STANDARDIZATION
I have always hated trimming shrubs–and by trimming I am referring to the taming of our long privet hedges by clipping them straight across the top to achieve a level height. Even now that I have violated my personal rule about power tools and mastered the electric hedge trimmer, the task is tedious.
I may grind my teeth over the privet, but lately I am nearly addicted to standardizing the other shrubs. Why? Because even though my garden is overcrowded, I am loathe to part with the plants and shrubs that I have selected so carefully over the years and tend in such a loving, if haphazard manner. The only alternative, if I want individual plants to look like anything other than a mess, is to prune and divide intelligently and reduce the bulk of some of the larger specimens. Standardizing reduces bulk by transforming a shrub into tree form, with a single trunk and a crown of branches on top. I standardized several shrubs last week and now I can’t stop.
I started with a shrub that is much loved by garden writers–Jasminum nudiflorum or winter-blooming jasmine. Depending on the winter temperatures, this jasmine family member flowers in January or February, producing small, yellow, forsythia-like blossoms up and down its arching branches. It also has refined, glossy green leaves and a vigorous growth habit. I love to bring the budded branches into the house in winter and watch the buds unfold, but I don’t love the plant’s aggressive and thuggish habits. Left to its own devices, every branch will grow until the tip touches the soil, at which time it will root. Eventually the lovely jasmine becomes an unholy thicket, with canes insinuating themselves into neighboring plants. The Jasminum nudiflorum in my back garden was fast approaching the thicket stage when I decided that it was time to impose some disciple. I selected the three strongest trunks, eliminated any branches growing lower than three feet from the ground and braided the newly naked trunks together, tying them in three separate places. Now I have a four foot-tall tree with a crown of gracefully weeping branches. I will have to keep an eye on those branches, but the area around the new “tree” looks better already.
I was so pleased with my jasmine, that I tried the same treatment on three gangly rosebushes. Each could be grown as a short climber, but I don’t have enough trellises or sunny vertical space for that. My well-loved but awkward looking Rosa glauca, with its bluish stems and red emerging growth, now looks like the Audrey Hepburn of roses, with a slim, elegant “trunk” surmounted by a few graceful branches. ‘Brother Cadfael,’ one of David Austin’s English roses, was so invigorated by the standardizing treatment that it sprouted three new buds, one of which has now opened to a lovely, lavender pink bloom. ‘Sally Holmes,’ with its trusses of big, white, single flowers, had become a nuisance, with wayward canes flopping into the adjacent path and snagging garden visitors. Its strongest canes were too far apart to tie into a single ‘trunk, but I trimmed off all growth below the three foot point and clipped off canes that were growing horizontally into the path. Now, I can admire my well-mannered ‘Sally Holmes’ without fear that she will reach out and snag my shirt.
Hydrangea quercifolia, the oakleaf hydrangea, is a vigorous native plant that sprouts impressive conical flowerheads in late spring. The flowers on my two plants are still in place, having aged from their original cream to pink to dusty rose to brown. In a week or so, the leaves begin their own metamorphosis, from green to brilliant red. It will be a breathtaking spectacle, but it doesn’t eliminate the necessity of severe pruning. Quercifolias will also develop into thickets if not groomed properly. The shrubs have a number of trunks and do not lend themselves to conventional standardization. However, you can prune them to eliminate branches below a certain height and encourage upright branches by clipping others that grow horizontally. I did that the other day with the smaller of my two quercifolias. Removing all branches from the bottom two feet of the plant’s central trunks will prevent promiscuous suckering behavior and allow the handsome exfoliating bark to take center stage, along with the fall leaf color.
My standardizing crusade goes on. This weekend, I intend to go to work on the foundation plantings in front of the house. While I have been busy attending to other chores, they have done what foundation plantings do–exceeded their original boundaries. Now I think I will standardize to wayward Osmanthus, slim down a butterfly bush, relocate and standardize a variegated euonymus and return the cloud-pruned yew to its former cloudlike state. If all goes according to plan, by next week the pizza delivery man will once again be able to read the house number.
And, since hard work should be rewarded, I will feel perfectly justified in buying some additional bulbs to fill the newly blank spaces.