Let by Rodney Eason Exposing the Root Flare (Photo by William Cullina)


We are making a ton of upgrades at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens including taking the time to go back and fix some of the details we have not had time to address with new gardens being installed and buildings being built. Some of these upgrades include revising some of our older gardens including the Perennial and Rose Garden and Te Great Lawn. We are also repairing some of our problem areas with broken irrigation and areas of poor drainage. Since we are such a young garden (we opened to the public in 2007), I really want to improve the quality of our existing plantings as they are so young and we can easily correct any problems that they might have. Everywhere I go throughout the gardens, I am looking at how our existing trees and shrubs are growing and how they have been pruned. Years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend several training sessions by Dr. Ed Gillman from the University of Florida. Dr. Gillman is one of the leading researchers in the United States on planting and care of landscape trees and shrubs. If you


ever have the opportunity to attend one of his classes, please do. He has a great way of helping you understand how trees grow in the landscape and how to prune them for best form and habit. He also shows how to plant ball and burlapped and containerized plants. Vast amounts of information is available on his website through the University of Florida. Of all of the things I learned through these sessions (and later reinforced with a training seminar at the Bartlett Research Labs outside of Charlotte, North Carolina), proper planting depth stands out as one of the most important. Everywhere I go, I compare how trees are planted in the landscape versus how they naturally grow in the woods on the Boothbay peninsula. I can see pronounced buttressing roots all along the hiking trails as explore the beautiful nature preserves. But when I get to some cultivated landscapes, I see… mulch and a straight trunk sticking


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Summer2013


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