Purple leaves me crabby

Please listen to ProfessorRoush: youmust plan your garden carefullyrather than submit to the whims of spontaneous plant purchases and spectacular momentaryblooms! Science suggests that in an infinite number of parallel universes, almost anything can happen.Im sure, therefore, thatsomewhere out in the gardening universe, there exists a gardener who plans everything on paper, circles and borders and hardscapes each perfectly sized, and that mythical gardenerlater proceeds to shop for that clump of Stella de Oro or that purple barberry planned to provide just the right size and color blob for each spot on the plan. Its even conceivable thatin one of those infinite parallel universes, there is a ProfessorRoush who plans his gardens before he plants. In the rest of those infinite gardens, however,there is a crabby ProfessorRoush who planted too many purple-leaved crabapples.

Like many great artists and gardeners, I haveevolved through a number ofcreative periods; my bedding plants phase,my daylily extravagance, the iris collection mania, the weeping evergreen saga, andmy ornamental grasses affair.My most notorious fleeting passion, however, wasa purple-leafedtree period, which resulted in an entire front landscapingdominated bydreary dark-burgundy blobs, all individually beautiful, but collectively presenting adistressing anddepressing display. You allknow how it happens. In early spring, a local nursery seduces you with a Royalty crabapple, whose perfec tly beautiful pinkish-purple blooms are shown above.Those claret, delicately-veinedblooms are gorgeous, arent they? The fact that the plantwill haveburgundy leavesthroughout the summeronly adds to its theoretical interest and gardenusefulness. Price doesnt matter, we must have it!

Unfortunately, those burgundy leavesserve asan uncontrasting backdrop for the burgundy flowers and fromover afew feetaway, the flowers disappear into the foliage. Witness the tree in full bloom (above).Now youve just got adark,dirgeful blob in the lawn, and youre never sure when the plant is in bloom from a distance. Deep in your addiction phase, nowadd in a similarRed Baron crabapple purchased before youve learned your lesson, anda Canada Red Prunus candedensis tree with purple leaves, and a Fr axinus americana Rosehill Ash whose leaves turn burgundy in the fall, and youveaccidentally created adoleful landscape in purples. Thankfully,acopper-red Profusion crabapple died under my care as an infant tree andthe Canada Red has since enlisted the Kansas windin an assisted-suicide pact, both proof that God exists and is attentiveto foolish gardeners.

A little variety, friends, goes a long way in a garden, and so does a little hard-won wisdom. Weve all done it,andthose who missed their purple phaselikely just substituted a white phase centered around Bradford pears orsuffered some other colorfulcatastrophe of their own making.Although I later succumbedto a minor shaggy-bark treeinfatuation thatcaused a smaller area of my landscape to appear as if massive dandruff had afflicted all the trees, I learneda substantiallesson during my burgundy fiasco and have sinceaddedmaples and oaks, magnolias and sycamores, and cottonwoods and elmsto the garden.Given age and actuaria l tables, I may never see the mature outcome of these efforts, but perhaps, someday,my landscapemay look more like a planned garden and less like a watercolorscene created by a two-year-old with a penchant for purple. I still dont have a garden plan, and Im still subject to spontaneous purchases, but I persevere with the knowledge that time and nature will help correct my mistakes.

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