Regional Ornamental Gardening

Plant selection and garden style are deeply influenced by where we are gardening. To successfully grow a range of beautiful ornamental plants, every gardener has to know the specifics of the region's climate, soil, and geography. Growing the Midwest Garden, by Edward Lyon, the director of Wisconsin's Allen Centennial Gardens, offers an enthusiastic and comprehensive approach to ornamental gardening in the heartland. This guide features in-depth chapters on climate, soil, pests, and maintenance, along with plant profiles of the best perennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, and bulbs.  Part of the Timber Press Regional Ornamental Gardening book series, this book is ideal for home gardeners in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, southern Ontario, southern Manitoba, and southeastern Saskatchewan. Edward Lyon is the director of Iowa State University's Reiman Gardens. He has worked for Chicago Botanic Garden, Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and Rotary Botanical Gardens. Through Spellbound Garden Writing & Consultation, he writes and speaks nationally for public and professional audiences. Ed writes the Ask the Expert column and feature articles for Wisconsin Gardening magazine, and a regular regional report and feature articles for Chicagoland Gardening. He teaches and lectures and is a frequent keynote speaker. Preface Horticulture is my second career. When I lost my agribusiness job in the 1990s, like many people at that time, I realized it might be a good time to return to college for a new career. I researched a number of fields and realized that what I had always considered a hobby, gardening, had developed into an obsession. That insight directed me to a plant-based focus and I worked toward an M.S. degree in horticulture. I think the value of this book is that a hands-on amateur turned "expert" is dispensing the advice. When I advise others I am quick to tell them that they will learn far more from my mistakes than my successes. This might be my definition of gardening.      As a horticulturist, I will forever be in debt to my father for teaching me about native vegetation. It was an integral part of our lives that instilled deep love and appreciation for nature and would eventually change my career. I doubt I will ever feel at home without the proximity of trees and scent of dried leaves.      Growing up on a small dairy farm near Cooperstown, New York, I remember my father lamenting that the property bordering our farm contained black locust, but it missed our land entirely. In contrast, we were the only farm with mature, fruit-bearing butternuts (oh, how I miss Mom's butternut cake!). We didn't think consciously about it as youngsters but we had already learned that plants prefer specific environments and what flourished in one area didn't thrive in others. When I took dendrology (a fancy name for the botanical, versus horticultural, study of trees), we learned how site specific tree species can be. I returned home after that class and took a reminiscent walk through the "back forty." I noticed that musclewood and ironwood grew only in the wooded border, sugar maple and beech populated the eastern hillside, and eastern hemlock dominated the north. Black alder and American sycamore were happy along stream banks but only smaller shrubs effectively established roots in swampy muck. Tamarack and white oak defied the challenges of wet ft. until they eventually reached a size where roots forced shallow due to excess water could no longer sustain their weight. They had toppled with giant circular plates of root-bound soil jutting skyward. This exposed more sunlight for shrubby willows and arrowwood viburnum; Davids to fallen Goliaths. Trees may have been the most obvious evidence of plants evolving and adapting to specific, culture-influenced sites, but there were plenty of examples of perennial plant ac