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ERIN FRANCE
iffiTimniiii* good growing
Between the Hedgerows
USING PLANTS FOR PRIVACY IN YOUR YARD OR ON YOUR PORCH
By Erin France news@flagpole.com
IIIIIHI4 threats & promises
New Releases from Hooker Vision
PLUS, MORE MUSIC NEWS AND GOSSIP
By Gordon Lamb threatsandpromises@flagpole.com
Besides beauty and food, plants can provide
space from your neighbors, reduce traffic
noise and act as cover for discreet summer
day-drinking. Hedges, like the famous box
woods in Sanford Stadium, are well-known,
familiar, orderly and often create a formal
space. Hedgerows are hedges’ impulsive sis
ter, messy with climbing roses, bushes and
intertwined tree limbs. Hedgerows provide
animal habitat and a casual garden atmo
sphere as well as a natural boundary.
If you’re interested in planting peren
nials for privacy, now is the time to plant
or re-pot trees and bushes. You won’t have
to water as much during the winter, and
it’ll give the plant’s roots time to acclimate.
Planting trees in the spring can stress the
vegetation, already working hard to produce
flowers and leaves. It’s not impossible, just
harder on both the flora and the gardener.
I learned about hedgerows watching
a BBC history show recreating working
farms from the past. Later, I read Craeft:An
Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of
Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands,
an archaeologist and one of the present
ers on the BBC show. Hedgerows seemed
utterly fascinating to me. A boundary—
grown by a collection of plants and man
aged by man—to mark territory, protect
livestock and provide privacy.
Looking around Athens, I see more
hedges than hedgerows. Athens drivers
might see rows of Leyland cypress hedges
on Cedar Shoals Drive, Cedar Creek Drive
and down Lexington Road. Though the
Leyland cypress is a hedge standard,
they tend to get thin on the bottom as
they grow. No one will see into your sec
ond-story window from the street, but driv
ers will see your kids play in the backyard.
Leyland cypress also die from various fungi
that chow down on cypress trees planted
too closely together in poorly draining
soils—the basic formula for most hedges I
see. Hollies also are popular for a monocul
ture hedge.
When I decided to grow my own hedge
row, I went a little crazy, choosing all types
of plants at various heights. I added three
Leyland cypress to give height in the back,
but I planted them far apart. I also included
two red maples (“Brandywine” and “October
Glory”) and a tulip poplar. Those trees
joined several varieties of yucca, a prickly
pear, a fragrant tea olive and several crape
myrtles. I even planted some rose bushes,
moved from a shadier part of the yard. It’ll
take three to five years for everything to
grow together to make a barrier from the
highway, but this first year shows a lot of
promise.
Whether you have a yard, a porch or a
balcony, it’s worth considering adding some
privacy plants. Here’s a few tips from what
I’ve learned about maintaining plants for
privacy in the last year:
No monoculture: If
you have one particu
larly nasty disease or
pest, all your privacy
could be gone at once.
But you also don’t
need one of every
thing, especially if
your design aesthetic
is less cottagecore/
bric-a-brac and more
orderly and formal.
You could pick three
or four varieties with
dark foliage for a
sophisticated look.
Vary heights and
growing habits:
My upright elephant
ears (variety “Black
Magic”) provide some
great height, but not
a lot of cover at the
bottom. I tested var
ious vines this year, trying to fill the holes
between the porch railing, and by midsum
mer the morning glories were the clear win
ner. Pick a vine, a medium-sized bush (like
a lantana) and a taller specimen, like an
elephant ear, for a fun combo on a porch.
Easy watering routine: I have a soaker
hose for the hedgerow in the front, but I
have to remember to hand water the porch.
Accordingly, the porch plants suffer in the
summer. For porch plants, limiting the
roots will limit the foliage. If you want a
bigger top, use a big pot to make room for
the roots on the bottom. For in-ground
plants, test your soil before planting any
thing. I killed and sickened a lot of trees for
two years in my front yard before I tested
the soil and learned I needed to add garden
lime and compost.
Experiment with different plants: I saw
a balcony garden growing a whole batch of
corn this summer. I’m not sure if the gar
dener harvested any ears, but they did get
great privacy from the corn stalks, and this
looky-loo’s impressed appraisal. ©
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Without getting
too far into it, and before this slides into
sentimentality and sappiness, let me just
say that I remain thankful for everyone who
reads these words each week and every art
ist whose news populates it. I mean, sure,
there’s always going to be room for specific
criticisms, but with regard to the huge,
overall universe of Athens music, I remain
very thankful. I hope all of you have a won
derful holiday. Now let’s get into it...
TWO NIGHT FLIGHT: This Friday, Nov. 25
and Saturday, Nov. 26, Flicker Theatre
& Bar will host the 2022 instance of the
Cloud Recordings Festival. Tickets are
an exceedingly reasonable $10 per night.
This year’s lineup features Telemarket, the
duo Shane Parish &
John Kiran Fernandes,
The Rishis and Kiran
Fernandes on Friday,
then Marcel Sletten, In
A Kythe, Shane Parish
(solo) and Organically
Programmed on
Saturday. For more
information, please see
facebook.com/cloudre-
cordings and cloudre-
cordings.com.
DRIVIN’BY, INDEED: Tickets
are on sale now for the
individual solo tours
by Drive By Truckers’
Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Thing
is, though, none of the shows are in Athens,
but a few are fairly close. Hood plays
Atlanta’s City Winery Dec. 13-14. The clos
est Cooley will come to Athens is Alabama,
but he’s got four shows in our neighbor
state. He’ll play Birmingham (Dec. 15), then
he’ll do a double-header in Waverly (early
show and late show on Dec. 17) before play
ing Selma on Dec. 23. Find tickets and more
information at drivebytruckers.com.
HI-DEE HI-DEE HI-DEE HI: The Artie Ball Swing
Band will perform a special show at VFW
Post 2872 (835 Sunset Drive) this Friday,
Nov. 25. The group, composed of quite tal
ented Athens folks, sometimes performs
in different configurations. For this show,
though, they assure us that, “The full band
will be on hand to play for you and help
you get a little fun out of life!” which seems
nice and helpful of them. Doors open at 7
p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. For more
information, please see facebook.com/
vfwpost2872.
BYRON COLEY ON SPEED-DIAL: The cascade of
new releases from Athens experimental
label Hooker Vision will not let up and,
as such, I’ve fallen behind on my coverage
of what I believe to be one of the most
aesthetically—in every sense—pleasing
endeavors to ever come out of Athens. A
few weeks ago, the label released new work
from Quiet Evenings, Motion Sickness
of Time Travel and M.M. Turner. The
Quiet Evenings’ release, a 30-minute,
two-track ambient drone named Glass
Bridge is both unwittingly aggressive in
its first movement while incongruously
comforting in its second. Motion Sickness
of Time Travel’s Outerhoros is a combi
nation of recent music and tracks from a
decade ago. Self-described as possibly being
“subliminal pop,” I’d have to agree, as this
is especially true with tracks like “Green
Carpet.” This is Rachel Evans’ (one half of
the Hooker Vision C-suite) longtime solo
project which has continually come more
into focus. Finally, there’s Tree in Sun and
Rain from composer and Professor of Music
M.M. Turner (aka Mitch Turner). There are
four themes explored here: light, rain, grass
and leaves. Turner’s compositions contain
solid underpinnings but have a sheen of
brittleness across them such that it’s almost
as if we weren’t supposed to hear them.
This record is guitar-oriented and each
track was recorded in a single take. But, as
the liner notes say, “...this is not mere jam
ming, these pieces have been masterfully
crafted and composed.” Well, I’m certainly
no master, but even through my limited
understanding I’m inclined to agree. For
more information, please see hookervision.
bandcamp.com and mmturnermusic.com.
BEYOND AND BEFORE: Prog rockers Nix The
Scientist lean in hard to that descriptor on
the group’s latest release, Chosen I. This five-
song release certainly pays honest tribute
to the band’s chosen musical predecessors.
To wit, if you can get through the opening
song “Prophecy” without thinking of both
Emerson, Lake & Palmer as well as Pink
Floyd, then you get a gold star. The band
takes a huge left turn by the time it gets
to “The Curse Of Being Bored” which is a
fairly by-the-numbers fourth-wave emo pop
song. Similarly, the theatrical screamo of
“Eyes Up” leaves me pretty nonplussed. The
operatic return to form, if you will, of closer
“The End” is a fitting bookend which wraps
this up nicely but, when matched with the
record’s opener, you’ve got a book whose
cover isn’t representative at all of what’s
actually inside. I dunno. Let’s just say Nix
The Scientist shines brightest when they’re
reaching for the stars instead of looking on
the ground. Find this on Spotify and other
services, and for more information, please
see facebook.com/nixthescientist. ©
Hibiscus mutabilis covers the front porch through the summer and fall and
only dies back after several hard freezes.
M.M. Turner
N0VEMBER 23, 2022- FLAGPOLE.COM 15