Winter Activities 2012

Yes, that's a sprinkler on in the Conifer Garden north of the Visitor Center.  Our snow drought has meant a real drought now as rainfall has just been spits and drizzles too.  6 days in January 2012 have had a temperature above 60F! 

Cabbages and Lettuce at the end of January?  Almost unheard of for "up here" but with just a bit of cold damage and lows hovering around 10F in protected places, it is the new normal this year.

Even the Kale looks pretty darn gorgeous for the end of January.  Usually its a mush pile by now but many still have their gorgeous foliage colors as kale is generally hardy down to 10F.

This Prairie Rose (Rosa setigera) bush in the Heartland Harvest Garden's Apple Celebration Court shows us where the mockingbirds nested last summer.  The great songster on top of the greenhouse actually had 3 family broods in the roses around the apples last year and all 3 nests are now visible in the winter landscape.  Most songbirds build a new nest for each brood to avoid both predators and parasitic pests.

The bare trees and shrubs and the January thaw make it the ideal time to prune fruit and nut crops as you can see the branching structure well and your hands don't go numb!  HHG Horticulturist Matt Bunch is busy pruning our nice collection of Hazelnuts and Filberts (Corylus spp.).  Hazelnuts are one of our first shrubs to bloom in spring with very unique flowers: the female flowers look like tiny red spiders and the male flowers are dangling catkins that release pollen into the wind.

Heartland Harvest Garden Gardener Barbara Fetchenhier is busy pruning the peach trees.  The peaches in the Peach Plaza are really starting to show great form and the potential for a phenomenal crop of peaches.  We all are worried how the mild weather is affecting our fruit and nut crops but so far these plants are remaining dormant.  The dry weather has been a benefit and a warm, spring-like rain would not be a good thing now as it would force plants flower buds to emerge too early!

Oregon Grape-Holly (Mahonia aquifolium) shows beautiful red-purple winter foliage right now in the Menu Garden.  This evergreen shrub has beautiful and nectar-rich yellow flowers in early spring followed by blue, tart berries in summer that can be made into delicious preserves.  This shrub adds some variety to an edible landscape as a welcome evergreen.

The Encore(R) Azaleas are a new evergreen shrub added to the Powell Gardens landscape this year.  These repeat-flowering azaleas are gaining immense popularity.  I photographed our 10 hardy varieties now to voucher what their foliage looks like in winter and this is the cultivar 'Royalty' which has large, royal fuchsia flowers produced sporadically all summer and into fall (in addition to springtime bloom!). 

 The sky on Monday, January 30th was crystal clear but the jet contrails created a very unique pattern of clouds that stuck through the day.  Yep, there is "global dimming" researched by scientists as a result of these conditions.  I won't explain that now but it does lower daytime temperatures and increase nighttime temperatures.  At any rate, staff and visitors to the garden couldn't help but notice the fabulous sky yesterday.

So yes, it's time to water any new plantings or evergreens whose soil around them feels dry to the touch.  It's also time to prune fruit trees for a bumper crop next year.  Most of all this mild winter weather offers no excuse to experience the beauty of the winter landscape from evergreens to sky!



Bones of the Winter Landscape Nature Hike

Sunday afternoon, January 15 provided an unseasonably mild day for our Bones of the Winter Landscape Hike on the Byron Shutz Nature Trail.  Betsy Betros, local naturalist and butterfly book author, took the following pictures of our hike and I thought I would share this "nature of" Powell Gardens experience here.



We began our tour at the Visitor Center and talked about the beautiful evergreen Southern Magnolias at Powell Gardens and that the Gardens has been designated an official magnolia collection of the North American Plant Collection Consortium by the American Public Gardens Association. 

We looked at the tapestry of deciduous and evergreen shrubs along with winter grasses left standing and how they are all excellent examples of the "bones" of the winter landscape.

The sky was beautifully blue and the temperature approaching 60F.  You can tell by our long shadows that we are not quite a month past the winter solstice.  It is amazing how this backlit landscape looks entirely different than the picture above.

We stopped to talk about one of our fallen giant tree: a Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) that we are allowing to decompose in place.  The tree fell right across the trail and we made a cut at that point so visitors could count the rings of the tree ( approximately 92) and see all the interesting fungi that are returning the tree back to Earth.

We talked about the Osage Orange or Hedge Trees (Maclura pomifera) along the trail.  It was a rare tree when settlers arrived in the Midwest -- first brought back to the East by the Lewis & Clark Expedition.  The tree was on its way to extinction when we discovered a use for it beyond the Native Americans premier wood source for bows (The French explorers called it Bos'd Arc).  The tree was soon widely planted as a living fence throughout the Midwest before the invention of barbed wire and old hedgerows of it can still be experienced along the trail.

We found this abandoned American Goldfinch nest with 2 eggs still intact.  Goldfinches are one our last birds to nest and we pondered why this one still had unbroken and unpierced eggs in it.  Bird and Squirrel nests, cocoons of moths and even a butterfly chrysalis shell were discovered along the walk in the January bare and dormant landscape.

The trail crosses areas we have restored the remnant native prairie in with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation.  The wintertime native, warm-season grasses were in beautiful hues from brunette to blond.

Cattails (Typha latifolia) with their fluffy seed heads and Lotus (Nelumbo lutea) frozen in ice grace the Clay Pond along the high ridge of the trail.  What an odd place for a pond!  It is simply spectacular when the lotus are in bloom from mid to late summer.

The trail passes through an old orchard that now has become a naturalized pine woods complete with the scents and sounds so indicative of such a place.   

Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana) makes up most of our pine grove.  It is a bushy pine with short needles and abundant prickly cones whose seeds are great for winter birds.  This pine is somewhat susceptible to pine wilt that is killing all our Scotch pines in the landscape.

Here's one of the old Loblolly Pines (Pinus taeda) admired by the hike participants.  This pine has very long needles and is very tolerant of our wet or dry clay soils and has also naturalized extensively in our "pine woods."  This is one of the farthest north places this normally Southern tree grows on its own. (see the little pine seedlings in the foreground and larger "teenager" pines behind it)  It's only problem is that the long needles collect ice and make it susceptible to ice storm damage.
The final leg of the hike returned to the Visitor Center while admiring emerging blooms of Vernal Witchhazel in the Rock & Waterfall Garden and Snowdrops blooming on the Island Garden.  Everyone got a good workout and I hope learned more about our winter landscape.  February's hike will focus on birds and the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Powell Gardens staff lead walks and hikes at the Garden's trails each month from January through April.  Stephanie Acers, Youth Education Coordinator leads a Family Fun Walk on our mile-long short loop nature trail while Alan Branhagen, Director of Horticulture, leads a Season Highlights hike on the 3.25 mile Byron Shutz Nature Trail that transverses the wilds of our 970 acre site.  If you are interested in learning more about the "nature" of Powell Gardens, attend one of these hikes -- see our Garden Culture or visit our website www.powellgardens.org or call Linda Burton at 816-697-2600 x209 to register.

A Sample of Colorful Evergreens from Powell Gardens

Plants with evergreen foliage are a mainstay of the winter garden.  But how many of these plants are truly green?  The term evergreen means they hold their foliage through the winter but the wintertime foliage can be in almost any hue!  Here's a look at some of the evergreen plants around the Visitor Center which offers an exceptional collection of evergreens as it was designed to be a sort of winter garden for folks who didn't want to walk to far to see the beauty of the gardens on a cold winter's day.

Nandina domestica 'Blush Pink' offers about the wildest color one can have this season on a dwarf or compact shrub.  The winter color of this shrub is fiery fall red -- its pink in the summertime. 

Nandina domestica 'Obsession' also offers a wonderful blend of winter color with red-bronze-purple hued foliage.



 Nandina domestica 'Flirt' is a very compact grower with a more overall purple hue now.  All three of these mini-shrub Nandinas are part of the Southern Living Shrub Collection's zone 6 hardy varieties which were all donated to Powell Gardens for trial.  So far these are tough shrubs surviving last summer's ferocious heat and drought just fine.  These 3 varieties can be seen around the Visitor Center trolley stop.

Here's a grouping of native Eastern Redcedars (Juniperus virginiana) that were dug from the wild and planted as a screen to the Visitor Center's parking lot.  Native male Eastern Redcedars like these three have orange-colored pollen cones on them in winter that will release dusty yellow pollen in spring.  Many gardeners don't care for this color of evergreen in the wintertime but we feel it is part of the natural color scheme to our local landscape -- the "Spirit of Place" we try to capture at Powell Gardens.

These are a grouping of a 'Oxford' Eastern Redcedars which is a cultivar selected in southern Kansas for its greener foliage in winter.  It is a female cultivar so has some of the blue, berry-like cones that are so nice to adorn the plant in wintertime and ofter a major food source to wildlife.  You can eat these cones too, sometimes they have a sweet burst of flavor to begin with but always end with a strong gin aftertaste.  Yep, gin is flavored with juniper "berries."

Cannaertii Eastern Redcedars are another Kansas selection of our only native evergreen.  Canaertii Junipers are also female and have wonderful open branching patterns that are so striking in the winter landscape.  The trees on the right side of this shot are a bit lopsided because of severe deer browse on their leeward side.   

This evergreen (but yellow-leaved at all seasons) is the Golden Japanese Sweetflag (Acorus gramineus 'Ogon').  It is a very underutilized perennial groundcover that really does add a bright spot in the landscape throughout the year.  This mass is just northeast of the Visitor Center right along the main path.

Here's one of the greenest evergreens I could find: a Southern Magnolia (M. grandiflora) grown from a cutting off the Greater Kansas City champion.  This is certainly one of the hardiest Southern Magnolias anywhere and does grow as a sturdy, relatively compact plant despite its unsheltered site south of the Visitor Center.

The wonderful red-purple hues and rugose texture of this Leatherleaf Viburnum (V. x rhitidophylloides) make it one of our favorite huge shrubs for winter interest.  The foliage holds well through mild winters but this shrub can become more deciduous after a harder winter like last year.  Look for these big shrubs below the Visitor Center's Conservatory.

Rhododendron 'PJM' has some of the nicest dark, almost chocolate purple leaves of any hardy shrub that grows well here.  On cold, sub-freezing days the leaves roll up -- rolling up tightly during severe cold and giving the plant an entirely different look.  I think of it as a living thermometer in winter as the leaves unfurl as the temperature returns to above freezing.

This is the fabulous foliage of the Redboor Kale (Brassica oleracea) which holds beautifully down to temperatures around 10F or above.  It is naturally a biennial where completely hardy but since we are usually colder than zone 8, it often dies or the foliage is killed by our winters.  We would love to see this mild winter continue as all the kale look great right now.  We also have blooming pansies and a few spring bulbs already out!

Come out to Powell Gardens for a New Years hike and enjoy some of the beautiful evergreens that adorn the grounds.  The biggest collection is around the Visitor Center but there are marvelous varieties to be seen from the Heartland Harvest Garden to the Perennial Garden and even  a plethora of winter colors along the Byron Shutz Nature Trail.  Consider staying fit by walking outdoors as often as you can this winter, and may our mild winter continue!