Dispatch From Wisconsin

It’s been a little over a year since I moved back to Wisconsin after 40 years away, having spent most of that time working at Behnke Nurseries. I’m readapting to a colder winter, although I’m not looking forward to it. On the other hand, nearly every day of summer was pleasant and that goes a long way toward balancing out the cold. With a new garden in process, I’ve done a lot of winter prep.

Our house sits on a bit over a quarter of an acre of unfenced land in Middleton, at the western edge of Madison. Even though Madison is the state capital, we are just a small destination in a “flyover” state; the average airfare here is the highest of the 100 largest airports in the country. (But it’s “only” a three-hour bus ride from Madison to O’Hare Airport in Chicago.)

The back yard has a sandy/silty loam soil for at least the top foot. I think it was marshland before settlement; it’s very well-drained. The front yard is about six feet higher in elevation, and the soil has more clay. In either case it’s easy to dig, which is a plus. I unearth a fair amount of the native rock, in the form of water-worn sandstone stones to boulders. PH is near neutral, and the water is hard, with a lot of calcium.

I planted close to twenty shrubs and trees over the summer. As this will be their first winter, I have taken precautions to (I hope) protect them from the wildlife. I put three-foot-high hardware cloth fence cages around each one, with ¼ in holes in the mesh. The bottoms are buried about two inches deep. I am hoping to prevent or reduce feeding damage from three things: rabbits, voles, and deer.

The rabbits have been a problem, especially in spring and early summer. (For some reason, the population crashed around August 1. Before that, we would routinely see three or four in the early morning and late afternoon.) I quickly realized that I was going to have to be very selective in what I planted. At least in my garden, they turned out to be fond of perennials Ironweed (Vernonia), False Indigo (Baptisia), and Spiderwort (Tradescantia), which were either eaten to the ground or defoliated. Shrubs that were nibbled and gnawed: a native Rose, even though the neighbor has Knockout roses without any problem; Serviceberry (Amelanchier) and Aronia (Chokeberry). They did not bother perennials Ornamental Onion (Allium ‘Millenium’), Amsonia, Agastache, Beardtongue (Penstemon), Beebalm (Monarda), Russian Sage (Perovskia), Daylilies, Sedum, Goldenrod (Solidago). Or Raspberry bushes. When we took an early spring trip to Madison’s Olbrich Botanical Gardens, I noted cages up to protect early emerging growth on some of the ornamental grasses, so I guess in March I will need to cage the Panicum ‘Northwind’ that I planted. I looked online for rabbit-resistant lists and am using them as a guide in future plantings. There is a lot of overlap with deer-resistant lists, but rabbits seem to be even less discriminating in what they eat than the deer.

Winter damage from rabbits is quite destructive to shrubs and young trees. They gnaw at the bark and can girdle the trunk/stem. This is the main reason for the cages–to keep the rabbits away from the shrubs.

Voles are rodents. They look like mice with short tails. They are common in Wisconsin, and also in Maryland. They gnaw on the bark on stems, and also tunnel under mulch and underground and eat plant roots and bulbs. I recall that in Maryland, they were quite fond of boxwood. In the winter here, they tunnel under the snow. The reason the cages are two inches deep is to discourage the voles; I hope that’s deep enough. I have no idea if I have a “vole problem” or not, but the environment seems like we should have plenty of them. For Behnke customers who had trouble with voles eating things like tulip bulbs we recommended adding sharp (that is, not rounded) gravel to the soil around the bulbs, the idea being that when the voles were digging the gravel poked their soft little noses and they moved elsewhere. Don’t know if that works, but it’s in the back of my mind as another possible deterrent.

A big difference between the Maryland home landscape and the landscape in Madison is the mulch used. Here, it is frequently stone instead of bark. You see a lot of retaining walls made of large, rounded boulders, and beds around houses mulched with two-inch diameter gravel. The gravel is of various types of rock, as it comes from sand and gravel pit deposits that were left by the glaciers. Sort of a hodgepodge of colors. Not unattractive, but stark. I would guess that it isn’t the favorite haunt of the voles. I have replaced the rock in several beds with mulch, and we’ll see next spring if that was a mistake.

At the shady yard we had in Bethesda, deer were a big problem, but for the most part, they stayed out of the fenced back yard. Over the years I moved deer chow like hosta to the back, leaving the front with mostly deer-resistant plants. (Future article: Fifteen Deer-Resistant Perennials). Here we have at least one deer that passes through, and no fence. I know there is an overpopulation of deer in the park a few blocks away, so I assume it will be an increasing problem over time. During the summer, I occasionally applied deer and rabbit repellent, which did seem to help. The cages may help with the deer this winter, although a really intrepid deer can still eat the top branches.

I also planted two crabapple trees and last week I wrapped the trunks with tree wrap to prevent frost crack and sunscald, which can be a problem on trees with smooth/thin bark on sunny days in the winter. (The south side of the tree trunk heats up on sunny days, and when the temperature rapidly drops at sunset, the bark shrinks and can split.) And I put tree trunk protectors to keep the rabbits from gnawing on the bark and deer from scraping the bark with their antlers.

I think I am as prepared for winter as I can be, and I’m already working on plans for expanding some of the beds next spring. I’m excited about a whole new garden and being able to grow plants in a sunny garden, and eager to see the results of Year One plantings.