Greetings, fellow gardeners! I’ve been asked to begin penning the Address gardening column, receiving the trowel from Carol Stocker, who has helped demystify gardening for generations of readers. Her legendary authorship sets an extraordinary standard I’ll be challenged to reach. Thank you, Carol, for all the ways you’ve helped us learn so much about the ever-changing world of horticulture over the decades.
My editor chose “Ask the Garden Guy” as the name for this column, a different moniker than “Ask The Gardener,” but similarly encouraging you, Dear Reader, to inquire about any aspect of gardening or horticulture that’s important to you. You may recall that I was the Ask the Landscaper columnist back in the day when the Address section ran “Ask” columns on a wide variety of topics. My background differs significantly from Carol’s: I’ve been involved nearly exclusively with horticulture for my entire career, but I often discover that there’s a lot I still don’t know. Some aspects of gardening that seem complicated for you may be easy for me to weigh in on, and others will require research for me to give reasonable advice. I look forward to learning about your garden concerns and answering your questions.
My grandparents, Peter J. and Anna Olga Mezitt, founded in 1923, and my parents, Ed and Wally Mezitt, moved the business to Hopkinton in the 1940s. I headed the nursery from the 1980s until the early 2000s, when Peter and Karen Mezitt, our family’s fourth generation, took responsibility for all operations. I now serve as an adviser, spending more time in my own garden, enjoying family, and participating in various horticultural and other activities that interest me.
Early spring is always my favorite time of year. For me and most of us who garden, nothing compares to that surge of energy and enthusiasm we experience as nature begins her exhilarating rebirth process following so many weeks of cold and dankness. Every year my wife, Beth, and I add a lot of new plants to our home gardens, which now encompass several acres. We also do a lot of transplanting — moving trees, shrubs, and perennials that are growing in the wrong location to spots in the garden where they’re better suited.
Springtime is also the season I most enjoy transplanting: It’s so invigorating being in the garden now. Plants are most resilient just as they awaken from dormancy, and they readily adapt to their new location. Slowly rising temperatures, along with periodic rainfall, reduce the need to irrigate, and new top growth can begin naturally as new roots become quickly established in the warming soil.
When my nursery career began, only a few plants were being grown in pots; many were still being sold bare-root, seriously restricting the spring planting season for most homeowners. Choosing a dormant bare-branched tree or shrub, or an herbaceous perennial consisting solely of roots, needed a lot of horticultural knowledge, or blind faith in your local nursery’s recommendations. The advent of container-plant production was an innovation that enabled even the touchiest plants to be installed at any time of year, provided that proper maintenance is given. Viewing the actual bloom colors and foliage effect of each plant in full growth offers a distinct advantage for perfecting a garden design plan.
But even with all these advantages, I often need to revise my plans as the new plants I try growing become more mature. Even the most experienced landscapers will space plants too closely, especially if an immediate effect is desired, soon requiring transplanting (or removal) to optimize the garden design as it ages. Knowing the mature size of a newly installed plant is helpful in reducing the need for future editing, and lots of dwarf-growing or compact plant cultivars make that task easier. But don’t be fooled — even the most compact-growing plant will eventually outgrow its space if it’s planted too close to a neighbor.
Beth and I share the goal of finding the right place to enjoy every new plant or cultivar that appeals to us. Particularly for recently introduced plants, their ultimate mature size can still be undetermined, so we use our best guess as a guide, and that’s often overly optimistic. After a few seasons, the growth reality becomes more apparent, necessitating devoting a sizable portion of our spring to transplanting plants from prior years. In any case, just being outdoors in our spring gardens is far more gratifying than spending all those winter hours sitting behind that screen.
R. Wayne Mezitt is a third-generation nurseryman, a , chairman of , and owner of “,” a horticultural advisory business. In addition to serving as editor-in-chief for the , an electronically published monthly member newsletter, he chairs the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group.