All posts by Jan Nelson

I am a landscape designer and consultant in the Santa Cruz mountains in California. I write a weekly gardening column for the Press Banner newspaper. I am also a Calif. Advanced Certified Nursery Professional and managed The Plantworks Nursery in Ben Lomond, Ca. for 20 years.
Design trends

Everything You Didn’t Know About Mums

You probably think of mums as boring. They’re everywhere at this time of year. Many consider them a bit of color on the front porch that you compost after they’ve finished flowering. But mums have a lot more to offer than that.

Mums are in their prime as early as September. We tend to think of chrysanthemums at Thanksgiving as temporary filler plants for fall containers and borders but mums are perennials and can play a bigger role in your garden if you let them. Established mums can tolerate quite a bit of neglect and still keep blooming every year.

Chrysanthemums were first cultivated in China as far back as the 15th century. Over 500 cultivars had been recorded by the year 1630. In Japan records go back all the way back to the 8th century relating to mums.

The botanical name for the garden chrysanthemum has been changed to dendranthemum grandiflorum but I never hear anyone use this name. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Yellow or white chrysanthemum flowers of the species. C. morifolium are boiled to make tea in some parts of Asia. In Korea, a rice wine is flavored with chrysanthemum flowers. Chrysanthemum leaves are steamed or boiled and used as greens in Chinese cuisine.

Another variety of chrysanthemum- cinerariaefolium- is important as a natural source of insecticide. The pyrethrins extracted attack the nervous system of all insects. Harmful to fish it should be used with caution but it’s not persistent in the environment and is biodegradable.

Grown for years to flower only in late summer and fall, they are short day plants, setting buds when they receive light for 10 hours and darkness for the other 14 hours of the day. This is why mums bloom in the spring on leggy stems if they are not cut back. And this is how growers manipulate their blooming, adjusting the dark and light periods with shades in the greenhouse so buds will form in any month. They’re nearly constantly available in grocery stores in every season. Mums grown for florists in greenhouses, however, produce few underground runners which mums need to survive the winter so they won’t come back.

At this time of year when garden mums abound, pick a plant with lots of buds. They bloom only once and won’t set more flowers until next year. Those buds, though, last a long time if you don’t let them dry out. They’ll revive if they do dry out but the flower buds won’t last as long or look as bright. Although mums are somewhat drought tolerant once established you should water deeply once or twice a week depending on the weather.

The specific type of plant doesn’t matter since they all have long term growth potential. If you particularly like one color or form of chrysanthemum, plant it now to enjoy again next year. You never know what the growers might decide to grow next season. Newly transplanted mums should get a high phosphorus fertilizer to stimulate root growth.

Choose a well-drained, sunny spot to plant them. Like many members of the aster family, mums won’t tolerate soggy ground. After blooming, trim off the old flowers and cut back plants to within a 4 or 5 inches of the ground. If you started with 4 inch pots, trim back by half.

Next spring pinch them back when they are 8 inches tall- around Memorial Day. Pinch again in July, then allow plants to start forming buds for the traditional fall show.

A word of caution: all parts of chrysanthemum plants are potentially toxic to dogs, cats, humans and other mammals and a skin irritant for some people. They aren’t generally eaten by deer but a really hungry deer will eat anything. Spray with a deer repellent to make them even less likely to be munched on.

Design trends

How to Create a Beautiful Garden

Fast growing with low water requirements Matilija poppy are sometimes called Fried Egg Plant.

Fall is a good time to design and plant a new garden. I love to read those articles in gardening magazines with titles like “How to Create a Complete Backyard in a Weekend” or “This Front Yard in Just one Year.” If you’re like me you think, “Can I really do that?” There are some short cuts that can make this happen and fall is the perfect time to try out some of them.

Start by making sure you have paths where you need them. Simple flagstone set in sand or soil work fine for meandering through the garden. A more formal and permanent path is needed to lead guests to the front door but stepping stones are quick and easy in other areas. Hardscaping like paths, walks and fences establish the framework for everything else to build from.

If you want your garden to fill in quickly, choose key plants that grow fast and are suited to your conditions of sun exposure, soil type and water availability. Plants given their preferred conditions will grow and flourish quickly. Designate irrigated areas for must-have plants and use plants that like it dry in your other areas. Most important, if you are going for high impact quickly, choose plants that perform right away instead of those needing a few growing seasons to grow in.

Begin your planting by choosing trees and shrubs for structure, especially in the winter. Fast growing trees include chitalpa, red maples, mimosa, birch, Raywood ash, flowering cherry, evergreen pear, bronze loquat and Purple Robe locust.

There are many shrubs that grow well in our area and fill in quickly. Choose from carpenteria, Matilija poppy, abelia, ceanothus, smoke bush, butterfly bush, bottlebrush, choisya, rockrose, escallonia, hydrangea, philadelphus, plumbago, abutilon, Lion’s Tail, Pride of Madeira and weigela.

Next come perennials that mature quickly and make your garden look like it’s been growing for years. East Friesland salvia is one such plant and blooms summer through fall if spent stems are removed. Their intense violet-blue flower spikes cover plants 18″ tall spreading 2-3 ft wide. They look great in wide swaths across the garden or along the border of a path and attract hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees.

Don’t forget the other salvias. There are some 900 species of salvias. They all grow quickly and are the workhorses of the fall garden. Autumn Sage (Salvia greggi) is drought tolerant and deer resistant (really). Although it tolerates some shade it looks best when planted in full sun. To encourage repeat blooms trim off spent flowers stalks when they start to look rangy. They come in a wide range of colors to accent or match any garden. Recent selections include magenta, burgundy, red, rose, pink, salmon and white.

Walkers Low catmint is another perennial that keeps going and growing. This vigorous spreading member of the mint family blooms profusely with little spikes of 1/2 inch periwinkle blue flowers from late spring through fall. Catmints are easy to care for. Shear plants back by half at the beginning of the season and after flowers fade. They are drought tolerant, too.

Where you need a big clump of color to fill in a space look also at mimulus, erysimum, penstemon, mondarda, purple coneflower, verbena de la mina and yarrow. They all put down deep roots and mature quickly. Be sure to include combinations that bloom in different months.

Yes, creating a garden slowly over many years is satisfying, but if you need to fill in a new area quickly, draw on some of these tips and your bare dirt will be full and beautiful in no time.

Design trends

This & That From The Internet

CZU wildfire smoke. Photo taken August 18, 2020 before the fire reached my house.

My friend Evan is a computer whiz and designed my website and blog. He is often researching on the internet and forwards me interesting tidbits of information about plants whenever he comes across something exceptional. I am always amazed what nature does to survive and prosper. Here are just a few interesting facts you might find fascinating, too.

Did you know that trees don’t like wildfire smoke anymore than we do? From a publication called The Conversation ( www.theconversation.com ) which features science and technology articles written by experts, I learned the following facts:

When smoke overwhelmed a research site in Colorado that was studying air quality and ecological effects of wildfire smoke, atmospheric and chemical scientists were able to watch in real time how the leaves of the nearby pine trees responded. Turns out “They responded a bit like us. Some trees essentially shut their windows and doors and held their breath”.

Plants have pores on the surface of their leaves called stomata which take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen as well as other chemicals in the air around them. Smoke from recent wildfires shows up even in grapes and affects the taste of wine.

When wildfire smoke travels long distances, the smoke cooks in sunlight and chemically changes. Mixing volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and sunlight will make ground level ozone which can cause breathing problems as well as slowing photosynthesis in plants.

The research group in Colorado didn’t set out to study the effects of wildfire smoke on plants. As we know too well, 2020 was a bad year for wildfires. When thick smoke came through the field where they were working, they did their usual tests to measure leaf level photosynthesis of Ponderosa pines. They were surprised to discover that the tree’s pores were completely closed and photosynthesis was nearly zero. The trees weren’t inhaling the carbon dioxide they needed to grow and weren’t exhaling the chemicals they usually do. They were effectively holding their breath but not before having been exposed to the smoke.

It’s unknown how long the effects of wildfire smoke lasts or how repeated smoke events affects plants, including trees and crops.

From a newsletter called Aeon, I was reminded of the extraordinary complexity of plants behavior and the relationship with their environments, each other and with other living beings.

For instance, most plants respond to damage to their leaves by releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Some of these activate stress related genes, some have antibacterial and anti fungal properties. Some VOCs specifically repel the attacking herbivore with nasty taste or toxins and some plants can identify which specific herbivore is attacking and produce different responses accordingly. Even more interesting, some VOCs attract predators of the insects that are attacking the plant. An attack by an herbivore can also induce the plant to produce more nectar which encourages insects easy from the leaves.

I won’t go into the philosophy of plant behavior outlined in the article but it was most interesting. But that’s all for now.