Plant Talk

Trend-Spotting: Color Blasts

The  Northwest Flower and Garden Show gives us a sneak preview of what's going on in gardening...while the show ended today, some of the  trends on display in gardens and booths will be more lasting...

The most obvious trend, and one I hope sticks around, was blasts of brilliant color. Paint, pots, fabric, trim-work, garden furnishings and accessories were brilliantly colored, sometimes to lovely effect and other times in combinations that made my teeth hurt.

There was nothing shy about the cacophony of shades enlivening many of the gardens in bolder and more varied shades than in past years. Colors were used not to compliment flower color, but to compete with it, and the effect was sometimes fresh and fun, other times garish.

Lively color play in Judith Jones' fun board game of a garden:

 

Too many different colors jumbled together, no place for the eye to rest...and the lavender background is just so wrong...

  Gillian Mathews, owner of Ravenna Gardens and master colorist, created this gorgeous blue and green vignette. She used the same palette in her  booth, leading me to believe these watery shades will be popular this spring...

My top pick of trends? The orange, gold, chartreuse and yellow that warmed up so many of the show gardens.  Even in the gloomy, poorly lit Convention Center this rich palette, ideal for our all-too-often chilly and dark climate, was inviting and welcoming.

 

 

Hope to see you tomorrow (Friday) morning at my F&G Show talk on how to simplify your gardening life - 11 a.m. in the Hood Room...

Pots & Plants - F&G Show, Take Two

Pots, plants and scenes not to miss at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show...it runs through Sunday at the Convention Center in downtown Seattle...

Green wall at the Hardy Plant Society of Washington booth..made of easy-care, drought tolerant plants. See their web page for a full description of how they put the wall together...

 

Edgeworthia chrysantha, in full and fragrant bloom, and a weeping pussywillow, at Molbak's booth. The edgeworthia, a.k.a. Oriental paper bush,  is winter-blooming and hardy in the Northwest; the Woodinville nursery surprised with their plant display but no retail booth this year.

 

 

Swanson's Nursery's lust-inducing display of unusual plants, includes this great succulent/green glass checkerboard in a cluster of metal vases (I always wondered just what to do with those cool vases...) and a tender begonia (B. luxurians) with exotic foliage....

 

 

Be sure and stop by Monrovia's orange and lime green display to pick up their free handout "Incredible Edibles"

 

Can't remember which display has this very cool ligularia generously trimmed in white - consider this shrub, ideal to light up a dark corner of the garden, worth the treasure hunt...

 

Some of the most innovative, stylish scenes are on the skybridge, including this fabulous colorist display by Ravenna Gardens.... 

And a product I plan to track down are these lightweight illuminated pots, urns and stools, in vivid colors, made of 100% recyclable materials, from Rotoluxe. Visit this Edmond's company's web page to find retail outlets - they're offering a show special 10% off through Feb. 28.....

 

Show Gardens

Here's my first report from the F&G Show - stay tuned for inspired details, the disasters, and trends to watch for....

It was bustling at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show this afternoon, with goats bleating, designers putting the final touches on their creations, and vendors scurrying to stock commercial booths.  It was great to see the Convention Center alive with garden energy....

What one thing did I most want to take home with me? The moss recliner, left - you can lust after it too when you cross the skybridge to pick up this year's free stunner of a Great Plant Picks poster....

I was judging gardens for Pacific Horticulture magazine, but I'm not sure when the winners will be announced... so I'll just tell you about my favorite gardens. Loved the Family Farm In the City, right inside the main doors, with darling goats (one escaped while we were there -it doesn't seem right that live animals should be on display in that place!!! PETA where are you??). A collaboration by designer Jessica Bloom of NW Bloom EcoLogical Landscapes and Seattle Tilth, this is a utilitarian garden, full of good ideas, yet so attractive and comfortable. The garden feels real, personal, with water catchment, a covet-able outbuilding, a hogwire fence, gabion walls, stream, cob oven, edibles, cold frame, patio and dining table...it's really an inspiration of a garden, and right on trend. How Jessica squeezed so many elements in such a little space and kept it feeling harmonious I don't know, but she did.  I predict this intimate little garden will influence more show visitors than any other..

Top to bottom: one of the goats, stream, and path lined with hay bales & one of several raised beds:

The cleverest garden uses an old pick up truck as a container; "Crops for Clunkers" by Seattle Urban Farm Company is a transportable vegetable patch that uses every inch of truck to house chickens, and grow a  mini-orchard, vegetables and plenty of salad greens.

The Washington Park Arboretum's "The Garden In Winter" shows what we can do right now in our own gardens, with effective design and gorgeous plants...especially the peeling bark birches, camellia 'Yuletide' in full bloom, hellebores, and a fragrant little grove of 'Arnold's Promise' witch hazels. 

 

6 More Weeks of Winter?

No matter whether the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow this morning, spring has arrived early this year in our part of the country.  January was the warmest on record (kept since 1891) - Cliff Mass blogged that it was "April in January", supplies high temp numbers that spin your brain, and notes our average temps were warmer than those of Tallahassee, Florida!

I've lived in the Seattle area my entire life (I know, how dull....) and I never remember seeing forsythia in full flower by now, let alone daffodils budded and Iris reticulata blooming away. We're having average March temperatures, so no wonder Clematis armandii has been fooled into blooming.  I picked my first sprig on the last day of January....the narcissus in the photo are forced, the sweetly fragrant clematis just picked, its flowers open nearly two months ahead of normal bloom time...

 

Take a look at what really gives me hope for spring -  lambs in the Langley pastures already. We better hope we don't have terrible cold that'll harm these babies, born just last week....

It's Show Time...

Hard to believe the Northwest Flower and Garden Show opens this coming Wednesday....it's a couple of weeks earlier this year, and since when did winter fly by so quickly??? Anyway, the show is bearing down upon us, and I think everyone is a little skeptical of this first year with new owners...but it sounds to me like the seminar series remains strong and most of the vendors, plants and paraphernalia, will be back, along with fun non-profit booths like Great Plant Picks.

I'm speaking at 11 a.m. on Friday morning in the Hood Room on a topic near and dear to my heart - how to simplify your gardening life - hope to see you there. And on Tuesday afternoon I'm part of a team judging gardens for Pacific Horticulture magazine, so I'll be among the first to see the show gardens. Watch for a blog post on Tuesday night with garden highlights, and no doubt low lights as well....in the meantime, although as a judge I'm going in without preferences or knowledge, I'm liking the buzz about Seattle Tilth's Urban Homestead, dubbed "A Family's Little Farm in the City".  Nothing could be more timely than a garden showing how to grow food and live sustainably on a small city plot, integrating native plants, recyclables and rainwater harvesting. The trick will be making all this earnestness visually attractive, and if anyone can do that it's the innovative young designer Jessi Bloom. I'm excited that the garden features mini-goats and chickens ....let's hope the other display gardens prove as smart and timely. Stay tuned....
 


 


 

Sweet Peas

Sweet peas are the star benchmarks of the gardening year; planting them kicks off the gardening season for me, and picking my first bouquet of sweet peas means summer has arrived. It's time to order sweet pea seeds, especially if you're one of those good, thrifty gardeners who starts them indoors. I'm afraid I don't - the last couple of years I've had sweet peas in bloom from mid-June through mid-September by planting starts from the nursery (Wells-Medina in Bellevue and Swansons Nursery in Ballard carry a good assortment) and seeding directly into the soil around the starts for a second flush of bloom. The result is an array of colors over a very long season.

My tips for sweet peas are simple. Wait to plant until the soil dries out a bit,  usually by mid-March. Dig lots of manure into the soil - you can't overfeed these prolific bloomers. Sweet peas like a deep root run, and require regular watering, full sunshine, and a scaffold to climb. Sweet peas  earn the best real estate in my little garden with their abundance of fragrant, frilly flowers.

Renee's Garden Seeds offers an enticing array of sweet peas - I choose different kinds to grow each year, just making sure to choose a few dark purples for contrast with the pastels, and always the most fragrant varieties. I asked Renee Shepherd what she's excited about this year, and she reminded me that the supremely fragrant 'April in Paris' is her favorite. But she also recommends the new knee-high introduction 'Jack and Jill' and also 'Watermelon' for its "glowing color and perfume'.

Rose and soft blue 'Jack and Jill' grows only about three feet tall and are heat tolerant

The sweetly fragrant 'Watermelon' & my favorite dark purple, early-blooming 'Zinfandel'

'April in Paris' is quintessential sweet pea pretty and fragrant

Land Bridge - natives & art....

Next time you're traveling south on I-5, it's worth getting off the freeway at Fort Vancouver (just before the Oregon border) to walk across the new land bridge that's one of seven sites in Maya Lin's Convergence Project. Designed by JohnPaul Jones, it's a feat of engineering, an historic restoration project, an art installation, and a showcase for Northwest native plants. It's so delightful to walk across the bridge's packed earth and basket-weave patterned surface, that it's easy to forget the bridge serves the vital purpose of re-connecting the old fort to the Columbia River waterfront.

The land bridge is forty feet wide and so organically curvaceous that as the plants grow up you'll feel submerged in nature and forget how disturbed this beautiful, historic site has been for so long.....The bridge was completed in August, 2008 and cost $12.25 million dollars. Thanks to Maya Lin's vision, the connection between fort and river, interrupted for a hundred years by the railroad and highway, has been quite literally bridged.

Basketry-patterned paving

Interpretive panels explaining the history, landscape and plants of the surrounding prairies

 Welcome gate designed by Native American artist Lillian Pitt 

Art and Plants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern Courtyard

Modern garden design is so exciting and so unfortunately rare. We were in Portland over the weekend, and couldn't believe the very cool courtyard at the refurbished Hotel Modera on Southwest Clay Street. This freshly refurbished 1960's motor lodge is a celebration of sleek mid-century modern design. We visited for the restaurant Nel Centro, which has delicious southern Italian food, but were most impressed with the courtyard garden which features a luscious green wall, cut out squares of plantings, an inspired mix of hard and soft surfaces, and the coolest fire troughs I've ever seen.

Jane Hansen of Lango Hansen Landscape Architects was inspired by Columbia Gorge cliffs, and its true that the 64 foot long wall is rugged looking and thickly grown in with evergreen huckleberry, grasses and ferns. But the grid of rusted metal panels and the geometric design fits in beautifully with the sparely designed space. Take a look at this gorgeous wall - believe me, the courtyard at the Hotel Modera and the menu at Nel Centro are worth a jaunt south to Portland...

Circus Razzle-Dazzle Flowers

  I'm usually the cheerleader for bouquets cut from the garden, but this time of year I long for color. We don't live by evergreens and flowering branches alone, which is about all the garden offers in January.

"The Greatest Show" running from today until March 1st at Museo Gallery in Langley was the inspiration for this razzle-dazzle of a flower arrangement. Sometimes we just need all out color - nothing subtle here, as befits the circus theme celebrated by a variety of Whidbey artists.

The show opens tonight, Saturday January 23, with a party, 5-7 p.m. - drop in to see a stunning assortment of work. You can enjoy the excitement of the circus, including the gallery draped in a simulated big-top, without watching a single poor animal demeaned or mistreated (I've been boycotting real circuses for years.......)

The yellow, orange and striped tulips are from Metropolitan Market, 3 bunches for $10. The pussy willows were foraged and dried last winter, the red branches pruned just yesterday from my little coral bark maple (Acer palmatum ' SangoKaku') -  even in January the garden does yield up its delights....