The Cascade Effect

This was supposed to be a lazy Sunday afternoon. Read the newspaper (yes, I’m a dinosaur who subscribes to the print edition of newspapers), organize some documents I had been putting off doing; that sort of thing.

I looked out the window and saw my
containers needed watering

But, I glanced out the window by the front door and saw that the two container gardens at the base of steps needed watering. So, I filled a jug of water from a rain barrel and went out to quench the thirsty containers. Which is when I noticed that one of my foundation shrubs, a Leucothoe (aka dogshobble), had sent some exploratory branches out, and those branches were mostly hiding what I thought was a very attractive container.

The flowering raspberry was behaving
like, well, a raspberry bush

So, I went to the garage and got a pair of Felcos and a fabric barrel to trim back the errant branches. Which is when I noticed that almost all of the flowers on my flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus), located a few feet away from the Leucothoe, were past bloom and needed to be cut off. So, I did that first.
Which is when I saw that the flowering raspberry was behaving like, well, a raspberry, and had sent out a dozen runners into the birch bed (a very nice Betula nigra). So, I pulled up the runners and placed then into the barrel. But, in doing so, I saw there was an infestation under the birch of jewel weed (impatiens capensis); a low-order nuisance because they pull out very easily. It’s almost as though they know they’re not supposed to be there and so don’t put up a fight.

Both the Kalmia and Leucothoe
had committed a no-no: they
had grown higher than the sill.

But, what they lacked in fight to survive, they more than made up in sheer numbers. There were hundreds of them all along either side of the thirty foot (or so) path between the birch bed and the foundation plantings. Because they reproduce so easily, I knew I needed to get them all out. A few that had access to sunlight were as tall as the about-to-bloom summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) which they has also colonized.
By now, the debris barrel was full and I emptied it in the compost pile. When I returned, I noted that mountain laurel (Kalmia ‘Sara’) along the house foundation also harbored jewel weed which needed to be pulled. But the Kalmia also was growing over the top of some very attractive (and expensive) coral bells (Heuchera) that had been planted as ‘boots and socks’ for the foundation shrubs.

I filled three barrels with debris

So, I carefully trimmed back the Kalmia to make it look as though it and the Heuchera had always co-existed peacefully. Stepping back to admire my work, I saw that the Kalmia also was transgressing in another – maybe even more serious – way: its height was six or eight inches above my home’s window sill. I have always believed that shrubs higher than a home’s window sills is the first step on the slippery slope to becoming a recluse.
So, I went in and carefully cut back the top of the Kalmia, making certain no one could ever think I has just sheared off the top eight inches willy-nilly. Each offending branch was trimmed individually so there was no protruding stem visible.

Order restored

And, of course, the two Leucothoes (which had long since grown together) also were above the window sills. I filled and emptied the debris barrel a second time. Since I was already hot and sweaty, I figured I might as well also provide a modicum of ‘space definition’ between the Kalmia and the Leucothoe. I gave the Kalmia the benefit of the doubt where the two shrubs had dueling branches.
Then, I was back at the front steps of my house. I carefully trimmed back the Leucothoe – pulling out several branches that had rooted within a foot of the containers – and reshaped the corner so there would be ample light. Oh, and I watered both containers well.

And, the container
garden has light!

So, all it took to give a jug of water to two urns filled with annuals was three hours to do six other things. I’m certain this – which I call the Cascade Effect – never happens in your garden. It is, unfortunately, an all-too-common occurrence in mine.

The unwanted interloper

If anyone ever offers you the opportunity - and calls it ‘the honor’ – of running a community garden, you should run at high speed from the person trying to recruit you. Delete the individual from your phone and email. Change your address. Answer the phone in a foreign language.

600 square feet of Japanese hop

I know this because I spent Monday afternoon removing a nasty, invasive vine from 600 square feet of the conservation land in which the Medfield Community Garden is located; and from which garden I have been removing yet another pernicious vine now for the better part of a month.

Two millennia ago, the poet Virgil wrote the famous Latin line “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, which translates to: "I fear the Greeks (Danaans), even those bearing gifts." My update is “Beware of anything your town’s Department of Public Works brings you.” It especially applies when you’ve been told that only the DPW can supply something.

As the Community Garden co-manager (or Garden Ogre, and I have titled myself), one of my tasks each spring is to request that tenants of the 70 plots in the acre-sized garden replenish the wood chips that for the ‘streets and avenues’ around their gardens. I start saving newspapers beginning in September so that gardeners can easily a) rake back last year’s chips that did not break down into organic material over the winter; b) put down either cardboard or (preferably) newspapers across the three-foot-wide paths around all sides of their plot; and c) rake the old chips over the newspaper and supplement with fresh chips for a depth not to exceed two inches.

The town's mulch pile, in theory, weed free

Where do the chips come from? Historically, they have come from the Medfield DPW, which take wood debris dumped by homeowners at the town’s transfer station, grinds it up into a mulch, puts it in a large pile where, in theory, the internal temperature of the wood pile will get to just below the combustion point. In the process, those high temperatures will kill off pathogens and sterilize any weed seeds or vines that might have been ground up along with the wood.

The key phrase, is ‘in theory’,

The chips were perfect!

Each year, I request 60 cubic yards of mulch, starting with four piles, each of ten cubic yards. If that isn’t enough, I request more. Last year, for reasons I cannot understand, the DPW pointedly declined to provide additional chips.  Weeds were starting to appear in the unchipped aisles and so, after pleading for six weeks, my co-manager and I used a wonderful, free service called ‘Chip Drop’ which allows tree service firms to avoid paying tipping fees at landfills and, instead, drop off freshly-chipped wood at homes or other locations. You can even specify ‘no logs’ or ‘no branches’. Did I mention it is free?

Two days later, we got ten cubic yards of the best wood chips we had ever seen.  I was in thrall.

But the Community Garden is not a power unto itself. Like many such gardens, we are under the auspices of our town’s Conservation Commission, and the Medfield Conservation Commission takes its stewardship role quite seriously. We are on the site of Medfield’s last working farm, acquired by the town a quarter century ago. I did not ask permission to bring in ‘outside’ chips. And, when it was learned we had not asked permission, my co-manager and I were – and I will use this word because it is the dictionary-perfect description – castigated for violating the trust of the Conservation Commission.

This spring, we requested our usual supply of chips… and were told by the DPW they didn’t have any available because of the cold winter. So, I investigated ‘outside’ wood chips and narrowed the choice to two: Chip Drop (free) and Certified Playground Chips, which are milled from the everwood and pith of hardwood trees.., and are $55 per cubic yard. The community garden collects enough in user fees to pay for the chips, and I agreed to pay any overage from my own pocket.

We were about to order the certified chips when the DPW said it had taken the temperature of its wood mulch pile and found it had gotten high enough to kill off all the bad stuff. The Conservation Commission decreed we should use DPW chips and they were delivered and spread by gardeners in their aisles.

Three weeks ago, I noticed something I had not seen in the garden in almost a decade: bindweed.

For the uninitiated, bindweed is evil incarnate. It exists to make the lives of gardeners miserable. It can regenerate from root pieces as small as two inches.  And, it was all over the garden, vining up fences. I pulled back the mulch around my own plot. Pieces of the bindweed had survived in the wood mulch and taken root. Since then, I have been cajoling my fellow gardeners to cut off the vines at ground level so as to ‘starve’ the roots of energy.

Underneath the hop, the remnants of
the compost pile which harbored seeds

Two weeks ago, I noticed something else. In 2025, the DPW also delivered two truckloads of compost. It looked beautiful.  We augmented the soil in the garden with it. What was left over just stayed in two piles on opposite ends of the garden…. where, this spring, dormant seeds for an invasive vine called Japanese hop germinated and were running wild.

The Japanese hop, removed.

The smaller tangle was removed, unbidden, by one of our long-time gardeners. Which gave me the idea that I could do the larger one. Took me three hours. To clear the vines that came from the seeds brought in by the compost from the DPW.

But it’s done. And, because the vines were removed before they had an opportunity to flower and set seed, it should be the last I see of it. And the satisfaction of a task completed maybe makes it OK to accept an offer to run a community garden after all.

Unless, of course, the DPW has more ‘surprises’ in store for me….