Spring In The Hills - Tour of Gardens

Spring in the Hills Tour of Gardens presented by the Little Rock Council of Garden Clubs.

Ten beautiful gardens located on Edgehill, and in the Heights and Hillcrest areas will be available for touring on Saturday, May 2 from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm and Sunday, May 3 from 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm.

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door and can be purchased at most local nurseries or by calling 663-7515.

Janet Carson will be telecasting her radio show on Saturday morning from one of the gardens. Garden Experts will be available at all gardens.

"Spring... A Time To Till" Garden Workshop May 2nd

The Master Gardeners of Nevada County are offering a workshop for garden enthusiasts on May 2nd in Prescott at the Central Baptist Church, Stokes Center. The workshop will begin at 9:00 a.m. continuing until 3:45 p.m.

Participants will enjoy presentations from Sandy Nall - Daylilies Not Just A Pretty Face , Patty Bishop - Herb Chat, Larry Averill - Coleus Foliage Wonders, and Bob Byers - Design with Color.

Pre-registration is requested. Cost to attend is $15.00 per person and includes lunch. For additional information contact the Nevada County Extension Office either through email or at 870-887-2818.

Proceeds from the day will fund ongoing Nevada County Master Gardener community projects.

Gardenwalk 2009 - Conway, Faulkner County

The Faulkner County Master Gardeners will host the second Gardenwalk on Saturday, May 23rd, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Gardenwalk 2009 will feature six gardens in west Conway, showcasing mostly sun gardens. Some of the gardens feature pool landscaping, and others highlight creative use of grasses, perennials and annuals.

Tickets can be purchased at each garden for $10, and advance tickets can be purchased for $8 at the Conway Chamber of Commerce.

Tickets will also be available Faulkner County MG Plant Sale on May 16 at the County Fairgrounds.

For more information contact Jan Spann.

Plant Health Clinic News, Issue #7, April 13, 2009

The Plant Health Clinic News is a valuable resource that is created by Sherrie Smith, and I wanted to let everyone know about it. Sherrie is our very own Plant Diagnostician located in Lonoke.

The Plant Health Clinic News is always available to you online, and it is kept very relevant to plant health issues that are occuring as we speak.

In the current issue you can find information about Lettuce drop, Ivy anthracnose, Rose midge, and Stubby-root nematodes.

The current issue is here, and previous issues can be found here.

Herb Chats Seminar - Clark County

An herb seminar titled Herb Chats will be hosted by the Clark County Master Gardeners and held on Thursday, April 23 from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. The seminar will be held at the Clark County Fairgrounds and presented by Patty Bishop of the Red Dirt Master Gardeners in Miller County.

If you know of others that might be interested, I have a flyer that could be used for promotion. Email me and I will forward it to you.

Plant of the Week: Wild Gingers (Asarum canadense)

In my shade garden grow several wild gingers, members of the genus Asarum. Over the years, most have spread happily, wheedling their way into nooks and crannies around the garden and into my affection as well. Based on the amount of scientific ink that has been spilled on this group of lowly plants, I'm not the only one who has found them intriguing.

Asarums are temperate groundcovers of the northern hemisphere and occurs widely in North America, Europe and Asia. They belong to the small tropical birthwort family (Aristolochiaceae) that's best known for its unusual "Dutchman's pipe" flowers. The Asarums apparently originated in Asia but had spread across the ancient landmasses before the continents went their separate ways.

The most common and prolific of my wild gingers is Asarum canadense. It's a 6-inch tall creeping groundcover that spreads by means of fleshy, pinkie sized rhizomes, eventually forming colonies several feet across. It produces heart-shaped, deciduous 4-inch wide leaves that appear in early spring and persist until the first hard freezes of fall.

Asarum flowers appear in early spring with the new leaves, but they're easily overlooked because they emerge buried beneath leaves and other debris of the forest floor. They're borne singly at the end of a rhizome and are ½-inch long and wide, fuzzy, brown in color with three reflexed sepals. Though interesting, they're not all that showy.

But amongst botanists, the flowers have caused lots of controversy. Structurally, the flowers are arranged in such a way that it's obvious there should be something out there cross-pollinating them. Everything from slugs to fungus gnats have been proposed, but current research indicates most species are self-fruitful, only rarely being cross-pollinated.

When successfully pollinated, the flowers produce seeds which have a nutritious oily coating called an 'elaiosome' which ants find irresistible. The ants carry the seeds back to their nests, enjoy their feast and discard the seeds where they come up willy-nilly in the garden.

Botanists have had difficulty defining the limits of the wild ginger genus. The splitters consider only 20 or so species to belong to the genus Asarum, relegating the other 60 species to three separate, closely related genera. The lumpers though seem to be winning the day and modern classification schemes recombine the groups as separate subgenera within the Asarum genus.

Wild gingers have a long list of ethnobotanical uses, not the least of which is as a substitute for the tropical ginger root. Wild ginger has a similar taste to tropical ginger but is only about one third as strong. In addition to its culinary use, it was also used as a part of the Native American pharmacopoeia, treating everything from infections to various kinds of internal ailments. Meriwether Lewis, probably under the instruction of Sacagawea, pounded the roots and leaves of wild ginger to form a poultice which they applied to Joe Potts' swollen and inflamed leg which he cut with a knife in Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains. He quickly recovered.

But in 2001, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against using wild ginger in cookery or as an herbal remedy due to the presence of aristolochic acid, a substance known to cause kidney failure and possibly cancer.

Wild gingers do well in moist, fertile woodland soils where they can grow undisturbed. Most are hardy from zones 4 to 8. They're ideal for use along walkways, in woodland rock gardens or as a groundcover. Once established, they're tough, thrive without special care and persist for many years. Clumps can be divided in early spring.

In Japan, wild gingers are collected by enthusiasts for their colorful mottled foliage and unusual but showy flowers. One nursery is offering more than 30 cultivars of these unusual gingers for hobbyists who're looking for a pot plant that's easier to grow than an orchid and can be left outside over winter.

For more information about horticulture or to see other "Plant of the Week" columns, visit extension's Web site, or contact your county extension agent. The Cooperative Extension Service is part of the U of A Division of Agriculture.

Plant of the Week: Pearlbush (Exochorda racemosa)

During the 20^th century, American gardens went through a transformation towards greenness.

A century ago, the shrubs in most American gardens were leafless in winter with spireas, lilacs, flowering quince, mock orange and forsythia being common. Evergreens such as yews and junipers began more common early in the century but azaleas and hollies didn't appear until mid-century.

Pearlbush, though no longer common, was one of the deciduous shrubs of this bygone era.

Pearlbush (Exochorda racemosa) is a member of the rose family and most closely related to the spireas, except pearlbush has a larger flower more reminiscent of an apple. It's a large shrub, growing 12 feet tall and wide, with thick, brown stems and a coarse overall texture.

Four species are known, with two in China and two in adjacent areas of central Asia.

Leaves appear early in the spring before flowering and are a medium green, whitish beneath, and 2- to 3 inches long. Unfortunately they don't produce any fall color. Odorless, pure white flowers are 1.5 inches across, five-petaled, with each petal narrowing at the base and produced from a cuplike calyx appear in mid-spring. Flowers are produced on a raceme at the end of each branch and, just before they fully open, resemble a strand of pure white pearls.

The name Exochorda comes from a cord (exo, or
outside, and chorde, a cord) that forms around the developing ovary, producing a dry fruit with five prominent ridges when it ripens in the fall. Though not invasive, it occasionally produces a seedling under its branches.

The common pearlbush is probably too large for most American gardens, but one of its hybrids, E. x macrantha 'The Bride' is more worthy. It grows only 3 feet tall and wide and is covered in pure white flowers each spring.

The venerable old nursery owned by Victor Lemoine of Nancy, France, introduced it about 1900. His son Emile probably did the actual breeding work. This firm was responsible for hundreds of lilac introductions and many of the still common mock orange, spirea and forsythia clones still grown today. It was probably the most important firm for new plant development in the world during the last third of the 19^th century.

Pearlbush is hardy from zones 4 through 8. Because it's relatively nondescript, except in flower, it's best used as a part of the shrub border or, in the case of 'The Pearl,' in the foundation planting. Plants should have at least six hours of sunlight and do best in a fertile, well drained loamy soil. It is unbothered by insect or disease and is very long lived once established.

For more information about horticulture or to see other "Plant of the Week" columns, visit the Cooperative Extension Service Web site, or contact your county extension agent. The Cooperative Extension Service is part of the U of A Division of Agriculture.