Hit the Dirt; Magnolias

Hi there this is hit the dirt. My name is Claire Ackroyd. You've probably all been noticing. I hope you've been noticing Magnolia is in bloom starting right about now. Magnolia is a coming into bloom and there are more and more of these in the state now. I think people have been very afraid of them thought they weren't Hardy and not reliable and as more have been introduced and a few big successful ones have been noticed. We're beginning to see Magnolia showing up all over the place. There are a few big old specimens around a beautiful Blue Hill some great ponds on the campus of the university. But you are truly magnificent. And to drive by one of those and not to want to own one yourself is to be nuts. They are incredible. So briefly here is the story of magnolias. There are at least three kinds of magnolias that are reliably hardy in Maine. And really if you have the right location anybody can grow a magnolia. So here's the location soil is the key to grow magnolias they like a deep rich moist well drained soil and they really need all of those. If you don't have good drainage they have a sort of thick carroty root system that does

not take a soggy soil well at all and they won't grow in a poor hard dry soil. They like a good healthy rich well-fed soil plenty of organic matter. Once you've got that the amount absence or presence of sort of exposure wind and that doesn't matter a whole lot if you have a very windy rather exposed location then you're smarter to use the star Magnolia which is the first of the three I'll talk about. These are the small ones they bloom. Earliest they have a wide open flopped back set of petals that are actually people's If you want to be technical about it. That kind of lie wide open when the sun shines on them and they tend to be rather smallish shrubby plants may be 10 to 12. Ultimately possibly 15 feet tall. There are a couple of star magnolias as in Magnolia stellata that are worth mentioning. There's a variety of hybrid selection called Centennial which is very nice. It has a little bit of pink in the bud. It has

large flowers and it's a very tough upright plant. It's been in bloom at the University of Maryland always hard windy hillside every single year since it was planted. It never misses a beat. It's a great plant. And then there's royal star which might be the showiest in bloom has pinkish buds. It's very dense plant has very heavy blooming. There's not a lot to choose between the two of them but they are both slightly superior to the type of the straight magnolias the lighter. So that's the earliest and the smallest of them. The big one that is the sort of second choice will get oh maybe 20 feet and that's the Loebner I hybrids. They are hybrids between the star Magnolia and they are very hardy Magnolia called Magnolia Kobus which is an interesting plant is really a tree Magnolia which is scarce in this country. We'll get into that another day. It's a very interesting plot it's pretty there are more of them. No good telling about them because you can't get them anyway. But Magnolia

Loebner I there's been one around for a very long time called Dr Meryl which is very free flowering vigorous plant has a single flower about eight to 10 people to the flower as are all the bigger flowers there sparser and larger. It looks like these walloping great tulips all over the naked plant they both bloom before the leaves come out. Very beautiful very hardy. It has a cousin called Leonard metal which has not been that available but it's becoming much more available now. Ten years ago it was always thought of as the Loebner Magnolia that you only ever see in England. Now it's available and it's quite common. And the great advantage of that is that it's a real pink. It has a lovely sort of purplish stripe down the back of each petal people. And a fuchsia flush right through it. And this is a magical plant is these great big fuchsia the pink flowers on a quite a big vigorous plant. And it's a lovely one to have the other one that you can grow in that group is ballerina which has the foundries been double flowered and more or less fragrant. Now there's

one other group that is worth mentioning which is the hybrid group from. The star might go over the little shrubby plants across to the lily Flora Magnolia which has big purple flowers and these are all pink deep rosy purplish pink and then known as the little girl hybrids. And I'm not they all going to be able to get them all but there's Randy Ricky Jane and Susan pinky. That might be all of them and they are relatively rare still but coming into the trade there the children are to hybridize us who produced all these beautiful hybrids and named them after all the little girls and they are short slightly later flowering big published pink flowers very hardy and a great bunch of magnolias to try so that everybody gets to try magnolias Now if you've got the right location for them and you've been listening to hit the dirt and I'll be back in a week.