Denver Botanic Gardens has bamboo, and I think you can grow some kinds of bamboo here if you have a reasonably protected area. Fargesia Nitida is one that is advertised as Zone 5 hardy, not a traditional-looking bamboo, but very pretty.

Pam T
wishccr

Hi Coloradobird,

How is your Japanese Maple doing, and the Turkish Filbert? It's been about two months since you planted them, I think...

Cacau

Pam, thanks for the suggestion. I looked up photos of Fargesia Nitida and it is very attractive. I think I would try growing it in a container (which would mean I'd have to have a place to over-winter it), because I have a very small yard. Hmmm, I'll have to think about this.

Cacau, good to hear from you. Good memory!

Well the Turkish Filbert died. :( It never did take off--perhaps it didn't like the spot. I don't know, it was bare-root, which I think can be tricky.

I ended up getting two Japanese Maples. One, I bought on E-Bay for cheap, a Beni Otaki. It fried in the little bit of sun it got and I've moved it to a pot and will try to overwinter it in a neighbor's unheated garage (it's still very small) and then we'll see. . . . The other is a Sharp's Pygmy, which is supposed to be very hardy, and, since it's green-leafed, it's supposed to hold up in the sun better. Which is proving to be the case. It has looked good all summer, so I'm hoping for the best with this one.

I did get back to DBG once and the Japanese garden was open. It was lovely. One of the things I wanted to check out while I was there was the ornamental grass garden, which turned out to be futile, since it was in the process of being redone and was almost empty! They promised it will be in shape by fall.

Have you made any trips to the Gardens lately?

C.bird

Hi C.Bird,

Too bad about the Turkish Filbert, it makes a nice tree, but as you say bareroot stuff can be a problem. I brought in a bunch of it this year and a quarter of them took off fine, a quarter died back and later sprouted from ground level, and the rest is probably kaput (but I will keep it watered just in case).

No, haven't been back to DBG--partly because it's been so hot but surely I'll be going at least a couple of times in the next month or so. I did run across a nice-looking JM (not sure which one) in the front yard of 1031 S. Williams, if you're ever in that area...looks like it's been there a while (house was just remodeled and they managed to keep from wrecking the tree, which is very close to the house).

I moved my Magnolia grandiflora 'Edith Bogue' to the south side of the house after it died back to the ground last winter and it came back pretty well. It started out the first week in June with two tiny buds at ground level and now has twin stems up to 18" with 35 or 40 very healthy-looking leaves. It just now finished growing for the year. It's in partial shade from a crab, protected from the wind, and shouldn't get a lot of winter sun because of the house to the south of it. If it doesn't thrive in that location, I should probably give up on the evergreen mag's.

Also I recently managed, finally, to get a jujube tree (Ziziphus jujuba) cutting to root and it's now "shot up" to be one inch tall. I started taking cuttings in early June and those all rotted, ditto the second round three weeks later. On the third round I made some adjustments to the medium and the hormone and one of the cuttings "took." So I went back a fourth time and am now trying to root six more! It's a curious little tree, drought-tolerant, and has edible fruit.

I hope your "fried maple" comes back. I have a potted seedling Korean Maple that I was trying to slowly acclimate from almost full shade to partial shade, and one day I moved it too far and the small leaves got really scorched. Later it grew a few more leaves, but I'm going to have to baby it for the forseeable future.

Right now I am looking forward to Tagawa's sale--I think it starts on Sept. 1!

Cacau

Cacau,

Thanks for the info on the tree on south Williams, I'll have to look next time I'm in that area.

Will your magnolia flower? I didn't know they would grow here.

Jujube tree looks interesting. It gets pretty big, I guess, though it probably takes a long time to grow full size. That's great that you managed to get some giong.

I think my maple may survive, if it does okay in the garage for the winter. Hope your Korean recovers.

Which sale are you waiting for at Tagawa? They're already having one, with 50% off perennials, 24% off everything else (including trees). I think, though, that last year when I bought my plum tree, it was 50% off, so maybe that's the September sale you mentioned. Do you have one of their discount cards? You can ask for one at the customer service desk. You can use it every time you visit, to get 20% off one item, although you can't use it on sale items.

C.bird

Hi C.Bird,

It's the Tagawa tree sale, which I think starts on 9/1. I want to see if there is anything left over--at half price--from the unusual stuff they had at the beginning of the season.

As far as the magnolia flowering, I don't know. Right now I am just hoping in its new location that it will be able to survive the winters without dieback. That would really be sufficient for me, because I enjoy so much the thick glossy green leaves, even with snow on them! If it flowers someday it will just be a delightful bonus.

Yes the jujube is a bit of an oddity, at least around here. I'm looking forward to tasting the fruits on it if the squirrels don't get them all--I don't suppose they'll be ripe for another month or more. I don't think it gets to be a huge tree, though, at least in this climate. The one I've taken the cuttings from is about 20 ft. tall after 30 years, and it's only about 12 ft. wide. Most of the references say the tree is only hardy to zone 6, but this one has survived at least four winters with temps around minus 20. This is also supposed to be a very drought-tolerant species once established, a welcome feature in these parts!

Going to DBG tomorrow!

Cacau

Cacau,

Did you make it to the Gardens? What's looking great over there about now? It seems that they have fewer JMs than they have listed in the computer. There are supposed to be quite a few near the picnic area and I couldn't find any.

The magnolia sounds lovely and the jujube will probably do fine here, if we keep having these warm winters. It really seems like we've warmed to zone 6, but I guess there's no guarantee. It's cool to grow unusual things!

C.bird

C.B.,

Yes, I did get to DBG for about an hour, but went with a friend who got kind of antsy and distracted, almost like going shopping with someone who doesn't enjoy shopping, so I didn't stay too long. One thing I saw that I'm intrigued with is Sea-Buckthorn (Hippophae) which maybe can be a small tree (as opposed to bush). Drought/heat resistant, hardy, female plants have bright berries all winter, allegedly has medicinal uses. It's related to the notorious Russian olive and has somewhat similar foliage, but with thorns. Also noted a thing called Chaste Tree but haven't researched it yet.

As they grow, the maples there are getting more and more crowded! I didn't see any new JM's but didn't go to the picnic area (where is that, anyway?). I was talking to a staff member and she told me that a lot of plants are not on the database. With that collection, keeping the database up-top-date would be a major job. She told me they have a pawpaw (it's not in the database) in the Victorian Garden, but I still couldn't find it. There are so many plants there...you stare and stare trying to pick the thing you've seen before out from the camouflage!!

Growing unusual things...yes that's what interests me...I have a few others underway but superstition prevents me from naming them until they prove their mettle some more...

The jujube tree here that's 30 yrs old has been through some winters verging on zone 4 so there's not much question about its hardiness.

Cacau

Hi Cacau,

Your trip to the DBG sounds like my trip to Paulino Gardens on Sunday with my husband (though he was doing his best to be patient). They had a great perennial sale; I had to look through as many things as I could as quickly as I could before he got too restless.

Sea Buckthorn sounds interesting; I only see bush forms when I do a search. You must have a lot of space for all these trees.

The picnic area at DBG is south of the big pond with the lilies in it--the covered area with tables.

I am rethinking my JM situation. I compromised when I got the Sharp's Pygmy for that spot, and it's just not right there. It's too short, and always will be. I'm thinking of moving it into a raised planter at the front of the house (east side) and getting something else for that spot. Maybe not even a JM, but a specimen tree that would not get too big (6-8 ft.), or that would be very slow growing, so that I wouldn't have to try to move it in ten years when it was too big. Right now the spot is shady, because of the time of year (a fence to the south is shading it), but in June, it gets pretty sunny (too sunny for the little Beni Otaki I had planted next to it--but it's recovering nicely now that I've put it in a pot in the shade). Any suggestions would be welcome. . .

C.bird

Hi C.Bird,

I think that kind of spot can be challenging--having a vertical to the south so that a plant rather abruptly starts getting full sun from early May to early August. I guess that period is just too much for the more delicate maples. There are some smaller maples that might hold up better in the sun, are slow-growing and are definitely specimen-quality. Acer griseum (Paperbark) is one, along with the other trifoliate Asian maples. Paulino's early in the season had a couple of attractive Three-flower Maples (A. triflorum) but they were a bit on the expensive side. I think those were around four or five feet tall. I was there a few days ago and saw that they are giving a 20% discount on trees, but sometimes the Paulino's plants are marked off much more on an individual basis.

A six to eight foot maximum is pretty small for a "tree." It makes me start to think of the plants that are sometimes described as "large shrub or small tree," but even then, large shrubs easily surpass eight feet. One tree in that category, oddly enough, is that Sea-Buckthorn, which has a lot of good attributes. It's been described as exactly that, a large shrub/small tree. The male trees supposedly have a more tree-like habit, the females shrubbier. It's said to grow to 8 to 30 ft. tall--quite a range! Things in Colorado usually seem to grow at the low end of projected size ranges.

Another one that I thought of is Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus). It is a slow grower, and has a lot of other positive aspects also. There seems to be quite a lot of variety in habit with this one, often evident when the plants are only a few feet high. Tagawa had at least a couple of them in May, but I haven't been back there yet. As I recall, the Tagawa plants seemed to be developing along multi-stem lines, but they would probably accept some shaping. It's not a plant I've seen for sale elsewhere in the region. With those, you could see the plant's habit before buying, rather than taking a chance with a mail order.

Parrotia is also a very nice smallish specimen tree. If you got one around three or four feet tall, it might not outgrow your limit in ten years. (BTW, what happens when/if it gets to eight feet?). If you would entertain a conifer, Sciadopitys (Japanese Umbrella Pine) is a classic slow grower and a very interesting plant.

Well, there are a few more coming to mind but I don't want to write forever. An equally good bet to find something suitable would be by searching for drawfish cultivars of trees that ordinarily grow much larger. As an example, I saw a photo of a Sweetgum 'Gumball' a few days ago (maybe on the Trees Forum) and found it intriguing. It's far smaller than the species, but I don't know offhand if it'll stay under eight feet. If it did, it might work...certainly it fits my definition of a specimen tree. Two places to search for cultivars are Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants (DBG library has a copy) and the Forest Farm website.

Drop me a line at DallasJoao@aol.com, as I have some other info you might be interested in.

Cacau

This spring I put Phyllostachys aureosulcata (aka yellow-groove, from Groundcovers) into a large pot because of its rambling growth habit. I already have enough aspen shoots all over the place! After a week of protection under the grid of my patio table the shoots were poking right through. It reached about 6.5 feet after a few weeks and has stayed there.

And I put a Fargesia muriellae (from Timberline) into the ground, with mucho mulch. It's only a couple of feet high, but beautifully dense, and supposedly won't run under the fence into my vegetable garden.

I'm still not sure what to do with the yellow-groove pot, as there's not a lot of all-day light anywhere inside my home. Among suggestions I've googled: chop it back, spray with anti-dessicant, put it into the unheated garage (a little bit of morning sun in ours), bring it in just for the coldest nights???