Book Reviews & Ask the Expert Column

By Miri Talabac

Pachysandra Problems

Q: My long-established Pachysandra bed is dying in patches, and some of the stems and leaves have brown blotches. Is this blight, and what can I do?

A: “Blight” is a catch-all term used for a variety of quick-killing infections. In this case, Volutella Blight is the culprit affecting Pachysandra. (The same genus of fungus can also infect boxwoods.) Conditions of dense growth and accumulated fallen leaves underneath the Pachysandra “canopy” contribute to poor air circulation that promotes or worsens infections.

Fungicide is not recommended for a variety of reasons. First, it’s not very effective in this situation, and getting the good coverage necessary for adequate control with a dense planting like that is not easy. Second, treatments cannot cure existing infection, only prevent new infections on stillhealthy growth, if they work well at all. (Some growth might look clean only to be harboring an infection that hasn’t manifested symptoms yet, so a treatment would fail to protect it.) Third, even though these pesticides target pathogens, they can still have negative impacts on other organisms and could risk pollinator health if exposed.

Instead, sanitation is the best method of getting a handle on a rampant infection. Cut down the symptomatic areas (and slightly beyond them, to make sure you excise it all), or even the entire planting, with a weed-whacker. (Mowing might suffice, but could prove too difficult, especially if your mower blades are not sharp.) Then, rake or blow out the debris and trash it; don’t compost unless you use a hot-com- posting method to ensure pathogen spores are killed. The Pachysandra should regrow well if its root system is otherwise in good shape. Given how dry most of the area has been so far, monitoring for irrigation needs is important.

Having said all that, Japanese Pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis), the type most gardeners will be growing, is non-native and can be invasive in the Mid-Atlantic. It’s been documented in natural areas in at least 10 Maryland counties. As such, we discourage its use overall, so if you’re open to it, just remove the entire planting instead of dealing with the Volutella and install a mix of different species in its place, ideally native. Using a variety of species instead of a monoculture will add resilience to the planting as a whole, and may improve its wildlife value and seasonal aesthetic interest as well.

Flocked Cherry Trees

Q: Parts of my cherry laurel and cherry tree bark look like they’ve been flocked like a Christmas tree…white and slightly fluffy. What kind of fungus might this be? There’s been a bit of dieback but given how infected it looks, I’m surprised it’s not worse.

A: The culprit here is actually not a disease but an insect—White Prunicola Scale. The males of this species tend to congregate into these snowy masses, although all scale feed on plant juices and when numerous, can cause a loss of plant vigor and branch dieback. This particular scale has three generations per year, with the approximate crawler (hatchling) emergence times being late May, late July, and September. Nuances in temperature differences around the region and from year to year, or even from one location in a yard to another (say, a hedge out in the open versus one up against a hot wall), will shift these dates a bit. See our White Prunicola Scale web page at https:// extension.umd.edu/resource/whiteprunicola-scale for more details.

Scale management is challenging and can take over a year to be successful in reducing their numbers. While several beneficial insects consume scale, they can be hard to detect and they won’t eradicate an extensive infestation. You can try physical removal

(trimming out localized scale colonies or gently scrubbing them off bark) or chemical. Or just avoid dealing with them entirely by removing a heavily infested plant, especially if it’s already died back some, and start fresh with a different species. Scale tend to have wide host ranges, but this species is seen most commonly and abundantly on cherry laurel and their flowering and fruiting cherry tree cousins, plus lilacs.

If resorting to pesticides, always keep flowering in mind so plants are not treated while being visited by pollinators. Low-toxicity contact insecticides like horticultural oil can kill scale crawlers (before they’re shielded by a waxy “shell” as they mature), but repeat applications are needed for each generation and thorough contact with all infested bark is necessary, which can be hard to achieve in dense shrubs or mature trees. Systemic (plantabsorbed) products can be very effective. Since these ingredients persist in plant tissues for weeks or months, though, select a short-residual product and avoid treatment during flowering. Some ingredients in this category are illegal for the general public to apply in Maryland, so hire a certified pesticide applicator in that case. Insect growth regulators (IGRs) can be a good middle-ground choice for lowering risk but should also be applied by a professional so they are appropriately chosen and timed to the right life stage of the scale. Finding active crawlers, the most vulnerable life stage for treatments, is key and often requires magnification to confirm their presence, which is why experienced hired help is valuable.

Miri Talabac is a Certified Professional Horticulturist who has worked as a horticulture consultant for the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center since 2019. To ask a gardening or pest question, go to http:// extension.umd.edu/hgic and scroll to “connect with us.” Digital photos can be attached.

The Creative Vegetable Gardener: 60 Ways to Cultivate Joy, Playfulness, and Beauty along with a Bounty of Food

Author: Kelly S. Trimble

Publisher: Storey Publishing

List Price: $19.99

Order Links: https://amzn.to/3qTGyLm and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781635865035

Reviewer: Marissa Yelenik

While many people are interested in gardening and creating their own organic foods, the task can be daunting to a population so far removed from their farming roots. Kelly Trimble attempts to bridge this gap between the known and unknown for all interested in starting a new garden, or just revamping the style and meaning behind their current garden. From wellness to simple botany, from art to the different types of insects your garden may be dealing with, this book has it all.

Trimble is based in Tennessee, zone 7a, which shares a zone with much of the DMV area. However, a lot of the information and advice can be applied almost anywhere.

The book is made up of four different sections that advise readers about how to create their own creative gardening space to enrich their lives while explaining how it will help them in the long term. The book contains beautiful full-page photos, caretaking instructions for different types of edible plants, methods for planting, designing and harvesting, and so much more.

The first section of the book, “AMEND: Rethink the Rules of Vegetable Gardening,” challenges the standards for vegetable gardening.

Trimble encourages gardeners to keep their mindset open to new ideas and broaden their creative horizons. Some of her considerations include deciding whether rectangular raised beds are better for you, if gardeners really need to keep traditional ledgers of their planting, and harvests, how to think of bugs, and more. It includes additional information about how much shade or sun and water different edible plants may need.

The second section, “DIG DEEPER: Grow for More Abundance and Joy,” explores the gardener’s relationship with their garden, rather than just the outcome. It encourages gardeners to “connect on a spiritual level with the garden and the act of growing and caring for plants” to benefit both themselves and the earth around them. The chapter explains the positive reactions that can occur between gardeners and the earth, tapping into mindfulness while working on your garden, how community growth can happen as a result of gardening, and recognizing and honoring the gardeners who came before us. The chapter helps readers stay in tune with the earth and history of their area. The chapter also includes additional instruction-based information, including medicinal benefits of herbs.

The third section, “CULTIVATE: Make a Personal Garden Space,” promotes readers to find their own styles rather than simply following the ones set out for them, while explaining why some rules exist and what should be considered before breaking them. It examines different shapes in gardening and both practical and abstract aspects of each of them, with pictures supplementing the different possibilities.

The fourth section, “BRANCH OUT: Evolve Your Gardening Practice,” takes a more technical approach to gardening. It considers the different types of insects that may live in the garden, both the good and the bad, and ways that the bad can be dealt with without damaging the surrounding plants. It also describes how pollinators can be drawn in and assisted in their job, how to choose different plants to harvest year round, which cut flowers may be ideal to pair with your garden, and

“embracing organized chaos” by trying tons of diverse options in different ways.

This book is a great choice for any gardeners (or aspiring gardeners) who are interested in expanding their gardens beyond the traditional simple separated boxes, or wish to get more out of the experience than just the harvest. With both abstract and more instructional advice, it can appeal to many different groups of people. It can help you get more in touch with the land around you and inspired to learn more about the history of what surrounds you every day. o

Marissa Yelenik is a rising junior journalism and psychology major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is an intern this summer with Washington Gardener. She is a Savage, Maryland, native and amateur gardener

Tiny + Wild. Build a Small-Scale Meadow Anywhere

Author: Graham Laird Gardner

Publisher: Cool Springs Press/Quarto Order Link: https://amzn.to/3qTv62i and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9780760376232

Cost: $24.99

Reviewer: Marsha Douma

Tiny + Wild, subtitled Build a SmallScale Meadow Anywhere, is a worthwhile entry in the collection of books nudging gardeners toward using more native plants in their landscapes to create ecologically friendly habitats that are compatible with and beneficial to their particular environments. The author clearly personally connects with wild spaces and expansive vistas. The goal of the book is to share with and explain to readers how they too can design beautiful gardens of all shapes and sizes using native plants, to bring some “wilderness” home, and in that process be part of the effort to introduce more biodiversity into our gardens, and the world in general.

For sure, the author doesn’t expect readers to equate the unique pleasure of vast vistas of nature with what can be accomplished when some portion of the turfgrass of a standard urban or suburban lawn is replaced with native plants. Rather, he encourages us to use our imaginations and distill the essential information relevant for our location and the size of the plantable space we want to naturalize, to bring a piece of the “wild,” however small, into our home landscapes.

In the beginning of the book, the author gives the environmental rationale for making the switch to native plants. This information is provided as a summary. For those readers who are interested, the author suggests excellent reference books provide a more complete explanation of the perilous situation insects, birds, and other small mammals are currently finding themselves in due to increasingly rapid loss of their habitat, which is only exacerbated by climate change. The author also mentions the surprisingly high levels of noise and air pollution created by lawn mowers, and the general limitations of the turfgrass lawn. To give readers yet another reason to use natives and “wild” our gardens, he notes the benefit that after the plants are established, a garden of natives requires lower maintenance compared to plants that did not evolve to survive and thrive in our soil with our weather.

The author has been a landscape designer for 25 years. Within that time, there has been a sea change in many parts of the professional horticultural and landscape design communities, away from primarily using traditional garden design principles that emphasize turfgrass lawns and the arrangements of plants selected for their individuality compared to a more natural design that mimics the seem- ingly random placement of plants in a meadow or elsewhere in nature. The plants in the latter function more as a unit performing various purposes in the biodiverse ecosystem they evolved in. Native plants are chosen with varying blooming times, as are most plants in a traditional garden, not only to make the garden beautiful, but to simultaneously provide pollen and nectar for as long as the growing season permits.The individual plants are not the stars; the collection of plants are, because collectively they provide habitat, food, and protection for the living creatures they share space with.

Providing these safe havens is becoming increasingly necessary as the dual threats posed by climate change and the loss of habitat accelerate.

There are many challenges to convincing the average homeowner and our governmental municipalities to replace some of our lawns with gardens filled with beautiful natives, particularly the keystone plants. Most of our gardens are a collection of plants from around the world. The more mature the garden, the more the plants will reflect the evolving popularity of different kinds of plants and garden designs. The switch to prioritizing planting natives is accepting the imperative to do so. I think the other and very real hurdle is changing people’s sense of what gardens can and should look like. “Design by nature” is a movement to have our gardens mimic how plants naturally arrange themselves in woodlands, meadows, stream beds, etc., in the eco-regions where we live. To help the reader appreciate how beautiful these kind of a gardens can be, the book is filled with photographs of such places. If we have come to view a vast expanse of turf grass as beautiful, certainly we can come to appreciate the beauty of natives as well.

The bulk of the book explains in clear detail all the considerations a landscape designer contemplates before planting a new garden—be it a meadow of natives or any other selection of plants. The book is a mini course in landscape design. In that regard, an initial read from front to back might feel overwhelming for a beginner, but there is a wealth of useful information in this book that can benefit any level of gardener. o

Marsha Douma is a retired dentist and lifelong gardener who also enjoys swimming, tennis, and playing the piano. She lives in Rockville, MD.

The Garden Apothecary: Transform Flowers, Weeds and Plants Into Healing Remedies

Author: Becky Cole

Publisher: Hardie Grant Books

List Price: $24.99

Order Link: https://amzn.to/3CyKu6P and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781784884376

Reviewer: Taylor Edwards

When you think of weeds, you usually think of pests in your garden that should be removed right away. Becky Cole transforms that perspective into healing remedies that you can make from the ingredients in your backyard. The book encourages readers to reconsider how plants are connected to wellness. Cole says that working in a garden helps you connect with the soil, wildlife, and the seasons. By doing this, you can turn your garden into your “very own wild apothecary” by growing herbs.

The book is split into four chapters that teach the basics of foraging, starting a home apothecary, and plant profiles, with recipes sprinkled throughout.

The first chapter, “Herbs & Herbalism,” explains how growing medicinal plants can help save money and support our immune systems naturally. It describes how you only need a small outdoor space to start. Although the book is based on herbs, the author mentions how edible flowers have multiple purposes for remedies.

In the second chapter, “The Home Apothecary,” Cole says you don’t need a lot of equipment to start an apothecary because most of it resides in your kitchen already. She also describes the step-by-step process of harvesting and drying herbs.

“Apothecary Techniques,” the third chapter, covers how to create teas, honeys, syrups, balms, and more using techniques curated for different herbs. It was fascinating to learn how many diverse ways herbs can be used. On some pages, there are references to recipes that the book covers later on.

The fourth chapter, “Plant Profiles,” takes a deep dive into recipes that accompany different plants. This bulk of the book explains each plant’s various purposes, how to harvest them, and two unique recipes that each could be used for. I was surprised at how versatile plants are and how you can heal your body naturally through these recipes.

This comprehensive book is perfect for people who want to start their own miniature pharmacy in their backyard and get more use out of herbs. It’s easy to follow along and learn more about both medical terms and harvesting. The book has various recipes that can replace your everyday items, such as lavender lotion, lemon lip balm, teas, and ointments. After reading this, you’ll have a new appreciation for all sorts of plants and recipes that are accessible right out of your garden. o

Taylor Edwards is a rising senior majoring in journalism with a minor in Black Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland. She is a native of Waldorf, MD, and an intern this summer with Washington Gardener

The Seasonal Gardener: Creative Planting Combinations

Author: Anna Pavord

Publisher: Phaidon Press

List Price: $49.95

Order Link: https://amzn.to/3CAbd2Z and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781838663988

Reviewer: James Dronenburg

I am not a fan of this book. First, because it is a book of “combinations”—60 highlighted plants, each with two highlighted companion plants, sometimes blooming with the featured plant and sometimes blooming at other times, to give multiple use to the space taken by the featured plant. In the back, there is an alphabetical listing of each featured plant, with a lot more suggested companions. If the book had taken all of these into in-depth consideration as well as the two highlights, it would have been much better.

Secondly, this is a rework of a book the author wrote some 20 years back (she says this in the preface).

Thirdly, I’m sorry, but this is a British book. Perhaps things like Italian arums and ostrich ferns aren’t thugs there, but they certainly are here.

The book is arranged by the bloom time of the featured plants. This is, of course, fairly “off” from the Washington, DC-area calendar, and the book incidentally does not include much of what one has to do to make the plants happy in the UK, much less here. It also has such items as “astilbe” without mentioning cultivar, which of course means different heights, foliage color, bloom time…You get the idea. And this extends to the companion plants. And speaking of color, the light is supposedly different there. A combination that works in that light may—or may not—work here. If you can get everything to grow. There are, for example, several lovely shots of masses of Cyclamen coum. This does not spread, except from seed, and plants are, at the cheapest place I know, $10 a pop. If C. coum is happy, it will seed. Expect a wonderful patch in 10 to 15 years. If the Italian arums and ostrich ferns haven’t eaten them.

My favorite item-to-diss is the featured “Quail” narcissus. Companions? Euphorbia amygdoloides v. robbiae, and feverfew. Pavord does at least mention that you have to keep after those two each year, mentioning that each is an “enthusiastic self seeder.” She does not mention the contact allergy that many people have to euphorbia sap. Incidentally, between featured and companion plants pictured, eight out of the 60 item pages have euphorbias of one sort or another.

There is no such thing, of course, as a totally bad idea, and I have some of the combinations listed myself. But it is not reason enough to buy this book new. Instead, go to your local library or used bookstore, and buy the original Plant Partners (I have that myself). o

Note: These book reviews include links to Amazon.com and BookShop. org for ordering them. Washington Gardener Magazine may receive a few cents from each order placed after you click on these links.

Love Reading?

The book reviews in this issue are by volunteer members of the Washington Gardener Reader Panel. To join the Washington Gardener Volunteer Reader Panel, send an email with your name and address to: KathyJentz@gmail.com. We look forward to having you be a vital part of our local publication and its gardening mission. o