The end of Februrary already? My how time does fly! The sun has already become more readily available than in past few months. Perhaps more cold and clear, but those candle-hours are important to sleeping natural world; it is their built in clock. You cannot lie to a plant, it knows what time it is. Far more intelligent than one gives them credit for.

As you plan what to add to your garden this winter, I am sure you are paying attention to light and water requirements all good perennial vendors attatch to each entry in their catalog. This is very important to your success with each plant. But it is possible to mix more drought loving plants with those that require more moisture in same planting with good results. The secret lies in substructure of each given plant's area in bed.

Drought lovers do like some water, they will reward you with a much more beauty with some weekly water...in a drought bed. But what if you want to put say - lavender and phlox in with lobelia and ligularia? Those water requirements can really hamper one's creativity! So some knowledge of drainage engineering will give you ability to try mixing them in same planting area. Lavender and Phlox like drier conditions. Not that Phlox will die in a spot where daily overhead watering is recieved. It will survive and grow huge, and flower excessively, but be stricken with fungus that makes lower leaves yellow, icky looking and then become half defoliated. Ground watering is it's preferred daily moisturizing treatement. One can place it in a corner sprinkler doesn't hit and water that section by hand once or twice a week and it will reward you very nicely indeed. Since Phlox is rather tall, this avenue of placing it in back corner works out well. It likes moisture but not on its leaves. Roses fare better this way as well, especialy since one cannot control what heavens will pour down. Less black spot and such other marring problems will occur, if ground water is used vs. overhead.

Lavender on other hand loves it hot and dry. It doesn't mind what heaven pours down IF there is a good drainage structure where roots are. Too much water retention and it will slowly die. To conteract good soil water retention where one would like to plant ever so beloved lavender row, a blind drain is required. It is called "blind" because on surface you do not know that it is different from rest of area. In a planting area that is scratched once or twice a month some of substructure will mix into top surface and change color of topping soil. But once bed fills no one will see this. (Surface scratching, by way will put much needed air tunnels to roots, create more water availability to roots, and lessen amount of weeding one must do, if it is done twice a month.)

The smaller particle size of soil, moisture it will retain. Clay having most minute pieces and sand having largest. Each person's garden area will have a totally different soil structure. If you are in hard clay, I would advise that either you excavate 6" of clay and fill with 7 inches of peat/topsoil 50-50 fill OR raise bed at least 6 inches above harsh environment of clay. Raising it is much less labor than excavating! Not too many things will do nicely in clay. The only way around it is correction. Once you have nice workable soil, with good moisture retention, yet good drainage - you can go about planning what goes where and how to amend each area for certain plants.

Morning coffee with internet has become a tradition of mine in recent years. The internet holds a much greater variety of information than newspaper, as well as less depressing things to read at beginning of day. No one should have to wake up with murder and mayhem in their face. A more pleasant mindset is found in waking to check weather, respond to a note from a friend, or reading about an exciting new plant. This morning I went to look for further information on a particularly nifty new plant on one of my vendor’s sites. Not finding that I clicked on another link that caught my attention in their Garden Writers section.

"Meatballs, Soapboxes and Tuna Cans", to be precise.

To a person who has never been employed within landscape industry, that phrase would bring to mind food. To insiders it would have a far different meaning. Of course where I worked it was baseballs and cubes. So this morning’s coffee was sipped between chuckles.

The author (head of sales) I would venture to say is younger than 50. Those over 50 feel that these balls, cubes, footballs or tuna cans are a staple that is required in landscape. For life of me I have never understood why we must have them. What is so necessary about using a shrub far to large for its placement and whacking off it’s limbs to shape it into an unnatural form? Off with its head! It should wear a size 42 long jacket, but we will force it to fit comfortably into a 10 short. It is interesting to note that also helpless poodles have also fallen victim to this manner of unnatural shaping and they are not plants. A month ago I witnessed a house cat shorn in this manner.

Mr. Woods, who wrote afore mentioned article, has developed opinion that it is an inherent human instinct. That we humans have so little that we actually have complete control over that our psyche has tuned in to helpless shrubs in our yard. While I giggled often while reading his words, it struck me that he has a good point. Why else would we so cruelly inhibit wild beauty of a shrub? In my early years I had no reason to argue with my father, professional landscaper as to why we must do this. Quite contrary, originally I assisted him in his whacking while trying to mimic his methods. It wasn’t until I started to design plantings and began to see plants for their own individual beauty that I began to question this barbaric practice. It has come to be a long standing argument between us over years. He refuses to budge from his Pro Juniper stance, insisting we simply MUST have prickly old things. Yews and Burning Bushes have their place and are quite lovely if not placed where they can be gently shaped not beaten in submission twice a season.