Plant Talk

Which Gardening Mag?

Gardeners love to read about our passion and craft and I've had lots of questions lately about what gardening magazines to subscribe to or give as gifts. It's harder than it used to be - I loved the gardens in Metropolitan Home and House and Garden - both magazines have  followed the dinosaurs into extinction, and I miss them. Then when the current issue of Horticulture Magazine had an entire article on the best blogs and didn't include a single one - NOT ONE - from the Northwest, that completed my disenchantment with that magazine, for which I was an associate editor for many years. Fine Gardening is mostly reader-written, and I'm afraid that shows in how non-literary and repetitive it is....I always read Gardens Illustrated even though it seems a bit of a shadow of its former self...okay, okay, you're asking for suggestions, not a wake....

Garden Design is stylish, with great photography featuring international gardens and  public gardens as well as private ones, which I really appreciate. It also emphasizes green design, and what's new in plants. People complain that it's too much about garden furniture and accessories, but at least they're really cool and often innovative furniture and accessories.

Pacific Horticulture covers West Coast gardening, and since the authors write for free, you get to read work from people who are passionate about their subject. Reading Pac Hort is a great way to keep up with what's going on in Northwest gardening, for editor Dick Turner is dedicated to moving beyond California (the mag is based in San Francisco) to feature gardens and events up our way....

Garden Heaven, published in Ireland, is my current favorite gardening magazine, mostly because it's so beautiful. The photos and design are so amazing I look at each issue over and over. And the writing is equally good, featuring a variety of fabulous authors, including the always entertaining Helen Dillon...

Tile It

Carol Rose Dean is a Whidbey Island tile artist who crafts what might be the ultimate in low-maintenance outdoor furniture. At the moment, she's fashioning concrete chairs, which will ultimately be coated in colorful tile - here they are in their original state:

Dean describes the finished chairs, "They'll never blow away in the wind, are fairly maintenance free. (never hurts to seal the grout every 2-5 years) Eyecatching, and functional....."

Soft and comfortable? Well, maybe not, but in winter you have a focal point art piece and in summer toss on a couple of cushions covered in waterproof Sunbrella fabric and the chairs will be inviting if not nap-inducing. Here are a few of Dean's tiles and couches, or stop in and see her amazing range of work at Dean Tile and Design, (360-331-1295), 1660 Roberta Ave. in Freeland, near the south end of Whidbey Island.

 

 

Thanksgiving Table

Dressing the table is so much more fun than the cooking part of Thanksgiving...I love flowers best, but can't resist making bouquets too large for the holiday table. You want your guests to be able to see each other over the flowers..

Long, low, and sufficiently narrow to leave plenty of space for tableware is the mark of a good holiday centerpiece. Add to that sufficiently showy to complete for attention with holiday food, yet still simple and natural. Also original...no cornucopias, baskets of dried flowers or piles of squashes, thank you.  Most fun of all is creating a centerpiece out of things you already own, with perhaps the addition of something new to spice the arrangement up a bit.

This Thanksgiving that something new on my table is fluffs of bronze feathers (from Lavender Heart in the Madison Valley; they also come in a pewter color) that have loops on them so that at Christmas you can hang them on the tree.  But for this holiday, the fluffs are sitting on the table, along with a tiny glass pumpkin (from Museo Gallery), candles, and a tiny Raku box that's usually on my desk. The garden is evoked by the vivid orange berries of Iris foetidus, some scattered on the tray, others still in their pods.  Puffy Chinese lantern pods fill in between objects. Maybe there's still room to stuff in some chartreuse moss? Such variety needs containing, and a long, narrow bronze tray (bought from Lavender Heart years ago) echoes the shape of the table and organizes the objects...

Happy Thanksgiving...despite this crazy roller coaster of a year we all have much to be grateful for....

Forget To Plant Your Garlic?

 
Now's the time to tuck individual cloves (starts) into the soil and harvest plump heads of garlic next summer. Log House Plants has devised a lovely chart - might we call it garlic porn? - picturing the many varieties of garlic they grow and distribute. Silhouetted or shown full frontal on a black background, this garlic is gorgeous!

Who would have thought garlic comes in so many different flavors? I want to try them all, from spicy, medium-hot 'Polish Jenn' to the Asian heirloom 'Brown Tempest' with a fiery flavor and a buttery aftertaste when eaten raw. There are Rocambole Hardnecks (easy to peel, with a deep earthy, gourmet flavor), Asiatic varieties that are especially spicy, and Artichoke Softnecks, that are milder in flavor and easy to grow.  I'm intrigued by 'Purple Glazer', described as rich but mild with a peppery taste. And I'm definitely giving garden room to 'Nootka Rose', and not just because of its enticing name. It's a Northwest heirloom garlic from the San Juan Islands that is especially delicious when roasted.

Alice Doyle, proprietress of Log House Plants is legendary for her generosity, and right at the moment I'm feeling abundantly blessed with garlic. I arrived back in Seattle last night to find two cases of beautifully packaged cloves on my doorstep....as a vegetarian who starts out nearly every dish by sauteeing garlic and onions, I'm going to be one happy cook. Alice - you've kicked off the holidays in great style....and thanks for the delicious lesson in the myriad flavors and possibilities of the stinking rose....

 

The Fix-It Manual for Plants

"What's Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?)", a fresh-off-the-press manual, is almost as good as having your own consulting plant doc at hand. Authors David Deardorff (plant pathologist and botanist) and Kathryn Wadsworth (gardener, photographer) live in Port Townsend, so you know they're plenty familiar with the problems we face here in the Northwest.

I'm the audience for this book - usually if a plant is suffering, I'll try moving it to a more hospitable location, but if it doesn't perk up, it's outta there. I want my plants to be healthy; looking at a sick plant is so discouraging. But I plan to consult this book for its many diagnostic drawings and photos, and better yet organic remedies, in the hope I may learn to work harder to cure a plant before composting it.

Ever wonder what weevils look like? Or what's causing pear leaves to blister? The book is a visual catalog of all things bumpy, warty, diseased and suffering. The authors cover houseplants, edibles, ornamentals, lawn, flowers and fruit...I love that their remedies are organic, the tone practical, their advice straightforward...And if you've never gotten a really nice close up look at an aerial crown gall before, here's your chance....

Amazon likes it!

I have to let you know - The New Low Maintenance Garden just came in 5th on Amazon.com's "Best Home and Garden Books of 2009". This is so exciting for me because I never - and I mean never - win anything! Most book awards mean joining groups, strategizing, schmoozing - stuff I can't figure out how to do and don't have time anyway because I'm writing a weekly column.... so this is a very good day, thanks for sharing it with me...I'm going to bask for a day, tomorrow I promise a post with more content....meanwhile, here's the latest review of the book on Garden Design Online....many thanks Jane for your generous words...

Music to Garden By....

Does your gardening life have its own background music? And I don't mean in the sense of elevator music, but in the sense of music whose rhythms match your own, that comforts, inspires, calms or stirs you up.

In the springtime, when the weather is more encouraging and I'm so excited to get out there and plant, the tunes in my head are all the company I need to garden for hours. But this time of year, when it's so cold and wet outside, I launch myself out the door by plugging into the warmth and liveliness of my "In the Garden" playlist. Tucking an iPod Nano into that little slit pocket in my fleece and anchoring earbuds with a warm hat, I feel fortified to cut back, clean up, and get the bulbs into the ground. Should I be embarrassed to admit my iPod has become as indispensable as a waterproof pair of gardening gloves and a sturdy trowel?

I'd love to hear about your favorite gardening tunes, the background music to your gardening life; my gardening playlist changes seasonally, but here are a few songs I'm listening to this fall:

Harvest Moon, Neil Young

What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong

Daydream, The Lovin' Spoonful

Nature, India Arie

Singing Softly to Me,  Kings of Convenience

1234, Feist (a bit more contemporary than most of my picks)

Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding - this is an all-season song, on every playlist I've ever made.

Season of the Witch, Donovan - definitely indicated for autumn gardening - enjoy......

Book Launch Tonight - Hope to See You There

Tonight's the night - the Northwest Horticultural Society and the U.W. Botanic Gardens are throwing a party to celebrate my new book. Here's the details:

6:30 p.m., Nov. 16, at the Center for Urban Horticulture, 3501 N.E. 41st Street, Seattle.

Cost is $18, to benefit the Miller Horticultural Library.

Come meet lots of fellow gardeners, enjoy a lavish dessert buffet, check out the plant raffle and auction. I'm going to talk about my new book and show images from it. There'll be a book sale and signing.

For reservations, call or email Karin Kravitz at nwhort@aol.com or 206-780-8172.

An enticement: I had dinner with Lee Neff last night, and she told me she's baking Katharine Hepburn brownies for the dessert buffet - there'll also be chocolate dipped figs, Mexican wedding cakes...believe me, the Northwest Horticultural Society knows how to throw a party. Hope you can make it...

Who Needs Flowers?

If you want container plantings that hold up year round without any fuss, go for this green-on-green medley of sturdy, easy care plants. This trio even tolerates quite a bit of shade. The textural interest lasts all year, even though the Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold') dies down for a few months in winter. Although as you can see in these photos taken today, the grass is still going strong in mid-November.

What makes three green plants look so good? It's all in the interplay of texture; the mahonia is tall & rigid, with sharply toothed leaves. Then in winter, when the forest grass dies down, the mahonia stars with a burst of fragrant yellow flowers (in bud in the photos) that attract our native hummingbirds. It's quite a site to see a shimmery little hummer sipping nectar from that yellow topknot of flowers on a frosty morning.

The autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) is evergreen, with a crisp texture to its splayed leaves. Just cut away the old foliage in March or April and watch the new coppery leaves unfurl. The Japanese forest grass flows over the side of the pot, shiny and nearly liquid in its sheen and shape. The bottom photo gives you a close up look at the textural contrast. I can't imagine any combination of plants that looks as good for so long, with such little care.....you could always tuck some bulbs in the pot for spring bloom and annuals for summer color, but you don't need too - these three stalwarts can carry the scene just fine on their own.

Naming Nature

"What's the use of their having names, the Gnat said, "if they won't answer to them?"

 "No use to them," said Alice; " but it's useful to the people that name them, I suppose. If not, why do they have names at all?"

 "I can't say," the Gnat replied.

Lewis Carroll; Through the Looking-Glass

In "Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science," a biologist and New York Times science writer (who lives in Bellingham) brings a fresh perspective to the naming of plants and creatures.

Carol Kaesuk Yoon takes a literary approach; from her very first sentence, you know this is a scientist who can speak to non-scientists.

"More than two hundred years ago, scientists began a quest to order and name the entire living world - the whole squawking, scuttling, blooming, twining, leafy, furry, green and wondrousness of it."

Yoon sees taxonomy as part of the deeply felt human need to order and name the living world around us. She evokes the vast diversity of all earth's living things, and reveals how humans around the world and throughout time have struggled to understand and make distinct  this overwhelming abundance. I love this approach to natural history - it's like reading the backstory to Linnaeus, which  not only gives a larger perspective to botanical names, but also awakens us to the nature's myriad wonders.