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"Conversations with Alaska Gardeners" is your gateway to exploring the vibrant world of gardening in Juneau, Alaska, where the wilderness of towering mountains and the vast blue sea meet. This podcast series brings to life the unique challenges and unmatched rewards of gardening in the rugged yet beautiful terrain of The Last Frontier. Join us as we celebrate the passion and resilience of Juneau's gardening community, sharing insights, tips, and stories from those who thrive amidst the challenges of Alaskan gardening.
Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners is your gateway to exploring the vibrant world of gardening here in Juneau. Join us as we celebrate the passion and resilience of Juneau's gardening community, sharing insights, tips, and stories from the experts. Here's Margaret Tharp and David Lindrum of Landscape Alaska on KINY.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning, everybody. And a nice bright gardening day it is, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Typical gardening day. That's what I'd say.
Speaker 2:Typical for this year. For at least at least it's not quite as wet as it has been.
Speaker 3:At least it's not snowing yet.
Speaker 2:Oh, golly. Yes. I was looking. We've still got piles of snow under the trees. You know?
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 2:It's such a cold, cold spring. I don't remember it ever being
Speaker 3:like this?
Speaker 2:No. Uh-uh. Maybe it's because I can't remember that well, but I don't think it's true. I think it's just absolutely freezing. And I was in somebody's yard yesterday thinking, you know, it's the it's the end of the first week of June, and I'm barely able to prune the hydrangeas because they're only just now coming into leaf.
Speaker 2:Right. It's like, wow.
Speaker 3:Well, we did a a nice job in that yard yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh, we really did. Transformed it. Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And we have more to do, so we'll be back.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's we're having a hard time this year because labor is so hard to come by. But if you're on our list, don't worry. We're gonna get to you. We're to make sure it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2:Well, this is, Landscape Alaska's Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners. It's usually meant to be a call in show, but you know what? The phones don't work yet. So if you have questions or you wanna comment or you wanna do anything like that, you can text to the radio station at (907) 586-1800. I'll repeat this a couple times during the morning, and then we'll pass the information on.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about our Japanese maples.
Speaker 2:They just came.
Speaker 3:It's so exciting. Oh. You know, I tried to prepare the young people who had not been there when the Japanese maples come. I said, well, you know, it's kinda like royalty is showing up. It's absolutely kicks ass, and you just sit back and say, hooray.
Speaker 3:You're here.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. One of our real good friends is a Japanese maple specialist and hybridizer in Oregon. And when his product arrives, it's it's so spectacular. The colors are so vibrant, and and there's so many forms and colors. Finds.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:That one called orange dream.
Speaker 2:Isn't that spectacular?
Speaker 3:That's an amazing tree.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And wait till you well
Speaker 3:Wait till it turns color.
Speaker 2:Wait till it turns color in the autumn. It'll be in somebody else's yard. You won't be able to see it unless they invite you over for a orange dream afternoon viewing.
Speaker 3:Well, As as People don't mind if I visit.
Speaker 2:That's right. We visit them often. And there's also the one called
Speaker 3:That's a big
Speaker 2:Inabishadari. Really, really a beautiful weeper.
Speaker 3:A dark red.
Speaker 2:A dark, dark, dark red. And and also the, Crimson Prince, the one that when you look through the leaves at the sky, it's like looking through stained glass windows because they're translucent enough that the light comes through them.
Speaker 3:One of only one tree came damaged. I I don't think it's and it's a little tree. But I'm gonna show it to you when we get home so you can see if we can it's in the root ball. It's not in the top or any the trunk or anything like that.
Speaker 2:Great. Maybe I can help it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I propped it up, but it it was the way it was packed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's no never any question about that kind of stuff. And we have also a selection of young trees that are gonna grow to be magnificent. Linda Wilde, if you're listening to this, there is one of those aureums that came in this time. So if you are interested, give me a call.
Speaker 2:It's the one we've been looking for for the last couple of years. Sherris hawanum aureum.
Speaker 3:People came yesterday.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Good.
Speaker 3:You know, it's kinda like going to the museum.
Speaker 2:Well, they're not all unpacked yet. They're just barely.
Speaker 3:Which one do I want? Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know? So And, you know, it's true. They are kinda like royalty. Yeah. In in this environment, you know, the most spectacular stuff you can have.
Speaker 2:Some of it's in bloom right now. Those flowering accolade cherries along Fritz Cove Road. They're just spectacular right now.
Speaker 3:They are.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and and there's you know, some of them have been there for fifteen years, so they got some size on them. They're just lovely. But then the next hit is the Japanese maples coming. And they
Speaker 3:Japanese maples. I don't know. They're they're inspirational.
Speaker 2:That's what happens. And there's so many different forms.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:There's the regular tree shape that looks like just a tree in a forest, grows up, spreads out, has branches, and there's all kinds of leaf colors and leaf shapes.
Speaker 3:You know, I grew up in a house that was built in nineteen o five, and the landscape was installed by Italian stonemasons. And they did of course, in nineteen o five, they did Monet's impressionistic garden scenario.
Speaker 2:Which is Japanese. Which
Speaker 3:is Japanese. And it had a pond with a waterfall and two Japanese maples, one red, one green, and hearty perennials. And I think living and playing in that environment has a lot to do with me becoming a landscape designer. You know?
Speaker 2:How could it not?
Speaker 3:Yeah. There we had 17 different kinds of Camellias. I mean, it was incredible.
Speaker 2:And you think in '24 when they planted them, they were just little whips.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Looking ahead We didn't
Speaker 3:get the house until 1955.
Speaker 2:By which time they were established and big, you know. Uh-huh. 50 years old by that time. Right. Right.
Speaker 2:So you do that too when you're planting in the landscape now. You think, well, I'm planting it so it's pretty now, but I really think about what it's gonna look like in fifty years.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't think fifty years, but I think in five years. You know? A lot of people don't have fifty years, so I want it to be nice now.
Speaker 2:Yes. And so both both things have to play in purpose. Yes. Okay. If you've got a question, text it to (907) 586-1800.
Speaker 2:Tomorrow, Sunday, the seventh, we're going to have a pruning workshop at Landscape Alaska, and we'll focus on the things that that of course, the things that interest us mostly, but the things that it's really critical to prune correctly.
Speaker 3:Well, I'd like a haircut. You think you could fit that in?
Speaker 2:Okay. You can stand in line next to the hydrangeas and roses. There you go. I'll get a haircut too. So we're gonna gonna do with hydrangea bushes and hydrangea trees and Sitka rose style roses and flowering trees like accolade cherries and crabapples and whatever other kind of trees you're interested in pruning on and shrubbery.
Speaker 3:You should come and see our tree roses though. Our tree roses are very beautiful. And We so
Speaker 2:buy things sometimes just because we wanna see them.
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 2:And this Julia Child tree rose.
Speaker 3:Is is just blooming like crazy. Brilliant
Speaker 2:yellow. Brilliant. And fills the greenhouse with aroma. I tell you, it's almost like hearing a sonata. You know?
Speaker 2:You can smell it from you get into the door and you get closer to it. The aroma gets stronger. The music is swelling. The the credits are running.
Speaker 3:But in order for them to live through the winter, we need to find someone who has a heated greenhouse and keep them alive because they're not gonna live outside in the wintertime here. They have to be protected.
Speaker 2:They have to be protected. But boy
Speaker 3:Boy, they're beautiful right now.
Speaker 2:They really are. And they're gonna bloom all summer long.
Speaker 3:Right. All summer long.
Speaker 2:These kind of tree roses just continually flower the whole summer long.
Speaker 3:I love the fact it's named Julia Child.
Speaker 2:Isn't it cool?
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. Because she was so cool.
Speaker 2:Wasn't she though? Uh-huh. Okay. So there's also this is the last weekend for vegetables at our nursery. If you're interested in some vegetable starts, we still have a fair selection, but I'll take half off on them if he wants to come in and get some Swiss chard or some beets or lettuce.
Speaker 3:Really nice lettuce.
Speaker 2:Really nice lettuce. And we chose the kind of lettuce that the slugs don't like. That's good. The red oak leaf lettuce. And evidence has shown it's the least the least desired by slug land.
Speaker 3:We got plenty of slugs.
Speaker 2:Boy, don't we, though? So, what also came this week are a new collection of deciduous azaleas. Yeah. And they are a spectacular flowering shrub. Absolutely spectacular.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry we couldn't get any pink ones.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry we couldn't get them before they bloomed. It really breaks my heart. But it was so hot in Oregon and so cold here. In
Speaker 3:the eighties.
Speaker 2:Just couldn't we just couldn't do it. Couldn't make couldn't bring them here, they would have frozen. But for anyone that knows them and knows what they are, the selection is beautiful. The plants are lovely.
Speaker 3:And they're big.
Speaker 2:And they're orange and gold.
Speaker 3:I didn't see gold ones, but I saw orange ones. I have to look at all the names.
Speaker 2:Look at them all. Yes. And pansies. And the pansies are shining right now. And, you know, pansies conjure up a kind of an image of not very tough, But, really, pansies are one of the most enduring and hardy of our blooming flowers around here, and they kinda symbolize the regrowth and restarting of every year.
Speaker 3:Well, I think what's amazing about them is not only are they pretty, but they can take the extreme type of weather that we have from hot to cold, rainy, and dry.
Speaker 2:And perk right up.
Speaker 3:And and just keep on marching through.
Speaker 2:They're another thing that continuously blooms. Mhmm. You get new flowers on them all the way up until, you know, it gets too cold. And, we're sending them around Southeast Alaska. We send them to Sitka, to Cake, to Angoon, and people in the other towns who don't have access to to such spectacular flowers call us up and say, you know, what colors are available?
Speaker 3:So and we have a new order of Roseanne Geraniums.
Speaker 2:Roseanne geranium is a spectacular, hardy perennial plant that starts blooming just about now. It's getting its first flowers on it now, and it'll flower heavily
Speaker 3:All the way till October. October.
Speaker 2:All the way till October, and it's a beautiful beautiful blue. Just a spectacular blue color, and it makes clouds of flowers, and they come back.
Speaker 3:And you don't have to deal with it. You just have to enjoy looking at it. Don't You have to pick them up.
Speaker 2:Peeking. No nothing.
Speaker 3:No nothing. Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Just get out of the way and let it go. But what I mean is even this year, as harsh a winter as it was, every place I look that we planted them, they're coming back in
Speaker 3:it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even in, even in the industrial areas, coming back. And even in raised planters coming back, they're they're cool. Roseanne uranium, and one guy in the world owns the rights to him. If you wanna grow them, you have to get his permission to pay him a license fee. There you go.
Speaker 2:They're sterile. They don't make seed. You're not legally allowed to make cuttings from them. They're a they're a monopoly. They're a brand name.
Speaker 2:They're a spectacular claim to fame, Roseanne. And if you've bought them before, you'll know what I'm talking about. So, come and check check them out. The first ones are blooming right now. I think I'll put a sole tag on one of the ones that's blooming so that I can hold it back and not let it go away.
Speaker 3:Good luck with that. So So
Speaker 2:when we talk about our pruning workshop tomorrow, we're also gonna work on things that have gotten winter damaged. Arborvitaes, flowering fruit trees, even fruiting fruit trees, things that have gotten broken and have gotten you know, sometimes they look like they're perfectly well, and the buds swell and the leaves come out and the flowers start to open and then it all just drops away. We've got one coming in. Tiger lilies. Well, tiger lilies are a spectacular flower that works well here.
Speaker 2:They get chest high to me. They're bright orange with black spots on them. You plant them in the autumn. The bulbs are often the size of my fist, and they grow Lilies are a real unusual thing. They have two root systems.
Speaker 2:They have a root system at the bottom of the bulb, and they have a root system at the top of the bulb at the bottom of the stem. And the one at the bottom of the stem is what feeds, and the one that's at the bottom of the root is a contractile root and every year it pulls the bulb deeper and deeper into the ground. It's such a clever thing.
Speaker 3:But we we don't have any tiger lilies.
Speaker 2:We We don't have any tiger lilies, not this season.
Speaker 3:No. And they will live in your garden, but it's hard to keep them alive in a pot even if it's in a greenhouse in the wintertime. They wanna be in the ground.
Speaker 2:They do. They wanna be in the ground.
Speaker 3:They're a big thing.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And they're they're tough. They live in the ground and stay there for years and years and years, and they reproduce. Yep. They reproduce by by lots of methods.
Speaker 2:One of the most spectacular ones is that that some kinds of those tiger lilies grow little tiny bulbs on the stem in the axle of the leaves. And so there'll be these black little miniature bulbs up and down the stem, and they even start rooting while they're still attached to the mother plant. Then they fall off on the ground and dig themselves into the dirt.
Speaker 3:And didn't some of the Asiatic lilies that we used to carry do that also?
Speaker 2:I don't remember any of the Asiatics doing it.
Speaker 3:I'm talking about long time ago when we first got those big bulbs from Oregon.
Speaker 2:Oregon bulb farm before they went banco. Yeah. Well, there was a time when lilies were just like like tulips were in the sixteenth century. You know, you couldn't imagine how how they could ever meet the demand as much as they could produce it. You just couldn't imagine how they could ever meet the demand.
Speaker 2:Everybody wanted them. And now when you go in the florist shop and you see those big spectacular or the Casablanca lilies or the stargazer lilies, Those are kind of the offshoots of that lily craze time.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. But I I think that lilies are fabulous, and you can probably order them from some bulb farm.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. You can order them anytime of the year, but you can't you can only get them sometimes.
Speaker 3:Get them from the East Coast. Yep. Then they're asking about Easter lilies.
Speaker 2:Well, Easter lily is a kind of lily that's really been been bred just for greenhouse production. It's short. It's it's a trumpet shaped white lily. They don't they don't, transplant out into the yard very well at all, but they're they're really a connoisseur kind of a flower. They're so pure looking.
Speaker 2:The white is so clear on them, and the bright yellow stamen is so gold. It's, it's well worth having them in your in your home when they come available. And get them before they're in flower so you can watch the whole process. A process of a lily flower opening is so cool. You can't imagine it's almost like having a pear growing on a stem that then opens up to reveal the interior of kind of like a cathedral look.
Speaker 3:David, you're such a romantic.
Speaker 2:I just love them. Well, they got my number, you know. I don't know how it works. They got my number long ago and I just went for it wholeheartedly.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So there's something else I'd like to talk about, just touch on. There've been several people coming in looking at dwarf conifers. And a conifer is a plant that makes a cone like a pine tree or a fir tree, spruce tree, and most of them are big trees. Get great big, you know, occupy huge forest swaths, but every now and then on any one of those trees, some odd growth appears. The branches are different, the needle shape is different, Sometimes they're kind of twisted.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they're long haired. Sometimes they're a different color. Witches' brooms.
Speaker 3:That's it. Witches'
Speaker 2:brooms. They call them a witches' broom. And and people like us who would walk in the forest would look at them and go, oh, look at that. And you'd take a little piece of it and take it home and graft it onto some other root, and it'll continue to grow like that. Then you take pieces of them and and pretty soon you've got 500 of them, and you say, okay.
Speaker 2:I've got a name for this one. I'm gonna choose a name. And and they stay dwarf. They stay, whatever kind of color variant they are, whatever kind of shape variant. You could have little blue weepers.
Speaker 2:You could have trees that normally would get to be 50 feet tall, and there's a a type of it that only gets to be 10 inches tall, and the needles are really reduced in size.
Speaker 3:There's So what's your favorite thing right now that you're fascinated with? Conifer Wood.
Speaker 2:My favorite one right now is the dwarf eastern white pine.
Speaker 3:There we go.
Speaker 2:I'm There was something here. You got you. You drive out of the post office in the valley, and you turn to the right. And there at the far north credit union, right along the road, is this big, soft, round ball that looks like a teddy bear of a pine tree. And it's about, go, four and a half feet tall, four feet across.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's so graceful looking. You just want to stop and pet it. You just you can hardly keep your hands off, and it looks so cool. And the wind blows and the needles shift around like they're little dancing skirts. You know, I I am absolutely enthralled, and I'm so glad that I could get a couple of them.
Speaker 3:You got some this year?
Speaker 2:I got some this year. Not many of them, just enough to say, okay, this is what they are. And that one tree is the only one I have ever seen planted in Juneau, but it looks so nice. It's been there since we left there.
Speaker 3:Plant one in our yard.
Speaker 2:Okay. You can pick the nicest one, and we'll plant it in our yard.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And, we've got several named varieties of mugo pines. Most of the mugo pines that you see around are seedlings, and so they're gonna grow up to be all kinds of gawky Big. Big, rangy trees. In their native environment, they grow where the snow is 20 feet deep, and the snow will press them down into the ground, and they're able to rise back up again. They're also called a Swiss mountain pine.
Speaker 2:But there's a bunch of them that once again, you see them in their odd shapes, and people propagate them and they never get very big. And we've got a couple one's called valley cushion, and it makes this little round ground to ground mound. A little round ground to ground mound.
Speaker 3:Listen. You're giving this pruning workshop. You ought to have these samples of these exotic conifers out also to talk about them because people who come to your your program tomorrow, will be interested.
Speaker 2:I'll do that. I'll make sure that I have some setup.
Speaker 3:Not just the things you're gonna be pruning on, but a little bit more horticulture.
Speaker 2:I'm afraid that I have some things that died over the wintertime. I'm gonna use them as samples to show how to prune things. That way we could see the branch structure very clearly.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:And know where to cut them. And also we've got a couple of those big splayed apart arborvitaes.
Speaker 3:Are you kidding? Absolutely. And we have some arborvitaes that are damaged down below that need to have the burnt stuff cut off of it.
Speaker 2:We can do that in the class. You bet. Yep. Saw some arborvitaes when we were down south last year where they had had some kind of damage on them, and the person that was in charge of them had pruned the damaged part away, but it was only damaged on the side you were seeing it from. The side you didn't see from, they were perfectly fine.
Speaker 2:So they pruned off just the front of it, and you could see the branch structure exposed against the background of the perfect evergreen part. It was so cool. Such a such an innovative way to manage that stuff and make it look acceptable.
Speaker 3:I saw it.
Speaker 2:Yep. It was very, very, very nice. And when we talk about plant names, you know, one of the hooks to get people to buy things is to name it something that they're gonna gonna want, like the quick fire. The quick fire hydrangea. What a clever name that is because it blooms about a month before other hydrangeas do.
Speaker 2:And so by the time the other ones are starting to flower, quick fire is already in full flower. And, that's the the hydrangea that's been made into little trees and shrubs. You probably see them all around town. You see them around the Capitol Building. You see them as you drive down the street in Douglas going into town.
Speaker 2:It's a pair on one of those homes on the right hand side that has the little tree shape, and they look so delightful. It's hard to think about them. When you first start seeing them coming into leaf, you think, well, that's a pretty little thing. It's hard to imagine how absolutely spectacular they are when they come into flower. And the flowers start off pale green, and they ripen through pink to dark red, and they're in bloom from June till frost, and the there is so cool.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. I I've been bitten by the hydrangea bug too. Another text. What's we calling?
Speaker 3:This is our main participator today, but they're asking, has anyone tried growing a weeping willow?
Speaker 2:Well, I know people have tried to grow weeping willows, and we've grown them for a few years. You know? But then there comes a winter like this last winter and they'd be gone. So you could look upon them as kind of a a short lived ephemeral, something you're gonna enjoy while it's here and maybe replace it with something else after it goes away. Willow's quick.
Speaker 2:Willow grows fast. Our native Willow is very attractive too. And, you know, one of the nice things about willow is that you can cut it off, it grows back. You can cut the top back, it grows back again. And and it's a it's a quick space filler.
Speaker 2:It's a quick hedge maker. If you wanted to make a native plant hedge and make some kind of division between your property and your neighboring property, a mixture of willow and alder and hemlock would be a wonderful hedge. And they, they don't have to be real regular. They don't have to all be the same size or shape, but they grow together to be a a real attractive combination.
Speaker 3:I love that alder hedge that you planted at the university that goes on the way to the rec center.
Speaker 2:Isn't that cool?
Speaker 3:Well and because the that when the construction was done along the roadside there, they put cobble down. It was all rock.
Speaker 2:It's that they blasted the road out of the sheer rock. It's just just there.
Speaker 3:It's just there. And and the use of the alder there. It was a perfect place for it to grow. I mean, you didn't have to bring in soil. You didn't have to
Speaker 2:Didn't have to do nothing. The alder came in by itself too. Know?
Speaker 3:You just like, I'm gonna move in here. And instead of cutting it out, you maintained it and keep it as a hedge. And it goes from the highway all the way to the rec center, and it's really inspirational.
Speaker 2:And this year, with all that snow weight and things breaking up everywhere, there was no worry about the altar hedge. Boy, it was like 10 soldiers standing up along the line. You know? And and the nice thing also, since the university has to pay for every hour of maintenance, it's something that you can maintain. A big, big hedge, you can maintain it in two days a year.
Speaker 2:You know, with the with power pruners and a couple of guys, and it looks really, really sharp. And it looks it looks sharp even when it doesn't have leaves on it.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. It's really nice.
Speaker 2:And that, hedge we planted at the fish hatchery long, long ago was the inspiration for that. Right. So hedging just means trimming them into a uniform shape. You know, you could use anything and make a hedge out of it. So we're coming up close to the end of our time here.
Speaker 2:I'll be open at Landscape Alaska today from 10:00 till 04:00 anyway, maybe even till 05:00, depends on how the weather is. The weather really determines how much we could get done. But come and visit and look at these spectacular Japanese maples that came in, and, come and visit the dwarf conifers. You can pet my little pet pine.
Speaker 3:It's pet conifer day.
Speaker 2:That's right. Pet my conifer, please. And, come and join us tomorrow, one o'clock, Landscape Alaska. Bring your pruning shears, and, be ready for a real good time. And we'll show you how to prune damaged things, seasonal things, things that need regular prunings, things that hardly ever need pruning that every now and then.
Speaker 2:That's right. And also how to keep the Mugo Pines shapely. Now that's a technique all in its own. I'm really sorry the phones don't work here yet, but by next week, I hope they come alive. This is our plan anyway.
Speaker 2:So, until next week.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2:This is Margon Dave from Landscape Alaska, and we're wishing you all happy gardening.
Speaker 1:Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners is your gateway to exploring the vibrant world of gardening here in Juneau. Join us as we celebrate the passion and resilience of Juneau's gardening community, sharing insights, tips, and stories from the experts.