From the supposedly ornamental Univest studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it time for another tree shaming episode of chemical free horticultural hijinx You Bet Your Garden.

You see them all over the place, Bradford, Cleveland, and other supposedly non-fruiting pear trees.

Well, I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and on today's show I'll reveal why you should never plant one of these supposedly ornamental monsters.

Plus, we talk with a Shady Lady about plants for shade.

And we'll take your telecommuted questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and decidedly demure declarations.

So keep your eyes and your ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you not attracting flies to your flowers - right after this.

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Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the Univest studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up later in the show, we'll discuss shade loving plants with a Shady Lady and will warn you about the notorious, invasive and evil Bradford pear.

That's a lot to get done.

So let's hop right to your fabulous phone calls... Alita, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Why, thank you.

- Well, thank you.

How are you doing?

- Just dandy.

Just studying to get my teacher certification.

- Oh, well, good for you.

They need more teachers right now.

- Yes.

So I hear.

- And where are you?

- I'm in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

- All right.

What can we do for you?

- Well, my question was...

I have...

I garden.

I like perennials because I want to fill it up and have less weeding to do, but of course I have to keep weeding.

So I have a lot of black-eyed Susans that come in and expand, and I've taken them...

I've taken seedlings to my husband's small business.

He has a fence business.

I tried to plant them along the fences so it looks a little pretty.

And unfortunately his workers are not familiar with perennials and they, in their weeding, often rip them out.

So my question is...

I decided maybe it's better to do them in the fall and then go talk to them and say, These are what the leaves look like.

Please don't rip them out.

But my question is...if I pull the seedlings that have not bloomed this past season out and transplant those, will they flower next season?

- Black-eyed Susan is a somewhat complicated plant.

There are a lot of different varieties, believe it or not, and some of them differ in their, quote, habit.

In the wild, they are biennials.

They will produce a plant the first year.

And then produce the flowers on that plant the second year.

And the seeds cross-pollinate and everything gets mixed up and even the poor flower doesn't know what it's supposed to do.

In gardens... You know, if you buy professionally grown starts, they'll probably be listed as something like half hardy perennials or short lived perennials.

Now, the reason a lot of people think they are truly perennial is that they readily self seed.

A lot of the seed that they produce that the birds miss drops to the ground.

And that's where the new run comes out.

And you'd never know it.

I mean, many plants are like this.

So you have a couple of options.

You can just transplant the plants directly.

And you could also be a little sloppy in doing so and not get all of the roots, because they will regrow from the rhizomes they produce underground.

So, live plants, pieces of root...

Either one of those is going to produce flowering plants for you.

And of course, you can collect some of the seed, the dried seed heads, like with sunflowers.

I would start those inside under bright lights and plant them out around sometime in April, April or May.

- All right.

Thank you so much, Mike.

- My pleasure.

You take care.

Please call us at... Kane, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you, O great king of compost.

- Well, somebody had to do it, and I was the only guy left in the room.

How are you doing, Kane?

- Yeah.

Good.

How about yourself?

- I'm just ducky.

Thanks for asking.

And where is Kane?

- Highland Lakes, New Jersey.

- All right.

What can we do you for?

- I have a crazy question for you.

When making yard waste compost, brown leaves, and using the coffee grounds, does it matter if you use decaf coffee grounds?

And the reason I ask is I know some of the...

..I guess decaffeination... ..processes use chemicals or maybe eliminate the nitrogen from the caffeine molecule.

- When coffee is decaffeinated, there are two different processes.

One is what's called the water process.

I don't know exactly what it involves, but the only thing that's added that somehow sucks most of the caffeine out is clean water.

You are absolutely correct in...

I'm not sure if it's still done, but the other process is based on solvents, chemical solvents.

And I can see why you'd want to avoid those in a compost pile.

Who...?

Who drinks the decaf?

- I do not.

I'm a pure caffeine person.

But when I made compost, I didn't have enough coffee.

So I went to one of the name brand places who would give you as many coffee grounds as you would like.

- So we're talking about Starbucks.

- Yeah.

- You've got your question three quarters of the way answered.

Go to the Starbucks website and, you know, look around and if you can click on decaf coffee, do it, because, you know, they generally are very proud about where their beans come from and how they're handled.

Or if there's a chat box, just ask directly, How is your coffee decaffeinated?

But you're absolutely right.

I would not use a solvent-based decaf coffee.

- All right, Mike, thank you very much.

- Hey, thank you for a great question.

Now it's time to welcome our special guest, Amy Ziffer, author of The Shady Lady's Guide To Northeast Shade Gardening.

It's a new book.

It came out this spring and it's the second edition, which means she did a good job on the first one.

Amy, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike.

Thanks for having me.

- Well, thanks for being had, Amy.

Now, you know... Are you OK?

First of all, are you a Shady Lady?

- Only in the best sense.

- You don't cheat at cards or crap games or anything like that?

- I've never been caught doing that.

- Well, that may make you shadier.

What specifically compelled you to do a very inclusive book on shade gardening in the Northeast?

Did you simply know that there was a big demand for this kind of information, or are you living in Snow White's old house in the forest?

- Well, maybe both.

I do live in a house in the forest, and it's...

It's really nice.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

But no, you know, I... My business name was Shady Lady Garden Design and in with clients through the years... And I also have a background in publishing, actually.

I should just take a step back.

I used to work for a magazine that did not compete with the magazine that you used to work for.

Can I say which one it was?

- Sure.

- I used to be a staff editor on Fine Gardening, which is the magazine, not always, but in back in the '90s when I worked there, it was devoted to ornamental shade gardening exclusively.

Because of that background in publishing, I think, and specifically garden publishing and then working with clients, I just felt that there really wasn't a great resource that was devoted to that topic and I just decided I was going to take a shot at proposing it to a publisher, and I was lucky enough to find one.

- Somewhere in the book you mention that when an author attempts a labor like this, they wind up learning more than the people who read the book, because it forces us to do research and to double and triple check everything.

- Yes.

So that's very true, particularly of the second edition, because I had to approach...

In order to cover the subjects I wanted to cover in the second edition, I had to approach people who knew more about those subjects than I did.

So, yes, I did learn a lot in the second edition and that was great.

It was great.

I'd like to learn more.

- One of the things...

It took me much too long to learn this about a little bit of landscaping I do in the front of my house.

Nothing looks better than removal of certain plants.

- Mm-hm.

- I had a coward's shade garden - hostas, impatiens and begonias.

But you know, it's impossible to control hostas.

And, you know... - Some are way more vigorous than others.

- Yeah, there were just too many.

You couldn't walk in there.

And just this spring I had an intern working with me and I said, Get this big honking weed whacker and follow me.

And after I'm done walking in a place, just whack the heck out of all of these.

And it was mostly hostas, and the garden never looked better.

- You know, you mentioned access, and a point that I find myself making with audiences that I give presentations to more and more is the subject of structure in garden spaces, which all starts with ideas about access and how you use spaces, how you're going to access spaces.

And I find that it's really difficult to get people to think that way about their gardens because they are accustomed to just thinking them as sort of collections of plants or expanses of plants.

But really they're much more satisfying if you start with the idea of how you're going to move through the space.

- One of the things I wanted to talk with you about is flowering shade plants.

Previous books that address this subject, they're talking about foliage.

They're talking about plants with big, showy, colorful leaves.

But, boy, I'm seeing a lot of flowers once you get to the name the plant section of your book.

- So that's true.

I mean, most of this was a very highly curated group of plants.

So I was looking specifically to share a large number of flowering plants with people because, just like that lady in the luncheon, you know, people want flowers in their gardens and I can't blame them for that.

I do as well.

I think the most important thing to know about flowering in the shade is that the plants, most of the plants, I mean, a vast majority of the plants that are well adapted to shady conditions are spring bloomers.

So if you want flowering in your garden in the summer and fall months, you have to be very selective about your plants in order to have that flowering carry through the seasons.

So for instance, there are a number of native asters here in New England that actually do very, very well in shade, exceptionally well in shade.

Not a lot of them.

And most asters do remain sun plants.

I'm not talking about those.

I'm talking about a couple of shade adapted species.

I always make the point to people that if you just write down like the first four or five shade plants you think of, and then if you don't know when they flower and you look it up, I would bet that four out of five, if not all five, will turn out to be spring bloomers.

- In many, many people's cases, they're going to think having a shade garden is counterproductive because they're not helping native bees or butterflies.

But again, as I was paging through the second part of your book, I'm seeing beautiful flowers.

And it didn't seem like it was going to be that difficult to carry through the season.

- Yeah.

Well, not to mention the fact that bees and butterflies don't only reside and forage in the sun.

There are actually bee species that are kind of forest bee species.

And, you know, we have butterflies that transform from caterpillars that feed on forest understory plants like Lindera benzoin.

I actually have...

The Latin names are not a problem for me.

It's the common names I always have trouble remembering, literally, so... Lindera benzoin, spice bush, It just came to me.

Spice bush.

So we have spice bush, swallowtail caterpillars, for instance, and the plant itself will take some sun.

But the fact is that it just...

I think you don't see it in the sun, growing in the sun naturally, because it probably gets out-competed by other things.

So it has its niche in the shade and it has its associated animal and insect species.

There's not going to be a vacuum in terms of insect life.

There is going to be something to fill every available niche in shade.

- Now you're in trouble, because like most authors who cover a large topic, I have to ask you who your favorite children are.

So, yeah... (INDISTINCT) you know, is pretty well known I think, for having unusual flowers and also it's a fall bloomer.

So it's...

Earlier we were talking about ways to extend the season.

It's certainly one of the easily obtainable plants for gardeners who want to have fall blooming plants in the shade.

And they're just such architectural - the flowers are so architectural.

They're really, really lovely.

They look designed.

To me, they look like something that should be from another planet.

Yeah.

- All right.

Amy Ziffer is the Shady Lady, and her book is The Shady Lady's Guide to Northeast Shade Gardening.

It's a great book.

It is heavy.

- Let me... Let me close by... Well, yes, it is a lot heavier than the first edition.

Let me close by suggesting a native plant for you to try, that I'll bet you're not growing.

- Go.

- Goldenseal.

- Oh, yes, but I should be.

- Yes, you should be.

So give it a try.

Great little plant.

I'm very enthusiastic about it.

- Thank you, Amy, for being with us today.

- Thank you.

Have a great day.

Happy gardening.

- Same to you.

Time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling... Gail in Clarence Center, New York writes...

Here are some photos of my Cleveland pear trees.

As you can see, we have a row of them lining our driveway.

We planted them around 15 years ago.

The lawn is not treated and the driveway is not salted in the winter.

They do have compost at their base, but it isn't mounded.

All the other trees seem to be doing fine, but one is in trouble.

I noticed last year that it seemed a little sparse, but no dead leaves.

This year it got worse and now the leaves are brown.

I tried to get somebody to come out and look at it, but local companies are apparently too busy for one tree.

We'll cut it down soon.

Do you have any idea what could have killed it?

I am concerned about the others.

Well, Cleveland pear, like the notorious Bradford pear, is one of several varieties of, quote, ornamental pear trees, often called caliper pears or, more properly, Callery pears.

C-A-L-L-E-R-Y.

Named for Marie Callery, who sent the first specimens from China to Europe.

Now I'm putting quotes around ornamental because while they may be nice to look at in the spring when they are covered with showy white flowers, they are brittle trees whose branches regularly come crashing down to the ground.

Their flowers are fragrant with the smell of rotting meat, tainted fish and/or dog poop on your shoes because their flowers are pollinated by flies and not bees.

And despite being bred to be non fruiting, they have become seriously invasive.

Apparently non fruiting simply means the trees do not produce juicy eating pears, but all that filthy fly pollination does lead to the development of small, numerous fruits, which, again, I have to put quote marks around, because these hard half-inch things contain seeds that are rich in naturally occurring cyanide.

How charming.

But as the weather cools towards frost, those that are hard become soft and attract birds who eat the flesh and poop out the seeds at one of their next rest stops.

The seeds germinate rapidly in the spring, and neglected areas of field and forest quickly become Callery pear nurseries, forming an almost impenetrable mass of the nasty things, displacing wanted plants, native plants and pretty much everything else.

But wait, these trees were bred to produce flowers that couldn't be self-pollinated or cross-pollinated.

But there's lots of these trees.

Each tree has lots of flowers.

There's always lots of flies and lots of new varieties of these trees being continually introduced into the market.

And eventually, as Jurassic Park's Jeff Goldblum would have predicted, nature finds a way.

And now there are miserable monocultures of these triffids contaminating large spaces from the South through the mid-Atlantic and all the way up to Madison, Wisconsin.

Thus my headline!

Please don't plant any more of these vegetative villains.

Now back to Gail's dead tree.

I first want to congratulate her on having a chemical free lawn and avoiding road salt in the winter.

But those non mounds of compost around the base of her trees are...well, they're mounds, and they're big enough to be capable of creating the dreaded volcano effect, rotting the bottom of the trunk where the mulch keeps it constantly moist.

The solution is simple.

Use a rake or a hoe to spread those mounds out until they reach the margins of the root systems and are no longer touching the trunk.

If the trunk of the dead tree has been completely rotted or nibbled away where it was previously covered, that's why that one died.

And you know, this always happens to the tree in the middle of the line.

Never one on either end that you could remove without suspicion.

No, it's always some guy in the middle.

These trees were bred to be disease resistant, but like their supposed sterility, those dreams did not come true either.

Although their biggest enemies are the high winds, heavy, wet snow and ice that break their fragile branches.

they are susceptible to diseases such as fireblight, a nasty bacteria that affects eating pears as well.

The symptoms appear to match up pretty well with Gail's dead tree, and there is no real cure once a tree is that far gone.

Interestingly, the filth flies that pollinate the flowers in spring transmit the disease.

Bottom line - get it out of there before the roots spread this problem to your other trees.

And, yes, that means the stump must be pulled out.

But like all fruit trees, the wood emits a marvelous fragrance when burned, which you should definitely do, and you should probably make plans for the others.

Fast growing trees have the shortest lives, and ornamental pears generally only survive for about 25 years.

But don't feel bad about growing a short lived, villainous zombie tree.

When first introduced in the Swinging Sixties, when many other flowering mistakes were made, it was hailed as the perfect flowering tree, and for nursery owners it was the least expensive tree to produce and the fastest to grow.

Even though legendary wildflower lover and wife of President Lyndon "want to see my scar?"

Johnson had a Bradford pear, the earliest variety of these trees, planted in downtown Washington, DC, in the early '60s.

Even worse, The New York Times praised the Bradford, saying, Few trees possess every desired attribute, but the Bradford ornamental pear comes unusually close to the ideal.

And that, boys and girls, is fake news.

Well, that sure was some unfortunate information about so-called ornamental pear trees, wasn't it?

Luckily for you, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your leezhure, or, of course, your lezhure, just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week and you will always find the latest Question of the Week where?

At the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour long public radio show and podcast, all produced and delivered to you weekly from the Univest studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA. Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when he saw the Three Stooges live at a Philadelphia nightclub in 1968.

Hey, Mo!

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to plant pears on my property if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

But you can call us anytime at... Or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shores at...

Please include your location.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I'll be begging my last tomato plants to die with dignity so I can get out of my sauce splattered kitchen and see you again next week.