Is another Audrey lurking in a corner of your autumnal garden?

MONSTERS IN THE GARDEN

by Peter W. Gribble

It’s in the nature of monsters to take you unawares.

I attended a government-funded project to promote bee-keeping where they gave out instructions and a few free bee-friendly plants to start a pollinator garden. Among them was a potted eight-inch slip of an unknown variety of Rosa rugosa that would produce simple open rose flowers suitable for bees. Within a few years, the Rosa rugosa muscled up and out, morphing into an overgrown behemoth.

Yes, bees like it, but now I have to whack it back twice a year while standing on a ladder and being assertive with an electric pruner. In addition, thirty to forty feet of suckers snaking out from the base have to be pulled up each year – a veritable snake pit. More than a monster, it’s a many-headed hydra I’ve taken to calling Audrey II after the plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

It’s a reminder of the advantages of buying plants with identifying tags. Identifying tags are tiny inducements to make a purchase. Plant needs simply declared: sun/shade, watering needs, a picture of the flower or leaf at its best, size and climate zones and there you have it: pure propaganda.

Despite being in retail, I fall for it ... often ... especially if it’s a plant. I knew at once what it was, but had never seen one so small, or so inexpensive. The tag confirmed it. In a six-inch pot, at $12.99 and the only one left? I would regret not getting it. In for a penny, in for 12.99. It is a marvel how a large plant instantly lends an established feel to a garden.

Brazilian Giant Rhubarb can get completely out of control!

A spectacular monster of prehistoric proportions, Gunnura manicata is called Brazilian Giant Rhubarb and nicknamed Dinosaur Food. It’s a gentle giant for it is non-invasive and needs winter protection, but it grows 15 feet tall and at least that wide in a few short years if all the conditions are met. It prefers a shady aspect since its natural habitat is the jungle floor but can take the sun, only if it is well watered in rich, boggy soil. I planted mine up in a large 12-inch pot and stood back. After three years, it is a large-leafed plant six feet tall and eight across and, at the base, has produced three daughter plants, which I’ll remove in the spring and plant in individual pots or in the ground.

The mother plant will be planted up in a 16-inch pot. When she grows out of that, she may need a cage. For winter protection, wait until after the first frost then cut back the dead leaves and place them over the crown to protect it and reduce the watering until spring. I take the added precaution of moving mine into the garage ... with a dolly.

While not monstrous as such, the striking Harry Lauder tree Corylus contorta is beautifully macabre, with knobbly, corkscrew branches reaching out to snag the unwary wanderer straying from the garden path. Wintertime he festoons himself with dangling catkins. Alas, Harry Lauders are hard to find in either gardens or garden centers now. He is highly susceptible to the filbert blight, a pandemic devastating hazelnut trees and their relatives everywhere. You can tell whether your Harry has the infection by examining the bark’s surface – either trunk or branches – for the telltale dotted line of small black craters looking like a nasty strain of linear acne. These are the fruiting bodies of the deadly fungus.

Remove the infected plant immediately and entirely before the spores spread to others. Do not put any part of him in the compost but wrap everything up and put it in the garbage. Wash your hands afterwards and sterilize your tools. At the least symptomatic sign of this, Harry is at once beyond any hope of quarantine.

Curly willow (Salix mastudana ‘Tortuosa’) might replace Harry. Curly is seldom seen in nurseries or garden centers except as interesting smooth twisty sprigs in flower arrangements. Keep the cutting of Curly in water and within a month you may see roots. Pot Curly up in planter box mix and keep him well watered. He’s a mildly creepy, fast-growing tree with a shallow but aggressive root system. If planting in the ground, place Curly well away from water lines and telephone lines. Thin bark makes him susceptible to insect and occasional fungal problems and a windstorm can result in much branch breakage.

Curly seldom lives longer than ten years but is nonetheless striking with his spindly branches trembling up to the sky.

The corkscrew rush (Juncus effuses ‘Spiralis’) also has Curly’s growth habit but doesn’t get much taller than 18 inches and can be grown in a pot. Its tumbling messy aspect makes it look like the Addams Family’s Cousin It on a bad hair day. Over time Cousin It will spread as its root system is also aggressive. Plant it near water as it too likes a boggy environment.

Rising from the laboratory table hybridized by the mad hand of man are the Frankenstein plants. Fatshedera is a cross-species hybrid of Japanese aralia (Fatsia japonica) and English ivy (Hedera helix) two different species yet within the same family, in this case, Araliaceae. It is attractive yet vaguely ominous with its large ivy shaped leaves glistening confidently as if readying to take over an unsuspecting world.

Surprisingly it is not invasive: the Fatsia side domesticated the Hedera side. It can grow to eight feet even in a pot indoors with bright indirect light. In the garden, it prefers shade to part sun (preferably morning) and can withstand winter temperatures down to minus 15C. But if outdoors in a pot, protect it by wrapping the pot and moving it to a sheltered spot out of the wind. Too much hard afternoon sun can burn the leaves.

Bees love the abundant nectar of this Common and Canary Island Foxglove cross.

Into the genetic cauldron mix common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) with Canary Island foxglove (Isoplexis canariensis) – again two species but from the same family – and you get Digiplexis luckily combining the best traits of both.

It produces striking long-lasting stalks of purple flowers flaring with pink, orange or red highlights. The cross proved sterile – a mule in the garden – for it does not set seed. Bees love it for its abundant nectar. Treat it as an annual, as it does not survive frosts. Do not try to overwinter it indoors if you have children or pets as it is poisonous.

Twilight and moonlight in the garden glow up variegated leaves streaked with white or grey. Artemisias (such as Dusty Miller), Euphorbias and white winter kales revel in this half-light. One of the best small-sized trees with this effect is the elegant, dark-leafed Styrax japonica “Evening Light.” As the leaves fall in the autumn, more of its hanging pendulous drupes appear like silvery, phosphorescent drop pearls.

White pumpkins dotting the landscape act like night lights. Snow at midnight in a ghostly garden is the ultimate illumination. In late fall the garden becomes a graveyard; dead stalks: frail headstones, withered leaves: crumbling memorial plaques of what once was there. Yet below, perennials sleep waiting to wake again to rise like green ghouls, come spring.

The scary event may be what happens to the lichens after this year. The pandemic shutdown gave them an exceptional year with the reduced pollution levels. September’s dangerous wildfire smoke will have consequences. Not all lichens are bellwethers of air pollution, but look for a die-off in the coming months ... as if we need another sign that Mother Nature is unwell.

In this scary garden, scary world, are what we’re calling monsters merely the harbingers of change?