This past weekend I had the marvelous fortune of attending a Fall Gardening Workshop held by Wedgewood Gardens. Herein I shall attempt to regurgitate some of my favorite bits of wisdom garnered from this excellently composed and superbly delivered lesson. Any errors are a result of my own misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or mishearing.

Planning

Fall is a wonderful time for observation. Many of us delight in watching the leaves change their coats, the birds fly south, and the squirrels fatten up for winter. Our Wedgewood Gardens instructors advised we also use this season to discern what we’d like to change in our garden, so that we can plan ahead for spring. The workshop provided the following list of plant landscape components to assess in our gardens, along with a few examples.

1. Layering – Depth, support, extended interest
   1. Height differences between plants
   1. Organic edge to blend into the beyond
   1. Keyholes to create movement
2. Repetition – Color, shape, and texture
   1. Clusters are key
3. Diversity – Color, shape, and texture
   1. Different bloom shapes
4. Vertical elements
   1. Borders
5. Light, movement, sound
   1. Backlight
   1. Birdsong
   1. Wind blowing through grasses

I would personally advise noting these elements in the feral gardens of the forests, fields, and roadside wildernesses. Art imitates life, so it can serve a means of inspiration, but I also find it a very effective means of mindfulness and sanity-maintenance, to stop and smell the roses, as it were. We are surrounded by an abundance of free, ever-changing entertainment, when we see the different structures of branches, feel the various textures of leaves, hear a rustling in the bushes and wonder what animal it could be. Even in the depths of a concrete jungle, we can see the pattern of locations where weeds find a viable home. But I digress, lovingly so.

Along with the Goldenrod, Northern Sea Oats, and Starstruck highlighted in the workshop, I discovered another plant for my wishlist while walking around the gardens. I still want hanging ferns, but now I also greatly desire these hanging jellyfish arrangements.

Planting Woodies

As a big fan of trees, I immensely enjoyed the lovely tutorial on tree root flare. I had to look up the definition of this new term (and realized it’s not spelled fabulously as “flair”). It refers to the section of roots that attach directly to the tree trunk. With the bare understanding I currently have, it seems to me that root flare behaves and has requirements associated with both roots and trunk and should not be treated the same as deeper roots. The primary takeaways from this section:

1. When transplanting young trees, amend the root ball as needed to fix any pot-bound or root-bound defects. Most notably, remove any roots that are wrapping around the root ball, or twisting around larger roots, which would inevitably strangle the plant as it grows.
2. Do NOT mulch on top of the root flare, or bury it under surface level when replanting. Leave it exposed. Also leave bare any jumbo roots that pop up to the surface farther from the root flare. Rule of thumb: respect the tree’s decision to flash its bits to the world, because it’s doing it for a reason, and ignoring that choice may likely suffocate the poor woody.

Pruning

Fall is not an ideal time for pruning, especially for woody plants. BUT! With the leaves dropping, you get a clearer view of the internal structure of the stems and can generate a picture (actually, yes, I’d say take an actual picture) of how you want to prune in late winter/early spring.

1/3 rule: you don’t want to remove more than 1/3 of *living* plant matter. Exception: water sprouts from branches and suckers from roots (another set of terms I recently had to research; these sprouts and suckers develop from dormant buds and are generally weakly attached to the tree).

Another great rule of thumb, for when to prune:

1. Blooms before June 1^st: Prune immediately after flowering.
2. Blooms after June 1^st: Prune late winter/early spring (before flower buds are visible).

Am I the only one who’s ever looked at the behemoth hedges in upscale suburbs (often when watching home/garden improvement shows) and wondered why they often look part dead? It appears so out of place in a space seemingly so uniform and controlled. I think I’ve finally been handed an answer: overshearing. This method of pruning involves going around the entire plant, generally as a method of shaping and refreshing foliage. Apparently doing this too much can kill the center of the plant, and hence we see sections of dead brown. A few solutions include only shearing every other year; not shearing all at once; and “punching holes” (pruning deeper into the plant, which actually adds the groovy benefit of increasing air circulation. Can I hear a “Wahoo”).

When pruning, cut at a 45 degree angle, or less, so that the open ‘wound’ has less surface area for potential disease to infect. Exception: if there are two buds on opposite sides of the stem, in which case, cut level. Also, the base of the cut should be about level with the bud (which I think is synonymous with ‘node,’ at least for this purpose). These are all techniques I have definitely not been applying, being previously unaware. Rather, I had intentionally been cutting beneath stem nodes to propagate plants. Now I know to at least make a secondary cut, right above the next lower node, for the health of the mother plant.

Bonus Content

The instructors were a fountain of knowledge that offered up fantastic tid-bits prompted by questions from the group. I present these gems of miscellaneous information:

1. Scale (an insect pest) can be distinguished from lichen/mildew/etc by rubbing against the covered stem with a gloved hand – if the squished remnants are red, you’ve got scale.
2. Lichen is a sign of good garden health, while mushrooms at the base of trees is a sign of death. But mushrooms in mulch is normal and not a concern.
3. Powdery mildew (apparently particularly bad this year, so I’m feeling less guilty about my own run in with it) can be prevented with the use of copper fungicide. Neem helps after the problem has already taken hold, as we learned earlier this year.

Possibly my favorite new knowledge

Myth: Goldenrod is responsible for a lot of fall seasonal allergies.

Fact: Goldenrod pollen is insect-carried, not air-born, and thus does not cause allergies. Ragweed is the plant responsible for these allergies and Goldenrod’s bad rep.

Bonus Facts: Goldenrod is a fall-blooming native North American perennial that does not require nutrient-rich soil aka very good for lazy gardeners (*cough*looks-at-self*cough*)