Current Tree Grower’s Diary Letters
Post your letters about trees here and I’ll do my best to help you find an answer! Keep in mind that I do not reply via email. I post my responses HERE in the hopes of SHARING with people who might have similar questions.
Disclaimer: I am not a tree expert, just a novice who has been studying trees for quite some time now. If you require an expert opinion, I suggest the forums over at TreeHelp.com or the tree forum at GardenWeb.
If you leave a letter, please state in the letter where you’re writing from so that we have a general idea of your climate zone. THANKS for all your encouragement and support!
Don’t forget to let us know where you’re writing from! City, town, or even a climate zone number will help! Thanks!
Their innocence and simplicity really get... on 
My family calls me "the mamarazzi."
Hi Sally. You can prune purple leaf plum pretty much any time, though the a good time is in spring just after the flowers have fallen off. The reason this is a good time is so that you don’t compromise any flowers for next year, but if you don’t really care about that, the the absolute best time to prune these trees would be in fall, just after the leaves have all fallen off. Hope that helps.
~jules
Hi Julie, I live in Essex, England, about 40 miles from London. I found your site when looking for advice as to when I should prune my purple leaved plum tree – have you any ideas?
Your site is lovely, the pictures are stunning!
Many thanks, Sally.
(From Barcelona, Spain) Needless to say that all your pics are awsome. I just came back from an exhibition in Montjuich and wanted to have some information about dogwood trees. Your blog is a great present. Thanks a million.
Hi Julie,
On the screen issue, “Taxus x media” hicksii. Yew, Hicksii. Columnar. Grows in shade. Supposed to get tall, eventually.
Might work, I don’t know.
Jeff- doesn’t know shrubs
Hi John,
Thanks for writing. I would give this some time. Maybe the tree is just taking longer to wake up this year for some reason. Even though there are only a few flowers on one side, the fact that there are buds all over the tree tells me there’s a good chance it’ll be fine. Has anything changed in the area since last spring? New construction? New fertilizers on the lawn? Severe flooding? That’s going to be the first question an arborist would ask, I think. Hope this helps.
~jules
Hi, I live 30 miles north of Boston. I have a Sunset Maple. We planted it 6 years ago and it has done very well. This spring it only has red flowers on a few branches on 1 side. The rest has some small buds but no flowers at all. Last fall had full canopy. Is tree in trouble? Anything we can do? Thanks, John Lacey
Dear Julie,
The photos of your black cherry are great! The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is having a series this summer on big trees, and one of the trees were highlighting in our collection is a black cherry. I was wondering if you’d give us permission to use two of your photos for an informational sign we’ll post next to our tree. Please contact me if this is of interest to you.
Thanks much,
Medi
Hi Julie,
I don’t really know shrubs, in general. In my backyard, I have a strong reliance on Forsythias to screen out the neighbors and their above ground pool. They do the job. On the other side, the neighbors elevated deck looks down on me. I have wild Forsythias over there as well, although I’m thinking of putting in a Leyland Cypress on of these years. I guess a Hornbeam tree might work, although it’s kind of slow growing.
Some Internet people have suggested “Henry’s Garnet” sweetbriar to me instead of the
“Burning Bush”. I saw some interesting “Red Twigged Dogwoods” and “Shadow Serviceberries” in one of the Cranford places today, but the other two weren’t in yet. I’m not sure how I’d place them all, anyway.
Good luck with the screening!
Jeff in Linden
Hi Jeff. Hmm. Considering my considerable failure at keeping arborvitae alive, and the fact that I’ve spent two years trying to figure out what to plant in their place, um, no, I don’t consider myself a shrub person. In fact, I’m considerably NOT a shrub person.
Got any ideas for what I can plant as a screen shrub underneath a moisture-hogging maple?
Hi Julie, I just enjoyed seeing your Fall Slide Show again! I particularly like seeing the Oct. Glory, since I recently planted one
Do you also know “shrubs”? I need to replace something in the bed at the west side of my house (partial sun from mid-afternoon on).
I saw articles on “Burning Bush”, but I get the impression that it offends purists for being “invasive”. They could pop up anywhere, even ten miles from my home
Jeff in Linden, NJ
Hi,
I enjoyed very much reading your story about the large old purple-leafed beech that was cut down before its time. I especially liked that you seem not to have become embittered or angry about it. I’ve always had a great fondness for beech trees, despite not growing up in a part of the Midwest where they were neither native nor widely used as introduced ornamentals.
Now I live in Denver, where they are even less common. About twenty-two years ago I planted one in my front yard, and it has grown from eight feet to now twenty-five feet tall. That’s slow, I know, but beeches are slow and very little will grow here as fast or as well as in the East. The beech is the standard European species, which was all I could find at the time. Even now beeches are not common in the nurseries, though one can run across the tri-color cultivar once in a while.
Plain old species or not, the tree is increasingly attracting the attention of neighbors and passersby. They sense that it is different and if I’m outside will comment on its beauty and ask what it is. I think it is the way the branches, especially the lower ones, spread outward, along with the lushness of the foliage. In the fall, they also notice the green-to-yellow-to-bronze leaf color sequence, partly because it’s one of the last trees to really light up the shortening days. I personally enjoy the classic smooth trunk, but that isn’t something that many folks see right away.
I’ve probably obsessed too much over this tree. It bothers me when I find a 2 ft. long branch on the ground, the result of squirrels jumping onto the tree from a much taller nearby silver maple. And it bothers me when a late frost in April nips a lot of the leaves, and they grow holey and deformed, such as has happened in the previous three springs (not yet, so far). When that happens, the tree’s growth is much less than in other years.
The neighborhood I live in consists of houses that are on the small side by today’s standards, but many lots are now being redeveloped. People want to build houses taking up much more of the land, and have two stories as well, so they end up with houses that are almost four times the size of the originals built in the 1920’s. My beech is far enough toward the street so that city regulations don’t allow a building there. However, that doesn’t mean the next owner of this property won’t destroy the tree. I think it is their legal right to do so. Whether it’s a moral right is another question. It’s my understanding that beech trees can easily live 200 years. That would mean having to deal with having a lot of different types of people having an effect on them…
Per your request, I estimate I live on the borderline between Zones 5 and 6. We in the hort community out here discuss and debate this issue frequently because there are a lot of very coveted things that can grow in 6 and not in 5. Zone denial is maybe what we have. The climate here is fairly different from the East, because of the aridity; we have to depend heavily on irrigation and the air is really dry. And little rainfall means it’s sunny a lot, and the sun is more potent at our altitude. Some plants would prefer an application of sunscreen.
Thanks again for putting together such a nice website, and if you have a chance, I’d love to know what kind of “energy bars” you’re eating!
Sonia
Hi Sonia. What a wonderful letter! Thanks! I thoroughly enjoyed reading that and LAUGHED OUT LOUD at the last line! Pecan Chocolate Chip Sandies are my current energy food. Your beech sounds wonderful. I totally appreciate your nurturing of it, and fretting over the future land owners. I wish there was a way to pass along our tree stories so that people would understand how deeply involved we have been in their upbringing. I would love to know if that old beech tree in my neighborhood had a story like yours. Cheers and thanks again for writing! — jules
You’ve combined two of my faivorite things on your site, tree’s and art. I often come here to unwind and enjoy your wonderful work.
Thank you for doing this!
Mary Belibasakis
Metuchen, NJ
Hi Julie – love your photos as always, where are all the tree pics ?? I miss them .. You are very talented you know.
I am having a hip replacement next week, will be off work for 6 weeks, I can see there will be lots of web surfing to be done, plus read and put my herbarium together, something I have wanted to do for years. I have alot of pressed plants sitting around under piles of books, nice acid-free paper and I`m set for awhile.
It is autumn here, the air is cool and the light soft and golden – my favourite season.
Arohanui Julie
Hi Marcia! Great to hear from you again! So cool to think of fall beginning there in New Zealand. I just subscribed to your blog using my new cool bloglines account which puts my subscribed blogs in bold when there’s a new update. Now if that doesn’t provide incentive to update your blog, I don’t know what will! I’ll add you to my prayer list about your surgery, and I’ll add an extra one about giving you some fun reading material. I really love that “the light soft and golden” phrase. Thanks for that visual, hon. Peace, Jules
How often do you add sulphur to your soil for the dogwood? Do I just sprinkle it on top of the soil? Can I use it for other trees as well?
Hi Mari. Actually, what I add to the soil for my dogwood is bone meal. Now, I’m no chemical expert, so if sulphur is a big part of bone meal, I don’t know. I buy a bag of stuff that says “bone meal” and not a bag of stuff that says “garden sulphur” or something like that. Anyway, I sprinkle bone meal in the spring, probably 2 cups worth of lovely cremeated bones (ew) probably from some creature I’d rather not have sprinkled on my yard. I spread it out to the dripline, and every year I fully intend to do this again in the fall, but never seem to get around to it. I don’t imagine that bone meal would hurt the other trees, but just to be safe, I’d go easy on it the first couple of times you use it. Also, if you have pets that hang out in the yard, they may very well roll around in the bone meal and try to eat it, which is really gross. Squirrels will pick at it too. I put the bone meal down underneath the spring layers of newspaper mulch.
Hi everybody — Julie here — I just wanted to test this out to see if how it will work. I got five tree letters today and have stopped posting them on the letters page at at TGD.com because it takes me too much time. But, if you post your letters in here, it will be much easier for me to respond, and for others to read and comment as well, giving you more opinions than just mine. That’s got to be a good thing.
