Friend-LINK: <%=INSERTTEXT%>

Subscribe to AGN Powered by www.ONElist.com

A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

Happy New Year & New Century to you all! It looks as if the world made the passage with few problems. It is nice to know that after a year or more of worry we can get back to more important things…like gardening. Perhaps one of the best resolutions we gardeners can write this New Year is to make our little corner of the world a little more beautiful.

Cottage gardens and Catalogs

I am beginning to wonder if there isn't some retailer out there who has forgone the usual questionnaires to discover my shopping preferences and is somehow reading my mind. Since removing a small pine tree from the front garden I have been looking into turning that section into a cottage garden with lots of perennials. It is as if I telegraphed my plans to the world. My mailbox is already starting to fill up with seed and plant catalogs. Of course, like most of you, I am circling lots and lots of plants to help start this new garden. Too many plants, I am sure.

I am going a bit wild with this project since this area is one of the few in my garden that gets plenty of sun throughout the day. While I spend most of my time looking for sturdy shade plants for the rest of the garden, I can now splurge on the Echinicea, Rudbeckia and Lavender I have been coveting in my neighbors' gardens. This will mean a lot of work, but I am ready to get into the garden and start building something new.

Stumps have me stumped

As regular readers will understand, I have many small stumps scattered throughout my garden. In order to open up the back garden to more sunlight I have had to remove many trees that were planted too closely. While most of the small stumps are easily hidden I do have a few larger ones that I need help with. Do any of you have ideas on how to remove these stumps short of using a stump grinder? I have drilled some stumps in an effort to help them break down more quickly. This has helped a little, but it can still take years for the stumps to break down entirely.

I came across and interesting idea for re-using tree stumps while on my first big vacation in the state of California. My wife and I took a 3 week circle tour of California by driving up the eastern half of the state and down the western coast. In the small town of Eureka, at their tiny town zoo, we saw a planting of Redwood trees that amazed us. After the zoo lost a large redwood tree to a storm they were left with a stump about 6-8 feet across and 4 feet tall. Into this stump the city gardeners had planted 5 young redwood saplings. These saplings had grown to several feet tall and seemed to be thriving.

Do any of you think this would work on a smaller scale? For example, would Echinacea plants be vigorous enough to help break down the stump and eventually send roots into the soil? I was thinking of scooping out some small holes, filling them with soil and then planting both seeds and seedlings in them. My hope is that this will somewhat simulate a forest environment where new plants thrive on the remains of older decaying plants. If you have any thoughts on this, please pass them on to the AGN Mailing List. You can join the AGN mailing list or view a complete archive of past articles by visiting The AGN Web Site.

Best wishes to all for the New Year and New Century!

Keep digging!

References

Cottage Garden (DK Living) by Christopher Lloyd, Richard Bird

Pleasures of the Cottage Garden by Rand B. Lee

The English Flower Garden by William Robinson