There are several constants I see after twenty- two years of growing plants professionally.

One of those things is if you let grass grow up to the trunk of your tree you will ding it with a lawn mower and cause a garish wound that gets worse with time. If you do not do that you will weed whip the bark right off the base of the trunk of the tree and kill it quickly.

Human nature being what it is overcomes common sense and instead of pulling that grass with your hand, cutting with lawn shears, etc you try and get as close as you can with dangerous machinery inevitably injuring your tree.

Anyone with a brain would not do this to a dog, cat, child, their mom – so why a tree? It’s a living thing too.

Often times people think a tree, bush, or perennial should be torture proof and sustain all kinds of injury and still perform perfectly. Do the Colts players pull that one off? No they do not!

That brings us to the solution to this problem the mulch ring. The mulch ring is a ring 3-5’ across with mulch no more than 2” deep. I use pine bark mulch and generally regard most other mulch products as less than desirable.  I do not use weed barrier. I place 8-10 sheets of newspaper (no glossy pages) for my weed barrier on the ground before I put my mulch down. This is a great way to keep 80% of new weeds down the first year.

The bottom line is this ring creates a psychological barrier against the mower and weed whipper. You do not generally weed whip or mow mulch.

Landscapes need to be functional and be thought out to a greater degree by the masses. Too often I see people make mediocre efforts in growing things and expect incredible results. Does this work in the gym?

Shawn with his young son Georg

Often times one gardeners problem plant is someone else easiest plant to grow.

I am pretty opinionated in general, especially on plants. I have often discouraged people from growing Lupines and Delphiniums. The reason, I can not grow them to save my life. Delphiniums are still out, although Lupines may have gained a status change.

I was transplanting some oak trees this spring that a client of mine had started from seed several years ago. He wanted them spaded out with our mechanized tree spade.

While I was tip toeing around on his turf with the skid loader I noticed Lupines in my work area. I brought this to my clients attention.

“Hey Jerry we got some Lupines in the middle of the work area.”

“Don’t worry about them their all over the place they grow like weeds around here” Jerry responded.

Jerry’s yard is a half mile away from my yard.

Lupines are beautiful flowers with tropical looking foliage and they are obviously very perennial. I always had a hard time growing them in pots. I think they resented our soil mix, too heavy on the peat probably.

I suppose when another client from the Albion area brought a picture of her Lupine with fourteen flower heads in several years ago I should have given Lupines more thought. She told me she put weed fabric around them and did a bunch of other stuff that usually puts most plants to death.

I was just not into investigating it further.

This is a perfect example of how good plants get bad names. One person or sometimes many people bash a plant because they have problems with that plant. Further investments of time, money and patience keep people from learning how to grow the plant.

Believe it or not plants do not all grow the same. Sometimes they are like people you just have to find out what makes them tick. I cannot say I blame people for giving up. Surplus time and money are not exactly prolific these days. People want something that is going to work easily. The catch is they also want unique , rare & new.

Just for discussion a few good examples of  plants many people have problems with are Japanese  maples and Dogwoods. Both these plants have bad reputations in the local area. They grow like weeds here at the nursery. Very seldom do I ever lose a Maple or Dogwood. I think poor planting practices are the biggest problem with maples and dogwoods surviving in peoples yards.

I suppose upon killing a plant or two we need to investigate further before we lay a bad name on a good plant.

I must add that we plant hundreds of different plants in our gardens every year. It’s hard not to get disgruntled and just say the plant is a dud. Gardening is an interesting endeavor as I have often written.

As your plants grow so do you sometimes. In retrospect I suppose I grew a little bit today. I hope you did too!