Following The Yellow In-Bloom Road

I notice lots of things horticultural on my weekly travels on the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway to the Hamptons. Mostly I notice how the seasonal timing slows down incrementally as I head east.

Spring happens 10 days to two weeks earlier at the Queens/Nassau border than it does in Southampton. And there can be another five day delay going out to East Hampton and Amagansett. And among all the things I see, nothing strikes me more than the yellow ribbon of bloom that begins in the last week of March then takes 10 days to two weeks to reach the Hamptons. It’s the annual blooming trail of the forsythia.

Some consider forsythia to be nothing more than a woody weed, and for some of the old-fashioned varieties this may actually be true. But when planted properly and pruned correctly, it’s a shrub that demands little care. Additionally, it provides some wonderful early spring color and is also a planting that can shield the view of a neighboring property or compost pile or can be a divider that sets apart garden areas.

Forsythia can also be kept as a deciduous hedge but this requires more work than most of us want to put into this plant and it can only be shaped right after flowering.

The plant is named after William Forsyth, a prominent English horticulturist who was born in 1737 and died in 1804. Though found under the names “Golden Bell” or “Golden Bells,” in some older plant books and catalogs it’s more commonly known by its genus,

forsythia

.

Forsythia is incredibly tolerant of abuse and will grow in just about any soil. It can be found growing in highway medians, Hampton landscapes and Manhattan terrace gardens.

Aside from numerous odd-ball varieties, the more popular cultivated varieties of this basil grower that got the ball rolling in this country were the weeping form

F. suspense

and a more rigid and upright form

F. virdissima

. Toward the end of the 1800s a hybrid of the two was developed and is known as “intermedia” or

F. intermedia

. Not too much was done with this hybrid at first and the weeping forsythia remained the most popular variety right through the 1930s.

Even today, you can still find stands of weeping forsythia all over the place. It grows quite tall, to about 8 to 10 feet, then arches over and spills back down to the ground. One of the big advantages of this variety is that at the point where a branch arches over and touches the ground, more often than not it will root at the point of ground contact, making the arch somewhat permanent. However, if you cut the rooted part at the ground (called a layer), you could easily have yourself a new shrublet by transplanting the rooted, cut section.

It was actually this growing habit of the weeping forsythia that spelled its doom. Gardeners became increasingly unforgiving of what was seen as a sloppy growing habit. And truth be known, this variety was something of a garbage collector—catching any piece of paper, candy wrappers, lost toys or airborne debris—like an octopus gathering the debris among its tentacles. The trash would inevitably be discovered once a hard frost hit and all the foliage of the shrub fell to the ground, exposing the naked skeleton of the plant and all its collected garbage.

There is weeping forsythia growing on a property next to ours upstate. It’s a magnificent shrub in the spring when in flower and it arches to form a dome about 6 feet tall, which is a haven for birds and wildlife all summer. But I was astonished the first fall we had the house because just after a hard frost, all the foliage fell to the ground exposing the yellow hulk of an aged Datsun 280Z sports car.

I rarely see the weeping forsythia purposely planted these days, as the intermedia forms are much more superior with their graceful arching variety of color shades and profusion of bloom.

When the cheery yellow flowers of forsythia open, we all know that spring has finally arrived. And we also know that when the flowers peak, just before they fade, it’s also time to apply pre-emergent crab grass prevention.

The most common intermedia varieties are Lywood Gold, Showy Border and Spring Glory. But there are newer varieties, such as Northern Sun and Northern Gold, which is one of the more upright varieties. The shapes and heights of intermedia varieties range from Sunrise—a somewhat dwarf and compact variety that grows only to about 5 feet tall—to Meadowlark, which can grow to 9½ feet tall and has very bright yellow flowers and foliage that turns golden orange in the fall.

If ignored or neglected, some varieties can get a little out of hand but they are all fairly easily rejuvenated by pruning. And pruning is the one area where many people go wrong with this plant.

Most varieties will bloom out here between the first and third week in April and the time to prune and shape is right when the flowers have fallen as new buds are set late in the spring and into the summer. If you prune later, you sacrifice the following season’s flowers.

Keep in mind also that most of the blooms will occur on old wood, so pruning in early May will stimulate the growth of new branches for more flowers. Remember also that if you take cuttings of the forsythia canes to force indoors, that this is also another form of pruning. There’s plenty of information on the internet on how to prune and shape these shrubs and how to maintain a forsythia hedge if you want the formal look.

If you’re starting from scratch, you can find both containerized (potted) as well as balled and burlapped plants at local garden centers; but they don’t stay around long so shop now. Last week I spotted some 8-foot-tall balled plants with about 20 canes each at a Southampton garden center for $20. A few weeks earlier I spied some forced forsythia canes in a supermarket. Three canes for twelve bucks. Grow your own.

Keep growing.