On Wed Oct 8 2014 Northumberland Master Gardeners welcomed John Moore of Baltimore Valley Garden Centre as guest speaker. John showed beautiful pictures of the many trees and shrubs he has for sale at his Garden Centre and provided lots of advice about selection and care of trees and shrubs.
Some trees/shrubs to consider adding to your collection are:
Hill’s Yew – will grow in sun or shade, very prunable and can be used as hedging.
Seven Son’s Flower – heptacodium miconioides – a large shrub with late summer fragrant flowers.
Hydrangeas – there are many new varieties on the market now ; hard to beat.
Weeping White Spruce – stronger than the more common Weeping Norway Spruce.
Autumn Fantasy Maple – outstanding fall colour.
Baby Blue Spruce – much nicer than Colorado Blue Spruce but it is a large tree (60ft). Baby blue refers to colour not size.
Reliant Peach Tree – a short lived tree suitable for our area that produces a lot of peaches and has nice fall colour.
Venus Flowering Dogwood – has extra large white flowers
Winter Creeper Euonymous – bright fall colour
Eastern Redbud – cercis canadensis – usually considered marginal here but most survived winter of 2013/14
Some of the gardening tips provided included:
Never cut off bottom branches of spruce or fir trees, they need bottom branches for support. Limbing them up stresses the tree. Consider the mature tree’s width when planting. Pines can have bottom branches trimmed.
Protect trees for winter. Stems should be wrapped with tree guards to protect from mice, voles, rabbits. Evergreens can be sprayed with Wilt-Pruf, an anti-desiccant. All trees and shrubs should be well watered before freeze up.
Much of the ice damage that occurred last winter could have been prevented if trees, shrubs had been carefully pruned.
There is a product that can be installed around septic systems to create a barrier to keep roots out. Trees can then be planted close to weeping tile with no worry.
Consider using “Myke” when planting new trees. Mycorrhizae ensure faster establishment and increased survival rate of transplanted trees/shrubs.