Thursday, November 21, 2013

Plan Ahead When You Buy Crape Myrtle

By Georgia Diaz


If you plan ahead a bit when you buy crape myrtle, you can be successful with one of the prettiest additions to your garden you can make. These shrubs or small trees with charming crinkled flowers come in many varieties, sizes, and colors to fit southern and mid-Atlantic zones and any landscaping need.

The delicate, crinkled texture of the flowers gives these Asian imports their name. Crepe is a fabric used for summer dresses - or the fragile paper streamers used for party decorations - but these flowers actually are long-lasting in the garden. India and Southeast Asia give us the less-hardy varieties, while the ones that can grow farther north originated in china and Korea. The taller, tree-like ones come from Japan.

Your planting zone will dictate which varieties you can plant. Fortunately, new imports and hybrids can grow farther north than used to be the case. These graceful and colorful treasures used to grow only in the far south, but now they are familiar in the mid-Atlantic region. Warm climate varieties were imported from India and southeastern Asia, but growers are now working with Chinese and Korean shrubs to supply a wider area.

Sizes of myrtles range from thirty-foot trees - the Japanese kind - to new dwarfs created by experimental breeding. Hybrids have come in new shades of the traditional colors, while keeping the vase shape that makes the shrubs so graceful. Nurseries even offer hedge myrtles now. Growers have worked to increase disease resistance.

The shrubs require pruning to show the best bloom, and a gardener can get the exact shape and size desired by performing the task regularly. If the plant is cut back in early spring to the height desired, it will leaf out and flower without growing much taller. Allowing four to six strong branches to grow year after year, while removing suckers and lateral branches, will result in a nicely-shaped shrub with strong, mottled trunks.

It's easy to find your planting zone in garden catalogs or by going online. Find varieties that thrive in your zone - or the one farther north if you want extra assurance of hardiness. Also consider things like mildew-resistant varieties, if this fungus is a problem in your yard. Myrtles like full sun and need at least six hours a day to thrive. Container plants are easy to transplant and should be acclimatized to outside temperatures by the retailer. To be sure, you can set them in a protected spot in your garden for a week or so before putting them in the ground.

Then it's time to visit the photo galleries to see the wide range of colors - white and all shades of pink, purple, and red. See how these shrubs can beautify any space. They look great up against a house, in the center of a circular drive, or out by the street. The blooms come on new growth, so these shrubs are easy for even novice gardeners to handle if grooming tasks are done at the right time of the year. If they are really happy, they'll have little crepe myrtles popping up around them in a few years.

With a little research and planning before you buy crape myrtle shrubs, you will get one of the most magnificent of all garden adornments. These exotic plants have made themselves at home in America.




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