Plant Talk

Allium, Plant Nannies.....and Plant Talk's on Vacation

Plant Talk's on vacation through June 7 - I'll be lecturing at Rancho La Puerta the first week of June, and will return home with photos of a supremely fragrant, glorious, drought-tolerant Baja cottage garden  - expect some inspiring photos the week of June 8th....

In the hopes of ripe tomatoes, I've moved mine to pots along the house where the sun is hottest in the afternoon - but I don't have a drip system there. So I've resorted to "Plant Nannies" - not the fancy ones, just the ceramic spike and plastic screw-on thing to which you attach a bottle. They seem to work amazingly well, keeping the tomatoes well-watered right in their root zone. And they don't look too bad - here's the visual:

In the meantime, the allium are in full bloom and covered with honey bees - one of my favorite moments of the gardening year. I add more allium every year, and they never disappoint...I used to grow the basket-ball sized, lavender Star of Persia (Allium 'Christophii') but they are shorter and get lost in the burst of May foliage. So now I concentrate on the taller, willowy 'Globemaster' and 'Purple Sensation', growing here with orange wallflowers, the dark Ligularia 'Britt Marie-Crawford' and Spirea 'Magic Carpet'

Q&A on Flower Gardens and an Ailing (Dead?) Strawberry Tree

Question: Hello, Valerie ...
I'm wondering if you can help me.

I have two strawberry Arbutus compacta about 20' apart, and about 6 years old.  After last winter's wind and snow, one is healthy and one appears now to be dead.  How can this be?  We live on the shore of Puget Sound, out on a point where we get a lot of wind and salt spray.  The surviving healthy shrub is farthest from the water and spray.  How can I tell for sure if the sick plant is truly dead?
Thanks so much. 

Jan MacGregor
West Seattle

Answer:
Hi Jan,
A great many gardeners are asking "How can this be?" as they yank out corpses of plants that have survived a great many Seattle winters only to succumb to the onslaught of '08. I thought it myself when cutting back to the ground a mostly brown Viburnum tinus 'Spring Bouquet' and digging out a thoroughly dead bay tree last weekend. Your dead-looking dwarf strawberry tree was probably in a more exposed spot, or maybe its soil didn't drain as well so the ground had more killing ice in it. I've seen hedges where some plants were killed and others survived - conditions vary even a few feet apart.

To figure out if your strawberry tree is really and truly dead, scratch the bark with your nail. If you see only brown, then it's a goner. If the inner layer is green, the plant has life to it. Also look very closely for signs of some sprouting way down along the trunk or branch nodes. I just found a few tiny leaves on a jasmine that I was about to pull out....

Question:
I have some friends coming to Seattle (Burien)  from Florida this July.  They say they would love to see some examples of NW flower gardens.  She says she has a hard time in the Florida heat with her small flower garden.  I looked for some kind of a directory of NW flower gardens but didn’t find any. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Jim Crone

Answer:
You have an embarrassment of riches to show your Florida friends in July. I'd start with Lakewold Gardens south of Tacoma, which is one of our more flowery public gardens. I'm not sure what will be in bloom at Bloedel Reserve in July, but it doesn't matter - the Japanese garden, the moss garden, the view, the house...it's always magnificent, and your friends will probably enjoy the ferry ride over to Bainbridge. There's a great dahlia display at Volunteer Park, and the Bellevue Botanical Garden's recently revamped perennial border should be bursting with bloom in July. Then there's the rose garden at the Woodland Park Zoo which is in full flower in July, with a variety of perennials as well as the roses in such a beautiful, historic setting. You can always stop by the Miller Horticultural Library or call the knowledgeable librarians there at 206-543-0415 for more ideas....

Open Gardens....in Orting and England...

Mark your calendars for the Garden Conservancy's Open Days Program on June 7, reasonably close to home in Graham and Orting. And well worth the trip, for Old Goat Farm will be welcoming visitors. Not only a beautiful garden and charming old farmhouse, but also a happy menagerie of goats, chickens and ducks. Gary Waller and Greg Graves are great hosts....and their little nursery is full of cool plants. Here's a shot of the old goat the farm is named for, and one of many charming vignettes at the farm.

The Chase Garden and HomeRanch will also be held open, and part of the day's proceeds will benefit the Chase Garden. For full details of the day, see the Garden Conservancy's Open Day info page.

Or maybe you'd like to visit gardens a little further afield? Jim Fox, famed plantsman from Wells-Medina Nursery, is leading a tour to England in October, and there are a few spaces left. It's sure to be a feast of gardens, for Jim is not only expert in plants but also so knowledgeable about England. ...check out the details at the link above. The tour starts in London, with stops at Beth Chatto's garden and Hidcote, among others...just think of working your way from garden to garden around the autumnal English countryside....

It's All About the Vase

Sometimes I'm embarassed about the number of vases I can't stop collecting. But then I do an arrangement that just doesn't work, and I realize that what contains the flowers makes all the difference. It's a question of height, girth, material, transparency; how the vase supports the flowers (or doesn't) and how it contrasts or compliments them. You need plain sturdy jugs and earthenware vases for big mixed flower bunches, but you also need more individualistic vases to show off a special flower or leaf. Here's a photo gallery, fresh from the garden, that explains better than words how fun it is to play around with the synchronicity between vase and flowers....

A cluster of small vases each holding a single special flower or foliage:

A slim vase shows off the splendor of a single tree peony. The cookbook is a fabulous new one from Phaidon, with an amazing Italian ricotta cheese cake recipe..

This last vase is called "carrot top" and was made by Johanna Nitzke Marquis:

It's Time to Prune Your Pines

Pruning can be the most confusing of gardening tasks, but not when it comes to pine trees. See those tall, thin candles on the pine above? Control the size of your tree by snapping off a proportionate amount of candle every May. Now's the time.

Candle pruning is such an easy and efficient technique, and you don't even need to use clippers. If you want to limit your pine tree's growth, simply snap or snip the candles off at the base. If you want to make it bushier and keep it from growing too much, pinch the candles in half. If there's room for your pine to grow quite a bit taller, simply leave the candles alone this year, or snap off the tips to help the tree bush out a little. That's it. I've kept the pine tree in the photo  - I think it's a Vanderwolf's pine - in a pot for years by pinching off at least two-thirds of each candle every year. As you can see in the photo, I haven't quite gotten to the task yet this year - maybe tomorrow.....

Trash Can Gardening

When my daughter and her neighbors wanted to deck out their modern townhouse complex with a few big containers, they were stymied by the lack of choices and the high price of pots. They weren't able to find any containers they liked, let alone afford.  They wanted simple, sleek pots, but Design Within Reach prices weren't within reach. So they bought galvanized garbage cans in three sizes (about $20 each) drilled holes in the bottom, and potted them up. I can't imagine a cooler contemporary look.

  The garden world is changing, expanding its aesthetics and horizons - why else would a project like the Crack Garden in San Francisco win an American Society of Landscape Architects Award this year?  CMG Landscape Architecture created an 800 square foot garden for residents of a four-unit building by jackhammering cracks in the concrete, which now sprout vegetables, flowers and herbs. The entire project cost $500. (See the story at www.gardendesignonline. ) The ASLA jury called it "A profound project for the future we are about to embark upon." I don't know if I'd call my daughter and her neighbors' project profound, but they couldn't be more happy with what they've created...take a look at these freshly planted up trash cans:

Seeking Artful Combinations...

Good gardens are made one successful plant combination at a time. How much less intimidating to figure out a small composition of plants that play well off each other, and have similar cultural requirements, than to envision an entire bed or border.  Create one satisfying combination after another and pretty soon you have a garden.

I've often cut a bouquet, and only then seen how certain flowers and foliages set each other off. Which sends me right outdoors to move plants around. But mostly we learn from other people's great ideas...so how about sharing one or two of your favorite combinations? What's really working in your garden this season? 

You can post your photos (along with plant names) at the end of this post, and please tell us where you garden. Or you can send them to me in an email (valeaston@comcast.net)  if that's easier, and I'll post them in a gallery of great plant combos.  Don't worry about the quality of the photo - I took the one below with my Iphone!

I'll start this out... and continue to add combos from my own garden, and others I visit through the season: Below is Ligularia dentata 'Othello' and Hydrangea macrophylla 'Lemon Daddy' (the leaves are just coming on) growing in a semi-shady, well irrigated spot in my Langley garden. From now until frost, the hydrangea's golden foliage is set off by the big, dark leaves of the ligularia.

Lilacs, birds, dogs and springtime

Right now is the moment lilac lovers wait for all year. For a brief few days (a bit extended this year because the weather remains so chilly) all the colors of lilacs are in bloom at once. As the white lilacs come on, the dark purples are opening and the paler purple ones are beginning to fade. It's the time to pick bouquets with all three major colors - what a delight. Nurseries are full of miniature lilacs ('Miss Kim') and novelty lilacs that bloom in summer, like the new Syringa x prestoniae 'Redwine', but my heart belongs to the big old-fashioned lilacs blooming around town.

I probably moved to Langley because it has more lilacs than any town I've ever seen.  You can walk anywhere around town this time of year and inhale the near-overpoweringly sweet scent of lilacs. Or you could if it ever warmed up a bit - the sun brings out lilac perfume.

Speaking of, the sun finally broke through the clouds Thursday afternoon, and here's my puppy Bridget sniffing the wind and enjoying the breeze blowing through her whiskers. There's nothing like a dog or cat to remind us how delicious spring can be if we pause long enough to enjoy it.

Would you say I'm crazy if I suggested that my new bird art, a glass piece by Whidbey artist Meredith MacLeod, purchased at Museo Gallery in Langley, is drawing more birds to my garden this year? Maybe they come to admire themselves in the piece's luminous reflectivity, or perhaps they take it as a sign of a bird-friendly garden....I saw my first goldfinch of the season last week, and now the garden is filled with hummers, goldfinches, sparrows and robins, all busily going about the business of singing, sipping, fluffing, and nest building. Meredith made the piece to go outdoors - that cool frame is solid cedar, and it's hung on the outside of the house.....

Flower Show Fate

So now there is word on the fate of our annual February show, although perhaps not the final word. Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association, which was trying to raise money to buy the show, has dropped out of the running. It's not easy to raise money from nurseries in this cold, recession-burdened spring.

More fatal to owner Duane Kelly's hopes of selling the show was the vote last night by the board of the Northwest Horticultural Society.  NHS was the leading contender, and eager board members were ready with a press release and fund-raising strategy. A tentative agreement had been reached, based on board approval. But negotiations broke down over the down payment, and the board voted last night to abandon efforts to purchase the show.

There are rumors that Kelly, who laid off his staff more than a month ago, has a couple more interested buyers....stay tuned.

 

Q&A - What's Happened to the Garden Contest?

Question: Will there be a Northwest Garden Competition this year by the Arboretum Foundation?
Thanks,
 Doris Leister

Answer: I've been wondering the same thing, as months go by with no final word on the fate of the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. So I checked in with Arboretum Foundation Director Paige Miller. Here's her answer, which means the end of an inspiring Northwest garden tradition - for now, anyway.....Paige writes:  "Because the Flower and Garden Show has been a main sponsor of the garden contest and the contributor of the major prizes, and because the future of the Show was uncertain, the sponsors (including the Seattle Times) have made the decision not to hold the competition this year.  We will re-evaluate when we know more about the future of the Show. I know that the competition has been a very popular activity with our local gardening community and that many will be disappointed that we are not able to hold it this year.  We hope that we can restore it in the future."