Nuance in the Garden

From The Desk Of Bill Caras

It’s been a pretty glorious spring and summer in the garden. (Or, should I say, it’s been a pretty, glorious spring and summer in the garden!) Either way, we’ve experienced a parade of color from early spring (forsythia, creeping phlox) to today (hydrangea, rudbeckia). In between we witnessed an awe inspiring progression of a plethora of different flowers in the full color spectrum. A little less conspicuous has been wondrous new growth, fabulous foliage, and cones and fruit galore. My favorites include the newly emerged fresh green foliage on larch, the meteoric candle growth on pines and spruce, and the chartreuse, almost fluorescent leaves on many new cultivars of familiar garden plants such as smoke tree, barberry and ninebark. The many maroon foliated plants have their place in the garden too. All these new foliage colors still mix well with my favorite color – green!

We soon will have fall foliage changes and the colors will be amazing, as usual. In the meantime, check out all the varied and colorful fruits as they reach maturity. Check out also the bright red seeds on some trees and shrubs particularly the ornamental maple “hot wings”. Other trees have light green seeds that contrast with the leaves and create a nice visual effect. The top of the list for this look is Redmond Linden.

Flowering crabapples have been developed over the years to not only produce eye catching spring flowers but small decorative fruits. This results in a nice show through the fall and into winter. These fruits, which come in a variety of colors, are not only small but also “persistent” which means they stay on the tree and therefore do not “make a mess” that the old time crabs were known for.

The flowers this year were, and remain, spectacular. My advice though is to sometimes look past the flowers to see the more nuanced things happening – the turn of the leaf, the peak of the fruit, the light off the bark, the buzz of the pollinator.