By AMY MUNCY
Advanced Master Gardener

WARSAW — Generally, I do not keep a journal of my garden. Putting it all in writing in this article will hopefully help someone else doing the same. It can be daunting doing your own landscaping from scratch. Yet knowing you did it yourself is a real boost.

I always draw a map of the perennials that are in my gardens so I can tell each year what is going to come up. I have dug up flowers before I knew what they were, thinking they were weeds. Perennials can be expensive and so can trees, so it helps to know what you have and where.

Already there are a few trees and the plan is to add more to this garden. Knowing the growth height of the trees will determine what types of plants I can use that will be affected by the shade the trees produce. The garden is going to be about 120 feet long and runs mainly north and south curving toward the west. The width of it will vary and curve also. The septic must always be considered as this garden will be along the edge of it.

A dwarf leaf lilac that I planted 10 years ago denotes where the garden will start, or rather, one of the ends of the new garden. The bush is beside our driveway and has a fragrant and beautiful display of flowers every spring.

I grow my own trees, being an avid fan of planting them and I receive free trees from being an Arbor Day sponsor from time to time. I have a protected area where I keep the new trees which are usually the size of pencil lead when I receive them. When they get big enough, I move them to where I want. Recently I have had to chop a couple down, (Washington Hawthorn got too full of thorns), because there is no room to move them. Most of the trees are deciduous, flowering trees that have berries for the wildlife.

From the Golden Raintree in the foreground, crabapple at the left and on the fair right a bush, is how far the garden will go. The road is the edge of the property.

The trees that I have planted at the north edge of the “soon to be garden” are a golden raintree and a sargent crabapple. The golden raintree is on the northwest corner and will grow up to 45 feet tall. This is a beautiful tree that flowers in early summer with yellow panicles of flowers followed by paper seeds that look like orange Chinese lanterns. Each lantern has a seed in it that rattles and also feeds the wildlife. It is an upright, quick growing tree. It can also tolerate drought, poor soil and pollution. This tree was planted only 1 year ago. It is almost as tall as the crabapple! It did not bloom this year. I believe it will next year.

The crabapple is seen everywhere and there are so many varieties. The sargent crabapple is a low, spreading tree. Maybe 30 feet tall by 30 feet wide or more at maturity. There are white flowers in spring followed by large red berry like crabapples. Many of the crabapple trees seem loaded with berries this year due to the excess rain. The problem with the one I planted is the deer won’t leave it alone. That tree has been there for three years and three branches finally made it high enough to not get eaten. I think it is going to make it. Since I pruned the tree and a large sucker was removed, it resembles a real tree now.

Amy Muncy was born in Wabash County and lived there for close to 40 years. Muncy grew up in the country, has always enjoyed gardening and mowing the lawn. She has been gardening since a small girl. She moved to Kosciusko County in 2000. She is a master gardener intern at this point, but will be a full master gardener before long.

“I enjoy all aspects of gardening. I really don’t have an expertise on any one thing. I make compost. I can, freeze and dehydrate. I like to grow veggies, flowers, herbs and houseplants. I like to plant trees everywhere I can. I know a little bit about a lot of gardening. I would say most of my experience has been on composting and different ways to do it. I believe we must conserve our land for our future generations and composting is a great way of doing this. The more we become self sufficient, the better off future generations are and we need to be teaching them by example.”