Made in the Shade: Designing a Shade Garden

This is an Oldie but a Goodie....

Nina A. Koziol

The Victorians had the right idea. On hot summer days, they retreated to chairs and benches under a leafy canopy of spreading trees, surrounded by a living room filled with cooling ferns, shrubs, vines, and wildflowers. Come high summer, when sweltering heat and humidity are enough to wilt most gardeners, the shade garden continues to offer a welcome respite. With its dappled sunlight and morning dew, the shaded nook is a delightful place where gardeners can focus on plants that thrive on limited amounts of light.

Unlike their showy counterparts -- zinnias, day lilies, and roses -- the unusual, variegated foliage of shade-loving plants offers a display of muted greens and blues that lasts longer than many flowers. Shady gardens are often a fact of life for those who dwell in old houses, from residents of urban row houses with courtyards cast into deep shade, to the owners of venerable homes enfolded by mature trees and shrubs.

While some folks lament the fact that they must garden in the shade of towering trees or nearby buildings, others recognize the wonderful possibilities such sites offer. The Victorians, for instance, were so fond of ferns that they created ferneries -- collections of lacy, delicate-leafed fern specimens -- that thrived in shady spots near the house. Similarly, in the early years of the 20th century, trellises, loggias, and pergolas were a favorite means of establishing shady spots to the rear or side of an Arts & Crafts bungalow or Colonial Revival home.

If your house is blessed with an abundance of shade, bear in mind that not all shade is equal. Shade varies in degree from partial (or open) shade to full (or dense) shade. When tall trees allow a great deal of bright light to reach the ground, the result is partial shade. Walls, fences, and other solid structures in close proximity to the garden tend to create full shade.

While full sun generally means six hours or more of direct sun each day, partial shade provides direct sun for only three or four hours. Plants in full shade get bright, reflected light, but little or no direct sun. Paying close attention to where the summer sun crosses your property at midday will help you determine how much shade you have.
Mature trees with large, spreading crowns -- maple, oak, hickory, and elm, for example -- are the dowagers of the shade garden. Trees with finely textured leaves, like honey locust and the silk tree, send more dappled light to the ground than the dense canopies of sugar maples.

If you are starting from scratch and your garden has space for a shade tree, select one that grows well in your locale. Medium-sized ornamental trees, such as dogwood or serviceberry, provide a suitable canopy for smaller sites. You can also create a shade-garden version of a forest understory with small- to medium-size shrubs, such as stephenandra, viburnum, variegated dogwood, or holly. An arbor, loggia, pergola, or high fence can create shade when there is no room for trees or large shrubs.

Where adjacent structures shade urban gardens, cloak the walls in vines that thrive in limited light. Choose from climbing hydrangea, with its fragrant white flowers and peeling bark, or old standbys such as English or Boston ivy, or Virginia creeper. Some flowering vines, including silver lace vine and a few varieties of clematis, will take more shade than other climbers -- although they produce fewer flowers than when in full sun. In small urban gardens, you can prune a large shrub such as witch hazel, pagoda dogwood, or Japanese maple to resemble a small tree with an arching canopy.

For smaller gardens or shady sideyards, use a combination of unusual plants rather than just one or two species. For instance, the delicate, showy stems of corydalis mix well with native bleeding heart, shooting stars, or miniature hosta. In moist areas, add a splash of red with scarlet lobelia or coral bell -- both favorites with hummingbirds.
Create visual interest by combining plants with contrasting leaf forms. For example, the delicate fronds of the maidenhair fern pair nicely with the coarse leaves of pachysandra, a groundcover. The large blue crenellated leaves of the fragrant, flowering heirloom hosta 'Elegans' contrast well with the soft delicate sprays of astilbe flowers.

Think of the shade garden as a small forest complete with a carpet of groundcovers such as periwinkle, hosta, epimedium, and ivy. The white- and silver-splashed leaves of lungwort and lamium 'White Nancy' light up a shady spot, as will hostas with variegated or chartreuse leaves. The shade garden is a restful place where the tracery of shadows, whether from trees or manmade structures, makes for an interesting play of light on your own private forest floor.

Tips for the Shade Garden

• Other than moss, few plants will grow in very deep shade. In places where no direct sunlight reaches the garden, you can paint nearby fences or walls white to reflect all available light.


• To increase the amount of light reaching your garden, consider limbing up a tree. Use a long-handled pruning tool (available at garden and home supply centers) to thin lower limbs or inner branches.


• Plant carefully beneath a mature tree. Poking too many holes near the base may disturb the tree's shallow root system. Instead, mulch the entire area with shredded wood chips to conserve moisture and help keep weeds to a minimum. Gradually add groundcovers underneath the tree's outermost branches.


• Ferns, iris, and other shade-loving plants need plenty of moisture. If rainfall drops below 1 per week in summer, water your plants regularly.


• Few shrubs require full sun to thrive, but many will do well in full shade. The deeper the shade, however, the more difficult it is to grow plants that prefer full or partial sun.


• Plant spring-flowering bulbs, such as daffodils, under trees where they will bloom before the trees leaf out. Intermingle them with hosta, which will conceal the leaves in midsummer.


• Add native woodland wildflowers, such as bluebells, trillium, or Solomon's Seal, to a shade garden.


• For a low-maintenance garden, use shade-tolerant groundcovers and perennials and incorporate a few annuals -- impatiens or tuberous begonias -- for spots of color.


• Adding a birdbath or fountain to your shady retreat will bring wildlife up close. And, like the Victorians, furnish your leafy outdoor room with a bench or chairs for full enjoyment.

(c) Nina A. Koziol and Old-House Journal

A Plant Collector's Sanctuary

A visit to the yin-yang garden of Judy Kloese

(c) 2010 Nina A. Koziol of http://www.thisgardencooks.com/

Photos (c) 2010 http://www.shirleyremes.com/

Plant Collector. Master Gardener. Native Plant Enthusiast. Composer. Transformer. These are just a few of the labels that Judy Kloese wears. In the 34 years since she and her husband Lee moved to Batavia, she has developed an exquisite garden that began as a blank slate around their new home. The only hint that this sprawling 1 2/3-acre garden was once farmland is the old milk house that sits behind the pumpkin patch.

“My grandfather had said ‘if it doesn’t provide fruit, don’t plant it’ so I started with an orchard,” Kloese said. Although the apple, cherry and apricot trees she planted in the 1970’s have slowly declined or died, she has added hundreds of new trees and shrubs, many, such as bur oak and red bud, that she started from seed or grew from seedlings. Two bur oaks and a scarlet oak are now more than 25 feet tall and the arborvitae seedlings, planted as an English-style evergreen privacy hedge tower over a border of perennials.

“The kids were young and trees take little care,” Kloese says. “It was a learning experience. As soon as I got a house, I discovered these latent botanical tendencies.” By the 1990s, with her three children grown, Kloese, a pre-school teacher, had time to pursue a Master Gardener’s certificate, take additional gardening classes and for 12 years, she’s worked at Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles.

“This is a learning process—every year we make the beds bigger,” she says. The bucolic setting is filled with English bluebells, snowdrop and allium in spring to coneflowers and prairie grasses in summer. Her tree collecting has produced a Korean maple with great fall color—“a tough tree as an alternative to the tender Japanese maples,” she says—to Carolina silverbell, striped-bark maple, dogwoods, hickories, sweet gum, katsura and tulip tree. Although she begins designing the gardens in her minds’ eye, she eventually puts the designs on paper.

In some ways, she has designed a yin-yang garden, where formal meets informal and native prairie plants rub stems with cultivated perennials. The fine-textured fountain-like leaves of prairie dropseed provide a sweeping edge to a flower border that includes Joe Pye weed, prairie dropseed, ‘Blue Heaven’ bluestem grass, helenium, prairie smoke and amsonia. Elsewhere, tightly pruned boxwood is used for the same effect as an entry way to another garden room flanked by two European beech trees.

Ponderosa pines, Swiss stone pines and white pines—started from seed in a cone—provide color and texture in winter. Striped-bark maple is growing under an ash tree that will be replaced.

She and her husband cut the grass together with two small mowers but the lawn is slowly shrinking to make way for more plants. “We do it for exercise twice a week,” she says.

“What I particularly appreciate about Judy Kloese’s garden is her love of trees, says garden coach Shirley Remes (http://www.shirleyremes.com/) of South Elgin. “She plants trees every year with an emphasis on natives.”

Last year, Kloese was one of 18 candidates from across the state who received a certification in perennials from the Illinois Certified Nursery Professional program. “She is a plant collector extraordinaire,” says co-worker Kevin McGowen of Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles . “She has pretty much everything under the sun.”

Although garden is low-maintenance in summer, needing just a few hours care a week, Kloese says, “I’m hoping I can let things go as we get older and just maintain the edges of the beds. There are plenty of native and [spring] ephemerals so the trees will grow into woodland.”

But, after casting a critical eye across the garden, the plant collector in Kloese says, “I just need more places for plants.”


Plantswoman Judy Kloese of Batavia shares these tips:

Good Read. “If you only could have one garden book, it should be a reference book and my favorite is the ‘American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.’” (DK Publishing, 2004, 1,104 pages, $80.)

Start Small. She starts many trees from seed in pots and then transplants them into prepared areas of the garden.

Room with a View. “I plant almost everything so I can see it from indoors.” Her next project is a pergola that will provide a shady spot to sit. “It will be placed so I can look out and into the sunny areas of the garden,” she says.

Recycle. “We never throw anything away, we reuse things.” When they replaced the patio, the stones became the base of the fire pit. The milk house-turned-garden shed was rescued from the developer’s wrecking ball and a dead apricot tree was transformed as a trellis for a climbing hydrangea vine.

Favorite Sources:

Midwest Groundcovers, 6N800 IL Route 25, St Charles. 847-742-1790 or http://www.midwestgroundcovers.com/

Possibility Place Nursery, 7548 W. Monee-Manhattan Road, Monee, 708-534-3988 or http://www.possibilityplace.com/

(c) 2010 Nina A. Koziol and the Chicago Tribune.

Time for a new Yew? Foundation Planting for Today's Homes

How to choose foundation plantings that suit your home

By Nina A. Koziol

For many homeowners, a house without an edging of greenery around the perimeter is like a painting without a frame. Throughout the Midwest there are countless home landscapes that typically flaunt a row of evergreens — usually junipers or yews — that were planted decades ago and now are often overgrown, sickly or sheared into tight little balls and cubes.

"It's like parsley around the turkey," says landscape architect Scott Ogden, who, with his wife Lauren Springer Ogden, wrote "Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens that Honor Plants, Place and Spirit" (Timber Press, 2008).

Ogden's family moved from Texas to south suburban Flossmoor during his high school years, and looking back now, he says, "I remember being shocked at the landscaping. In Texas, houses don't have basements so people don't hide the foundations the same way."

It hasn't always been fashionable for houses to don green skirts. Like lawns, foundation plantings are a relatively modern concept in residential landscape design.

Until the late-19th century, many physicians actively discouraged the use of foundation plants, warning that dark, damp shrubbery pressing against the house invited the dreaded scourge of tuberculosis. By 1870, the high stone and brick foundations of increasingly large Victorian homes were softened and cloaked with fragrant, showy shrubs that provided delicate, sweet-smelling breezes inside and out on warm summer days: Mock orange, summersweet, lilac, viburnum, roses and fothergilla were some of the popular shrubs planted under windows, at the corners of the house, and flanking doorways.

Then as now, the key is to keep plantings in scale with the home and choose lower-maintenance plants that will thrive in the available light, soil and moisture conditions.

Revamping that planting

Junipers planted more than 25 years ago — and clipped into a rolling wave of green — cover the entire front of Sharon Vojtek's town house in Palos Heights.

"They look tired, they're prickly and they collect every leaf and branch in the fall," Vojtek said. And they're slowly engulfing the window. In this instance, it's often easier to remove the shrubs — trunks, roots and all — and replant from scratch, says landscape designer Marcy Stewart-Pyziak of The Gardener's Tutor in Manhattan, Ill. "Plants don't last forever and if you get 20 or 30 years out of a planting around the house, that's pretty good."

A good place to start analyzing your home's landscape is from across the street. Consider replacing declining or overgrown shrubs with dwarf or slower-growing specimens that are more in scale with your house.

"From a design standpoint, a foundation planting can be part of a composition that extends right out into the lawn or up to the sidewalk," Ogden says. "You don't have to do the ‘line-'em-up-and-shoot-them' kind of thing. The [light] exposure creates a lot of planting opportunities."

On the north side of the house, Ogden suggests using plants that appreciate the extra shade and cool temperatures. In the Chicago area, that could include hydrangeas, ferns, hostas and boxwood.

"On the east exposure, plants like roses, which enjoy protection from the hot afternoon sun, might be an alternative," he said.

On south- and west-facing exposures, ornamental grasses, witch hazel, viburnum, butterfly bush and sun-loving perennials will offer multi-season color.

Keeping it green

Many homeowners are not eager to part with their evergreen foundation plants because they want some color during winter. Picking slow-growing replacement plants with interesting needles can sometimes help solve that problem.

"The most common error is to plant too much, too close to the house and too close to each other," says Rich Eyre of Rich's Foxwillow Pines Nursery (richsfoxwillowpines.com) in Woodstock. "Dwarf conifers (evergreens) extend the life of the planting bed because the growth rates are slower than the species and there is less maintenance and pruning needed."

Two of his favorites for full sun include Picea pungens ‘St. Mary's Broom', a flat, low-growing blue spruce that grows about 1 foot in 10 years, and Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Lemon Thread', which grows about 3 feet in 10 years and produces bright yellow foliage on graceful, drooping branches.

"In a shaded spot that gets morning sun, you can grow ‘Jeddeloh' hemlock (Tsuga canadensis ‘Jeddeloh')," Eyre says. It's another bright green spreading mound that also grows about three feet in a decade.

There are environmental considerations as well.

"I expect any landscape elements that deserve a place in our living environment to deliver some level of real performance and benefits," says landscape architect Marcus de la fleur (delafleur.com) of Chicago. "The whole concept of foundation planting — or any other pure decorating scheme of planting — makes my neck hair stand up. People would never buy a car with only two or three wheels just because it's pretty, but that is what they are doing with their landscapes."

He notes that homeowners should think about landscape treatments that could help with moisture management around foundation and basement walls rather than simply selecting plants on merits of their looks alone.

Moisture-loving plants, such as hydrangea, Siberian iris and astilbe and some native plants work well in planting beds where the downspout drains, Stewart-Pyziak says. Her native choices include sweetspire (Itea virginica), elderberry (Sambucus), turtlehead (Chelone) and spicebush (Lindera benzoin).

"In areas that have morning sun and afternoon shade, hydrangeas do very well and look good when planted in groups of three or more," she says. Depending on the style of a home, she may use Annabelle hydrangeas and rugosa roses around entrances to evoke a cottage garden feeling. Around midcentury modern homes, she opts for ornamental grasses, including the native prairie dropseed, which she combines with perennials and low-growing shrubs.

Scott Ogden also adds a more subjective consideration when choosing the plants that surround your home.

"Plants should mean something to you or you'll never have a relationship with that place," Ogden says. "Consider using plants that have a special meaning, like grandma's lilac, peony or a clump of iris, and think about how to incorporate those kinds of plants into the planting."

© 2010 Nina A. Koziol and Chicago Tribune

Edible Encores

If you want fresh herbs, vegetables or flowers for your table, you could make a run to the store. But it would be a lot faster and much more satisfying if you could simply step outside to pick what you need. And, if you sow seeds rather than buy plants, you can save some big bucks this summer.

”People often think that sowing seeds is more complicated than it is,” says Renee Shepherd of Renee’s Garden (www.reneesgarden.com), a specialty seed company in Felton, CA. “It’s really not that hard and it’s fun.”

It’s all in the timing. Although many Chicago-area gardeners wait until Memorial Day to plant their vegetable gardens, there are many cold-weather crops that can be grown from seed just as soon as the soil can be cultivated.

Jeanne Pinsof Nolan of The Organic Gardener (www.theorganicgardener.net) in Glencoe started sowing vegetable seeds in midsummer and will continue into September. “My heavy hitters in spring are peas, spinach, radish, arugula, kale, collards, lettuce and turnips,” says Nolan, who sows these cold-hardy specimens in early April. Cold-hardy crops can withstand some freezing temperatures and hard frosts without injury. They prefer cool growing temperatures—once the soil reaches 45 degrees, lettuce seeds will sprout. Early spring planting and harvest is a must because these robust plants tend to lose their flavor and quality once warm weather arrives.

Late April through mid-May is the time to plant frost-tolerant vegetables, such as beets, carrots, cabbage and chard, which are not as cold-hardy as the others but can withstand light frost. Their seeds sprout in soil that’s 50 degrees or warmer, so they can be planted 2 to 3 weeks before the average last spring freeze, which usually occurs about May 15 in the Chicago area, give or take a week.

Some Like it Hot

Tender vegetables, such as snap beans, corn and summer squash are injured or killed by frost and should be sown after May 15. Last are the real heat lovers, such as lima beans, cucumbers, herbs, winter squash and pumpkins, which need very warm soil--70 degrees or more--and warm air to sprout and thrive and do best when planted after June 1. (Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant fall into the heat-lovers category, but because they take a long time from germination to harvest, the seeds are best started indoors about mid-April.)

Sowing lettuce and radish seeds every 10 days during spring offers a nonstop harvest. “If you buy a six-pack of arugula or cilantro plants, you’re going to be disappointed because they bolt [flower] quickly,” Shepherd says. And once arugula flowers, the leaves become bitter. It’s less costly to pull the spent plants and sow more seeds. ”And, there’s nothing worse than having a million beans for three weeks and then none,” she says. “There’s a good reason to plant them again and again.”

Landscape designer Vicki Nowicki of Liberty Gardens (www.libertygardens.com) in Downers Grove sows bush beans, beets and chard once a week through June and July. As she harvests a row of beets, for example, she sows more seeds. “I also plant more summer squash throughout the growing season because after a certain point, squash vines start to peter out and I like to have new, fresh plants coming along.” Peas are planted again in late July and she sows spinach through August for fall harvests.

Petal Power

Veggies aren’t the only thing you can pick at the end of summer. Sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, celosia, strawflowers and asters are some of the annual s that can be sown from seed weekly from May 15 through September for an ongoing supply of cut flowers. Dill and fennel flowers also add fragrance to an arrangement.

”The health of your garden is improved by introducing flowers,” Nolan says. Blossoms bring in beneficial insects that prey on the destructive ones. Some, such as nasturtiums, borage and chive blossoms, are edible, Nolan says, and can be used to garnish a salad. Before you dine on any blooms, make sure the seed packet notes that they are edible.

Gear up

Choose a spot that gets at least six hours of direct sunlight. Vegetables, herbs and most flowers do best in soil that’s easy to cultivate, fertile with organic matter such as compost, and drains well after watering. For sowing in pots, choose containers that are at least 14” wide and deep and fill them with good quality potting mix. And study the seed packet. The “days to harvest” generally refers to how long it will take from the time the plant sprouts leaves to when the fruit is ready for picking. As much as 7 to 14 days may be added from the time you sow the seeds until germination. The average autumn freeze date occurs about October 15, so if a vegetable needs 40 days from sowing to harvest, you can count backwards to determine when to plant for autumn harvests.

“Seeds need moisture from below so start out with a planting bed that’s been very well hydrated,” Nowicki says. ”You don’t even need to make a row. Use your thumb and make an indentation according to spacing on the seed packet.” She places 4 to 5 seeds in each thumbprint and, when they have a few leaves, she cuts down all but the largest, healthiest one. That may seem like a waste of seeds, but if you don’t thin the plants to the recommended spacing on the packet, you’ll have a tangle of stems and leaves and little to harvest.
And make it a family affair. ”Direct seeding is a great thing to do with kids,” says Nolan. “It’s an absolute miracle for them to see a carrot seed and then see the carrot. Don’t get too discouraged if seeds don’t sprout--try again. Seed isn’t that expensive.”

Seed Sources

Stock up on seeds at your local garden center or check out these seed catalogs:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seed, 866-OLD-SEED, www.rareseeds.com
John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, 860-567-6086, www.kitchengardenseeds.com Renee’s Garden, 888-880-7228, www.reneesgarden.com
Territorial Seed Co., 800-626-0866, www.territorialseed.com
The Cook’s Garden, 800-457-9703, www.cooksgarden.com
Thompson & Morgan, 800-274-7333, http://www.tmseeds.com/

Keep it Growing

The following planting dates can help you develop a succession plan for your harvest:

April 15: Kale, Kohlrabi, Leaf Lettuce, Onion, Pea, Spinach, Turnip
April 23 to May 15: Beets, Carrots, Chard, Mustard, Parsnip, Radish
May 15: Snap Beans, Sweet Corn, Summer Squash, New Zealand Spinach, Annual Herbs
June 1: Lima Beans, Cucumbers, Okra, Pumpkin, Winter Squash, Annual Herbs
June 1 – July 30: Keep sowing Snap Beans, Beets, Carrots, Endive, Annual Herbs
August: Sow Lettuce, Radish, Chinese Cabbage, Turnips, Peas
September: Sow Lettuce, Chard, Mustard Greens, Radish, Spinach

(c) 2010 ThisGardenCooks.com and Chicago Tribune

This Garden Cooks!: The Passing of Summer

This Garden Cooks!: The Passing of Summer: "Tonight, in our 'exurban' garden well outside of Chicago, four hummingbirds sat at different feeders in the front yard taking their last sip..."

The Passing of Summer

Tonight, in our "exurban" garden well outside of Chicago, four hummingbirds sat at different feeders in the front yard taking their last sips before they headed off to sleep in the surrounding woods. During one fall migration, I watched as a ruby-throated hummingbird, having drunk all it could, flew up a few feet into the weeping cherry tree outside the kitchen window. There it sat very still and eventually put its beak straight up in the air. It was sleeping. I called My Mate to warn him not to come up the front path so he wouldn't wake it. At 5;30 the next morning, it was gone. Hundreds of thousands of ruby throats are heading south from their summer breeding grounds.

Our summer garden residents are likely gone now, heading south. But dozens of other hummingbirds, along with scores of monarch butterflies, are in the garden on these warm days filled with bright blue skies. These winged wonders are signs that summer is passing. The zinnias that I sowed in July are in full bloom and excellent nectar plants for butterflies. The Salvia guarantica 'Black and Blue' and 'Indigo Spires' are wonderful annuals that offer nectar to hummingbirds, clear-winged moths, night-flying moths and crafty bees that manage to get nectar by biting a hole at the base of the flower since they can't fit into . Summer is coming to an end, but as the flowers dry, I'll be saving the seeds of many annuals, taking cuttings of coleus and sweet potato vine and potting up the herbs to bring indoors.

Summer is taking its leave but now is the time -- before you start raking the leaves, to watch what's going on in your garden--from watching the warblers and other birds make their way through your flower beds and borders on the way to their winter grounds to the hordes of late-season hordes of dragonflies that suddenly appear, darting around as they pick off mosquitoes and other miniscule insects. Summer may be passing, but this is the time of reflection for the gardener. Happy gardening...

Nina at This Garden Cooks

Questions or comments? Email me at info@thisgardencooks.com

In the Garden of Good and Evil Plants

In the Garden of Good and Evil Plants

Why is it that some of the most coveted plants -- pricey heucheras (coral bells), euphorbias, sedges, hostas and other perennials -- never seem to seed? Anywhere. Many of the coral bells I’ve planted in recent years don’t even make it through our Midwest Zone 5 winters because they’ve hurled themselves out of the ground with the first few January thaws.

Strolling through our garden in late August made me realize that The Thugs were back. I'm talking about those extra-vigorous plants that, given an inch, will skip into the next county.

Bishop's weed (Aegopodium, aka goutweed), for example, which I first admired outside a little art gallery in Door County some 20 years ago, has spread in several beds. I liked the way its variegated leaves lit up the ground in a shady spot around the gallery's doorway. So I planted some in front of the yews. And then discovered that by mid-summer, the leaves had become tattered and dried out. I had to cut them all down. The yews are long gone with a home makeover, but the goutweed persists, here, there, everywhere.

Then there's Artemisia 'Limelight', a perennial that has the most delightful colors--chartreuse and green--in the spring. I planted it in a border of lime-green and merlot-colored foliage--the Lemon Lime Merlot border -- and discovered that it's quick to suffocate nearby plants.

Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea', the chartreuse leaved groundcover, has skipped out of the bed where I planted it under 'Tiger Eyes' sumac and is running willy nilly through the lawn.

There's pipevine (Artistolochia), which I pictured cloaking an arbor and attracting pipevine swallowtails to lay their eggs on it. It has crept away from the arbor and has managed to clamber 18 feet up a purple weeping beech.

And golden hops vine, Humulus, planted on a deep magenta arbor, is also sending up shoots several feet away as the trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) is doing elsewhere. (That’s not all of them, but it’s too exhausting to contemplate.)

All high maintenance plants to say the least. Pulling, cutting, cursing and, yes, chemicals, have become part of this gardener's artillery. The moral of this story is to investigate before buying (or accepting freebie plants from friends).

What thugs are growing in your garden and how have you controlled them?