| Ask Marianne: Splotchy Photinia? We feel your pain
Q: I have a hedge of Photinia fraseri that gets bright-red new leaves in the spring. Problem is, the older leaves get brown splotches and fall from the plant. Most of the time, this hedge looks just terrible. Is there anything I can do to keep all the leaves looking healthy? -- Y.S., Renton M.B.: I know of nothing that works to keep Photinia leaves blight-free, but before I gossip maliciously about how ugly and acne-prone this popular landscape shrub has become, readers, please chime in if you have discovered any fungicide spray or technique that stops leaf spot once it has infected a Photinia hedge. The spotted leaves that disfigure this plant are suffering from a fungal leaf spot encouraged by frequent rain. In the perfect location -- with full sun, good air circulation, great drainage and excellent soil -- Photinia fraseri can put on a good front as a colorful evergreen hedge.
Tough plants revealed
The people have spoken! Now that the weather has cooled off and there's been a little rain, we asked gardening show listeners for their top tough Canberra plants. There were a few simple criteria: Plants should not have the potential to escape, particularly if there's bushland nearby, and while a little water is fine, they should thrive on watering regimes that fit with our summer restrictions. Natives and exotics were equally welcome, as were productive plants. The result was a deluge (of plant suggestions, rather than rain) and we've organised the list for your gardening pleasure. The great benefit of this list is that it comes straight from Canberrans themselves - it's not sourced from a text book or made up by a temperate, coastal gardener with no experience in our climate.
Beth Am plans Remembrance Day
The Earth Day Celebration will also include displays on butterfly gardening, local state parks, hybrid cars, water conservation and hydroponics crops production in this area. For more information, call the church at (561) 746-4674. Forgiveness workshops hosted by Unity church "Spring Cleaning for Your Heart" Forgiveness Workshops with author and healer Mary Hayes Grieco will be from 12:30 to 4 p.m., Sunday April 22 and from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Unity Church in the Gardens, 6973 Donald Ross Road, Palm Beach Gardens. Call (561) 721-1267 or visit www.maryhayesgrieco.com. Shambhala meets next Saturday The next meeting of the Palm Beach Shambhala Meditation Group at Unity Church of the Gardens, 6973 Donald Ross Road, Palm Beach Gardens will be Saturday, April 21.
Frederick Olmsted to 'Speak' At Arbor Day Celebration
To celebrate National Arbor Day on Friday, April 27, Palisades Beautiful will host a program about Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the great landscape architects of the late nineteenth century. Don Marquardt, who plays the lead in a current documentary on the life of Olmsted (commissioned by the American Society of Landscape Architects), will talk about his subject at 4 p.m. in the Palisades Branch Library community room, 861 Alma Real. The public is invited and refreshments will be served. Olmsted is best known as the co-creator of Central Park in New York City, where he transformed a waste dump into a haven that brought the beauty and respite of the countryside to crowded city workers during the Industrial Revolution. He also designed George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and the original layout of the campus grounds at Stanford University.
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