Category: Trees

Citizen Science / Conservation / Evergreen Shrubs / Garden Maintenance / Master Gardener Home Visits / Native Trees / Pruning Clinic / Sustainable Gardening / Tree Care / Trees / Trees in Winter

 by Elizabeth McCoy

The Annual Pruning Clinic

  Woody plants remain healthier, more productive and more beautiful with strategic, well-timed pruning.  Pruning young plants guides their growth into a strong and balanced structure.  Pruning older plants opens them up to sunlight and airflow, limiting the opportunities for disease to infect them.  Proper pruning can also rejuvenate them with new, more vigorous growth. Pruning wisely is both an art and a science.  Some homeowners and gardeners may have questions about how and when to prune the many shrubs...

Conifers Every Master Gardener Should Know

Evergreen trees / Garden Design / Native Trees / Plant Literacy / Soil Conservation / Sustainable Gardening / Trees / Trees in Winter

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Conifers Every Master Gardener Should Know

Conifers Pinus taeda, Loblolly Pine Pinus virginiana, Virginia Pine Pinus palustris, Longleaf Pine Picea abies, Common Spruce Abies fraseri, Frasier Fir Tsuga canadensis, Eastern Hemlock Taxodium distichum, Bald Cypress Juniperus virginiana, Eastern Red Cedar x Hesperotropsis leylandii, Leyland Cypress The Beauty and Promise of Trees in Winter Planting Trees and Other Hacks to Manage Wet Soils Identifying Local Trees in Winter Native Trees Back to Plant Literacy Main Page  

Carbon Garden / Flowering Shrubs / Food Forest / Garden Design / Heirloom plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Permaculture / Plant Literacy / Tree Identification / Trees / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Deciduous Trees and Shrubs Every Master Gardener Should Know

Deciduous Shade Trees Quercus spp., Oak Acer spp., Maple Betula spp., Birch Corylus americana, American Hazelnut Fagus grandifolia, American Beach Juglans nigra, Black Walnut Platanus occidentalis, American Sycamore Liquidambar styraciflua, American Sweetgum Carya illinoinensis, Pecan Carya spp., Hickory Salix spp., Willows   Flowering Deciduous Trees   Aesculus pavia, Scarlet Buckeye Amelanchier laevis, Allegheny Serviceberry Cercis canadensis, Redbud Cornus spp. Other Dogwood species Cornus florida, Flowering Dogwood Lagerstroemia indica, Crape Myrtle Liriodendron tulipifera, Tulip Poplar Magnolia virginiana, Sweetbay Magnolia Magnolia spp....

Beneficial Insects / Birds / Carbon Garden / Compost / Fall / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Moss Gardening / Native Trees / Phenology / Poisonous Plants / Resource Protection / Soil Conservation / Tree Care / Trees / Water Wise / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Options for Autumn Leaf Clean-up

  Leaves float on every strong breeze, covering our walks and driveway just hours after we last cleaned them.  The many different species of trees in our community almost guarantee that we will have a long season of managing fallen leaves and pine tags. Leaves may begin to fall in August or September, particularly when the weather is dry.  And some trees hold onto their leaves until the following spring.  So cleaning up fallen leaves is more of an ongoing...

climate change / Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Community Gardening / Conservation / Edible Plants / Farm-To-Table / Food Forest / Foraging / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Larval Host Plants / Permaculture / Resource Protection / Trees / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Secrets in the Pawpaw Patch

  If you happen to come across a pawpaw patch in the springtime, when the trees have covered themselves in small, deep red blossoms, please don’t be tempted to step closer to smell the flowers.  Admire them from afar.  Zoom in  to take a photo.  Like skunk cabbage and jack-in-the pulpit, pawpaw flowers have a putrid odor to attract the flies and beetles that pollinate them, and the dull color of their flowers resembles rotting meat. Pawpaw’s small flowers, rarely...

Prized Plants at the Olympic Games

Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Evergreen trees / Fragrant Plants / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Ornamental Shrubs / Therapeutic Gardening / Trees

 by Betsy Beyer

Prized Plants at the Olympic Games

  The Olympic Games, a symbol of international unity and athletic excellence, incorporate plants and flowers into their ceremonies. These botanical elements enhance the visual appeal of the events and carry cultural and historical significance as well. Laurel and Olive in Ancient Greece In ancient Greece, victors of the Olympic Games were awarded olive wreaths, known as kotinos, made from the branches of the olive tree which is sacred to Zeus. This tradition dates back to 776 BCE and symbolizes...

Carbon Garden / Climate Change / Conservation / Food Forest / Foraging / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Mycorrhiza / Native Trees / Permaculture / Restoration / Sustainable Gardening / Tree Care / Tree Identification / Trees / Trees in Winter / Wildlife Gardening / Williamsburg Botanical Garden

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Beech, the Mother Tree, Queen of the Forest

A Mythic Forest The American beech, Fagus grandifolia, once covered most of North America from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts.  Before colonists cleared our ancient forests for farmland, large beech groves grew as part of the climax forest community.  A single beech tree can live for centuries, and as it ages it surrounds itself with sapling trees growing as suckers from its relatively shallow root system, forming an expanding grove of graceful beech trees....

Carbon Garden / Conservation / Food Forest / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Keystone Species / Miyawaki Forest Method / Native Plants / Native Trees / Permaculture / Resource Protection / Tiny Forest / Tree Care / Trees / Wildlife Gardening

 by Elizabeth McCoy

Cultivating a Tiny Forest (Part 1)

  Our once shady front yard was left a bright expanse of coarse wood chips and mangled leaves after the arborists pulled out their heavy equipment and left, that hot summer afternoon almost a dozen years ago.  A freak summer thunderstorm had harbored a waterspout or small tornado when it blew in from College Creek a few days before.  Our first clue that something was wrong had been seeing the underside of a muddy root ball rising 8 feet or...

Compton Oak CW Arboretum

Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum / Conservation / Garden Design / Heirloom plants / Keystone Species / Native Trees / Planting Trees / Tree Identification / Trees

 by Rick Brown

The Compton Oak

  The former Colonial Williamsburg Garden Historian, Wesley Greene, had a discussion with Scott Hemler, Colonial Williamsburg’s nurseryman this year in August, about the origin of our famous Compton Oak. In this exchange, Greene raised questions about the “legend” of this tree and how it came to be planted on Nicholson Street in historic Williamsburg. So, at Green’s suggestion, I began an investigation to see if the Archives at the Rockefeller Library could provide any additional information about the time...

Conservation / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Larval Host Plants / Native Trees / Soil Conservation / Tree Care / Tree Identification / Trees / Trees in Winter / Wildlife Gardening / Winter

 by Elizabeth McCoy

The Beauty and Promise of Trees in Winter

  There is a special beauty in the form and structure of a bare tree after it has dropped its annual crop of leaves.  Like the beauty of a classical statue, one can see the truth of its bones.  Leaves, for all of their movement and color, veil the beauty of branches and buds. Looking at a bare tree is a study in pure potential.     All of the tree’s life  draws inwards to the wood and roots as...