Bringing a tree inside sheds special light on holiday season

There is something absolutely lovely about bringing an enormous plant into your living room and decorating it with every glittery light and metallic fiber you can find, isn’t there?

It is a delicious time of year, indeed, for those gardeners who celebrate the holiday season with an 8-foot-tall evergreen plant situated as the focal point of the family space. If your family didn’t notice your efforts cultivating those luscious houseplants, now they are sitting up and taking notice of your plant material!

Putting up the tree is always fun; taking it down is always proportionately depressing. Children especially dislike the day the tree comes down: They’d prefer to leave it up year-round. Personally speaking, haste is the key to effectively dealing with the unhappy task. Of course, that attitude has brought about more than one unfortunate (and, OK, amusing) situation in our household.

One year I plucked all the ornaments and lights off the tree and carted it out to the compost pile quick as a bunny. “Ah, there,” I thought as I leapt back into the house, “The kids didn’t even notice!” Moments later, the two little darlings, who had been out sledding, came to the door with several bitty glass ornaments in their mittened hands. “Mom, you left these on the tree in the compost pile. We didn’t want the squirrels to eat them and choke.” They had confused looks on their faces, like I was trying to murder the wildlife. After some lengthy public relations I convinced the little cherubs that it was merely an act of maternal oversight.

The next year I found it too depressing to place the tree in the compost pile so I jammed it upright in the snowbank beside the house. It looked like a lovely little planting, really. My husband kept asking me when I was going to “deal with that thing.” I thought it was pretty so I left it there until one day in the middle of a snowstorm the wind took it and rolled it across the road.

We watched from the kitchen window, the cherubs and I, as our beautiful tree rolled like a roving tumbleweed over the bank, through the garden and several hundred feet down, down, down the field, twisting and turning like a leaf on the wind until it crashed into the tree line and snagged itself in an old apple tree below. We laughed and laughed. It was as though our tree was escaping back into the wilds from which it came!

Naturally, the situation didn’t appear nearly so amusing the next day when we donned our winter apparel and snowshoes to drag the tree up, up, up the hill to its inevitable home near the compost pile. This time we anchored it with rope until we could properly – and very sadly – chop it up into compostable portions in spring.

Anyway, the only way to effectively deal with the sad undecorating of the tree is to dwell happily on what’s beneath it. The holiday season is the perfect time to indulge yourself (or to drop broad hints to your loved ones about how they may indulge you) in a good gardening book. Books are the perfect gift and investment: They keep yielding dividends for years and years. And, of course, it is ever so important to whisk away the long Maine winter blues with a good read.

If you’re not sure what to ask for this year, let me humbly offer some suggestions.

First, any tree lover should have at least one Michael Dirr book in their possession. Dirr is a professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia and the author of 11 books, including the well-known reference book Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. His latest publication, Hardy Trees and Shrubs, will unquestionably become one of the most beautiful and significant books in the gardener’s library. This lavishly illustrated encyclopedia describes the best woody plants, from Abeliophyllum to Zenobia, and is intended primarily for gardeners in USDA hardiness zones 3 to 6. It shows both habit and details – flower, fruit, bark or fall color – of more than 500 species and includes some 700 additional cultivars and varieties. The compendium features 1,600 color photographs.

You’ll love the way Dirr imparts his knowledge. He’s quick to express admiration of a favorite plant (“An absolutely magnificent plant in its finest forms.”) or dislike (“In all my traveling and consulting work, I have never recommended, at least when conscious, a poplar.”).

Next, for those who love the flavor of old-fashioned or grandmother’s gardens, look into “Restoring American Gardens” by Denise Wiles Adams, a knowledgeable gardener from Virginia, and “Classic Garden Plans” by David Stuart, a Scotsman.

Adams’ comprehensive book is an encyclopedia of heirloom ornamental plants used in gardens from 1640 to 1940. Adams writes a remarkable piece on gardening history and horticulture and documents the changing plant palette of American gardens. From the Colonial era to the pre-World War II period, no region of the country is neglected and no major plant group unrepresented.

From a database of more than 25,000 plants and hundreds of antique nursery catalogs, she has distilled a unique survey of American ornamental gardens. If you live in a historic home and would like to restore your property, you shouldn’t be without this book.

While Adams’ encyclopedia features American garden styles, Stuart’s “Classic Garden Plans” delves differently into history. It is another great find for any gardener who is unsure of what to grow or how to put plants together in coherent planting schemes that have a historical flavor. Many of the garden plans and plantings included are simplified versions of those created by great gardeners such as Vita Sackville-West, Margery Fish and Piet Oudolf. The author’s extensive knowledge of period plants and how they were put together to look beautiful has enabled him to re-create historical classics, such as the Renaissance parterre or the Monet water garden, from contemporary planting lists and plans.

For those gardeners who battle with pest control and whose conscience wrestles with the negative impacts of using pesticides, “Bugs, Slugs & Other Thugs” by Rhonda Massingham Hart will help control garden pests organically. Using environmentally sound solutions, Hart shows how to control the animals, bugs, birds and other pests that want to take over the garden.

For those gardening in urban or small areas, check out “The City Gardener’s Handbook” by Linda Yang. Yang offers a definitive guide to small space gardening, providing an invaluable resource for any gardener facing the challenge of growing plants where space is limited, whether in the courtyard of a suburban townhouse or on a midcity rooftop.

Finally, “Deckscaping: Gardening and Landscaping On and Around Your Deck” by Barbara W. Ellis is another full-color publication that offers apt insight to techniques need to use the deck more in every season. Ellis uses photos, drawings, and text as she sets out to improve the appearance and comfort of any needy deck. She suggests surfaces, lighting, plantings and furniture – from simple to elaborate – and provides tips on maintenance.

This small sampling of gardening-related literature doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s available, so set out for your local bookstore.

Feast your eyes! Indulge! Read! Be happy!

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.