How about growing this: American hazelnut

Wildlife-friendly American hazelnut is a host plant for many species of butterflies and moths. It grows right past the minor springtime caterpillar. Notice the chewed leaves at the bottom of the branch and the new, healthy leaves at the top.

For ease of care and four-season interest, it’s hard to beat American hazelnut (Corylus americana). It’s one of two North American hazelnuts (the other is Corylus cornuta, beaked hazelnut, a more northern species), and it’s native throughout much of the eastern half of the continent. It’s a highly adaptable, easy-to-grow plant, although it prefers well-drained soil and at least a few hours of sun.

This is a large shrub that does well as a specimen or as part of a hedgerow or shrub island. It wants to be over 12 feet high and about two-thirds as wide, but you can easily keep it smaller by pruning out the largest stems each winter. The plant will respond by growing lots of new, smaller canes.

I’ve had these beautiful shrubs in my garden for over 10 years, and they produce copious amounts of nuts, but I have never tasted one. (I’m sure they’re delicious.) I rarely see them on the trees when they’re ripe. They look like this just before the casings open and release the nuts:

Hazelnuts still on the tree. Image from http://www.wildflower.org/gallery/result.php?id_image=22096; NPIN Image Id: 22096

But usually all we see is the broken shells left on the ground after the squirrels and birds eat their fill.

Hazelnuts belong to the Betulaceae plant family; their cousins are birches and alders and hornbeams. They are our earliest shrub to bloom, and this year they should be in full bloom within the next couple of days. The tiny red female flowers and the long, slender male catkins grow on the same branches and are wind-pollinated.

Hazelnut flowers: male on the left and female on the right.

Soon every puff of wind will release a minute cloud of pollen granules from the male flowers.

The garden in snow

More snow yesterday–snow on top of snow, and the temperature hasn’t risen above 20 degrees for what seems like two weeks. The garden was particularly pretty yesterday afternoon while the snow was still falling.

Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) is holding its seedheads high above the snow for the birds to take advantage of. Although most of the most nutritious seeds (such as sunflower) and berries (such as dogwood) are long gone, plenty of winter food remains for the birds we see everyday.

Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) should be called pinkberry. The berries remain bright pink all winter. So please, please consider this small, carefree native shrub instead of the invasive beautyberry.

If your garden isn’t feeding the birds all winter, check back soon for a list of plants you might consider for winter food.

In the dead of winter

If there ever was a day to plan the coming season’s garden, that day is today: 18 degrees Fahrenheit and the beginning of a major winter storm, with 3 inches of fresh snow on the ground already. So here goes.

In the perennial beds, my major goal this year will be to cut back some of the more, shall we say, enthusiastic plants and introduce some additional species, with the overall objective being greater diversity. For example, in one bed Rudbeckia subtomentosa, sweet black-eyed Susan, is crowding out other plants; in another bed, the culprit is bergamot (Monarda fistulosa):

Both of these are lovely plants–but I have too many of them, and they’re tall plants growing too close to the fronts of their respective beds. So I will dig some out, give them away, and plant lower-growing perennials and grasses to rebalance the plots. The plants I plan to order include prairie dropseed (a grass, Sporobolus heterolepsis), vervain (Verbena stricta), dotted mint (Monarda punctata), lanceleaf and rose coreopsis (C. lanceolata and C. rosea), harebell (Campanula rotundifolia), and nodding pink onion (Allium cernuum). Some of these are new to my garden, some are proven favorites.

I will order most of my plants from Prairie Nursery, a mail-order nursery in Wisconsin that specializes in pure species of native plants. I have ordered from them many times over the years and have found both their plants and their shipping methods to be very high quality. They will start shipping for the season in mid-April, but if you order now, you will get free shipping.

In the shrub beds, the major need is pruning, and this weather will prevent it. We did major pruning last winter, but many multistemmed  shrubs require yearly maintenance to keep them healthy and to prevent them from growing too large for a small garden.With luck, we’ll have some storm-free days between now and mid-February to get the pruning done.

I plan to approach the vegetable garden differently this coming year than in the past. As I have mentioned here, I have a plot in the Glen Rock Community Garden, and while I am very happy to be included there and have met and learned from some great gardeners over the past three seasons, some members are not as vigilant as they should be about removing diseased plants. As a result, the garden becomes full of pests and diseases by late summer, and harvests suffer. To  combat these problems, I plan to concentrate on early and late crops, primarily greens of various types; herbs such as parsley and dill that the rabbits destroy in my garden (the community garden is well fenced in); quick-harvesting crops like peas and, perhaps, one sowing of green beans. I’ll grow my tomatoes at home to avoid all the blights that affect the garden.

I’m looking forward to the first taste of mesclun and mustard greens, typically sown in March and ready around May 1:

Plant a forest

This is my backyard forest. We planted it about 18 years ago, and this picture was taken about 10 years after it was planted. Northeastern North America was once entirely covered by forests, interspersed with meadows on very wet, very dry, or recently burned sites. Any piece of ground left to itself quickly reverts to forest. So forests are the easiest type of ecosystem to create and maintain—basically, remove invasives and enjoy (as you continue to monitor and remove invasive species). From an ecological point of view, forests are also the best ecosytem you can maintain: the most friendly to wildlife, the most protective of our air and water. Once established, forests grow and change but remain for a long, long time. They are the definition of sustainability.

A forest doesn’t have to be large. Perhaps you have an unused strip of ground a couple of feet wide along the edge of your property. Stop mowing it. Within a few weeks the grass will grow long and wildflowers such as lobelia, asters, goldenrod, and milkweed will spring up. Within the first growing season woody growth will appear—native sassafras, black cherries, and oaks, but also invasives such as Norway maples and multiflora rose, depending on what’s growing around you. Pull out the invasives and allow the natives to grow. In just a few years, you will have a little strip of woodland, complete with woody plants and understory flowering plants and grasses. If you like, you can plant additional species such as ferns beneath the trees, or you can add once-common shrubs such as serviceberry, which birds adore. You will have a productive ecosystem that provides food and cover for wildlife year-round where you once had waste ground.

A forest can occupy any part of your property that is now unused. For example, leave the center of your backyard as lawn but plant trees and shrubs all around the perimeter. Or plant additional trees and shrubs around a specimen tree on the front lawn. Or join two or three widely spaced specimen trees with shrubs, vines, and groundcover. My forest stretches across the back half of our backyard. It was formerly lawn.

Start your forest with free plants—use what grows—or purchase trees and shrubs. My forest now contains a combination of plants we bought and plants that have appeared over time–volunteers. Choose fast-growing species and you’ll have a beautiful native ecosystem within five years. Whatever native species you choose, you will have improved your local environment for many years to come.

Early harvest

I’m just a little bit obsessed with fruit. I selected many of the shrubs I grow because they produce fruit, not necessarily for us but for the birds and other critters. Today we noticed that the birds were going crazy among the ripe Aronia berries. A friend picked about half my berries for jam about a week ago, and I was going to get around to picking some for my own jam–sometime soon. Except that if I hadn’t gathered them today, there would have been none left. The catbirds and robins had devoured at least half of what was left, so I shooed them away and picked almost two pounds of berries. And those birds know how to pick ripe fruit–the berries were soft and juicy, not hard like Aronia berries usually are.

The photo shows the Aronia berries (right) before I picked them over and washed them, plus some elderberries (bottom) that I picked and cleaned a few days ago and stored in the fridge, and some prune plums I bought in the market. The plums on my American plum trees are turning red, but they’re not ripe yet. All this fruit is macerating with sugar in the refrigerator, and I’ll make jam tomorrow using a formula for pectin-free jam I found online.

All summer I’d been planning a purple-fruit jam made entirely of my own wild fruits–Aronia berries, elderberries, and plums–but the plums did not oblige. However, the hazelnuts (Corylus americanus) seem to have ripened today along with the Aronia berries. A few days ago I checked them, hoping to get just a few before the squirrels devoured them all, as they do every year; they were still tight and green inside their husks. Today the ground under the shrubs was littered with husks and shells.

I searched long and hard for some nuts left on one of the trees. I managed to find a single remaining nut and took a rather poor photo of it, so at least you can see what it looks like if you’ve never seen a hazelnut on a tree.

It still looks green, doesn’t it? It sure fooled me, but not the squirrels.

How about growing this: Aronia

Aronia is a genus of native shrubs that includes two familiar species (or species that should be familiar, because they’re gorgeous, wildlife friendly, and carefree): Aronia melanocarpa (black chokeberry) and Aronia arbutifolia (red chokeberry). The common names refer to the color of the fruit of the respective species. I grow both. Red chokeberry is perhaps a little more demanding in terms of site–it does best in full sun. Black chokeberry does well as long as it gets at least a couple of hours of sun, although the more sun, the more fruit. Both species are considered to be wetland plants, although both do just fine on my very dry site.

Aronia is a member of the rose family (Rosaceae), as are so many of our most ornamental plants. You can see it in the simple, five-petaled flowers, which are small but lovely and lend grace to the early spring garden:

You can also see it in the fruits, which look like tiny (1/4″) apples. Right now they are just beginning to show color;  in a few weeks they will be midnight black:

The orange leaves give a preview of the lovely fall color. As the photo shows, many shrubs lose some lower leaves when their fruit ripens–the plant is putting so much energy into seed production that it must sacrifice a few leaves. Those leaves usually turn the color of fall.

Aronia berries are the latest superfood, full of antioxidants and other good stuff. They have been popular in Europe as a health food for some time, and the news is beginning to reach the U.S. media. As a result, growers are starting to produce the fruits commercially; cooperative extensions are putting out information for growers, and growers’ associations are being formed.

I originally planted aronia, as I do most shrubs, for the birds, and the birds do like the fruits. The fruits are edible to humans, although don’t eat them raw–the plant’s common name, “chokeberry,” describes the extremely astringent taste. To use the fruits, you need to cook them, preferably along with other fruits that provide some sweetness. Like crabapples, aronia berries have lots of natural pectin, so they lend themselves to jam making. Last season I made a delicious jam out of aronia berries, plums, and peaches.

Plant an aronia, or two or three. They’re lovely, easy to care for, environmentally friendly, and well-behaved. The health benefits are just icing on the cake.

How about growing this: New Jersey tea

New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus) is a lovely little flowering shrub. It grows 2-3 feet tall and about 3 feet wide wide and prefers full sun and well-drained soil. It’s coming into bloom now, and no flower attracts pollinators like this one. They hover around the blossoming shrubs in crowds.

The bright green deciduous leaves are somewhat tealike in form, and during the American Revolution, the colonists, starved for British tea imports, used them as one of many tea substitutes–hence the common name. Various parts of the plant are said to have been used by Native Americans as medicines. Deer and rabbits, the bane of my garden, generally leave this plant alone, and it is pest- and disease-free.

I have several of these shrubs in my perennials gardens–you see it in the photo above surrounded by sundrops (Oenethera fruiticosa). Because of its neat shape and size, New Jersey tea fits into a border than most shrubs. But it would make a lovely low-growing hedge in a sunny spot, with the bonus of very, very pretty flowers in in June. And besides, it’s named after New Jersey. Give it a try.

Missing plants: Serviceberry

Of all the plants that used to be common in the northeastern United States but have gone missing, serviceberry is the one you most need to know about.

Serviceberries belong to the genus Amelanchier (pronounced am-e-lank-er), which includes around 30 species of tall shrubs and small trees, all but two native to North America and all very much alike, with small leaves, white flowers, and edible purple berries. Different species range in height from six to twenty-five or thirty feet. They are the earliest ornamental shrubs to bloom, and they are very ornamental indeed—they produce elongated clusters of pure white blossoms in mid-April (see photos below). At that time, their delicate flowers should adorn the edges of the woods throughout the northeast. They are also the first berries to ripen, and through the month of June, birds should be feasting on their abundant berries.

Serviceberries, like many shrubs, normally grow in openings in the woods or along the edges of the forest. Serviceberries are successional plants—in other words, when this area was forested, they would pop up whenever a forest opening appeared, and they would be shaded out as the taller forest trees grew up. They would persist only in areas where tall trees do not grow, such as along stream banks or in swamps. Many shrubs fill this same ecological niche—elderberries and several species of dogwood and viburnum, to name just a few. Most of them, like serviceberries, are now rare or have disappeared entirely, crowded out by alien invasive plants.

We know that serviceberries were once very common because we have so many different names for them. Shadbush and shadblow refer to the fact that they bloom in early spring when the shad run in the streams—or used to. Juneberry refers to the time they set fruit, as does serviceberry: In colonial times, these shrubs fruited when the rivers became navigable and traveling parsons could reach the backcountry to perform wedding services. Another explanation the name is that early explorers thought the plants were related to Sorbus species, a large group that includes mountain ashes. In Canada they are called Saskatoon berries.

The berries look like small, purple apples (Amelanchiers are closely related to apples). They are edible to humans—the fruit is grown commercially in some parts of the midwest and Canada—and delectable to birds. The berries grow in clusters, but as with many wild fruits, they ripen one at a time. Each fruit starts out green and changes day by day through dull pink, bright pink, red, and finally purple. As the first fruits start to turn color, the birds start checking out the berries. Large birds like cardinals, robins, catbirds, and jays seem the most interested. I have a mature bush, full of fruit, right outside my back door, and this year the bird surveillance began on Tuesday, June 4. I saw a catbird busy in the bush; when it flew away, I checked the berries, and sure enough, a few were bright pink. Each evening, during the brief season, I look for almost-ripe fruit, and each morning, when I check again, the ripe fruit is gone. The early birds get the berries.

Serviceberries are pest-free and lovely in all seasons. Their spring flowering is brief but exquisite. Here is a sequence of photos taken in April:

In fall, the leaves turn a variety of bright colors, depending on the species, and the bark of mature plants takes on a silver-gray color. As long as they get at least a half- day of sun, they will fruit abundantly (the plants do well in shadier areas, but they produce less fruit). They can be grown as part of a shrub border or as specimen plants. Some want to be small trees and some want to be many-stemmed shrubs, so be sure you get a species that’s right for your site. Two or three years after you plant your serviceberry, when the birds start eating the fruit, you and they will be helping to restore the native seed bank.

Missing plants: American plum tree

Did you know that there is a native American plum tree? The species is Prunus americana, and it’s native to all of the United States and Canada from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. It’s a species that should be everywhere in northern New Jersey but isn’t anymore–except in my back and front yards. Here’s a closeup picture of the plums, taken today. They are about an inch long and will be ripe in another few weeks:

The American plum is a small tree or large shrub that sends out suckers and can form large colonies. However, the suckers can be easily controlled by mowing, so a good way to use the tree would be as a specimen in the middle of a lawn. It likes full sun, and although reference books say it likes wet places, it does very well in my dry, sandy soil. The flowers, which bloom in very early spring, are exquisite–pure white and delicate. And the suckers are easy to dig up and replant. All in all, a lovely tree.

I’ve grown these trees for more than 15 years, but I’ve yet to taste a ripe plum. The birds get them all the second they’re ripe. But that’s why I decided to grow them in the first place.

Nature notes: late spring/early summer

We’re halfway between spring and summer here in northern New Jersey. Spring flowers are still blooming, but the first summer flowers have begun to open. One of our loveliest shrubs, grey dogwood (Cornus racemosa), is just coming into bloom, and the last of the local viburnums, arrowwood (V. dentatum) is in full bloom. In wet areas you will often see these two shrubs side by side, perhaps because they bloom simultaneously and can therefore share the services of pollinators.

I often wonder why certain plants so often occur together in nature–dogwood and viburnum, goldenrod and aster–there’s a pair of each for every type of site. I also wonder why so many shrubs have large, flat flower clusters made up of many tiny white fragrant flowers. Obviously that type of flower is attractive to pollinators and results in a large number of fruit. But why white flowers? why fuzzy? Viburnums, dogwood, elderberry (Sambucus species), serviceberry (Amelanchier species),  and chokecherry (Aronia species) all have similar flower clusters.

Something equally wonderful but not as mysterious is the annual appearance of spring azure butterflies (Celastrina ladon) just at this time, when dogwood shrubs are blooming. These tiny creatures (wingspread of barely an inch) are silvery blue, and they flit so rapidly and so erratically that it would be impossible to photograph them, but you can see a picture here. The reason they appear right now is that their larvae feed on the flowering parts of dogwood and other shrubs. When the shrubs flower, the adult butterflies emerge.

So that seems quite simple and clear. But there were no dogwood shrubs here before I planted them. How could it be that these tiny, delicate creatures immediately found their preferred larval food source almost as soon as it was available? Every year at this time, I am filled with wonder.