Why I Oughta...

Earlier this week, I showed off the new haircut that I gave to the pair of crabapple trees in our sideyard and talked about my plan for shaping them into a Palmette Verrier form along the side of our house . I thought it would be wise to document my other (or...as the kids say:  OG) espalier:  the pair of Greenspire Linden trees that are shaped into a four-tiered horizontal cordon. The last time that I showed these trees was in early April when they had NO leaves on them .  I mentioned last week that they had broken bud (very pretty buds, btw) and were leaf'ing out.   What do they look like this week?  Really lovely set of espalier - with four tiers.  Well...almost four.  See below: On the left, the bottom tier is done on the left, but needs some help going right.   On the tree on the right, the bottom tier needs some help extending both ways.   I'm thinking those will get done this growing season.   #6 on my 2022 to-do list was to continue to work the Lindens (these have bee

Earlier this week, I showed off a couple of photos that featured the pair of Sugar Tyme Crabapple trees that were in (what I then called) a pre-espalier form .  These were planted last Fall along the southside of our house, in front of our gate.   Since they had already bloomed, I thought it was time to take out the pruners and remove all the non-necessary limbs to allow the trees to focus growth on the limbs that I cared most about.  I started with a top haircut - pruning off the apical meristem or leader on both.  That usually has a strong impact on the tree where it signals a bunch of NEW growth.  I used the siding boards to get them the same height.  From there, I went two siding boards down and removed all the little, starting limbs in between those two segments.  Then, again two boards down.  And so forth.   I still am not sure what form these will take, but - for now - I'm training them horizontally.  See below for what are (now) four-level horizontal cordon espaliered craba

Last Summer, we planted a pair of Sugar Tyme Crabapple trees on the side of our house - the south side that gets a lot of sun - right up against the foundation.   I watered them in a bit, but we were (mostly) past the heavy heat of the Summer (mid-September is when they went in), so I kind of let the trees just figure things out on their own.  I didn't train these very hard last Fall because of that.  I left them as is and didn't prune anything off of them.  I did, however, put a couple of limbs out horizontally with some light bamboo poles, but otherwise didn't touch them. Earlier this Spring, there was a peek at one of them (naked) in this Disneyland Rose protection post from mid-March .   What happened this Spring?   They woke up.  And put on a really nice show.  Pink buds opened up to white flowers with pink centers clustered all over both trees.  See below for a pair of pre-espalier crabapple (Sugar Tyme - Malus 'Sutyzam') trees . This post is going up on May

I've talked about how our yard, beds and even view of our house from the street has changed since we moved in back in 2017.  At that time, we had a house next door (to the north) that was sitting closer (than our house setback-wise) to the street and had a driveway that wasn't right on the property line.  With our new neighbors building and moving in a couple of years back, that changed.  They upgraded the property and house in a MASSIVE way.  And...they're just good neighbors and nice people.  But, they did upgrade the property in so many ways.  In doing so, they built their new house a bit further back from where the old, smaller house was situated.   As a result, that 'view from the street' that I mentioned changed a little bit.  It changed when you are coming south on our street/sidewalk and 'see' our house.  What used to be hidden (mostly) due to landscaping and the old house was the side of our garage.  It is a big, mass of wall with no windows.   Here

This is the third in a series of shrub exploration posts that are helping me think and plan how I execute on my #1 priority for 2022:  plant shrubs in a deliberate way .  I started with this 20' area where I need to replace some lilacs with an evergreen layer and three Tardiva Hydrangeas . Yesterday, I looked at an adjacent spot that calls for a similar (but different) evergreen layer fronted by three dwarf Little Lime Hydrangeas that are planted in a way to NOT foreclose a potential path.  Today, I'm looking at the area that lays at the feet of the pair of Greenspire Linden trees along our fenceline.  Here's what it looks like today: Orange ovals = Greenspire Lindens in a horizontal cordon espalier.  Green ovals = Summer Beauty Alliums. I've always wanted a little bit more structure in this area - but haven't done anything meaningful. There are two problems:  First...the plan is SILENT here.  No plantings.  Second, there's a bit of an elevation/slope that is

Last year, I heard from someone from the University of Missouri who was writing a story about the art of espalier if they could use a photo that I took of the Belgian Fence espalier at Disneyland for inclusion in their piece on the Mizzou site.  At first, I wasn't sure *which* photo - because I've taken a bunch of them - but the one he was asking for was the second photo in this post :  the diamond-shaped one close to It's A Small World After All in Disneyland.   That story ended up getting published last year and my photo was included here: For those of you who have a little bit of interest in espalier or training trees, you should go ahead and give the story a read.  Head here to go through the full post. It is titled: " Espalier: Pruning as an Art Form " by David Trinklein - University of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences. 

I've posted about my pair of horizontal cordon Greenspire Linden trees a number of times over the years - talking about their structure, how I train them, what I train them with , etc.  Most of those photos are show during some part of the growing season when they're covered with leaves or buds .  But, winter interest is a lot of why I've fallen in love with the idea of espalier.  I've always thought that the structure is never more clear than when the trees have shed their leaves.  Just look at this post from last month . But, it turns out, there's a little nuance there.  See below, a photo that I took a few days back.   I'm not certain that I have a new answer:  when do espalier'd trees show the most structure?  When they're dormant, yes.  But, more so:  when they're covered in a little bit of snow. Set against the grey cedar fence, the snow capped branches are highlighted and stand out.  I have a few other trained trees that are years behind thes

I've done these ' Christmas Haul ' posts over the years where I show off some of the gifts that I have received from family and friends at the holidays.  In 2011, I posted a couple of Beatles magnets that I received .  In 2018, I posted a photo of a bird seed bell .  For 2019, Nat's folks gave me a heated bird bath for the backyard .  Last year, I received a gift that sat RIGHT at the intersection of two of my loves:  Disney pins and jigsaw puzzles .  And, I also put a new pair of chainsaw protection gloves to work in the Spring.   This year, I received some fun gifts from Nat and the kids and as part of a family gift exchange, Nat's brother gifted me a few things for the yard.  I mean...what else would I want, right? The first thing they gave me is here, below.  A double pack of Rapiclip Soft Wire Tie (Light Duty) espalier training (padded) wire.  Each of the spools is 16 feet long.   I've posted about this padded training espalier wire before and have found i

We're now five full growing seasons in with our pair of Greenspire Linden trees  ( Tilia cordata 'Greenspire' ) that we've espaliered into a four-tier horizontal cordon.  Planted in 2017 , I initially went one way with the layout of the branches (at one time, I had six tiers and was even planning on shaping it into a candelabra form ), but last Spring (2020), I finally had a cogent thought (after looking at these trees for years) and made a call to prune A LOT back and go with a simple, four-tiered horizontal cordon.  In the Summer of 2020, I got busy pruning things back and because I was SCARED to really go for it, I ended up leaving a few little branch 'nubs' 1 with some growth on them just to make sure I wasn't pruning off TOO MUCH of the tree at once.  You can go look at this photo here and you'll see the little orange things that I left (at the time).   With all the leaves dropped from these trees, I can start to look at the form they've crea

This post serves as the final 'tree planting' post for the year, but also lays out a little bit of the self-education process I've been through in terms of ornamental tree pruning over the past few weeks. I'm learning (everyday!) that there are many types of pruning - and I've tried one of them:  espalier. But, in addition to espalier, there's also pollarding, pleaching and topping. The espalier I've done includes some horizontal cordon work on a pair of Greenspire Linden trees . After four growing seasons, they're starting to come into their final form and I love them.  And more recently, set up a new pair of crab apple trees with a TBD form .  I've been exploring the other pruning methods to figure out if I should try to learn and get to know them. What I've settled on is trying my hand at pleaching. The first time i talked about pleaching was back in 2018 here when I was discussing trees .  At the time, I was using pleaching and espalier int

This past weekend, our next door neighbors had a party on their back patio.  It was a really nice time (aside from a sting...) with a lot of great people.  At the party, I found myself sitting in one of their Adirondack chairs and facing my own house.  And I couldn't help but be struck by this big, blank wall staring back at me: This is part of the south side of our house that has a little sideyard that we've (mostly) neglected.  I have three Disneyland Roses over there - you can see two of them in the photo above.  But, there's just a linear, foundation-hugging border and some ratty turf.  Based on how the Village of Downers Grove mandates the grading, there's also a little ditch 1   but other than that, nothing much to see here.   I've long thought about converting all of this side yard into a bed; it gets a lot of sun, the grass doesn't do much for me and it would be a little bonus garden.  The downside is that nobody really sees it - including us.  But, th