South Carolina ETV

Making It Grow! News Articles

April 11th

Back to News Articles Home

The crowds at local nurseries and garden centers rival those who braved rain and cold to cross the Cooper River on the old bridge's last hurrah. Gardeners, too, will slosh through puddles and huddle under umbrellas while they select the plants that will add new spots of beauty to their gardens and new joy to their lives.

Question: My backyard has a dogwood that has been the focal point near our patio. It got hit very badly in the ice storm two years, loosing many branches. Now the bark is actually sloughing off and we don't know how to treat it. We had to cut down three pine trees, too, and now the whole back yard is much hotter than before.

Although we often see them blooming in full sun, dogwoods prefer to grow under the shade of taller trees and in a rich, loamy soil. Your tree has had a radical change of environment that combined with the loss of branches and leaves has resulted in overwhelming stress. At this point, you need to remove that tree and think of a replacement that can handle the hotter conditions that you now have in your backyard.

A lovely tree that flowers in the summer months is vitex, or chaste tree. Since your dogwood was near your patio, a single vitex or group of three would add color during summer cookouts. Vitex agnus-castus has deeply dissected leaves with a pungent odor when crushed. In older times, people often hung their laundry on this tree to give it a fresh scent. According to Dr. Michael Dirr, this tree was introduced to our country in 1570, so no doubt many pairs of socks have hung from these small trees in the intervening years! Although pink and white cultivars exists, the blue flowered variety makes the best show in the hot mid-summer months.

Tulip polars or bald cypress tress would be good candidates to replace the pines you lost. Both these trees are fast growers if given plenty of water and both are deciduous. Bald cypresses have the advantage of such fine textured foliage that you don't have to rake in the fall. The cypress trees are much more flexible than pines and less likely to suffer ice or wind damage.

Any new trees you plant must be well-watered during the first year or two until established. Remember that in a nursery situation, plants in containers may be watered several times a day in hot, dry weather.

Newly planted trees and shrubs must expand their root mass before they can live without extra care. A good mulch of pine straw, hay, or wood chips is a necessity! IMulch acts like a beach umbrella, keeping those roots cool, and helps hold moisture so the soil stays soft and permeable as those roots grow into the surrounding soil. Mulch also keeps an over-eager lawn mower pusher from hitting the trunk of those new trees and making an port of entry for insects and diseases.