needs into account.

I learned to call on others who knew more than I did when a problem first appears in a garden. After finishing the landscape design program, I also enrolled in Oregon State’s Master Gardener program and learned even more.

If you are having trouble with your trees, or any part of gardening, I recommend you call or email your extension division. Many state’s agricultural colleges run a humdinger program that gives very good advice for your region.

In that plum corner, I now have a very tall King George Rhododendron and a Japanese Maple that sways with every breeze. These trees help the sound of wind keep us feeling cool on hot days. I hope I take better care of these plants.

Where the plum once lived, a heritage rhody and a maple.

Nearby, we have a Black Tartarian Cherry tree that has a horizontal branch big enough for a swing. The grand-kids in the family are glad to have that fun in the shade. Their parents have sort-of-forgiven me for killing their swing tree.

The children's swing hangs from a Cherry Tree

I hope my plum adventure helps you take good care of the trees you plant or the trees you have inherited. May you and my friend Lois enjoy your own trees for many years. And thank you, Lois, for a really good question.

Coming Soon

I now have quite a collection of Japanese Maples throughout my garden, thanks to a different adventure that my landscape-design friends and I embarked upon. I will tell you all about that adventure when next we visit our oasis in this world.

Where's the Oasis in this Desert?

As a long-time landscape designer and lifetime gardener, I don’t mind staying at home. I do go for walks to build my lung capacity (and to try to keep up with Woody Long-Stride), but home is a great place when you have a small plot in which to get closely acquainted with nature. Now that we are several weeks across this desert of Covid19, I'd like to show you one oasis we can visit.

Come on into the oasis of our small yard. There is water, quiet, no newscasts and space for friends and books here.

Open our driveway gate.

See the garage which hasn't held a car since 1950 because the side porch was added to the house. Only a model T could ever have maneuvered back to that space, so it has been a tool storage for a very long time.

From the garage, follow this walkway to our patio.

We have a paver patio because we have tall cherry trees shading our lot. I used to think the back yard grass did not grow because of our Labrador retriever, Canaan. If you’ve ever lived with a Labrador, you will know that they love to till the soil, and then lie down in the cool place they just made.

However, beloved Canaan died several years ago. And still, the grass did not grow. The roots of the cherries, and the shade of the cherries made grass a non-starter.

So, I dug up all my favorite bedding plants and potted them. And then, we put in the paver patio.

The biggest drawback to such a project is that it needs heavy tools, and it needs skill.

The area has to be excavated.

(Canaan would have loved that process.)

After freeing the soil of grass roots, and then smoothing the soil, six inches of sand go down and gets rolled with a roller filled with water. The water makes it heavy enough to compact the sand. Compaction is critical because you don’t want pavers jumping up as you walk across the space.

Then the pavers go in. And they, too, have to be compacted into the sand. They are rolled to create a slight tilt of the whole patio toward the future garden areas. The tilt is for drainage. Although paver joints take quite a bit of water down into the sand and dirt, we sometimes have gully-washers. Tilt toward garden and away from house is important in heavy rains.

After the right tilt is accomplished, sand is spread over the pavers and pushed and rolled into the joints.

This is the work we hired done because, while I knew how it should be done, I had never done it and I didn't have the right tools. I knew enough to admit that knowledge and skill are not the same thing.

And next, we also put in a drip irrigation system. No more watering with a hose or sprinkler, and no more losing a lot of water to evaporation.

Afterward, I replanted the one-hundred or so favorite plants in the new garden beds. While the work was going on, I had been rethinking the uses of space.

When our youngest son lived at home, he and I had built a pond in one corner. Now he has his own garden and he built his own huge pond with help from dad.

Our old and smaller pond became instead, a rocky path and a bench in the shade among the King George Rhododendrons and some Japanese Maples.

A nod to the old pond is a large pot with a recirculating water system through a bamboo pipe. It gives the sound of the pond and waterfall with a lot less maintenance.

Near the bench is another path where a children's swing hangs from one of the cherry trees.

Woody rebuilt our two boxes for a vegetable garden behind the garage. They were originally designed to accommodate a wheel-chair back when we all thought that would be necessary. However, that need went away, thanks to several doctors, so now the vegetable beds are taller and wider. And where the walkway would have been around them, we now have roses and lilacs.

The lilac and the roses are climbers who can get out of the shade and into the sun.

Sometimes, the roses like to remind us they are there and not to be taken for granted. So, I have a few battle scars from the War of the Roses. Nevertheless, they reward us with summer-long blooms, perfume, and lovely leaves.

Our garage was built forward on the lot, so the roses, lilacs and veggie beds have about 30 feet of space behind it. This is a very lucky circumstance and not available in all the lots in our neighborhood. It allows us to grow many fun vegetables back there.

At the lower elevation of the boxes, the vegetable garden is too shady for some plants like squashes, so we have to plant those in the sunny parts of the front yard and driveway. However, the shade lets us grow several plantings of peas and lettuces, collard greens, spinach, string beans and Swiss chard and early blooming cherry tomatoes and Romas. Some summers we also get eggplant and other vegetables. We test that possibility, but it doesn’t always work out in those summers with many overcast days.

Here is a view of the deck. Our back door is three steps above the patio. Over the years, we have built different configurations of decks here. When our children were at home, we had a hot tub off the end of the house. Kids came after soccer practice and for parties. It's great to have a yard that kids like to come home to.

When they grew up and had their own homes, we found we didn’t use the hot tub as much and wanted more seating room on the lower level for family gatherings. So off went the hot tub and in came tables and chairs. The patio became a dining room and a reading room.

There is one drawback to pavers. Moss, pop-weed and grass grow between the joints. Woody has tried several solutions to this problem. The blow torch looked promising when the weeds curled up and turned black. However, they soon sprouted again from the old root systems.

The more violent plan was to pull them out by the roots each spring and fall. It turns out that pulling is most efficient for dealing with weeds. So, we divide the patio into fourths and each of us pulls a fourth one day and a fourth the next day.

Before you know it, your back knows you’ve been doing this job.

So, maybe, as we get really old, we’ll do an eighth a day and then a sixteenth and, after a time, we’ll just be pushing up grass from the other side.

Meanwhile I have a lot of books to read and stories to write in between bouts of weeding and photographing this one oasis in the world.

When more of us have immunity to the Covid19 virus, and we can enjoy company again, let's get together and discuss the things we did and the service organizations we learned to support in order to help others. We can discuss the politics that disgusted us, the leaders we came to like and the good books we read while apart.