Ink & Penstemon

I’ve been philosophical about the garden, lately. There’s not much else I can do with it. 

I hope the 40 foot silver maple—which my arborist has dubbed the most healthy-looking silver maple in the state—will recover from its patio trauma with the help of a Cambistat injection to stimulate root growth. But what if it goes? I don’t like to look on every element of the garden with a contingency plan, but it’s best to prepare one’s self. Without the maple, my montane-like microclimate would be wiped out and many plants would suffer. Especially the firs. 

Winter would just be sad without the swarthy greens of my fir trees. They seem to deepen in color during the winter, though this saturation could be an illusion created by the absence of summer’s verdure. Regardless, their dark spires bring out constrasting colors in plants around them that go wholly unnoticed during the flamboyance of the growing season, like the branches of Acer glabrum. Commonly known here as “Canyon Maple” it’s a native riparian tree/shrub that grows to 15 or 20 feet tall. The new growth on the branch tips burns as red as Cornus sericea but cools to an ashen gray at the base, which only completes the illusion that it’s smoldering.

But evergreens are tricky things in snow country. I’m amazed at the efforts people go to to keep their Junipers, Thuja, and Box from being splayed open by heavy snow. The most impressive I’ve seen are photos of Martha Stewart’s elaborate burlap covers that her groundskeepers sew over her box balls and hedgerows. In my opinion, efforts like this are just trying to hold back the tide. Despite such expensive and elaborate preparations, eventually those shrubs will be broken apart by an unexpected early winter snow. I just avoid potential damage altogether by using mountain plants adapted to extreme temperature drops and heavy snow loads, like firs.

People say spruces and firs are oppressive in the garden; I think they are really complaining about their dense branches and monstrous spread. You can get around this with some grafted dwarf cultivars, like Abies concolor ‘Candicans’, or Picea glauca ‘Pendula’, but you often end up sacrificing cold hardiness. I’m fortunate in that I can grow Abies lasiocarpa, as it is probably the narrowest species of fir with a mature spread of only about 10 to 15 feet, and is sparsely branched. It is almost impossible for people in the valleys to grow it well here, but I’m surprised that it’s never used in cooler areas like New England where it could be used in place Thuja and other conifers usually used for vertical accents and screens. True, it can’t be shaped and pruned into refined forms like these others but it deserves to be more widely known.

For broad-leaved evergreens, Mahonia repens is always a sure bet, granted you can keep its runners from taking everything over. So far mowing them down consistently keeps them in check for me. I’ve not tried the nicer looking Asian hybrids as I doubt they would hold up as well through the winter. Paxistima myrsinites, or “Mountain Lover” is another plant I got this year that deserves to be in nurseries and used widely, but isn’t. It is a spreading, native relative of Box, but lower growing, usually only to 1 or 2 feet. Its bright Box-like leaves glisten with a fresh green in the snow and shine under the heavily-shaded canopies of spruces and firs where nothing else seems to grow. 

Photo credit: Steve Hegji.

It is the ultimate local solution for dry shade. Unfortunately, I know of only one nursery locally that sells rooted hardwood cuttings. I’ve just began to grow it, so I don’t know if it would take to shaping. If it did, one could potentially look to develop it as an alternative to box that would be incredibly rugged and cold hardy.

Regardless, all of this is theoretical. I’ll just have to be content with these greens, bare twigs, and musings until spring.