plum crazy

Plums are a great addition to the edible landscape, and help to promote wildlife. (The bees were going crazy over this Chickasaw plum's blooms.) Three species that do well in our area with little input are American plum (Prunus americana), Wild Goose Plum (Prunus munsoniana), and Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifloia).

These native fruit trees can be large shrubs or small trees, hybridize amongst themselves, and tend to form colonies when left to their own devices. White spring blooms give way to red, orange, and yellow fruit in late summer. Plant a few plums for optimal pollination.

Eaten fresh, baked, or processed into jams or wine, the possibilities are mouth-watering and easy to attain. These plums will do well in partial shade to full sun, bearing fruit in just a few years. Keep in mind, native plums are smaller than the European varieties you may be used to at the grocery store.

tree tags

Now through the middle of March is a great time to plant trees and shrubs! We’ve been planting lots of trees at work and I recently ordered these aluminum tree tags for long-term, no-fuss labeling. From A.M.Leonard, these heavy aluminum labels are wrapped around stiff cardboard backing for easy pencil marking. They arrive pre-wired for simple branch hanging.

Labeling these tags is a great activity for a rainy day. We’ve had such a mild and wet late winter that it’s feeling more and more like spring. Today it is 70 degrees and rainy; there are Daffodils blooming everywhere along with deciduous Magnolias, Cherry trees, and Bradford Pear trees.

God is in the details: a Pine matrix

According to Wikipedia, the idiom "God is in the details" expresses the idea that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; i.e. details are important. And with this phrase, I couldn't agree more.

Patterns fascinate me; whether naturally occurring, mathematically based, or both. In professional practice I’ve had to come up with patterns to show the relationship between different landscape elements such as different varieties in a rose garden planting, or different sizes of stone in a hardscape design. A successful pattern creates beauty and balance, with a degree of randomness.

Recently, I worked on a large-scale screen planting, made up of three different varieties of Pine trees; Loblolly (Pinus taeda), Virginia (Pinus virginiana), and Shortleaf Pines (Pinus echinata). The three varieties were chosen for visual interest as well as insurance against environmental problems (e.g. a pine beetle that prefers Pinus x).

The nearly thousand pine tree saplings were obtained from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry. With a 30% expected mortality rate, the area forester recommended a plant spacing of no less than 6’ on center and a planting ratio of 2:1:1 Loblolly, Virginia, and Shortleaf, respectively.

This adds up to a lovely grid of trees reminiscent of a Christmas tree farm. However, the client wanted a more natural and less industrial-looking screen planting. The solution: a pattern that could be replicated throughout the specified area to create variable spacing and arrangement of the three species.

The design began with 6’, 7’, and 8’ diameter circles drawn randomly, overlapping ever-so slightly. Then 7’ circles were drawn over each center point creating an arbitrary plan of overlapping circles and voids. A 30’x30’ section was extracted and developed into a color-coded plan that would be easy to flag, rotate, and replicate in the field.

As with a lot of planting plans, some adjustments had to be made on site due to topography, existing trees, and with care to avoid any spacing closer than the 6’ minimum. Thus exemplifies either how complicated a simple tree planting can be made by a Landscape Architect or as I believe the true importance of detail.