Ground Breaking Banter - Rick
Ah, fall color – so beloved, so iconic, so welcome. And while trees get all the attention in fall (and rightly so!), there are so very many other plants that you can add to your garden or landscape to bring different colors to the season. It’s also worth considering that fall color can come from things besides foliage: there are flowers, like asters, anemone, autumn crocus, colchicum, and pansies, and, as we discussed recently, berries as well.
Join us at the YouTube link above or on your favorite podcast platform to hear our whole conversation on making fall even more fabulous by diversifying your garden or landscape.
Here’s Rick’s Lim-A-Rick:
Colors that compel
A visual groundswell
Fall color is the buzz
We love it just because
Falls well that ends well
So growing season… good-bye.
The winter season’s nigh.
so start the coffee debate
Pumpkin flavor to celebrate?
Nope. No more Mr Spice guy.
Flowers, fruit, and foliage: all provide excellent options for a more colorful autumn, though of course, foliage gets all of the credit. Obviously, it’s difficult to ignore all the huge deciduous trees with their foliage transforming from green to yellow, orange, red, purple, or a mix of all of them. As we’ve discussed, the reason that fall is so colorful is because deciduous plants translocate the energy-producing chlorophyll to store for winter, revealing the other plant pigments that were there all along. But it’s not only deciduous plants that can take on unique fall color: some evergreens and semi-evergreens can also develop some pretty remarkable fall color, like Tres Amigos abelia, today’s plant on trial.
Tres Amigos is a variegated abelia with clean mint green and white foliage. Variegation is always kind of a polarizing feature, with some people adoring it and others despising it, but this is one of those plants with tidy variegation that looks good. However, in spring and fall, when the days are shorter and the temperatures – especially night time temperatures – are cooler, Tres Amigos abelia takes on all sorts of fabulous colors, completely transforming the way the plant looks. The newest growth turns a vivid pink, which fades into orange and yellow down the stem. While you’ll see some pink new growth on the plant all season, especially if you live in a cooler area, in spring and fall, it’s especially vivid.
Abelias are one of those shrubs that, overall, doesn’t get enough appreciation. Sure, in the South, you have some varieties that are landscape staples, but honestly there is so much more diversity to be had within the genus, whether it’s different habits, different foliage colors, and different flower colors that it deserves to be explored. Tres Amigos is one of our newer abelia varieties and it comes to us from Minier Nurseries in France. In milder climates, it will be evergreen, so you can enjoy its unique foliage all year round, whereas in the colder end of its zone range – USDA zone 6 – it will be semi-evergreen.
In addition to its foliage, it puts out flurries of fragrant white flowers throughout summer. It’s not one of those flowering shrubs with one big flowering moment, it simply always has some flowers on it throughout the entire summer and into fall. Though the splashy variegated foliage does to some extent camouflage them, you’ll definitely be able to smell them, and you’ll also notice them because the attract lots of butterflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds.
Tres Amigos abelia is hardy to USDA zone 6 and heat tolerant through USDA zone 9. It reaches 2-3’ tall and 3-5’ wide. Deer resistant and super durable and adaptable, it is a great choice for beauty year-round.
If you’d like to add Tres Amigos abelia – or any of the 320+ Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs – to your garden or landscape, you’ll find a list of local retailers here.
Gardening Mail Bag - Stacey
There are no doubt many factors at play here, but what you are seeing is not necessarily unusual. Of course squirrels are busy storing up food for the upcoming winter, and in “mast years,” when acorns are particularly abundant, they have more to bury so are even busier than they may normally be in fall. Plus, oaks aren’t the only trees that have especially prolific years like this – walnuts, pecans, and other nut trees can also have something akin to a mast year that would cause the squirrels to work faster and harder to save up the nutrient-rich nuts. Plus, the most common North American squirrels – the grey squirrel and the fox squirrel – aren’t super territorial so you may actually be seeing multiple squirrels displaying this behavior. Enjoy the show – and the bonus show when they dig them up in winter.
Whichever tree or shrub this occurs on, it is a classic sign of drought stress. The dramatic browning on the edges of the leaves is caused by two things: one, that these are the farthest points away from the water-conducting xylem tissue so will be the first to go if water is limited, and two, the edges of the leaves themselves lose water as the leaf photosynthesizes. It’s important to remember that the drought stress and the appearance of the browning foliage can actually be several weeks apart – it may not be immediate, so if you see browning foliage like this and think, gee, we’ve had a lot of rain, or perhaps you’ve started watering, the damage had already been done. Fortunately, the foliage should emerge happy and healthy next season. To prevent it from happening again, mulch your plants with a good 2-3″ layer of shredded bark mulch, and water well if summer rains are scarce and/or weather is very hot and sunny.
What you’ve got here is a case of scale or mealybug, hard to say exactly from the photo. Roses aren’t typically susceptible to these pests, so it may indicate it is stressed. But in any case, it is easily dealt with – just cut it off, throw it away, and plant your rose. If you see if pop up on other branches, simply do the same – no need to spray or otherwise treat.
Do you have a question for us? We’re happy to help! E-mail us or use the contact tab above. Due to high volume, we may not get to your question, so if you need an answer quickly, please reach out via the Proven Winners website.
Branching News - Rick
Reminder: Please send us your garden horror stories for our Halloween episode, airing November 2, 2024. Just use the “contact us” tab above and we’d love to read your story on the air!
- The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development was the first to introduce SeeCoast viewers powered by EnChroma to enable color blind visitors to see the changing colors in Fall at 12 parks and scenic overlooks.
- Did you know? The invention of the modern chainsaw was inspired by nature. Timber worms in Oregon, to be exact.
- Iceland’s farmers’ association has reported shortages of cucumbers because of a Canadian TikTok creator whose cucumber salad recipes have gone viral.
