Reuse winter outdoor decorations in gardens

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, January 12, 2008

So your lighted Christmas deer died. Don't put him in the trash, instead, tuck him away until spring. He will make an interesting addition to a flat flower garden.

Plant a vine, nasturtiums, for instance, around him. Or, tie two half baskets together and hang them over his back.

A half basket hung from his neck or a wreath around it will have your neighbors either praising your artistic talent, or wondering about your mental health. Any garden can use a bit of whimsy.

This month's Northern Gardener magazine, the magazine of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society, has information on some trees and shrubs that might be just the one for your yard.

The Kentucky Coffee tree's native habitat is moist streamside soils, but it does quite well in our alkaline soil, too.

It is bare until late spring making it a perfect tree to plant daffodils and crocus under.

It also drops its leaves in early fall. It is not dense like many of our native trees.

The long leaves cast a dappled shade. It has no insect or disease problems and can fix nitrogen in the soil.

It is difficult to transplant because of a branching taproot. It is also slow to get going but a bit of fertilizer will speed things up. It's a big tree, 50 to 75 feet tall and 50 feet wide.

Female trees have large seedpods so if you are fussy about litter; plant a male or seedless variety. The raw seedpods contain a poisonous acid, another reason to plant a male or seedless cultivar.

Stately Manor is a seedless male cultivar from the University of Minnesota.

Espresso is a fruitless male that has a vase-like growth habit. If you like the shape of elm trees, you will like that one.

The third cultivar is Titan, a more spreading male. It is described as having interesting winter architecture. All these cultivars are reliably hardy in Zone 4. They seem to do well here, too, as there is at least one Kentucky Coffee tree that is at about 25 years old growing in Otter Tail County.

We may have an invasion of Canadians this winter. Canadian owls, that is.

They had a bumper crop of rodents in Ontario last year so owls raised many owlets. Because of a poor seed crop this fall, there are fewer mice, voles, etc., that means there are more birds than food so they are moving to better feeding grounds.

Good news for us as they will thin out our crop of rodents.

The moral for this week is plant a coffee tree in your yard and a reindeer in your flowerbed.