TOP LANDSCAPE MISTAKES

By: Kevin D. Starr
County Extension Director
N.C. Cooperative Extension Service


The recent warm weather has made many of us think about working in the landscape and garden. While no one will ever accuse me of being a master landscaper, there are some landscape practices that I wish would change.

The first of these is “crape murder”. Crape murder is the harsh cutting back of tree-form crape myrtles. This destroys the natural beauty of the plants, reducing the trunks to stubs. When spring comes, multiple shoots grow just below the cuts, resulting in an unnatural brushy appearance. Sometimes the cuts are made in the same spot each year, producing unattractive knobs at the end of each trunk.

This pruning is sometimes done because the plants don’t have enough room to grow to their normal size. If this is the case, you might want to consider replacing the plants with something else. The one positive thing you can say about crape murder is that it won’t kill the plants since crape myrtles are very resilient. The same can’t be said about topping large trees, a practice which creates huge wounds, sometimes leading to the ultimate death of previously healthy specimens.

Another type of pruning that’s common is shaping shrubs into balls or cubes that are nothing like the natural growth habit of the plant. It’s simple and fast. But if you’re going to prune like this, you might as well just buy one type of shrub because the individual characteristics of the plants are hidden by the pruning. I haven’t heard a good nickname for this technique but maybe we can come up with one.

Another common landscape practice is “volcano mulching”. You can probably guess that this is the piling of an excessive amount of mulch around trees so that it looks something like a volcano. Excessive mulch creates a very moist environment around the crown of a plant that is a good place for pests to become established. If you keep your eyes open, you may be lucky enough to see crape murder and volcano mulching on the same plant.

In the final analysis, you can treat your own landscape plants any way you want. But I encourage you to learn more about cultural methods that are beneficial for plants and make them look good as well. If you have questions, please call Cooperative Extension at 704-73-8452.