End of Summer with Master Gardener Tena van Andel

Hi, welcome to the Garden Shift. Joining me today is Tena van Andel. Tena has volunteered with our group since 2003.

She's an amazing writer and can lecture on just about anything horticultural. Her favorites are orchids, trees, and restoration of large spaces. Today in this episode, we will discuss being on the shift, tasks to do in an autumn garden, and what to do with those leaves.

Hope you enjoy this episode.

Tina C: Hi, Tena, thanks for joining me today.

Tena VA: It's a lot of us, Tina.

TC: As a longstanding leader in our Toronto Master Gardener group, you've inspired so many of us with all your good work. I feel so lucky to be able to call on you, text with you, or meet up with you and discuss our gardens. I think we've known each other for over 15 years.

And I remember coming to your home in East York, pulling up to your front of your house and being amazed by your front garden. Basically no lawn, except for maybe a pathway. How did that all evolve? Did you do all that?

TVA: I did. It's funny. I was talking, somebody else walked by and admired my front garden. And I was saying, well, I moved in with many, many boxes. The boxes stayed unpacked. And I went outside immediately and started to dig up grass. So I had the garden settled before I had the house unpacked. And it's been, yes, 20, 25 years or so.

TC: Wow. Now I also noticed that you have really great specimen trees. And I guess that's your love of trees, right? Remind me of some of the trees in your front garden right now.

TVA: I have, the biggest tree there is a white spruce, but it's the hybrid that's quite narrow because it is an urban garden. So I didn't want anything too big.

I had purchased things that said they were small, like a larch, but it turned out to revert to not being small. So I moved that up to my parents' house. The biggest tree I have besides the spruce is a Cornus kusa, which is a flowering dogwood, Chinese dogwood.

And it's gotten taller than I ever thought they would get. It's up to the second story. And some years, absolutely a white carpet of beautiful flowers. Other years, maybe two or three. And right now, it's covered in the seeds, which are a beautiful pink colour that the raccoons and squirrels absolutely adore. So I've had raccoons break the branches trying to get to the seeds.

Other than that, I have a variety of things. I have some ewes that I rescued. I have a globe cedar.

I'm actually in the process of renovating the whole front of it. So I've removed some of the smaller shrubs that I don't particularly like or haven't done particularly well, and replacing with native.

TC: Right. Because I was going to ask you when the native mindset set in for you. Was that back in 2003? Were you an early adapter?

TVA: I think quite frankly, you were the one that inspired me mostly for going native. It was something I wasn't that interested in. I mean, I was interested in ecology, but hadn't really jumped on the native, you know, knowing everything about it. But yeah, slowly, because you spoke to me about all your native plantings and how important it was, and that got me hooked. So yeah.

TC: But you know, the other thing that your front garden demonstrates is diversity, right? And we all know how important it is for diversity, and that we need to bring that back to our gardens. When you say that you, I know that you're really good at moving things. You often tell me move things.

What's the tips there? Like what's on your mind when you think, I've got to move? Like you said, you moved a number of those shrubs.

TVA: Yes. So I heard somebody call that wheelbarrow gardening. I'm a wheelbarrow gardener because every single year I dig up one. I will even, right now I have a clematis that comes up purple. It's a shrub clematis. And I'm literally with this garden renovation going to move it one foot, just one foot so that I can have a Japanese maple that I'm moving be more effective in what I think is the look of the garden.

So I do, if you were to look in a textbook about how to move shrubs and trees and stuff like that, they would tell you, you know, spring is a really good time and fall is another good time except for evergreens. I, if I want to move, I just move it.

I try and get as much of the root as I possibly can. I make clean cuts of the roots. So sometimes if the roots are going out, you know, three or four feet, I'll just cut them clean.

I'll plant them in the same soil that I've dug out. So I don't add anything fresh. I'll mulch and then I water every single day, usually by a bucket, not the hose, a couple of buckets every single day for however long.

So I've moved, I had a Pagoda dogwood that I moved from the backyard to the front yard. It was about 12 feet tall and it survived. Now I don't know if that's because, you know, it is a native tree. It's a beautiful tree. I think it's my favorite native, but yeah, it survived. Now it's like 23 feet and just absolutely perfectly architectural.

Last week I moved some from the backyard to the front yard. So I moved a 12 foot Magnolia tree with a diameter of trunk about the size of my wrist. I got my fingers crossed.

TC: You're not, you have no fear.

TVA: I have no fear. And I have to say, yes, some of them too that I'm moving, I do really want them to live and I do really take care of them. But some of them, I wouldn't be sad if they didn't make it.

TC: Yeah. What about, now I can't remember the species, but as you go into your backyard, you removed a tree that was, I think invasive.

TVA: It's got pink powder puffs on it, flowers. And it's in the legume family because I can tell by the leaves and the seed pods are like peas. And I guess those seed pods spread seed a lot.

And it isn't actually invasive in Ontario yet. In fact, in Toronto, this is borderline hardiness for it. So as climate changes, we're getting warmer, there's a greater chance that it's going to survive.

And looking forward, as much as I love the tree and the tree, it was bought for a sentimental reason. Just someday I won't be looking after this garden and the person that is looking after the garden may not know that it's invasive. So I sacrificed it. I got rid of it. And I could tell already that there were a lot of little seedlings around where the tree was. So I knew it would end up being a problem, but it was so pretty. I mean, pink powder puff flowers, ferny foliage.

TC: Yeah. So that's on our radar though, right? As ecological gardeners, I mean, how to balance, you know, we want pretty with, we want habitat. And I mean, you, I know you have a garden further north as well, but just speaking about your Toronto garden, I mean, I think that we, because of what we plant and how diverse our plantings are and the introduction of natives, we are seeing, you know, species come in to our yards, right? And benefiting from what we're doing with the diversity, either for habitat or for food. Have you seen anything spectacular this year in your Toronto garden come to benefit from your good work?

TVA: This year, it's funny, the first year that I really pulled out a lot of the invasives and put in natives, I did see a lot of, I saw toads, which I hadn't seen in a long time. This year I saw one leopard frog, which is funny to me. I always think of frogs as being by water and I do have a tiny little pond, but I, yeah, I haven't seen, I've seen a few dragonflies, bats, right? But they, they've been around for a while. Yeah. But not, not as much of a change as it was when I first stopped and after the pesticide ban too, right? Because then the whole neighbourhood wasn't using pesticides. So there was a lot, a lot more, a lot more insects, grasshoppers. I mean, how long, how many years has it been since we've seen grasshoppers in our gardens?

TC: Yeah. I'm waiting to, I'm waiting to see a praying mantis, even though they scare me, but I would love to see it.

TVA: I don't think they're native though, are they?

TC: I'm going to have to talk to an entomologist. I don't, I don't know my insects that well, but.

TVA: I have my fingers absolutely crossed for fireflies. Because leaving the leaves, as I know we might talk about later, firefly larvae overwinter in the leaves. That's what I've got my fingers crossed for because there's nothing more beautiful than looking out your window and seeing all those fireflies.

TC: And we used to see those, right? Like don't you remember being young and seeing fireflies?

TVA: Yeah. Yeah. In the fields and stuff like that.

TC: Yeah. So I've seen them. I think I saw them once when I let the dog out late one night and I stopped and I went, oh, it must be a car. And then I went, wait a minute. And I just, I mean, it was, it was so wonderful, but, but just random. And I really, I’ve gone out the same time a number of times and haven't seen them, unfortunately.

Right. So the, it's interesting, the, I was reading a little newsletter from the Toronto Wildlife Centre and they were saying that there is a lot of possums that they have to rescue and help out. And I think, yeah, people don't know how beneficial they are, but unfortunately it's because of climate change, they're coming up here, but then they're not surviving if we have a really super cold winter.

TVA: Yeah. Yeah. The neighbourhood I'm in is surrounded by ravine and every so often, unfortunately dead on the road, I'll see possum.

Apparently they like to hang out in barbecues. People find them in the barbecues.

TC: Oh, wow.

TVA: And I say cute, but they're not really cute, are they?

TC: They're not cute, but they're so interesting to see one. Now remind me again, what, what you saw living or nesting in your north estate house?

TVA: Oh, we've had various nesting things, but inside an ermine, which in the summertime is a weasel, decided to take up residence in our old farmhouse. And we were all sitting around the fireplace one evening and two little pink ears and eyes peeked out from the rafters and ran down the wall.

So I have seen this summer a mink family running around the pond. So I'm not, I don't think it's the ermine. I think that's a different thing, but there's been lots of wildlife up there, which is wonderful, right? It's so fascinating just to sit on the front porch and watch.

And every so often, you'll just see something dart into the grass or all the different birds. Yeah.

TC: Awesome. Okay. Let's get back to, you know, it's not going to be long before we have piles of leaves all over our lawns and our patios. And you know, if we're fortunate to have nice big trees.

So what's, what does science tell us that we should be doing with our leaves?

TVA: Okay. So I always like to start this conversation by saying, all we can do is try our best. That's all we can do.

We are living in an urban area. We still do like lawns, but we, we're in a crisis, right? We've got to start protecting our environment. Do your best.

Science would say that we would let the leaves fall off the trees and we would just leave them on the lawn or wherever they fall. That would be the most, way to emulate nature, to increase biodiversity, or like enriching the soil and the lawn, or the garden. It's free fertilizer.

You can, contrary to popular belief, leave your leaves on the lawn, as long as you still see grass peeking through. So maybe about five centimeters or an inch or so of leaves, you can leave on the grass. I have a huge, great big silver maple.

The last two years I have not raked a leaf. I've let them, left them where they fell. And I've actually noticed greener grass and not having to water it, which I don't really do anyway, but it stayed greener longer through drought and less weeds, which was amazing.

Now, if you have more than one big maple tree, or you have a lot of oak trees, and you want to keep your lawn, I know that that's an issue. And if possible, if you can rake up your leaves to pile them on the garden or to pile them in just a leaf pile, that would be beneficial. If you can, oak leaves are something that takes, if you don't shred them, about five years to break down.

So if you can intermix them with like grass clippings or other leaves that break down faster, like maple leaves, that will help. Some people are still shredding their leaves, which maybe three or four years ago, that's what we were saying. Oh, leave the leaves, but shred them and they'll decompose much faster.

But, we don't yet know all the pollinators or all of the insects that are wintering over. We don't know their life cycles. We don't know, do they wait till, you know, when it's really cold in November and make their homes and leaves? Do they do it in August or September? So when you're shredding the leaves, you may possibly be shredding the home, the very home you've tried to create for the biodiverse insects and things that winter over.

So recommend not shred the leaves if you possibly can. It's hard. Like you said, you just have to do your absolute best.

Maybe shred half of them, leave half of them, but just don't bag them. And the other thing too that goes with the not bagging, it used to be we were very, very, the ones of us that like saved our leaves, we would go around to the neighbors and collect the bag of leaves. That's something we're also not recommending now because of the spread of jumping worms and the eggs.

The jumping worms are annual worms, but they lay a lot of eggs and the eggs can be on the surface of the soil. So you're raking them up and putting them in bags, you could be raking up the leaves or the eggs, and then you end up with an infestation of jumping worms, which we want to avoid as well.

TC: Right. And actually Toronto Master Gardeners has a PDF on their website about jumping worms, because that should really be on every gardener's radar. Understanding their life cycle, understanding when you would see them in your garden, what you should look for to know they are in your garden. So that's super information. We could go on a whole, I'll make a note of that in the episode notes. But it's just really good information to have a really, really big problem.

So I think the word that we used to, or the term we used to use of clean up, it's time to clean up, it's fall, it's autumn, we're not using that anymore. We don't want to clean up. So yeah, there is definitely a downside to having a clean garden in terms of an ill effect on biodiversity.

So the other thing that I read a lot about starting a couple of years ago was leaving the stems and leaving your perennials standing. Do you do that?

TVA: I absolutely do that. People will ask me if they know I'm a Master Gardener, they'll say, what should I be doing right now in the autumn to clean up the garden? I'm like, get a glass of wine and just sit and look at your garden because there's absolutely nothing that you need to do. The only clean up, I think, in a garden is if you have a vegetable garden and some of the refuse of that, the debris has some sort of disease on it, then I would probably put that for the city compost.

But other than that, I do nothing. Absolutely nothing. I leave it there.

It's good for your perennials to stay standing because they will trap the snow, which will protect the roots. The birds will eat the seed heads for some of the things, depending on what it is. Nope, I do absolutely nothing.

Even my hostas and stuff that I have, I just let them rot right back into the ground.

TC: Yeah, absolutely. If I have something like... I'm trying to think of something I have that has a lot of powdery mildew, I might take some of that away.

But quite frankly, if you have powdery mildew, you're going to have powdery mildew. Taking away a little bit is not going to... But I just think that I do try to curate my garden a little bit. So what I'm looking at in the winter, there's beautiful seed heads over there and there's a pause and then there's maybe a log.

So I do do that a little bit for where I can see my garden from the window. But yeah, I just love that we can say to people, don't worry about it so much. You didn't miss anything by not going out and cleaning up.

The other thing... Yeah, the other question we get a lot as master gardeners is, how are my plants going to get through all those leaves? Aren't those leaves going to suffocate my spring plants coming up?

TVA: Right. So probably not, right? If it's a maple tree or honey locust or something like that, those leaves will, over the winter, slowly rot and maybe into a month or two of the summer will slowly decompose into the soil. The worms are going to come up and bring it down and the sow beetles and all that kind of thing, sow bugs.

So no, it won't smother it. They will grow through with it. Now, if you have more than an inch or two of leaf litter, you can gently remove it in the spring because if it's more than that, then yes, it could smother it a little bit.

Again, you can gently remove it, remove it to a compost area or scatter it a little bit more on the lawn or whatever you want to do so that those perennials will come up. But don't worry, that's what they're meant to do. Most of them come from places like native that they're growing through leaf litter anyway.

TC: Right. So I know that if you're lucky enough to have a ravine edge or a forest edge, I mean, that's exactly what the spring ephemerals do is they push up through and you have these magnificent displays of trilliums and claytonias and all kinds of different beautiful spring ephemerals, right?

TVA: Yes.

TC: Yeah.

TVA: And I think, I mean, if you've planted your tulip bulbs and things like that, that the squirrels like to dig, if you let the leaves fall on top, the squirrels are looking for the smell of the bulbs. So maybe that'll mask it a little bit.

TC: Right.

TVA: Maybe protect some of your tulips. Yeah.

TC: Yeah. Sometimes I get a little bit anxious and I think, oh, I wonder if I lost that plant that I, you know, and it's under the leaf. So I might push them back a little bit and then you see the tops of them and that's part of the fun, right? Go out there and explore a little bit and once things dry up a bit, but not in March, maybe not even in April, the way we're having wet springs, you really have to know your garden, know how well it drains. I have a very shady garden, so I don't start really doing anything till the end of April in my garden, just because it's too wet and yeah, shady.

TVA: That's one of the bothersome to drive through the neighborhood on a beautiful sunny day in March and see people out breaking their grass. I want to get out of the car and go and hug them and say, no, don't do it. You're compressing, you're doing more damage than you are good.

I know you want to be outside in the first spring day, but leave your poor garden alone.

TC: Yeah. It's a time that you should just be researching or reading a good gardening book and getting excited about what you're going to do.

So let's just go back to autumn and there is one thing, it's not really clean up, it's saving seeds. Now I know you're a big native plant grower. What seeds are on your radar to start this winter?

TVA: I had very successful bearded penstemon.

It was gorgeous. And so I noticed that the seed pods have gone brown, right? That's when you don't want to do it too early. So I have salvaged, I had only about three plants and I took seed, there was like four stems on each plant. I took maybe two stems from each plant. So I've saved those seeds. Hopefully the others will reseed.

I have up north a narrow leaf gentian, which is absolutely gorgeous. And to me, it is kind of rare. I've not seen that before. I was delighted when I discovered it. I looked this weekend to see if the seed was ready. Don't think it's quite brown yet enough to do that. But I did take a couple that looked like they'd already spread some seed because I'd love to try that. It's a beautiful, beautiful blue. It's rare to find blue in the garden, but this is great gentian.

Other than that, I'll just collect a little bit. It's here and there, mostly for other people. I have enough anise to make tea for all of North America.

TC: But anise hyssop is a great starter seed for people who want to start with native plants because it's 100% success with germination.

TVA: 100% success. That and the great blue lobelia. I would recommend that to any gardener. I've started to learn more and more about native plants and how they're growing in our urban areas, which is much bigger because I think we've enriched our soil so much that these native plants absolutely gorge on all the nutrients in it. So things that I expect to be a foot or two high are like three or four feet high.

Anise hyssop is like a shrub. So I've been looking at things that, because a lot of urban gardeners are container gardeners and we're really encouraging people to grow native plants on their balconies and condos and things like that. So great blue lobelia is an excellent one to grow there. It's pretty well behaved. It's again, a beautiful blue colour. They look almost like orchids or delphiniums or something like that. And very easy. They'll reseed to be a band for sure.

TC: So if I were to put one, you gave me great blue lobelia, a vegetative propagation, but it flowered when you gave it to me. It's gorgeous. It's dropping seeds and it's seeping into my meadow, which is so, so pretty, that blue. What was I going to ask you? I was going to ask you, if you have it in a container, would you try to leave it in the container? Would you put it in the ground right now going into fall?

TVA: It depends on the size of the container. If you are just a container gardener, just a balcony gardener, I would obviously leave it in the container. If it's bigger than about 18 inches across, it should winter over. I would push everything against the wall and try and maybe insulate a little bit.

If I had the container in my backyard, I might, and I wanted it in a container next year, I would just tow in the container. So dig a hole in my vegetable garden, stick the container in and let it winter over that way.

TC: A good idea if you have space. That's a great idea. I forgot about that.

Going back to the balcony gardener, so they want to keep whatever they're growing because it's perennial and they're containers. I might even put some mulch on top too, right?

TVA: Yep. That's a good idea.

TC: Help with the roots. And then I love that, just push it, like you said, the outside wall so it's not right up at the balcony where it's going to get all the winds and stuff. And it's the freeze and thaw, right? That's the problem with containers. So if you can give that a bit of insulation, that might help.

I mean, I know a lot of people who are so successful now, and I don't know why, if it's because our winters are milder, but a lot of success with overwintering natives in containers. And that's a great way to introduce yourself to native plants.

So in case you're wondering, my goal is to get my swamp rose mallow to germinate. So do you know that plant? Did you give me the original seed?

TVA: I might have given you one of the seedlings. I got the seed from another one of our master gardeners and it was actually quite successful germinating. I think they ended up with at least a dozen plants.

TC: So what did you do? Do you remember?

TVA: Well, I do the winter sowing on the front porch. And this year I brought them into a greenhouse a little bit earlier than they would normally germinate, just to see if I could boost things up for plant sales and things like that. So you're actually buying a seedling or getting a seedling as opposed to a tiny, tiny little bit. I'm not sure that that was as successful. It was with some things, but maybe not others. So I won't do it as much next year. I will do more of them outside.

TC: Right. So you have them outside to do the cold moist stratification, and then you need inside to accelerate growth.

TVA: Yes. Yes. But it still has its required cold moist stratification period.

TC: Which could be anywhere from 30 to 90 days. So we're always looking that up. Yeah.

TVA: So here's my experiment with the swamp rosemallow is that my garden is really too small to have one of those, right? Because they get quite large. The flowers are quite big.

I'm not sure I like the flowers. I heard some gardener refer to them as your Aunt Biddy's underwear out on the coastline.

TC: Don't say that.

TVA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always remembered that phrase. But I did take them up north where they are not considered to be hardy, but we'll see. I planted them in an area where it may be a little bit more protected. I didn't get any flowers or anything this year, and I'll see if they come up again next year.

TC: Well, I had success with one plant from a seedling from a Master Garden, another Master Garden, probably talking about the same person, Trixie, I'm sure. But I planted it in Markham at my mom's garden. And the first year it was really quite pathetic. Probably only grew to about, I don't know, maybe 12 inches and one flower. And it's quite an exposed area.

And the next year, which was last year, it was very sleepy. And it's like end of May and there's nothing. And I'm thinking, you know what? I think this has died.

Well, all of a sudden it takes on this enormous growth and it's huge. And it must have had three dozen flowers on it. And it was, I'm telling you, Tena, next year you're going to come see it. It was gorgeous. So my mom and I decided we want a whole hedge of it. Wouldn't that be nice? So I'm not going to try like I did last year, like two dozen different things. I'm just going to really zero in on what I need.

TVA: I say that every year and I end up with like 21 bins of seedlings and 500 plants.

TC: Well, the getting seed is interesting. I think the Toronto Botanic Garden now has a seed library. I don't know how well stocked it is, but in the spring they did have some native seeds. They also have vegetable seeds there.

But if I wanted something specific, I would go to the North American Native Plant Society. If you're a member, you have access to all of their seed growers or native plant growers who collect seeds. So that is an amazing resource. Do you go anywhere else for seed?

TVA: So they actually have a seed sale. I think it's in the spring. No, must be November, right? Because you can do your winter sowing.

But I've got a lot of seed from them. And it's not, I think it's very inexpensive. I think I paid $15 and ended up with like 20 different plants to try.

The only thing with them is that it is North American. So there are things that you can get seed for that aren't native to Toronto or Ontario. But yeah, that has been my major seed source.

And then other people that collect seeds and the Toronto Master Gardeners have had a couple of very successful seed exchanges. So got a lot of different stuff there.

TC: Yeah. And it's fun. I mean, it really is a fun thing to do in the dead of the winter to start them and get them going. And I usually have lots of stuff in my fridge downstairs, you know, labeled and that I forget about that might just start germinating on you in the fridge. Yeah, it's definitely a hobby that is addictive. Yeah, for sure. Well, listen, Tena, this has been great. Thanks so much for coming on and hopefully I can snag you again for another episode soon.

TVA: Thank you so much for inviting me. I was honoured. And yes, I'm willing to talk gardening with you anytime.

TC: Thanks, Tena. Have a great day.

TVA: You too.