“ Spring Gardening Seminar—March 1 ”
Back by popular demand, volunteers of the Arboretum at Tanglewood are hosting another Spring Landscape Gardening Seminar this year. The March 1 event will be held at the Forsyth County Agriculture building in Winston-Salem in order to accommodate the large expected crowd. There is plenty of room in the Ag center, and at $5 per household it is good value for cutting-edge gardening help. Not only will you get to hear South Carolina’s top gardening expert, Bob Polomski discuss ways to “Get Ready for Spring”; but, you will also have a shot at stumping some of the county’s best master gardeners with your toughest gardening questions. A plant clinic, replete with free literature and soil test kits, is scheduled after the talk. It all starts at 10 am, next Saturday, and will conclude with a book signing by yours truly and the guru himself, Mr. Polomski. Bob’s book, Month-By-Month Gardening in the Carolinas, was recently revised and is extremely useful with its no-nonsense, garden maintenance advice. Its twelve chapters give clear direction to timing of chores and helpful “how-to-information”--- everything from herbs and houseplants to lawns and annuals. Though I don’t own his most recent revision, I continue to reference the earlier edition for timely tips on perennial garden maintenance and roses. Though not a New York’s best seller, my book, The Carolinas Gardener’s Guide, continues to be helpful (so they say) with plant selection and planning a landscape in the piedmont. 

While I am waxing away at gardening references, there are two other newcomers to your local bookstore. With the gardening season upon us, Burpee’s The Complete Flower Gardener  by Cutler and Ellis, as a hardback copy is a fine coffee table publication. When contacted by Karan Cutler one of the authors and asked to review their book, I expected to receive another wimpy, watered-down, redundant, gardening discourse. What a pleasant surprise when it arrived at my office! I immediately pored over its pages looking for ideas to improve our gardens in TanglewoodPark. I haven’t been disappointed with the technical information as the authors don’t mind addressing the perplexing questions related to building your soil and managing pests organically. Its flower lists are very useful and the color photos impeccable. Approximately half of the 500-page treatise is devoted to specific growing tips for scores of common flower varieties.
At January’s nurserymen association trade show in Greensboro, I discovered a fine book about my favorite topic—trees.  Hutchinson’s Tree Book is a reference guide to popular landscape trees. The author, Bob H. Head, is a second generation nurseryman who has discovered and introduced several patented plants. His contributions to the trade are numerous. At my first glance, I thought this book would surely be an incredible reference for garden center bookshelves and horticulture students at our colleges. And indeed the book is “dedicated to the Green Industry.” But anyone with a desire to learn more about the wonderful trees that are most frequently planted by professionals in the south will find this is a good buy. There are hundreds of photos of excellent quality, showing the different seasons of interest for a tree and close up shots of flowers and leaves for ease in identification.
A list of trees in Hutchinson’s Tree Book caught my eye at the first glance; his recommendations for drought conditions. How important is that. What was even more interesting were his features of two new, compact magnolias called ‘Teddy Bear’ and ‘Alta’, both columnar forms and patented cultivars. There are some many interesting landscape plants now appearing on the market, making gardening in an urban environment more inviting.

2008 Perennial Plant of the Year
The Perennial Plant Association has awarded Geranium x "Roxanne" the title of Perennial Plant of the Year®.  Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is a natural hybrid cultivar of G. wallichianum ‘Buxton’ variety x G. himalayense.  The plant was discovered by Donald and Rozanne Waterer in 1989 in their Somerset,England garden.  This cultivar is a strong performing hardy geranium that has 2.5” iridescent violet-blue flowers with purple violet veins and white centers.  The plant blooms profusely from late spring through November or until frost.  Geranium x ‘Rozanne’ has deep green foliage that will turn reddish brown in fall, and has a mounded habit.  It is considered one of the longest flowering plants of all the hardy geraniums. ‘Rozanne’ is unlike many geraniums in that it has very good heat tolerance and grows vigorously without ever becoming invasive, thus it rarely needs to be divided.  ‘Rozanne’ grows best in full sun.  The size of the plant ranges 20 to 24 inches tall and 24 to 28 inches wide.  Iris, phlox, heliopsis, and ornamental grasses are all very good companion plants for Geranium x ‘Rozanne’.