I’m trying to get up on my knowledge of woody plants in the area. I pulled out my woody plant book, which is Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs. I crossed an invisible line in my travels. Most trees and shrubs I see are not in this book. I needed the companion book: Dirr’s Trees and Shrubs for Warm Climates. I proceeded to check it out from the library. So far I’ve made it through the introduction and looked up one plant.  The intro was very fascinating to me since it’s about Dirr’s Georgia garden, and I’m now in the same area. I found out the botanical name for a crape myrtle (it’s …Lagerstroemia). I had no idea before, even though crape myrtles are nearly as common as bark mulch.  I managed to get a horticulture degree without learning any plants that are used in warmer climates. Now I’m able to happily increase my knowledge.

A library copy of this kind of book will prove to be insufficient, but I’ve wanted to buy this book for a while. However, recently they released the new Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs.
I could go ahead and buy both, but it appears that the new book is mostly a compilation of the previous two Dirr woody books. This makes a lot of sense in my mind, and here’s why:

The invisible line in Dirr’s two book was going from a zone six to a zone seven. There’s no reason really to divide the zones like this, so I’m happy to see that they combined the books. I’m only half a zone apart from where I moved from: a 7b to a 7a. I’m wondering if things like a loropetalum wouldn’t grow well in many Utah landscapes: at a zone seven they are supposed to be cold hardy.  But I’m also still not sold that going off and planting a myriad of zone seven plants is wise. Like I said in this post I’ve seen winter damage on zone 5/6 plants.

There are other factors going on too. Like rhododendrons and azaleas still don’t make it far past garden center shelves before suffering a quick death due to alkaline soils. (Why they are on garden center shelves is beyond me. I once tried to convince someone in a hardware store they really didn’t want to buy that azalea…it would shortly die. It didn’t go over so well since I was just buying screws, and the associate in the garden center thought it was a good choice. I have yet to see an established azalea in a Utah landscape…)  Not only are winters more mild in Georgia, but acidity and humidity play a huge role in the plant pallet.

The native plant pallet that should be drawn upon and used frequently will be different as well. I also believe in regional gardening…Georgia is a great place for woodland gardens. Utah (at least to me) caters to dry desert and mountain alpines. So when I’m done in Georgia I might have a whole new list of landscape plants…but I’m not necessarily in a hurry to go ahead and plant them in Utah.

But I really do need to go and buy that new Dirr book, one way or the other.