Tips for sprucing up your front porch for the holiday season
Now’s a good time to spruce up the front entry landscape in preparation for holiday visitors.
Start with a broom to the walls and ceiling of your porch. Halloween is long gone so those natural spider webs can be brushed up and moved to a tree trunk, spiders and all. Just gently swipe the webbing and any spiders you find so they cling to the broom. Then, brush the broom bristles up onto a tree or shrub where the good-for-your-garden spiders can overwinter.
Next rip out any frost-damaged annuals still in pots and empty any hanging baskets or window boxes that still have summer plants. Add these faded plants to your compost pile or dig a shallow hole and bury them some place in the landscape where you want to improve the soil. You most likely added fertilizer to your container gardens all summer, so get back the value of that plant food by returning those summer plants to the soil.
Now start planting. You can still add bulbs to your pots and planters and reap the rewards in spring. A huge advantage of planting bulbs in containers is that they will be safe from moles and voles. Shallow containers such as window boxes and hanging baskets can be filled with small bulbs such as crocus, snowdrops and dwarf daffodils.
Tip: When your potted bulbs are done flowering, transplant them into the garden with their faded foliage still attached. This will give you empty pots to fill with summer annuals, and most bulbs will flower again the second year if you allow the greens to yellow and fade as nature intended.
No bulbs to plant? Don’t like the look of bare earth even if you do add bulbs to pots? If you are lucky enough to live in Western Washington, then you have free greens as close as your own or your neighbor’s landscape. It will not harm our native cedar, huckleberry, salal or holly if you snip branches even in winter. Harvest branch tips of hardy evergreens and poke the cut stem into the soil of your patio and porch pots. Mix the greens or just use one type of foliage and adorn with weatherproof ornaments or bows.
Local nurseries and garden centers are a source of wreath making classes, fresh cedar swags and holiday greens. Sign up with the Washington Park Arboretum on the UW campus to learn about their “Greens Galore” fund raiser.
Q. Help! My crazy husband took the hedge shears to our hydrangeas and cut them back to about 3 feet tall. They no longer have leaves and look like they are dying. I know that winter is not the time to prune hydrangeas. Will they survive? Or maybe I should have him buy me new hydrangeas this spring? — J.L., Olympia
A. They will survive. But hydrangeas cut back in the fall or winter may not flower the following summer. That’s because some hydrangeas set flower buds in late summer, so removing the top half of the plant cuts off the future flowers.
But here is some good news. You did not mention what type of hydrangea were pruned. Some of the new varieties such as the “Endless Summer” hydrangeas will flower on old and new wood. A severe pruning might just delay the blooms by a month or so. There also are panicle or “Pee Gee” hydrangeas that flower on new wood so a late winter or early spring pruning is recommended. Even if you have the old-fashioned mop head hydrangeas, the plants will resprout in the spring.
But wait! If your husband had to shear back the plants because they have outgrown their space, then you now have the opportunity to invest in a compact or dwarf hydrangeas. Wait until early summer then visit your local nurseries to meet the many new hydrangeas varieties that are considered dwarf because they only to grow to 4 feet tall. Watch this column and I will review the latest and greatest hydrangeas that do well in our area.
Q. Thank you for identifying my mystery plant as a hebe. We have lived in the same house since 1968, arriving from North Dakota, and the name of the evergreen bush that flowers in September always had me stumped. Now what is the best time to prune a hebe shrub? — J.B., Buckley
A. Late spring is the safest time to prune winter-tender evergreens such as hebe. Pruning always stimulates growth and hebe is one of the somewhat tender shrubs that does best in a protected location with no pruning until you see tulips in bloom.
Tip: For help with plant identification, you can send an image to me at www.plantersplace.com and click on Ask the Expert. I usually post the answer within 48 hours and there is no charge for the service.
Marianne Binetti has a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and is the author of several books. Reach her at binettigarden.com.
