David Chen is a former nursery worker and lifelong gardener who writes about ornamental grasses, climbing plants, plant troubleshooting, and garden tools for Caledonia Garden Centre. He has trialed over 180 ornamental grass cultivars and 60 climbing plant species on his own lot since 2014.

Trial bed at a glance

  • Soil: Heavy clay, pH 7.2, high in iron but low in organic matter. Drainage is the main design constraint on every project.
  • Sun exposure: Full sun on the south lawn, part shade on the east side, dense shade under the spruce windbreak on the north fence.
  • Wind exposure: Lower than Margaret’s lot, due to the spruce windbreak, but the soil cold in the rooting zone pushes hardiness about half a zone colder than the air temperature would suggest.
  • Deer pressure: Moderate. Rabbit pressure is the bigger problem on the back fence.

What David actually grows

The trial bed holds roughly 180 species and cultivars, weighted heavily toward ornamental grasses, climbing plants, and tools-of-the-trade plants that he tests by deliberately mistreating them. The longest-running clumps include a 2014 switchgrass (Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’), a 2015 sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora), and a 2017 Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) that has not been divided once in eight years. All three are still going.

Method

  • New plants go in the ground in spring only, with one exception: bare-root ornamental grasses and clematis go in during a narrow window in early September, when the soil is warm but the air is cool.
  • Clay soil is amended with a 2-inch topdressing of compost and a 1-inch grit layer, worked into the top 4 inches with a digging fork. Deep amendments are not used; the science on deep amendment does not support it (University of Minnesota Extension, 2017 soil guidelines).
  • Pruning is done at specific calendar windows for each species, tracked in a spreadsheet. Wrong-time pruning is the most common cause of “the plant did not bloom” complaints he gets from readers.
  • Records are kept in a shared spreadsheet that backs up weekly. Bloom time, height, disease pressure, wind damage, and tool failures are all logged.

Things David will not write about

  • Lawn care. His lawn is a 100-square-meter patch of fine fescue that gets mowed and ignored. The American obsession with the perfect lawn is not a fight he picks here.
  • Anything that requires more than 30 minutes of maintenance per square meter per season. The math does not work for working gardeners.
  • Pruning advice he has not tested himself. He broke a lot of shrubs learning the timing the hard way.
  • Tools he has not used for at least one full season. Sharpen the blade, watch the balance, see what fails.

What David reads

  • Royal Horticultural Society plant selector and The Plantsman - cultivar-level data on grasses, clematis, and herbaceous perennials.
  • Chicago Botanic Garden Plant Evaluation Notes - multi-year comparative trials, the only source he trusts more than his own trial bed.
  • University of Minnesota and Penn State extension publications - soil science and cold-climate data.
  • Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder - the standard for care notes on 7,500+ plants.
  • USDA NRCS Plants Database - native range and ecological data for North American species.