Category Archives: POPULAR INTEREST

Nuisance Orchid on the Loose!

by Ann McCulloh

There are a bunch of weedy plants that people regularly ask me to identify, but one of the odder ones is the Broad-leaved Helleborine Orchid, aka Epipactis helleborine.  It’s a European import that is incredibly hardy and tough. It often pops up in heavy, compacted soils near driveways and sidewalks. It’s very tenacious, coming back again and again after repeated weedings. Frustrated gardeners might be justified in naming it “Orchid from Hell.”

Epipactis as many first encounter it

Orchids have a reputation for being exotic, rare or finicky. The opposite is true of many of them, especially when they are growing in conditions that are similar to their native habitat. Broadleaf Helleborine is widespread across much of Europe, Asia and northern Africa, so this thing is very adaptable! In North America, it is an introduced species and widely naturalized mostly in the Northeastern United States, eastern Canada and the Great Lakes Region.

Many orchids have strategies for getting pollinated and reproducing that seem almost devious if not deviant. This one is no exception. It entices several species of wasp to visit its flowers with intoxicating nectar. If no wasps show up after a few days, the flower can twist around and pollinate itself. Ideally, you have spotted it by then and cut the flowers for a kitchen table bouquet. (It is rather pretty in an understated way.)

Epipactis blooms between July and September in Northeast Ohio.

If the flowers are pollinated, hundreds of tiny seeds result. Yes, that brownish haze on my palm in this photo contains many dozen Epipactis seeds.

Too late! My hand with Epipactis seeds

At which point the battle is basically lost for the season, since the dust like seeds are dispersed by any light breeze! Orchid seeds often require a partner to germinate, in the form of a specific soil fungus. In the case of Epipactis, most any one of a dozen different fungi will do. Once a seed germinates, it creates a radiating cluster of hardy but breakable roots about 6-8” deep in the soil. The roots have lots of little growing points that can create new shoots if they remain in the soil after the gardener’s industrious digging.

Deep and determined roots.

The recommended control methods are repeated pulling to exhaust the root, or deep and thorough digging. Herbicide sprays can work, but take several applications, with mixed success. Thank goodness this orchid pest is rarely so prolific as to threaten or outcompete desirable plants! In Northeast Ohio gardens its mostly a perennial annoyance, but it probably has a negative impact on native landscapes. Epipactis helleborine has been declared invasive in Wisconsin, where Door County has seen significant populations. Best to eradicate or at least control the spread of this diabolically persistent little orchid!

Epipactis unfurling

Langton Road Pollinator Pocket Update

by Tom Gibson, photos by Laura Dempsey

GardenWalk Cleveland Heights featured a successful pilot project: 11 36 sq.ft. pollinator pocket gardens on Langton Road.  The gardens combine a steady flow of blooms, low maintenance, (relative!) deer resistance, and attractiveness to pollinating insects.  The goal was to enhance both immediate neighborhood attractiveness and community spirit.

Those goals appear to have been realized. Madeleine Macklin, the Langton resident who helped lead the effort, conducted an informal survey of those homeowners who participated.  She reported: “Many of the people walking in the neighborhood often stop to chat about the beauty of our street. Some just give ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs.’ But I am often told that their stress, depression, anxiety levels have gone down from sharing, and experiencing the beautiful flowering plants on our street.”

The design component of this project: each homeowner had a voice in individual site selection. The challenge was, for the sake of visual unification, to find a not too broad range of mostly native plants that were adaptable to a quite broad range of growing conditions, and were visually showy.  Almost everyone received one or more hibiscus moscheutos, with its spectacular dinner plate style blooms.

The next step will be to raise enough additional funding to extend the pollinator pocket project to other streets in the Noble Neighborhood. Green Paradigm Partners, which conceived and executed the project, is discussing expansion of the project with key scientific partners and foundations.

Photos are courtesy of Laura Dempsey. More of Laura’s work can be found on her website, ldempsey.com. She is open to new clients and opportunities.

GardenWalk Cleveland Heights

by Lois Rose

Saturday, July 20 was a 96 degree scorcher, with high humidity as well. Some very brave garden lovers walked and drove around Cleveland Heights for the first day of the two day inaugural GardenWalk. Around 40 private yards and public gardens were available for viewing from 12 to 5, plus three community gardens and ten pocket gardens on Langton, in the four zip codes of Cleveland Heights.

Cleveland Heights covers about 8.13 square miles at an elevation of 935 feet. It was founded in 1903. Forest Hill is one of the historic neighborhoods, north of Mayfield between Lee and Taylor. It was purchased in 1923 by John Rockefeller from his father.

There were several homes in this neighborhood on the tour.

Further south some of the older neighborhoods featured a diverse group of gardens with wonderful water features, native plant havens, and charming displays of perennials and annuals. Friendly gardeners often greeted the visitors, offering refreshments and guided inspections as well.

One home on a small lane had crisply clipped hedges interrupted with white picket gates inviting you in.

charming gate off of the lane
swamp milkweed finds a way
Hypericum
watering method

Some homeowners placed signs in their gardens to inform visitors about their plants and other features.

GardenWalk Cleveland 2019

Slavic Village by Elsa Johnson

Gardenopolis Cleveland has, since our inception, been a firm supporter of GardenWalk Cleveland, and has covered it with pictures and text on our blog. This year for various reasons we were only able to commit ourselves to one day, and we chose Slavic Village because it was a place we had not yet been. As Inner Ring Suburb Eastsiders, we’re not very familiar with the neighborhoods of the once great industrial heart of our city.

We got off to a late start due to some trauma inflicted upon one of us by the cat affectionately nicknamed The Brat Prince (there was a lot of blood involved), and then we had trouble getting a map — neither of the two Dave’s we stopped at had maps or even any idea they were supposed to have them.

But we did eventually wend our way to Slavic Village. Like many of Cleveland’s ‘working class’ neighborhood’s it is a place of pleasant sturdy houses, often designed for two families (mostly up and down duplexes), in an area now somewhat denuded by housing-stock loss. But people still make the most of their garden spaces, and have both vegetable gardens and gardens to please the eyes (and birds and pollinators). People express their personal creativity, and enjoy their yards in the summer.

We were especially interested to find one resident with an extensive bee keeping industry. You could wander among the hives and enjoy the singing bees wandering about around your head and in the air.

We hope you’ll enjoy our pictures.

The bee keeper

People found ways to bring comfort into their outdoor environments

And they found ways to add small scale personal touches

They brightened their environments with the colors of flowers

And many people were serious vegetable gardeners

There were handsome houses and handsome trees

Someone was claiming a corner to make an in progress pocket park

This gentleman had been fishing for Lake Erie Walleye.

Little Italy by Ann McCulloh

Little Italy, the other neighborhood visited by one of the Gardenopolis editors, offered more than 30 gardens this year. There are a surprising number of small but lush oases tucked away among the brick fronted homes and hilly side streets. Traditionally Italian grape arbors and fig trees, impressively well-tended vegetable gardens and whimsical decorative touches abound. A brand-new garden discovered at the end of an unpromising alley turned out to be an extensive and delightful outdoor entertainment space, with a pizza oven, water gardens and not one, but two welcoming patios.

Full disclosure: Ann has been involved with the committee that plans GardenWalk Cleveland since its inception.

Garden Tour Season is Upon Us!

by Elsa Johnson

Garden tour season is upon us, and we’re doing our best, weather permitting, to cover the various events. We went on the Shaker Heights Garden tour about a month ago. We managed to see 5 out of the 7 homes on the tour before we gave up because of all the rain. We loved the variety on this tour, which bridged from the spacious very English manor garden professionally designed and maintained….

to the tiny and intensely intimate in scale, overflowing with plants and hidden nooks and crannies

to the fantastically imagined Japanese garden, which at the time we saw it was under about an inch and a half of water —

and a bit more. 

Meanwhile, In Forest Hill Park…

Some of you may know that I work closely with various organizations to do environmental work (removing invasive species, planting trees) in Forest Hill Park, in both the East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights ‘sides’ (in much of the park there really is no way to know when you’ve passed from one governmental entity to the other). She has followed the death of so many of the park’s great old oaks with great distress. Last year, working with Dominic Liberatore, one organization she works with test (East Cleveland Parks Association) inoculated one of the oaks that seemed to be in the direct path of possible oak wilt (a year later the tree is still standing and alive). This year working with Chad Clink (Bartlett) we treated 4 oaks – one of them a recognized Moses Cleveland tree (although an inventory of trees in that area revealed that quite a few of them also qualify)  —  for Two Lined Chestnut Borer.  Two were chestnut oaks showing some crown die-back and retrenchment, and two were close- by white oaks. We shall see what we shall see. Here are a few pictures from that process, which involves drilling tiny holes at the base of the tree into the capillary system of the root flares, and then using pressure to inject small amounts of the same pesticide used on Emerald Ash Borer.

The bigger question is – does it make sense to try to save such aging trees? Do you have an opinion? Let us know….

GardenWalk Cleveland Returns July 13 and 14, 2019!

by Ann McCulloh

Put on some comfortable walking shoes, grab your camera/phone, a GardenWalk guide (available at Dave’s supermarkets and online at https://www.gardenwalkcleveland.org/guide), and  a water bottle. Gardeners in seven of Cleveland’s distinctive neighborhoods are inviting you to gawk, snoop and tarry in their yards and patios like an old friend. Marvel at gardens that may be breathtakingly colorful, wildly clever and or oddly quirky, but always unique and individual.

GardenWalk Cleveland is a totally free, self-guided tour of private gardens, community gardens, and home orchards in neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio. The event is entirely volunteer-fueled, from the tireless organizers to the hosting gardeners. An annual event since 2011, the neighborhoods chosen to be on tour vary each year. Note that this year the neighborhoods will be split between the two days of the GardenWalk!

This year’s venues spread from West to East, with West side neighborhoods Detroit Shoreway, West Park, and Old Brooklyn on display Saturday July 14th from 10am to 5pm.

The East side neighborhoods of Little Italy, Collinwood, Fairfax and Broadway Slavic Village will welcome you on Sunday July 15th, also from 10am-5pm.

Pick up a Guide before the GardenWalk begins at most area Dave’s Supermarkets, starting July 1st! The Guide will soon be live on the GardenWalk Cleveland web site at https://www.gardenwalkcleveland.org/.

Guides with maps and details will also be available in several garden site “refreshment stations” throughout the neighborhoods as well. Prior to setting out you can locate an information station by checking online on the GardenWalk web site. Each clickable neighborhood page from the “Guide” page will list the refreshment station addresses. The stations will be indicated in the printed Guide, as well as on the GardenWalk banner in front of the property. Refreshment stations were a new feature of GardenWalk Cleveland last year and are great spots to garner a guide, rest and refresh, pick up some tips about “don’t-miss” features and purchase raffle tickets.

The raffle prize this year is a wheelbarrow stuffed with garden related items valued at over $600. One ticket costs $5, 5 tickets cost $20. If you don’t need garden tools and a wheelbarrow you can leave a donation in the box to help pay for GardenWalk next year!

This is always a fun, eye-opening event whether you are a gardener, new to Cleveland,  or just interested in knowing more about the neighbors and neighborhoods that make up this remarkable city!

Serendipity at Spirit Corner

by Elsa Johnson and Bob Brown

Join the Spirit Corner neighborhood on Sunday, June 30 for a neighborly get together to celebrate this friendly, quirky, ‘spirited’ gathering space. The event takes place from 12 noon to 2 PM.

I recently saw this short piece by Bob Brown on Next Door Neighbors. It was charming, and spoke to what makes a place special, the space being, in this case, Spirit Corner.

Serendipity at Spirit Corner

It never ceases to amaze me how our little Spirit Corner green space is put to such unexpectedly wonderful uses!  This morning as I walked Ori down the block, I saw a group of little children and parents at Spirit Corner.  When we walked onto the site, I saw that they had a large silver cooking pot sitting on our tree-stump table and a copy of the book “Stone Soup.” 

I saw the children collecting stones and sticks and dropping them into the pot.  When I asked what they were doing, I was told that they were on a little outing to act out the story of Stone Soup.

Since I didn’t recognize anyone in the group, I asked one of the adults how they had chosen to do this at Spirit Corner.  The lead person in the group said simply, “This is such a magical place.  The children love coming here.”

Moments later another visitor arrived at Spirit Corner.  It was a lone deer, who surveyed the activity on the site, apparently decided that all was well, and then proceeded to munch leaves on one of the trees, while the children continued to make their stone soup.

When we designed Spirit Corner, none of us expected it to become the site of a Stone Soup cook-off!  Just as none of us expected a group of Tibetan monks to hold a ceremony here and consecrate the site (as happened last year).  And certainly none of us expected Spirit Corner to become a Pokemon Go gym, which it is!

We named Spirit Corner after the spirits who were assumed to inhabit the house that sat here vacant for over 55 years.  Maybe we should expand the name of the place to become “Serendipity Place at Spirit Corner”!  What do you think?

The Origins of Spirit Corner

How did Spirit Corner come to be? A few years back (8? 9? 10?)  Green Paradigm Partners (and Gardenopolis Cleveland Co-Editors) Tom Gibson and Elsa Johnson taught a class on permaculture (Tom) and design (Elsa), which was attended by Cleveland Heights resident Laura Marks, who was at that time living on upper Hampshire Road in the Coventry neighborhood. Instead of working with her own plot Laura chose to work with a plot across the street. This was a small corner lot that had had a house sit vacant on it for 55 years. A mythos had grown up around the structure. I was supposed to be haunted. It was a little spooky, and very, very sad. Finally came a release from its misery, and the house was torn down (in itself an event that is always a little sad, though it was a very tight cramped fit on the lot).

Laura wanted to see the space become a public green space. She got the neighborhood engaged in this project and we worked closely with Laura and the neighborhood to design a space that the neighborhood could call its own. It included two gathering ‘pods’ and a walk-through pathway that crossed the site diagonally. It was originally intended to follow permaculture concepts and include appropriate permaculture plantings, and also include as many native plants as possible.

Delightfully, the City of Cleveland Heights was willing to support the project, and supplied many of the trees, as well as ground bricks for the path, and some tree stumps for children to climb and play on.  A friend who was deconstructing a tepee donated the long pole supports, which were used to create a sense of enclosure in which a picnic table now resides. Several benches were donated, and two more were constructed from raw materials. A man driving by saw the neighbors building a stone wall and stopped to help. The neighborhood took the space, made changes, donated plants, and made it their own.

Spirit Corner, as the following pictures show you, is not a groomed, polished public space. It is rough and ready; full of weeds as well as flowers; a place where imagination can find space to play. It is a place where this is not forbidden by the unwritten codes of ‘Behavior for Polished Public Spaces’.

It has not evolved exactly as intended: It has strayed from its permaculture intentions, and, to be completely honest, as a landscape architect, there is a part of me that is disappointed by Spirit Corner — that it is not that more polished public place. It will never win an award from the Society of Landscape Architects.

But perhaps that is a good thing. It is a place to hold a stone soup cook-off; that is irreplaceable.

Spirit Corner is one block east of Coventry Village on Hampshire Road. Parking is available in the city parking deck off Coventry.

A few weeks ago at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

by Lois Rose

Lucky me.  My new grandchild lives a half mile from the Botanical Garden in Brooklyn so naturally during a recent visit we went to see the cherry blossoms in full swing.

Coincidentally, and somewhat unfortunately, there was a massive Japanese festival going on, complete with drummers, dancers, food, ceramics, demonstrations and thousands of children and parents roaming the grounds.

Parts of the garden were closed off: the roses were behind bars. 

Many tulips in sunnier locations, like beside this water feature, were gone by and the perennials were just emerging, too early for flowers.

Massively large trees, like this wingnut, were featured in several locations.  Newer plantings along this meandering creek, were mostly in bloom with daffodils, early tulips and Fothergilla. 

huge wingnut

An outcropping of huge boulders was cleverly surrounded by carefully managed conifers and flowering shrubs and was adjacent to a lovely display of early emerging flowers, like Pulsatilla.

The vegetable and fruit area was enviously pristine with stunning pruned shrubs, meticulously planted vegetables, many varieties of small fruit like blueberries, currants, raspberries, figs and some espalier. 

A beech hedge sported a sitting bird in nest, surprisingly close to the hordes of visitors.

Wild flowers were carefully arranged in protected nooks around some tremendous very old trees, with paths wandering up and down, giving unique vantage points as you walked.

Turning the corner we came upon the children’s garden, not yet cultivated for the season except for bulbs and early perennials.  The greenhouses were crowded as it began to rain, so we skipped to the tulips, and several garden rooms nearby with raised beds of daffodils, a Shakespeare garden and woven wooden enclosures.  

At the end of our tour was the Japanese Garden, surrounded by a charming fence and entered through a gate which limits the number of pedestrians allowed in at a time.

The garden was replete with well managed trees, shrubs, and plantings, right off of Grand Army Plaza.   Despite the distractions, this is a tour worth repeating during the seasons. Can hardly wait to see it—and my grandchild—again soon.

Noble Gardeners

by Tom Gibson

Avid gardeners are ordering seeds and planning new beds for the coming growing season. How about adding actual selling to those plans?

That’s a message from Noble Neighbors, a neighborhood organization based in Cleveland Heights, which is launching a Gardener’s Market to begin Saturday, July 20 and continue every Saturday through September 21. According to Brenda May, a Noble Neighbors leader, “We think the time is ripe for a venue strictly for home gardeners and community garden members who want to generate additional income and participate in the broader community.”

The market will be the region’s first market in which only backyard and community garden growers (no professional farmers) can sell extra fruits, vegetables and flowers. Initially, the market won’t be offering any kind of processed food.

Noble Neighbors tested the concept last summer with several “pilot” garden market Saturdays. The location of the market was (and will be) a small park belonging to the City of Cleveland Heights along the major thoroughfare of Noble Road at Roanoke Road (a block north of Monticello) and is the site of both significant foot and auto traffic. “We experienced strong interest from customers and potential customers,” says May.  “We’re confident that a larger market with more offerings will be a success.”

Noble Gardeners’ Market organizers hope to attract a variety of gardeners from local communities beyond the immediate neighborhood.   “We think the opportunity to offer home produce at no space-rental charge is unique to the region,” May says. “Our goal is both to allow gardeners to make money and to increase the feeling of neighborliness in the area.”

Sellers must bring their own table or ground cloth, be prepared to make change for their customers and provide their own weather protection.

Further information will be posted on the Noble Neighbors website www.nobleneighbors.com. Send inquiries to NobleNeighbors@gmail.com