Last year my neighbor gave me a dogwood tree that was one stem about 6″ tall with a few scrawny leaves, still tight up against the stem. I didn’t know how well it would do, cos it didn’t look like much of a plant then, but I planted it in a sunny spot and watered it and it began to grow!  She had gotten these small trees from a project at her school, and later she said some other peoples’ didn’t grow.

Mine grew, all summer it grew. I put a concrete block around it for a while so the guy who mows my grass wouldn’t cut it off when it was small.  It grew and I removed the block before the winter. Didn’t want water/snow/ice  to collect in there and freeze, and damage the roots.

Winter came and I was hoping it would make it thru its first winter.  It was about 3′ tall, and branched at the ground, with 5 stems coming from the ground, which I had never seen a dogwood do before.  Why………?

It sure did make it thru the winter and grew a lot the second summer.  Now, on 10/4, I noticed it had a small bunch of flowers on.  Hmmm, dogwoods do not bloom in October.  Behind some of the flowers were some berries.  Time to search the internet to find out what I have here!

You can answer any question online if you ask it right. This is not an ordinary dogwood of the variety we normally have here, but a roughleaf dogwood.  They grow wild in some parts of the south.  The plant is confused right now for sure, cos it shouldn’t be blooming now. But it has grown well again this summer, thru the drought we had here, with me watering it occasionally.  So maybe it just felt it was time to produce one little bunch of flowers, no matter what the season.

Next spring it should have a lot more flowers, and the berries form over the summer and birds eat them in the fall.  Also, it will get 16′ tall with these branches all around, and give small animals a place to hide. (Like from the red tailed hawks that are around here sometimes.)  And I can take cuttings to root next year and plant some more.  Using a rooting hormone makes taking cuttings work pretty well.

My neighbor gave me a very good thing, better than we knew!  I always say this piece of land wants to grow things very well.  This dogwood wanted to grow and provide pretty foliage, flowers, and berries, and be part of an animal-lover’s habitat.  This is good.