Frozen? Trying to unfreeze? Pam Bennett, plant specialist with CFAES, has tips to help you keep your trees and lawn safe from too much rock salt. (Photo: Getty Images.)
landscape plants
‘Climate change is real, and it’s disrupting how we care for plants’
Jim Chatfield, horticulture specialist with CFAES’s outreach arm, OSU Extension, looked at how climate change is affecting Ohio’s plants — including, very likely, ones in your own backyard — on Feb. 10 in the Akron Beacon Journal. He especially talked about CFAES scientist Dan Herms and his long-term phenology research, which tracks the bloom times of certain landscape plants and the development times of some of their pests. Hint: As shown by science, those times they are a-changin’. Great read. Check it out.
And now for something completely different …
At OARDC in Wooster, which is CFAES’s research arm, more than 600 crabapple trees like this one are starting to blossom and should be at their peak this weekend. (Photo: Royal Raindrops crabapple, Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)
Help pay it forward by mastering gardening
CFAES’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster is taking applications through Jan. 29 for its first Master Gardener class in more than a decade. It’s a way to learn more to keep your garden healthy and sustainable — and a way to help others keep their gardens green, too. Read the story.
Try these plants for a drought-proof garden
There’s nothing sustainable, of course, about drought-killed plants. Here’s a fact sheet from OSU Extension, the outreach arm of our college, on how to improve drought resistance in your home landscape, including 124 recommended trees, shrubs, and perennials. Much of Ohio is experiencing moderate or severe drought conditions.
Buckeyes (and Ravens) on buckeyes (the trees)
Celebrate trees on Ohio State’s Oval this Friday. You’ll see, among others, a very big (B)uckeye. Though actually now a Raven. Though actually ravens are now coming back. It’s an Arbor Day program hosted by our Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens.
‘Great new sustainable landscape plants’
Steve Foltz, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden’s horticulture director, will present “Great New Sustainable Plants for the Landscape” Friday (2/25) at Ohio State. Foltz oversees one of southern Ohio’s largest plant collections — 3,000 varieties of trees, shrubs, tropical plants, grasses, bulbs, perennials and annuals. His talk is part of a free winter seminar series by the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, which is part of our college.