New Growth

New growth on one of my 2 serviceberries (Amelanchier arborea)
All of us that garden await the day that our new plantings start showing new growth. It doesn't mean much when our newly planted specimens stay green or simply don't decline. It's the new growth that shows us that our plants are establishing themselves in their new environment. I've heard it said that many plants "sleep" during the first year and "creep" the second before springing into action, but I've rarely found that to be accurate. In my landscapes, I have found that most plants initiate new growth rather soon after they are planted. Those that "sleep" often are the ones that eventually decline, so I wait with baited breath each time I add something for the new growth to appear.
Some plants don't seem as important as others because I know that I can replace them if they die. It's the others - the ones with special meaning because someone has given them to me, or the ones I've searched for years to find - that are especially significant to me. The serviceberries I've added are special only because I managed to find 2 especially beautiful specimens and I would be devastated to be the one to kill them.......
Serviceberries are well south of their natural range here in Pasco County. I see them and marvel at their beauty when I am in Torreya State Park west of Tallahassee, for example. Their tasseled snow-white flowers in early spring are some of the first blooms in the understory of that great deciduous forest and the dark purple, blueberry-like fruit are relished by songbirds. I want dearly for them to do the same in my new landscape. I kept one of these understory trees alive for nearly 10 years in my former home, but it never thrived. I believe the problem was that it didn't get the amount of sunlight it needed. Perhaps, the soil was too dry as well. It remains in that landscape as it was too large to transplant, but I fear that the new owners will never understand why I originally planted it. My two new plants adjusted slowly after they were first planted and over time they shed some of their leaves. They may actually be getting too much sunlight in their new home, but they are adjusting. They have new growth.
As gardeners, all we can do is place our new plants in the locations where we believe they should thrive. Sometimes we are wrong and sometimes it just takes a while. My red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) has lost all of its leaves. It is stressed from the amount of sunlight it currently gets. I don't expect it to die, but I also know that it won't leaf out again until next spring. The same thing happened to the two I planted 25 years ago at the County Cooperative Extension Service landscape in Pinellas County. Both trees leafed out each spring and almost immediately lost them as the sunlight was too intense. They were planted as an understory tree, but the canopy trees were still too small to give them the partial sun that they needed. Today, both are prospering - they flower and set nuts just as I had planned. It just took a few years longer than I had expected.
The summer rains seem to have returned to my part of the world - with a vengeance.  The 15 inches of rain we've had this past week has hurt a few of the things I have planted in the wildflower garden and jump-started a whole lot more of my plants that were struggling a bit in the droughty conditions that preceded it. As gardeners, we will make a few mistakes and have a few successes. Hopefully more of the latter than the former. Nature will sort things out for us in the long run. For now, I'm seeing a lot of new growth.

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