Northridge

We planted a walnut tree in the back garden nearly a dozen years ago, hoping it would grow to shade the far too sunny kitchen and master bedroom windows. If there were nuts, we reasoned, they’d be an added bonus. We selected an English walnut because black walnut trees secrete a substance called juglone that kills other plants. It never once crossed our mind that the tree we’d chosen might be an English walnut grafted onto hardier black walnut roots. Of course that’s exactly what happened. Now we’re stuck with two choices: kill the tree (and the nuts and the shade, though it probably won’t bring the dead lawn back) or give up on the lawn and instead plant juglone-resistant plants like hosta, cinnamon fern, bleeding heart, lamb’s ear, coral bells, pansy, violet, purple cone flower, bee balm, Shasta daisy, anemone, iris, snowdrop, or yarrow.