Salix alba ‘Chermesina’ (coral bark willow)

The vibrant coral to orange-yellow stems of Salix alba ‘Chermesina’ offer a big dose of therapeutic late-winter color in the Hudson Valley. At Loomis Creek,  we depend on ‘Chermesina’ and other willows for visual delight in our slowly reawakening March gardens.

Around the nursery we pollard 3-4 stems of Salix alba ‘Chermesina’ to a height of roughly 5 feet. All of the previous season’s growth is pruned to a stub in late March or early April. Sometimes we delay the pruning to give early-bird nursery customers a chance to see this stunning willow when we reopen for the season. Pollarding encourages a close rounded head of brightly colored branches to form. Vigorous, upright stems (rods) grow 4-10’ in a season; they are very flexible and quickly regain posture after heavy wet winter snows.

During active spring growth, twig color rapidly fades and stems sprout green leaves with silvery undersides. Plants fade into the background until leaf drop in October when stems color anew. Do the math – that’s 4-5 months of nonstop color in the off-season. Hard to beat!

P.S. Salix alba ‘Chermesina’ is often confused with the cultivar ‘Britzensis’. Michael Dirr in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants suggests that these 2 cultivars are indistinguishable to most eyes. I tend to agree.

Culture: Full sun to part shade; grows rapidly in moist soils.

Deer: Pollarding elevates branches beyond their reach.

2010 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

(We reopen for the season on April 1.)

MARCH
Saturday, March 20 – “BORDERS & POTS WITH PIZZAZZ,” class by Bob Hyland at Bard College cosponsored by the New York Botanical Garden; www.nybg.org/edu, or call 718-817-8747

Saturday, March 27 – SPRING FORWARD: Tips & Techniques for 365 Days of Gardening, workshop led by Margaret Roach & Bob Hyland at Berkshire Botanical Garden; www.berkshirebotanical.org, or call 413-298-3926

APRIL
Thursday, April 1 – Loomis Creek Nursery opens for 2010 season; 518-851-9801

Saturday, April 10 – Cornell Cooperative Extension Ulster County Garden Day; “BANG FOR THE BUCK: NONSTOP PLANTS”, keynote talk by Bob Hyland; www.cceulster.org

Saturday, April 17, 8:30am-1 pm (rain/snow date Saturday, April 24) – SPRING GARDENING 101 at the garden of Margaret Roach, Copake Falls, and Loomis Creek Nursery. Hands-on workshop led by Margaret & Bob with a focus on pruning basics, border cleanup, soil management, spring ephemerals, spring frost protection, cool-season vegetable gardening & more from the experts. Light breakfast refreshments included; $45/person with $5 Loomis Creek Cash coupon toward next nursery visit. ***Registration details, bottom of page***

MAY
Friday, May 7, 10am-5pm – Berkshire Botanical Garden Plant Sale; Bob Hyland of Loomis Creek Nursery selling his signature planted containers. www.berkshirebotanical.org

Sunday, May 9 (Mother’s Day weekend), 12-4pm – Plant talk and Loomis Creek Nursery Plant Sale at Olana State Historic Site, www.olana.org

Saturday, May 15 – TRADE SECRETS Rare Plant & Garden Antiques Show, Sharon, CT; Loomis Creek Nursery among nearly 60 vendors selling choice plants and garden antiques to benefit Women’s Support Services. www.tradesecretsct.com

Sunday, May 23, 10am-4pm – Garden Conservancy Open Days, Columbia County, NY – Loomis Creek on-site plant sale at the garden of Margaret Roach; www.gardenconservancy.org for directions to Roach garden.

Saturday, May 29 (Memorial Day Weekend), 11am-1pm – CONTAINED EXUBERANCE: Container Design Workshop at Loomis Creek Nursery, with Bob Hyland and Margaret Roach. Learn to design and maintain exuberant pots with flowers, foliage, edibles, and woody plants; $18/person with $5 Creek Cash coupon good toward next visit. ***Registration details, bottom of page***

JUNE
Sat., June 5 – Hudson-Bush Plant Sale & Exchange at Clermont State Historic Site; Loomis Creek Nursery among more than 30 vendors selling heritage and heirloom plants; www.friendsofclermont.org

Saturday, June 12, 10am-4pm – Garden Conservancy Open Days, Columbia County, NY; www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays

Saturday, June 19 (Father’s Day Weekend), 11am-1pm – SUMMER GARDENING 101 at LCN, with Bob Hyland and Margaret Roach – Hands-on workshop with a focus on summer-blooming perennials, shrubs & grasses, timely border maintenance tips, summer watering strategies, staking and more; $18/person with $5 Creek Cash coupon toward next nursery visit. ***Registration details, bottom of page***

JULY
Saturday, July 3 (4th of July Weekend), 11am-1pm – CONTAINER GARDEN TUNEUP at Loomis Creek Nursery, with Bob Hyland and Margaret Roach. Refresh and invigorate your container plantings for the summer months; $18/person with $5 Creek Cash coupon toward next nursery visit.

AUGUST
Saturday, August 21, 10am-4pm – Copake Falls Day; garden of Margaret Roach open for tours with Loomis Creek Nursery on-site plant sale. www.copakefallsday.org

Saturday, August 28, 8am-5pm – Hollister House Garden Study Weekend, Washington, CT. Loomis Creek Nursery among 20 vendors selling choice plants for fall planting. www.hollisterhousegarden.org

SEPTEMBER
Friday, September 3 thru Monday, September 6 – ANNUAL LABOR DAY SALE at Loomis Creek Nursery.

Saturday, September 11, 8:30am-1 pm – SHADE GARDENING 101 at the garden of Margaret Roach & Loomis Creek Nursery. Practical hands-on workshop with approaches for designing, planting and/or rejuvenating a shade border. Fall is a great time for planting! Light breakfast refreshments included. $45/person with $5 Loomis Creek Cash coupon toward next nursery visit.  ***Registration details, bottom of page***

***To register for Loomis events marked with asterisks: Mail a check to “Loomis Creek Nursery,” including names and phone #’s of all registrants OR email info@loomiscreek.com with name and return phone number to contact for credit card info.

Salix ‘Swizzlestick’ (Corkscrew willow)

RIGHT NOW IN THE DEAD OF WINTER, we thrive on thickets of colorful stems at Loomis Creek. Curled, twisted, and contorted twigs and branches add interesting architecture, too. For these reasons Salix ‘Swizzlestick’ wins plant of the week status during the last week of January.

Our friend and Epimedium guru, Darrell Probst, gave us cuttings of this upright corkscrew willow. He discovered it along Interstate 295 on one his trips to Pennsylvania – or so the story goes! In our minds Salix ‘Swizzlestick’ is a worthy improvement on Salix matsudana ‘Tortuosa’ – the more common corkscrew willow that often has an awkward shape and presence in gardens.

Salix ‘Swizzlestick’ produces sturdy, amber-yellow vertical stems that are fancifully gnarled and twisted. Characteristic of willows, growth is rapid – particularly in moist soils. In 2 to 3 years, ‘Swizzlestick’ reaches 20 feet with a distinct narrow, fastigiate outline.  We favor planting young, 1-gallon plants of ‘Swizzlestick’ on 2-foot centers forcing them to intertwine for quick hedges and visual screens. A 60-foot-long planting forms the back wall of our nursery shade house (pictured).

Young, vigorous ‘Swizzlestick’ stems reward you with the most vibrant coral-orange hues after leaf drop in fall and winter. We coppice (the practice of cutting plants to ground level) our hedge of Salix ‘Swizzlestick’ every season in late March or early April. We harvest the stems for new propagation material, flower arranging material, pea staking, and swizzlesticks for cocktails (only kidding!). Stumps rapidly regenerate shoots during May and June that top out at 10 feet by mid-summer.

So, if Salix ‘Swizzlestick’ catches your fancy, talk to us now about propagating a quantity of starter plants to suit your needs.

USDA Zone 5; full sun to part shade.

I TOOK A BREAK FROM CUTTING BACK PERENNIALS and arranging nursery pots for winter storage to travel down to NYC to tour The High Line in late November. Walking in this elevated urban garden with colleague Patrick Cullina, High Line VP of Horticulture, was therapeutic, and really got me thinking about how much I love and rely on grasses like the giant Miscanthus and Calamagrostis brachytricha (above).

Nostalgic for the greens and rainbow flower colors of the season just past, I was energized by the tawny, brown and straw-colored ornamental grasses and fading asters at the High Line (above). Here and there the wiry, still-green stems of Molinia caerulea cultivars (purple moor grass) etched the plant compositions. These magical borders were particularly edgy against leaden, misty skies in fading afternoon light. I needed this dose of artful plant design before the inevitable distractions of trees laden with LED holiday lights, air-inflated snowmen, and WINTER.

Back at Loomis Creek, my appreciation for our own grass borders is rekindled. Red-fruited colonies of Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’ (winterberry holly) corralled in a sea of brown Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ (switch grass) are electric. In the distance, the russet needles of Taxodium distichum (bald cypress) growing happily along Loomis Creek casts distinct shape and presence. I am reminded that brown in all of its tints and hues is the unheralded color of the season.

Ornamental grasses (that’s Calamagrostis brachytricha to the left of Panicum virgatum ‘Dallas Blues,’ above) are one of Andrew’s and my specialties at Loomis Creek and we use them freely and creatively in our design work. Requests for naturalistic grass borders and meadow plantings has clearly been on the rise this fall. We are glad to see gardeners embracing this garden style in the Hudson Valley–particularly in Columbia County, where grasses seem a natural fit in our rolling, pastoral landscape. Some thoughts about using them:

• Grasses are great low-maintenance plants and only need to be cut back to the ground once a season.

• We let sturdy-stemmed, warm-season grasses (Miscanthus, Panicum) stand through winter; cool-season grasses that push new foliage early in the spring (Calamagrostis) are cut back now.

• Chasmanthium latifolium (northern sea oats) offers tawny dangling seed heads in winter gardens. It freely reseeds, so give it room.

• Miscanthus x giganteus at 12-foot-tall (top photo) makes the biggest winter statement in Loomis Creek borders. It’s a customer favorite.

• Grasses offer a wide range of foliage color; they’re not just green!

Ilex verticillata (Winterberry)

AS OUR HUDSON VALLEY GARDENS go leafless and become more transparent, Ilex verticillata (winterberry) shines. The scarlet-red to coral-orange fruits really pop against leafless, gray-black stems as the foliage yellows and drops.

Winterberries are most colorful and give the best punch from October to December in our region. We share the vibrant fruits with migrating and resident birds. In the last few years, flocks of robins discover our winterberry colonies anytime from Thanksgiving to Christmas when they devour the plentiful fruits in a day-long drunken orgy. The first time this happened I was highly annoyed that birds (particularly robins!) were depriving me of my winter color fix. I’ve learned to be more tolerant and live in better step with nature – Andrew may disagree! Now we depend on other plants like colorful twiggy dogwoods and willows for prolonged winter color.

Ilex verticillata cultivars favored at Loomis Creek:

Winter Red – luscious, 3/8”-diameter, intensely red fruits arranged in spiral patterns along stems; male pollinator = ‘Southern Gentleman’

‘Winter Gold’ – coral-orange, 3/8”-diameter fruits; sport of Winter Red; male pollinator = ‘Southern Gentleman’

‘Sparkleberry’ – robust hybrid with heavy red fruit set; male pollinator = ‘Apollo’

Note: For optimum pollination and fruit set, plant at least 1 male plant within 50 feet of every 10 females.

Growing tips: Ilex verticillata is a wetland species by nature, but readily adapts to most garden soils. If happy, plants will colonize slowly, suckering (sending up new stems) from underground roots. At Loomis Creek, we’ve planted winterberry on our wet, clay slopes above Loomis Creek (yes, there is a “real” creek by that name) where they prosper. Deer like to browse on winterberries, so use deer repellent or fencing.