Gardening for a lifetime

New hips, new knees, arthritis or general stiffness: what is the avid gardener to do when the vicissitudes of advancing age make gardening difficult? The spirit may be willing, but the flesh may be weak.
    Even if you’re young(ish) and spry, at Smith Mountain Lake there are many activities to vie for your time, distracting from the garden. Whether it’s volunteering for worthy causes, participating in clubs, hosting guests, raising families or caring for elderly parents, there’s always something to be done.
    If you feel pulled in multiple directions, and the garden suffers as a result, there’s help. Sydney Eddison is author of the award-winning book, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as you Grow Older. (Lakers might be compelled to add to the subtitle “Or if you’re too busy.”)  The book offers tips to help prioritize and balance living a full life and having a beautiful garden.    

Sub Shrubs for Perennials
    It takes an enormous amount of work to maintain a perennial border – or even a small collection of perennials. In contrast, a flowering shrub, or one with striking foliage, gives much more value with much less work. Look for ones that have been bred for multiple seasons of interest, including flowers, foliage, bark, seed heads and appropriate mature size.   
    Good shrub possibilities include ninebark (Physocarpus), a native that has been hybridized so gardeners have a wide choice of foliage color ranging from almost black (‘Diablo,’ Summer Wine) to copper (Coppertina) and gold (‘Dart’s Gold’).   Spiraea does well at the lake and the deer tend to avoid it. Try ‘Ogon’ for lovely golden foliage. The young foliage of Deutzia gracilis Chardonnay Pearls also is golden, and provides weeks of interest in spring starting with the white, pearl-like buds that cover the compact shrub before opening to pure white bell-shaped flowers.   
    Another compact, deer-resistant shrub I’m hooked on at the lake is the new lilac introduction, Bloomerang. It flowers profusely in April, and then lives up to its name, blooming sporadically throughout the summer. And of course, butterfly bushes put on a show all summer long both with pretty flowers and the flitting butterflies they attract. Check into the new, compact hybrids such as Lo & Behold and the three from the English Series: Purple Emperor, Peacock and Adonis Blue.
    Mix deciduous bushes with evergreen shrubs and conifers. A combination Eddison found successful in her own garden is a dwarf Alberta spruce planted with a golden false cypress (Chamaeparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea Nana’), three blue junipers and a flowering cherry.  
    For winter interest, consider the various red and yellow twig dogwoods (Cornus alba and C. sericea.  C. sericea ‘Silver and Gold’ has lovely variegated foliage in season and bright yellow twigs in winter. For berry color, plant the deciduous sparkleberry hollies (be sure to have a male and female plant for pollination) and beautyberry (Callicarpa) with its vivid purple berries.  
    Excellent reference books for shrubs are Michael Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants and Adrian Bloom’s Gardening with Conifers. Also talk to professionals at local nurseries to find out what performs well at SML, and take note of what shrubs your neighbors are growing successfully.

Go Native  
    Many properties at the lake are covered in trees. Of course you want to open the view, but think about leaving some trees to frame the water. Better yet, leave the trees and limb them up to open the view. Thread a simple path among the tall trunks and, voilà, you have a garden. Here, you can plant natives that enjoy dry shade such as ferns, solomon’s seal and wild ginger. Imports that also do well include epimedium, hellebores and Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’). Imagine strolling through your high-limbed woods, enjoying the cooler air under the canopy and savoring the pretty picture made by the exquisite woodland dwellers and the framed views of the lake.

Contain Your Garden
    Can’t garden but want to? Turn to containers, big containers. Eddison said, “For anyone who can’t do the heavy labor of in-the-ground gardening, gardening in containers can provide much of the same pleasures.”  She recommends large containers because you have more scope for planting and they need watering less often.  
    Make a dramatic statement in a large pot with a specimen such as a statuesque canna cultivar with vividly striped leaves or a fragrant angel’s trumpet (Brugmansia) or a compact shrub. Layer the composition with a large item in the center, then fill in the rest of the space with lower growing plants. Add trailing sweet potato vines and ground covers to spill over the edge.
    Go ahead and be greedy: don’t limit containers to just one or two places. Group potted plants on either side of doorways. Create mystery by concealing part of the garden with lattice screens covered in vines growing in pots. Make portable “walls” to divide spaces with rows of potted plants, and break up paved areas with pots overflowing with flowers and foliage. You might even consider painting the furniture to match the flowers.
    Eddison’s book is rich with common sense advice on how to indulge your gardening urges without overtaxing your time or energy. It’s available in paperback on amazon.com for $14.95.

Catriona Tudor Erler is a freelance garden writer, photographer and speaker who divides her time between SML and Charlottesville. The author of nine gardening books, Erler also blogs at joyofgardens.com.