UT Extension Agent Joellen Dimond and Chris Cooper plant a bed in front of WKNO’s studios. The bed has several problems that Joellen finds. The soil test (pictured right) comes back okay, but the soil is heavy and wet, so wet that a percolation test could not be conducted because the water just did not drain from a freshly dug hole. The bed also has a very thick mulch layer, 6+ inches in some places. Because of the hard soil and deep mulch, the existing magnolia trees have many if not most of their roots in the mulch layer.
Joellen considered tilling the bed to incorporate the thick mulch as an amendment to the native soil but this would have two undesirable effects. First, the trees would have many of their roots cut by the tiller and may die. Second, having amended soil on top of the non-percolating natural soil would create a basin where water would collect drowning the plants.
Using this information, Joellen designed an attractive layout using plants that can tolerate living in a wet area (her design on right). She chose to use Florida Anise, Dwarf Yaupon Holly, Anthony Waterer Spirea, Stella de Oro Daylily, Plumbago, Ogon Sweet Flag, and Canna. She also chose these plants because they should be easy to find in the nursery.
Because of the poor percolation Joellen chose to plant the plants with only two thirds of the existing roots under the soil. She chose to leave the rest of the root ball above the soil level and build a mound around each plant with a combination of native soil and a topsoil amendment. This would allow some of the plant’s roots to be above the water so they can breathe.
The cannas were already growing in one spot of the bed so she divided the cannas and distributed them into the areas she had planned.
When Joellen, Chris and a group of master gardeners were finished where there was once a bland, bare mulched bed there is now a beautiful arrangement of shrubs and plants.
Click here for more videos on shrubs and wet heavy soils:
Taking a Soil Sample: https://youtu.be/JRwqyTkUOSc
Soil Preparation: https://youtu.be/afPEkSw2VkQ
Low Maintenance Landscape Plants: https://youtu.be/HEjh7QuXVfE
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