Trees

As the summer heat intensifies and rainfall dwindles, watering newly planted trees and shrubs becomes incredibly important.

Watering Trees and Shrubs

Although rainfall has been significant so far this summer, newly planted trees and shrubs need watering as daily high temperatures creep up and rain dwindles during the drier part of our summer.  The next few months can be critical for woody plants struggling to become established in their...
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‘Forest Pansy’ is a cultivar of our native redbud that offers unique purple foliage.

Adding purple shade trees to your landscape

The ornamental value of landscape trees can be weighed by a variety of attributes, from interesting bark in the wintertime or colorful blooms in spring to the character of leaves that persists during the growing season. However, the foliage that embellishes branches to create a summertime...
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This year, periodical cicadas in Brood X will emerge across Indiana and a small, 4-county area of central Illinois.

17-Year Cicadas of Brood X

Over the next few weeks, some of central Illinois will experience a rare phenomenon that only occurs every other decade.  As soil temperatures warm, millions of insects will emerge from the ground in forests, city parks, yards and gardens.  They will carefully navigate the terrain and...
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Redbud is a fantastic spring-flowering tree offering the best floral display of any Illinois native tree.

The top four spring-flowering trees to plant

Spring is a time of abundant blooms as well as one of the best times of year to establish new woody plants in your landscape. This year, consider adding one, or all, of my favorite Illinois native spring-flowering trees to your landscape, and you’ll enjoy spring floral displays for years to...
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This young red maple could benefit from corrective pruning to establish a central leader that is free of competition from adjacent limbs.

Shade Tree Pruning

Wintertime offers few activities out in the garden, other than filling bird feeders and carefully watching dormant plants for any sign of awakening as spring nears.  However, winter dormancy is the ideal time to prune woody plants.  With trees and shrubs inactive in their winter slumber,...
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River birch is a native tree with excellent winter appeal from its beautiful, exfoliating bark.

River Birch

The snow-blanketed wintertime landscape often lacks the beauty we can recall from other times of the year when plants were in bloom or filled with wonderful green foliage.  It leaves both humans and wildlife searching for plant life that retains interest either in the form of ornamental beauty...
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Gymnosperms, like this Colorado blue spruce, are a group of nonflowering plants that emerged several hundred million years before flowering plants (angiosperms) entered the evolutionary history of the plant kingdom.

Angiosperms vs Gymnosperms

The plant kingdom has not always had the diversity we know today.  It has taken hundreds of millions of years of evolution to bring about the diverse, complex group of flowering plants known as angiosperms.  And for many millions of years prior to the emergence of angiosperms, the plant...
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The frosty accumulation of ice crystals on these spruce needles resulted from the wafting spray of an adjacent (untreated) roadway and serves to illustrate how salt spray can accumulate on plant parts.

How winter salt can damage landscape plants

Deicing salts are essential to winter travel in Illinois and provide necessary safety in a landscape setting by melting dangerous ice on precarious steps, sidewalks, entryways, and other areas of frequent foot traffic. However, winter damage from salt can be a major problem in some landscapes...
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Ice accumulation yesterday resulted in damage to many trees and shrubs in our area.

Ice Accumulation on Trees and Shrubs

Freezing rain is a regular part of winter weather patterns in central Illinois, resulting in occasional ice storms that can damage property, take out utilities and wreak havoc on tree canopies.  By meteorological definition, an ice storm occurs when ice accumulation is greater than 0.25 inches...
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Trees and other woody plants grow from buds at tip of each limb which release hormones to suppress growth of other buds lower down the stem.

How Woody Plants Grow

Woody plants are some of the largest and most long-lived plants in the landscape, forming the majestic and expansive canopy of our urban and natural forests.  With all of this wonderful woody growth, have you ever stopped to think about why woody plants attain greater height than their smaller...
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