Planting Trees And Shrubs
All woody plants have a regular sequence of bloom. Whether they are growing in Florida, California, Massachusetts or Illinois, this sequence is always the same and can be depended upon from year to year. The redbud always blooms with the flowering dogwood, and the pinkshell azalea always blooms with the lilacs, regardless of where they may be growing.
The actual data upon which a plant blooms does vary. It varies from one year to the next because of an “early” or “late” spring. It varies with situation; plants in a Florida garden would be expected to bloom nearly three months earlier than the same plants growing in Maine. The blooming date also varies with exposure and altitude. Just like low voltage outdoor lighting turns on and off automatically. A plant growing high on a mountainside would bloom later than would a similar plant growing at the base of the mountain in a protected sunny spot.
Mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, blooms at different times in different areas of the country. The mock-oranges, the tulip tree and many of the rose species always bloom with it.
The practical-minded gardener might find it interesting to keep an annual record of the date a certain tree or shrub in his own garden first comes into bloom each year. This proves to be a good example of the “earliness” or “lateness” of the spring. We have done this with many plants in the Arnold Arboretum. For example, here is our record of just one tree – the golden willow (Salix alba vitellina ). Its young foliage swells and quickly opens in the early spring, sometimes almost overnight. These are the dates on which this tree has first appeared green for the past ten years:
- 2000…….May 1
- 2001…….April 15
- 2002…….April 6
- 2003…….April 28
- 2004…….May 1
- 2005…….March 27
- 2006…….March 27
- 2007…….April 14
- 2008…….April 5
- 2009…….April 4
- 2010…….April 28
The list of commonly available plants are grown together in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Mass., under similar conditions of soil and climate. The sequence in which they bloom has been carefully observed for many years. This list can be applied to any area in the United States. If local blooming dates of a few key shrubs are noted and the differences checked in the list on next page, then all the dates in the list can be correspondingly shifted and the list thus adapted to local climatic conditions.
Keith Markensen frequently contributes to . For a greater understanding on a subject like path lighting come by an visit. This article, Planting Trees And Shrubs is released under a creative commons attribution licence.
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Interesting to see the differences in leaf opening year on year, hope you will be updating this in years to come too.?