Ann Ferro: Stealthily toxic

When did I notice that our yard had become dotted with black walnut pods? Maybe five years ago? Where did they come from? A neighbor’s tree?

No. The tree grew here, behind the honeysuckle … for years without as much as a thought. Last fall we had to take boxes of black walnuts to the dump. Last spring I paid my grandsons a handsome sum to divest the garden of hundreds of tiny black walnut saplings. That is what happens when you aren’t paying attention.

While this tree, with its beautiful wood, was growing behind the honeysuckle, it was also stealthily wreaking havoc on my much-loved garden.

I am a gardener, not a fantastic gardener, but one who finds peace, solitude, creativity and beauty in working with the soil, planting and arranging flowers and most times, if I am honest, finding delight in what happens when you don’t pull out those invasive plants. Even when I had a full-time job, was an active volunteer and had children at home, I could always find time for the garden. Yes, sometimes the weeds got ahead of me, but weeds are plants. Aren’t they?

First it was the roses, my lovely pale pink climber that was so strong that it grew up over the roof of the shed and followed the wire that we installed from shed roof to the roof of our house…. we had roses everywhere. I have pictures. Beautiful! Then, they were gone. Dead. It was sad, but wearily I attributed it to the life cycle of climbing roses. What did I know? I planted another climber that didn’t do well either. It lasted less than a season. The delphiniums, my showy, gorgeous “delfies,” disappeared. I thought, they had come to the end of their cycle. And then it was the foxglove, the hollyhocks, the purple salvia and my rhubarb, the transplants from what was my grandmother’s rhubarb … all gone. All that grew was ajuga and some hostas.

What could be causing this? Covid? Deer? Slugs? Fungus? Climate change? Bad karma? Was it something I inadvertently did? Some addition that I got from the internet? The celandine that had returned to the yard with its mysterious orange sap were a sign that something was going on. Was it something in the bag of mulch that was leaning up against the shed…something sinister that leaked out?

I was pretty sure that I had done something awful. But what? I went over my gardening for the past year. I bought good plants. I added compost. I watered with Miracle Grow. I put out plates of beer to kill slugs .. and the worst part was that I had no idea where to find the answer.

My master gardener sister drove four hours with plants and enriched soil to remedy the issue. The plants looked great for a month. They died too – an awful, mushy demise. Even more shocking, the bed of mint that had grown next to the house across from the shed for 20 years was showing signs of ill health as were the iris and the bed of oregano.

It wasn’t until one morning in April as I was wandering around the beginnings of spring that I really noticed how big the walnut tree had grown. Come to think of it, I never actually paid attention to the tree, kind of erasing it out of existence as I contemplated the other growing things that needed attention. Didn’t I read somewhere that black walnuts secrete a poison that kills or stunts most other plants near it? Google confirmed that.

There it was. Juglone… death by black walnut. The internet gave me some answers to what was especially sensitive to the juglone and what was not. I searched for the list entitled “Anything that Ann Ferro planted that cost money.” Failing that, I made a list of what might grow where I once had a thriving garden in the sun. But I also asked the question about remediation and the answers to that ran the gamut from “not much – give up” to a cheery recommendation to add high organic compost so that the bacteria therein will digest and eliminate the toxins from the tree.

Google also listed plants that tolerate the venom: Shasta daisies.

“But,” I yelled at Google, “they died, as did the astilbe,” also identified as resistant to the onslaught of walnut venom. And my lovely climbing roses don’t have a chance. The robustly-healthy ajuga and cone flowers were a clue about what might come next since they are among the few flowering plants that can withstand the walnut tree’s chemical assault. Hostas are also immune, at least so my computer tells me.

And so, with the very short list of resistant perennials, I will begin to reconstruct what might be my garden. But now, even without a job or any volunteer responsibilities and children that now have their own children, the sweet time on my knees is a ship that has sailed. To garden I will need help, and there lies the rub. This is my garden, my creation, as benignly neglected as it often was… it was mine, my hands-on creation … alone.

Just recently I read an article that said that when a holly is being eaten by rabbits, it changes the shape of its leaves from smooth to prickly. In fact, the type of holly tree cited had the ability to make four different kinds of leaves as the means of protecting itself from marauders. The black walnut has evolved a chemical defender to protect itself, not from enemies, but rather from plants that will stress its food sources. It’s kind of like some people I’ve known who will stab anyone who tries to eat off their plates.

So, today, it is me against the big tree that I didn’t notice, understanding that the results of my efforts will be different from what went before. Whatever, it will be me, Google and the compost vs. the toxic tree that I didn’t see.