Marvelous May: Forest-shaping

May is the gardening month par excellence, though it doesn't seem to get going until Mother's Day. The weather is cool, the vegetation is fresh, and we discover how well things did over the winter--or not-- which will determine what the new garden will require.

Variations on two common phrases have run through my mind more than once when scattering grass seed, assaying plants at a nursery, or lugging a tub of mulch or topsoil around the garage into the back yard.

— Gardening in the triumph of hope over experience.

— A garden is what springs up while you're making other plans.

Last summer was hot and dry; patches of our front yard became a desert, and several newly purchased plants didn't do well. I considered it a minor miracle to see that the blue beech (Carpinus caroliniana) that we planted last year, which did nothing but drop leaves for the rest of the summer, made it through the winter. It's still the same size as when we planted it, but its new leaves have a beautiful golden sheen. And I was equally pleased to see that two robust chokecherry trees have appeared nearby it in the midst of all the grape vines and Virginia creeper.

Two chokecherries amid the foliage

On the other hand, for several weeks I scrutinized the two witch hazel bushes we planted last year almost daily, looking for new buds, before concluding that I was staring at a couple of dead sticks.

If I had done my research before purchasing the plants I would have learned that—to quote the Chicago Botanic Garden—witch hazels "have preference for well-drained, loamy, acidic soil [which] means that they grow less than happily in clay soil." The soil out back, especially in the band of woods at the edge of our yard, is mostly clay.

I also read just now that the witch hazel is commercially grown and harvested "for the extract of its bark and roots, which is distilled into the common astringent that bears its name." I don't know anything about that, but last summer I watched the squirrels frolicking all over these plants, leaping onto them, bending them down to the ground, and basically going wild in every direction. Even this spring I saw a squirrel spinning around in the dirt at the base of the dead stump. Something in the bark appeals to them.

A few days ago we made a trip across town to the St. Croix River Valley to visit the Out Back Nursery, which specializes in Minnesota-grown native species but doesn't seem too concerned about the retail trade. As usual, our goal was to find a few shrubs to fill in the woods behind our house. After considerable hemming and hawing, we came home with another blue beech, a hazelnut shrub, and a gray dogwood similar to the ones that have lined our deck for the last thirty-five years.

A couple of nannyberry bushes had been doing quite well, but the rabbits girdled them during the winter and I cut them down, hoping they'd bounce back. One of the two is now, a month later,  a flourishing two-foot shrub. (It will take years to return to its former height, of course.) The other, larger, specimen still looks pretty dead. I tried to dig out the roots, but I couldn't lift them; they'd gone too deep. I gave up when the handle of the shovel sounded like it was starting to crack and simply repacked the soil and cut off the stump even closer to the ground. (You never know?)   

A blue beech (left) and a hazelnut

We planted the blue beech and the hazelnut within the deer-proof enclosure a few feet from the moribund nannyberry. (They say a black bear can smell a ripe hazelnut two miles away. That would be just our luck.)

Meanwhile, I'm thrilled by the new growth on the volunteer black locust. I'd say it's now at least four feet high and six feet across. (But maybe I'm exaggerating.) It seems to be suckering up from the roots of the two mature locusts nearby. I would have preferred to see it sprouting ten feet to the east, but it's a welcome addition to the woods just the same. 

Alongside this heavy-duty and perhaps Quixotic forest-shaping we also added a few annuals for color where the sun lingers for an hour or two—browallias, impatiens, astilbe, foxgloves. They don't look like much from a distance but add a little sparkle at close range. We also planted a few wishbone flowers, formally known as Torenia. They're named after my great-great-uncle Olaf (or so I'm told), the eighteenth-century Swedish bishop who "discovered" them in Viet Nam while serving as a ship chaplain for the East India Company.

We've planted them in the past: they never do well. 

Meanwhile, a columbine blew in last year that we hadn't seen in a decade. This year, it's back.

And the other day I transplanted a four-foot buckeye tree from near the woodpile alongside the garage back into the "woods," and I'm almost shocked to see that three weeks later it seems to be doing well. Dr. Seuss would have liked it.