Ideas are good travel souvenirs
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Bamboo stakes are wired to a chain link fence and gate in the private Gilgal Sculpture Garden in Salt Lake City to beautify them. Photo by Henry Homeyer |
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By HENRY HOMEYER - Published: November 8, 2009
I love to travel. I love the new vistas, architecture, foods, plants and gardens. I love talking to gardeners and learning how they grow things in a different environment. Recently I spent some time in Utah. Here are a few things that seem relevant here, too.
In Salt Lake City, I visited the Red Butte gardens near the University of Utah. They had a demonstration vegetable garden that used hay bales as a way of creating raised beds, a quick and easy construction technique that struck me as brilliant. Here's why: First, the bales of hay are a cheap building material that is easy to assemble. Lay out three bales on each side, with two bales on the ends, and you are ready to fill up the middle with soil and plant. No nails or screws needed. Assembly time? Maybe five minutes, if you have the bales.
If building a hay-bale bed, you need not fill the cavity created by the bales all the way to the top. A foot of soil is adequate, even if you are planting on a lawn or driveway. That way the bales will also act as a windbreak, protecting young seedlings. As a bonus, the bales will provide you a place to sit down as you weed. Just make sure to lay out the garden so that you can reach all portions of it easily. You may want to keep it narrow, using a single bale on each end.
At a small private garden in Salt Lake City, the Gilgal Sculpture Garden, I remarked on two ways to make a wall or fence seem less ugly. In the first case, there was a chain link fence and gate that was prettied up with bamboo. Natural bamboo stakes about an inch in diameter were cut to the exact height of the chain link fence and tied on with wire. At first glance the fence appeared to be a bamboo fence, not a metal one. It blocked out the view of the neighbors, too.
At another part of the garden there was a concrete wall that had the potential to be seriously ugly. The gardener there planted a row of castor beans (Ricinus communis) that grew at least 6 feet tall and made a lovely screen.
I usually grow one or two castor bean plants in my garden as annuals, and they are always a pleasure. They have huge leaves – up to 2 feet across – and come in both green and red-purple varieties. The beans are not edible and are said to be quite poisonous; castor oil is derived from the beans, but when processed it becomes a nontoxic oil used to cure constipation (at least it was in the old days). If you grow castor beans, do not try to extract the oil for your use.
The plants are easily started from seed, and produce seeds in their spiny, attractive pods. If you save seeds, you need never buy them twice. They are available from Johnny's Seeds, at (877) 564-6697 or www.Johnyseeds.com.
Hiking through Arches National Monument and Canyonlands National Park, I saw many plants that were reminiscent of plants growing here. Since the climate there is very dry most of the year, the plants that do well there are good candidates for hot, dry, south-facing hillsides here. Obviously different species in the same family or genus may have different needs, and some of the plants there would not survive our winters. Still, here are some ideas.
Junipers grow almost everywhere in Utah. In the landscape industry, junipers (Juniperus communis ) are quite popular because they are so tough, and because many of them stay low — and green all year. According to my favorite tree authority, Michael Dirr, junipers will grow in sandy soils, heavy clay soils, acid soils, alkaline soils. In fact, he writes, "Two things in life are inescapable: taxes and Juniperus communis" (from his "Manual of Woody Landscape Plants").
Another small tree I saw both in the wild in Utah and on the rooftop garden at the Salt Lake City library is the hawthorn. The library specimens were identified as Washington hawthorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum). I grow a related species, green hawthorn (Crataegus viridis), a variety called "Winter King." I like it for its size and shape – it is rounded and medium sized. But I really bought it for its persistent red berries in winter, though mine – still young – has not produced as many berries as I'd like. Mine gets part shade, which undoubtedly affects berry production.
In 2005 I planted a "Winter King" hawthorn for the Cornish (N.H.) Garden Club next to the fire station in town. When planting it I was very discouraged: Beneath an inch of topsoil was hard, sandy, rocky fill-soil. I couldn't imagine anything surviving there – but it has, and flourished. So if hawthorns will do well both in a windy rooftop garden in Utah and in soil that will barely support grass, I guess they are very tough trees. Got a brown thumb? This just might be your plant.
So next time you take a trip, see what grows well where you go. If you see things flourishing in tough conditions, think about those plants for your property. And of course, talk to a professional at your local family-owned nursery. They know better what works locally than the books.
Henry Homeyer lives in Cornish Flat, N.H. He is the author of the "Vermont Gardener's Companion: An Insider's Guide to Gardening in the Green Mountain State." He can be reached through his Web site, www.Gardening-Guy.com.
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