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Washington Gardener Magazine’s staff and writers are available to speak to groups and garden clubs in the DC region and ONLINE! Call 240.603.1461 or email KathyJentz@gmail.com for available dates, rates, and topics.

RARE AND EXCEPTIONAL PLANTS FOR THE DISCRIMINATING GARDENER AND COLLECTOR

Barry Glick

Sunshine Farm and Gardens 696 Glicks Road

Renick, WV 24966, USA

Email: barry@sunfarm.com www.sunfarm.com

Green Spring Gardens

www.greenspring.org

A “must visit” for everyone in the metropolitan Washington, DC, area. It’s a year-round goldmine of information and inspiration for the home gardener. It’s an outdoor classroom for children and their families to learn about plants and wildlife. It’s also a museum, a national historic site that offers glimpses into a long, rich history with colonial origins. Located at 4603 Green Spring Rd., Alexandria, VA. Information: 703-642-5173.

Tulipa ‘Jill Biden’ joins a small group of beautiful tulips bearing the names of American First Ladies. Seven First Ladies have tulips named in their honor: Tulipas ‘Mrs. Cleveland’, ‘Mrs. Grace Coolidge’, ‘Eleanor Roosevelt’, ‘Lady Bird Johnson’, ‘Barbara Bush’, ‘Hillary Clinton’, and ‘Laura Bush’.

Got a Garden Question?

Got a gardening question you need answered? Send your questions to KathyJentz@gmail.com and use the subject line “Q&A.” Then look for your answered questions in upcoming issues.

Bearded Iris ‘Little John’ in the garden of Carol Warner (Draycott Gardens), Upperco, MD. It was hybridized by Donald Spoon and registered in 1995. You can find out more about Bearded Iris breeding and registration procedures at the American Iris Society’s website, www.irises.org.

The Eastern Phoebe, named for its song (fee-bee!), is a familiar and energetic flycatcher. The bird embodies the Roman meaning of “phoebe”—bright, and full of hidden knowledge.

Credits

Kathy Jentz Editor/Publisher

Washington Gardener

826 Philadelphia Ave. Silver Spring, MD 20910

Phone: 301-588-6894 kathyjentz@gmail.com www.washingtongardener.com

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter

Proofreader

Jessica Harden

Intern

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In the Pink...

This issue is about a week late. The reason for the delay is that I came down with a respiratory virus that knocked me flat, after more than three years of not being sick one day, which I credit to all the masking and COVID-19 precautions, but I guess I was overdue for getting something at this point. I’m still feeling lingering fatigue and an occasional cough, but otherwise am up and pretty much back to normal.

In addition to delaying this issue for a bit, I paused the GardenDC podcast for a couple weeks, because I know no one wants to hear me croaking my way through that. We’ll be back with new episodes in early June. It also gave me a little time to pause and celebrate two big podcast milestones: completing our 150th episode and blowing past 100,000 total listens. I’m grateful to all of our podcast supporters, guests, listeners, and interns who have helped us reach those two accomplishments.

In the garden, I have trays of vegetable seedlings to be planted and lots of annual flowers to pot up in containers. I can’t wait to get out there and get the summer season started!

Sincerely,

Kathy Jentz, Editor/Publisher, Washington Gardener

KathyJentz@gmail.com

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Volume 18, Number 3

ISSN 1555-8959

© 2023 Washington Gardener

All rights reserved. Published monthly. No material may be reproduced without prior written permission. This magazine is purchased by the buyer with the understanding that the information presented is from various sources from which there can be no warranty or responsibility by the publisher as to legality, completeness, or technical accuracy.

Reader Contest

For our May 2023 Washington Gardener Reader Contest, we are giving away a Daylily ‘Handwriting on the Wall’ from Three Shovels Farm (value $18).

This beautiful daylily was created by renowned daylily breeder Karol Emmerich. It has 6-inch, triangular-shaped flowers that are peach with a wine-purple eye. Like watercolor paint, the purple color blends to lavender toward the yellow throat for a stunning display. A thin, purple picotee edge frames the blooms. It is a short plant, growing to about 24 inches high, and is a mid-season bloomer. Three Shovels Farm (https://threeshovelsfarm.com/) is a small, family-owned mail-order nursery in South Carolina that specializes in daylilies, Louisiana iris, Japanese iris, and Siberian iris.

To enter, send an email to WashingtonGardenerMagazine@gmail.com by 5:00pm on May 31 with “Daylily” in the subject line and in the body of the email. Tell us what your favorite article was in this issue and why. Please include your full name and mailing address. The winner will be announced and notified about June 1. o

Your Ad Here

Are you trying to reach thousands of gardeners in the greater DC region/MidAtlantic area? Washington Gardener Magazine goes out in the middle of every month. Contact KathyJentz@gmail.com or call 301.588.6894 for ad rates (starting from $200). The ad deadline is the 5th of each month. Please submit your ad directly to: KathyJentz@gmail.com.

April 2023 Issue

My favorite article [in the April 2023 issue] was the short one on Paw Paws. I really like Paw Paws and look for them when in the woods. It is interesting reading about their requirements for pollination especially by flies, as I was not aware this was what happened.

~ Dorothy Cichra, Silver Spring, MD

I enjoyed the April 2023 article on “Who’s Dining in my Garden.” I have frequent visitors to my yard, especially deer.

~ Ann Baker, Woodbridge, VA

November 2022 Issue

My favorite article in the November 2022 issue was on Carolina Chickadees, because they have long been a favorite feeder visitor of mine and I enjoyed learning more about them, especially how to tell them apart from the Black-capped Chickadee.

~ Maya O’Connor, Washington DC

My favorite article in the November 2022 issue was “A Living Wall at the NMCPPC Wheaton Headquarters.” I live in Wheaton and had no idea this living wall and the park’s headquarters were there. Now I’ll have to take a field trip to check it out.

~ Francine Krasowska, Silver Spring, MD

My favorite article in the November 2022 issue is “Carolina Chickadee,” because it is one of my favorite birds, especially in winter when its cheerful call brightens up even the greyest winter day. I learned about how the chickadee couples share their parenting responsibilities.

~ Phyllis Downey, Pasadena, MD

Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR) is an easy program to participate in and really does not take any extra resources than what you may have in your garden. In normal times, about 35 million people wonder where their next meal will come from. Most of these are children. That’s where PAR steps in.

PAR is such a simple program: It urges gardeners to Plant A Row (or a container) dedicated to feeding the hungry, and then take the harvest to someplace or someone that needs it. Once you have donated, send an email to KathyJentz@gmail.com with the total (in pounds and ounces) of what you gave. That is all there is to it. Easy. Effective. Adaptable and Helpful.

I found your articles on crickets and the Carolina Chickadee very interesting [in the November 2022 issue]. I have had crickets in the basement of my 120+-year-old house forever. Interestingly, they have recently started to occasionally come upstairs as well. And while I cannot be sure, I think it may be the crickets who are eating the peanut butter out of my basement mouse trap without setting it off. Quite a feat if it is, in fact, the crickets.

~ Marsha Douma, Rockville, MD o

From tending to a vegetable garden as a teenager and studying horticulture in college to owning his own plant nursery, Jeff Kushner has dreamed of turning Plants Alive! into a plant Mecca to share his love of plants.

Tell us about yourself and your background.

I began my journey of working with plants when my father suggested that we create a 10' x 10' vegetable garden when I was 14 years old. I was hooked from that point on. I had plants all over my backyard during the summer months.

I studied horticulture at the University of Maryland from 1976 to 1980, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree. I also experimented with plants in my dorm room at college. I read anything that I could get my hands on that had to do with tropical plants. I can still remember which plants I had then and when I was a kid.

Can you tell us how Plants Alive! got started?

Plants Alive! was started by a man named Milt Millon sometime in the mid-1970s. Plants Alive! originally created small landscaped boxes using dried beans, moss, etc. Sort of like a terrarium, but with dried material.