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Gateway Streetscape Director Lois Christensen shows how Gateway's hanging baskets are prepared. Each basket is 22 inches across, holds seven plants and weighs about 50 pounds when watered. |
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Sunday, March 29, 2009
By HOLLY KOZELSKY - Bulletin Accent Editor
If you want to garden, you have to get dirty and work, warned Lois Christensen, director of Gateway Streetscape Foundation.
That — and enjoy it, she was sure to point out.
Gateway is a nonprofit organization that seeks to enhance the area’s aesthetic value through orderly planting of trees, flowers, and shrubbery. Its mission also includes supporting recycling and battling litter.
Christensen runs the office of Gateway, and she is the city and county horticulturist, arborist and environmentalist. She gave a program about gardening Wednesday at New College Institute as part of its lunchtime lecture series.
Christensen showed one of the hanging baskets that will decorate uptown Martinsville from May through October. “Most people don’t realize how big they are,” she said. The basket was 22 inches across and held seven plants. She estimated that, when watered, it would weigh about 50 pounds.
The baskets have angelonia, wave petunias and variegated vinca vine.
Angelonia “is a relatively new plant. It’s wonderful,” she said. Its small, white, yellow or pink flowers resemble little orchids.
Although she hears many gardeners complain that wave petunias are everywhere, “you cannot beat wave petunias,” she said. They are beautiful and bloom profusely and “don’t require a lot of care.”
The biggest challenge to hanging baskets is keeping their plants watered sufficiently, she warned. They dry out quickly.
Uptown Martinsville’s coco-lined wire baskets also are lined with plastic so moisture won’t be lost so quickly. Small holes in the bottom of the plastic allow drainage. Soil Moist, granules which absorb and later release water, are added to the basket soil to help tide the plants over between waterings.
The uptown flower baskets are watered every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. By Monday, they are beginning to wilt, she said.
Christensen told the assembly she hoped to give them plenty of good advice and some unusual tips on other topics as well. They included:
Create a garden
Enjoy gardening and “be creative about what you do.” Don’t be discouraged if something does not work out, she said: Just try again.
Start with a good plan if you want to create a garden, she said. The first consideration is how much sunlight or shade an area has. Next in importance is the kind of soil in the area, and which plants would perform in that soil. Get the appropriate plants for those conditions.
Choose a focal point around which to build the garden. It may be a natural feature such as a tree or boulder. It may be something you place. She built a flower bed around an old pot-bellied stove from her family’s farm.
Expect to work
“If you want to be a gardener, you have to get dirty,” she said. “It’s hard work.” She stressed that plants are living things and need to be taken care of, which includes regular watering. She added that she doesn’t let up on maintaining her gardens, even if it’s 100 degrees outside and she does not feel like it.
Create plants from cuttings
Plants can be multiplied easily. She gave each attendee a sprig of rosemary from her garden and told people to remove the leaves and scratch the bark on the lower stem and stick the sprig in a pot of soil. If kept moist, it should root. Dipping the stem in the rooting powder Rootone would help ensure rooting, she added.
Improve your soil
“The key to having any good thing growing in your garden is your soil,” she said. That starts with organic matter.
A prime time to take steps to improve soil is the autumn, Christensen said. She recommended laying down newspapers or cardboard over garden beds and covering them with leaves. Keep them wet. As they disintegrate, till or mix them into the ground.
She pointed out the example of soil in the woods, which is rich from fallen and decomposing leaves, sticks and limbs. In contrast, garden bed soil is usually kept clear from those natural items which actually would have improved it.
Disappoint the deer
Deer don’t like plants that have a strong smell or a funny texture. That’s why they leave alone herbs, for example, and petunias (which have a fuzzy, sticky leaf).
The power of rain
Get plants out in the rain as much as you can. “Things never perk up like they do” in the rain. However, she cautioned against letting regular watering go in anticipation of rain. Skipping or postponing watering harms plants.
Natural implements
Banana peels are great to lay around rose bushes, because their potassium gets into the soil, she said. It’s also good to throw down coffee grinds.
Waiting until after frost
The first frost date around here is about May 11, she said. Not putting out annual flowers until after Mother’s Day is a good rule of thumb, she added.
Understand trees
“October through May is the ideal time to plant trees,” she said. Don’t expect much growth until the third year, she added, citing the saying “First year sleep; second year creep; third year leap.”
It is important to prune trees only “when they’re supposed to be pruned,” she said. Pruning a tree or shrub at the wrong time could damage or even kill it.
A general rule of thumb is to prune spring-flowering trees and shrubs in the summer, and prune summer-flowering trees and shrubs in the winter. A pruning guide is available from the Virginia Cooperative Extension at its office or on its Web site. Visit www.ext.vt.edu/resources - Home Gardening - Trees, Shrubs and Groundcovers - Trees.
Gateway started in 1990, but Christensen has “been a lifetime gardener,” she said. As a child, she worked on her parents’ 100 acre farm in New York. She received training through the Dept. of Forestry. |
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