Spring is upon is and the endless list of early season tasks and assessments takes over every spare moment, particularly on moderate days when the spring sun warms the napes of our necks. Clearing away fallen branches, trimming back last year’s growth that was left on plants to both feed the birds and protect the crowns of overwintering perennials, and seeing what may have been damaged by a rather quixotic winter—all these tasks put gardeners in full observation mode.
After last year’s devastation of pines, oaks, hazels, larches, and beeches from gypsy moth, it is critical to assess the health of these plants as they head into a new season. I was relieved to see that our beeches and larches seemed to be coming into bud, but also wondered what to do in the coming season to prevent the devastation many of these trees experienced last year (this should be the last year in what is typically a three-year cycle for this pest).
The manual removal of the egg cases of these pests is one method of trying to control spongy moth. I have done what I can on this front when I see the egg cases growing on the bark of a tree, though it is unclear to me how much impact this will have. Additionally, there are also numerous chemicals, organic and not, that people resorted to in the past year to protect their beloved trees — but such actions always raise the question of what one is willing to do and what the emotional and environmental costs are of such actions.
Most chemical treatments are not insect specific, so they take their toll on other insects, many of which are not only potentially beneficial to our plants and the ecosystem at large, but a food source for a dwindling avian population in need of sustenance. Last year, I used Neem oil to protect a few choice plants in my garden that seemed particularly vulnerable, with the hope that I was not impacting insect life on other plants in the garden. Derived from a chemical found in some tropical plants, Neem is marketed as organic and is often considered as one of greener treatment options.
I tried to use Neem judiciously by focusing it on at-risk populations, but I was still left with a concern about the imperfection of the data used in making such decisions. While I know chemical treatments vary in their toxicity and in their efficacy, with some being labeled organic, how much of the literature is simply greenwashing by the companies that sell these chemicals? I always feel like the patient being told to take a pill by my doctor, thinking that maybe I should just change my diet. The pill seems tempting, but is it truly better than realigning my choices to be more sustainable in the long run? But the mind does odd things when the plants we love and have nurtured for years seem threatened.
I attended a lecture last week by Toshi Yano as part of the Bad Grass series at the White Hart Inn, hoping the discussion would help me to determine when—and how—to use chemicals and when just to let nature take its course. In the course of his talk, Yoshi shared some of the issues he dealt with as the Director of Horticulture at Wethersfield and in his new role at the Perfect Earth Project, but the takeaway to me was that there are no simple answers. Making choices on how to keep the plants we love healthy, or at the bare minimum, alive, and moving forward from season to season is emotionally stressful, leaving us to balance our love for the earth more broadly with that for the plants we hold dear. When he showed a picture of a fifty-year-old beech walkway that had been taken down by a beetle (see photo above), it was devastating. I understood the decision to allow the trees to succumb versus treating them, and the replanting of the area with native musclewood that should give a similar effect in fifty years or so, but would I blame someone for having taken a more aggressive approach to saving the beeches? I can see, just like in making decisions about the ongoing care of a parent, how one could come to either decision; I am not sure I can hold anyone in judgement for making a decision that would be different from mine.
Back home, I faced a new issue this season when the boxwood in my garden seemed to be overtaken by boxwood leafminers. I know boxwood is not native and I questioned whether to remove them and replace them with new cultivars of inkberry that have been selected to have a similar form. This remains an option (and a potential garden budget line item). However, in the present, I am cutting away the infected foliage, upping the nutrition level of the boxwoods by amending the soil, and considering the use of a systemic to treat the leafminers.
The first two approaches are no-brainers in their impact on the environment at large, but the systemic raises larger questions. In the past my approach to disease has been simple: remove the plants that are struggling and replace them with something that will prosper. This is an emotional moment; I propagated these boxwoods from cuttings from my old garden in Connecticut, grew them on, and brought them here to line the drive and enliven a few borders in the winter. But, will one season of systemic treatment be enough to save them, and at what cost to the environment?
For the moment, I have completed the first two tasks, removing the clippings and hopefully most of the leafminers with them, and I am pondering what action to take next. The one thing I hope for in this process is that we all realize such decisions are not easy and that we have empathy for all the gardeners, standing in the chemical aisle at their local garden center, trying to make the right decision.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
