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September 19, 2013
| Vol 2, Issue 9
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Down The Garden Path
with Joanne Shaw |
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| Greetings! |
I hope everyone is enjoying the cooler unpredictable temperatures of fall. Your garden should be welcoming the cooler temps and rewarding you with some nice fall colours. Now is a great time to assess how your garden looks for fall. Do you have enough fall colour or winter interest to get you through until spring? Burning Bush should be starting to turn red, Japanese Maples should be starting to brighten up and Hydrangeas should still be flowering nicely. (I have to admit my Endless Summer Hydrangeas have been a disappointment this summer - lots of leaves and bush plants but no blooms. Let me know how yours turned out... or better yet send me a picture!) I hear from many of you that you enjoy my newsletter and that it provides you with timely advice to help keep your gardens low maintenance. That is my goal. And to further that goal, in addition to my monthly newsletters, I am planning on expanding my blog. I am especially excited about attending a Garden Bloggers seminar in Atlanta next week to learn the best way to do that as well as meet some other bloggers in the gardening industry. Stay tuned for more in the October issue or in my blog if I figure it all out! I hope you enjoy this issues' main article covering vines as well as some information on a really invasive weed that we should all be aware of - the Dog Strangling Vine!
Talk soon,
Joanne
Joanne Shaw
Landscape Designer
Down2Earth Landscape Design
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Dog Strangling Vine - How To Defeat The Enemy In Your Garden
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What is it? Why is it so bad this year? What can I do about it?
Dog Strangling Vine is a perennial, twining vine that can grow 3 - 6 feet in height with the help of your shrubs and trees. Without the help of other plants it is aggressive enough to twine around itself and create a rope to reach higher plants and trees. It is an invasive species that lives up to its name and literally strangles other plants. It is a flowering plant that is part of the milkweed family and it produces long narrow pods in late summer, opening in the fall. These pods open to release hundreds of seeds each. The seeds, if not removed before they open, will reseed in your garden and grow throughout your plants next summer. Pulling this stubborn plant out is easier the first year of its growth but it is still challenging to get the whole root out. Non selective chemical sprays like Roundup® can be used to slowly kill the plant if you spot it earlier in the year. This time of year, however, the most important thing is to cut off the pods before they open, put them in a garbage bag and dispose of them in the garbage NOT compost. The challenge with these types of invasive weeds is that you have no control with what blows in from your neighbors or from ravine property. The best you can do is diligently prevent what lands in your yard from spreading seeds further. **********************************
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A Tale of Two Vines - The Quest To Cover The Fence!
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One of the most common requests I get when visiting a customer is what will grow on my fence?
Well I know firsthand that both popular vines, Boston Ivy and Virginia Creeper, will cover the fence nicely and without the need for trellises to boot! I have both in my back yard that is surrounded by fence with narrow gardens between fence and the pool we inherited when we bought the house. Both vines provide nice fall colour and both are deciduous and lose their leaves in the late fall.
Here's my opinion of the pros and cons of both of these vines.
1) Virginia Creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia
Virginia Creeper is five-leaved ivy, or five-finger vine, it is a species of flowering plant in the vine family Vitaceae, native to eastern and central North America.
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This section of vine is all coming from the other side of the fence. No garden in this spot on my side.
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I didn't plant Virginia Creeper but I "borrowed" it from my neighbour behind me. We are in a corner house so my backyard faces the side of my neighbours' garage. When we moved in 8 years ago, the vine was covering their whole garage wall, right up the soffits.
I appreciated those few weeks of the vine covered garage. If I had to look at a brick wall in my backyard then it was great to see it covered with green... that is until they had it removed from their house, much to my chagrin.
Well I quickly learned there was no such thing as 'removing' Virginia creeper! Pro or con, you decide.
As it grew back with a vengeance, my next door neighbour and I decided to train it over the back and eventually side fence between us. If I had to look at a brick wall, I might as well have a green covered fence!
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Side fence between next
door neighbour and I.
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We were quite successful in a short period of time. The vine filled in nicely but needs constant trimming to keep it in check. You can see at the base of the fence that it even grows on the ground and seems to make a beeline for the pool. Since it is a deciduous vine it does allow for some hard pruning to keep it in check.
And even though Virginia Creeper plants attach to fences and walls with "pads" inside of tendrils, they still do a fair bit of twining and are constantly twining through my Japanese Maple (my one show piece in my virtually gardenless back yard). But my biggest pet peeve, believe it or not, is it also interferes with my ornamental grasses that I squeezed in front of it. It is constantly growing throughout the grass, 'pulling it down'.
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Virginia Creeper pulling down
ornamental grass.
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2) Boston Ivy, Parthenocissus tricuspidata
As for Boston Ivy, I didn't plant it either. It was already planted in the narrow garden that I inherited along the fence but it was just a small patch and didn't look like it was going to do much.
Well I guess this story is similar to the tortoise and the hare... as fast as the Virginia Creeper grew the Boston Ivy took its time filling in nice and slowly. It's much bigger glossier leaves creating a thick matte along the fence attaching itself with similar tendrils as the Virginia Creeper.
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Boston Ivy.
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So while I spent the last 8 years taming the Virginia Creeper, the Boston Ivy crept up on me and pleasantly surprised me with a nice glossy display.
I have tried to remove the Creeper from the back fence this summer and have let the Ivy fill in nicely. The nice cool spring may have contributed to its great growth this year but it has certainly taken its time.
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Fence with vines.
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So good or bad, I am sure when my customers want to know what will cover their fence, they mean now and not in 8 years!
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A look through the garden gate...
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A closer look at the aggressive Dog Strangling Vine! | |
Dog Strangling Vine
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Cut off Dog Strangling Vine pods before they open!
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As you see the Dog Strangling Vine
weed seeds will travel nicely in the breeze!
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CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Joanne Shaw is the owner and operator of Down2Earth Landscape Design. A graduate of Ryerson University in Landscape Design, Joanne has 15 years experience in designing gardens and a decade in landscape and related business, both for her own clientele and established local nurseries.
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