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April 3, 2023 Editor, The News-Gazette: The weather is warming up and the spring flowers are out. If you’re anything like me, your thoughts are turning to gardening! Have you considered planting a tree? In addition to adding interest, flowers, and shade to your yard, trees can help remove excess water, feed pollinators, and shelter birds.
I often hear that people don’t want to plant another big tree. Some beautiful smaller native trees for your yard include redbud, juneberry, and dogwood. Shrub willows, spicebush, buttonbush, native hazelnuts, and silky or grey dogwood will happily grow in wet soil, which we have a lot of around here. For other landscaping needs, you might consider the smaller attractive native bushes: winterberry holly, oakleaf hydrangea, beautyberry, and ninebark. Any of these natives will give you a lovely show, and most are low-maintenance as well!
We also have a wonderful resource in the city of Lexington: our very own licensed city arborist and horticulturist, Celia Raney. She will come out to any home in city limits and draw upon her wealth of knowledge and experience for you - for free! If you want to plant something but don’t know what to do, Celia can provide helpful and well-informed advice about how to get started, where you can buy trees and bushes locally, how to find a licensed arborist company to trim your trees, and what plants are best suited to your property.
As we all enjoy the beauty of nature around us here in Rockbridge, I hope some of you will bring a little more of it into your own yards this spring. JANICE FRIEND Member of the Lexington Tree Board
