Trim it! Landscape Lessons with Shades of Green Owner Deborah Lee

A quarter century ago, Deborah Lee and her husband, Richard, were walking through the R.A. Pickett Nursery on Avon Road in Rochester Hills in search of shrubs for their home, also in Rochester Hills. 

“We developed a rapport with the owner, Mr. Pickett, almost immediately,” Lee recalls, “and pretty much fell in love with him.” At the time, Pickett was getting ready to retire, and Lee was thinking she was ready to leave her job as a draftsman. “We struck a chord,” she said.

So Lee, who grew up in Warren, bought the nursery from Pickett. Richard joined his wife in the business three years later.

This year, Lee’s is celebrating 25 years in business. With a focus on trees and shrubbery, Shades of Green features an intimate atmosphere with a knowledgeable staff and a right-at-home ambiance.

Shades of Green’s main offerings include commercial and residential landscape design, including brick pavers and water features. The nursery also sells topsoils, mulches and some herbs, vegetables and perennials.

Among some of Lee's favorite trees are Stewartia pseudocamellia, a Japanese deciduous tree that has creamy-white flowers that bloom in early June and  exfoliating bark. She adores the fothergilla shrub for its unusual bottle-brush flowers that emerge in early spring.

With Memorial Day weekend and the busy planting season here and Father's Day three weeks away, Lee digs into her gardening-tool inventory to share some insider tips about everything from gloves to pruners, which might make great gifts for Dad or for any gardener in your life.

The best way to remove weeds, moss, etcetera from between pavers is with a Korean Hand Plow.

I don’t go anywhere on the property without my Bahco pruners. They’re sized for right-handed or left-handed people and come in small, medium and large sizes. All parts are replaceable.

The best tool for nipping delicate flowers is  Fiskars’ tiny microtip  pruners,  perfect for pruning spent flowers on, say,  perennials.  

Machine washable gloves that hold up well are the Nitrile Tough Atlas Glove. They come in sizes for children, too. 

I feel ready for almost anything with a good, hardy pair of scissors. Sometimes scissors are all you need to do some great hedge trimming. 

Favorite tools of the trade

Here are more favorite tools of the trade from Metro Detroit professional gardeners, flower enthusiasts and plant professionals:

• “The traditional Japanese weeder from Telly's in Troy. I find it to be the most valuable of all my gardening tools, getting utilized every day that I'm in a garden. It gets weeds out by the root without interfering with or damaging the good plants you want to keep. It also comes in quite handy for planting. It's so easy to dig a nice hole with the point of the blade.”   — Bloomfield Hills-based certified landscape designer Deborah Friedman
• “I'm not the gardener in the family, but my husband, Charlie, is. He likes a wooden-handled shovel and the way the wood makes his hands feel and the way the metal goes through the soil. He enjoys the smell and look of  rich soil as it is turned over.” — Royal Oak homeowner Catherine Peet
• “A well-used, old-fashioned trowel and my hands.” — West Bloomfield homeowner Wendy Rose Bice  
• “The A.M. Leonard soil knife. It’s a sharp, versatile garden tool. I use it to weed, turn soil, plant annuals, cut roots, dig between cracks and saw off the bottom of root-bound perennials. It is rust resistant, and because of its bright orange handle, it is always easy to spot in the garden.” — Royal Oak-based professional advanced master gardener Bridget McElroy
  
• “A Felco pruner, Model 2. It’s great for small shrubs and perennials. I also love Felco loppers for trimming larger shrubs and smaller tree limbs. The best shovel for durability is the A.M. Leonard (Nupla round-point shovel with 48-inch fiberglass handle). I also like to use a Japanese-style garden knife to remove stubborn weeds. The knife can be found in most gardening stores.” — Clarkston-based professional advanced master gardener Michael Saint 
• “Felco pruners. In any garden/landscape, it always amazes me what can be done to improve the health and aesthetics with a simple pair of Felco pruners. Whether it is simply shaping or selective pruning of an ornamental tree, they always serve well. Often, I use them to simply fix a poorly done prune job that maybe a homeowner has done without intent, and I know ... pruning the tree properly can be the difference between life or death of the plant.” — Rochester-based Ryan Youngblood, owner of Artistic Landscape Associates
• “My hands. I love to get them into the earth. I even dig holes with my hands to plant my plants, then I smooth out the dirt around them. It feels like I am taking good care of my plants that way, nourishing them. My hands are destroyed when finished, but it is so therapeutic for me.” — Troy homeowner Marcie Wagner
• "The 'Martha Stewart Hoe.' I don't know the official name, but that's what we've been calling it ever since my mom saw Martha Stewart use this. It's a small spade that's perfect for weeding without disturbing your flowers or veggies, and you don't spend as much time kneeling on the ground. Once the weeds are loosened up, you just grab them. Also my new rain barrel, which was my Mother's Day present this year — so appropriate, since it's good for Mother Earth, too. And we have a handmade tool rack, created with a 2-by-4 and some nails.  Then we drilled holes in the handles of our garden implements." — Huntington Woods homeowner Andrea Sperl
• "Seriously, my hands. I planted potatoes on Monday — cleaned the potato seeds by hand, dug the planting holes by hand and planted them by hand. Picked weeds in the garden this morning by hand. It feels right, although getting the fingernails clean is a chore!" — Clawson homeowner William Tite.

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