Plant Talk

Now In Bloom Redux

 Designer Richard Hartlage once recommended weekly nursery visits as the best way to make sure you have something happening in your garden year-round. Need an excuse to hang at nurseries?  There you have it...but the efficacy of this strategy depends not only on an abundance of time, but also on how good the nurseries are where you live (we're lucky in Seattle & environs). And nursery plants may well be forced into early bloom, so no telling just when they'll flower in future years...

Now I hope this isn't yet another sign of blogdom substituting for print on paper, but do you remember that my column in Pacific Northwest magazine always used to include a "Now In Bloom" feature? It  featured a plant at its peak moment- tree, perennial, annual, bulb, a very selective look at what was at its best. I loved writing it, but I'm sorry to say that "Now In Bloom" went the way of the artist who drew it....but I still get email from readers who want it resurrected.

So here, officially, "Now In Bloom" hops from newsprint to cyberspace. I plan to start every week with a special  plant - even if you are lucky enough to cruise nurseries often, maybe this highly selective feature (just one plant a week!!!) will help you sort through all the beguiling possibilities. I hope it'll tune you in to the seasonality of your garden, introduce you, perhaps, to some new plants, and help with those tough edits that make for the best gardens. So here we go:

NOW IN BLOOM;
Cornelian cherry is really a dogwood, though you'd never know it. From its haze of yellow flowers to its winter bloom time, Cornus mas is unique to the dogwood family.

Tolerant of a wide variety of soils, this small, sturdy tree fits easily into most urban or suburban gardens. You can see it growing as a specimen on the north side of Greenlake, or in a gridded grove in front of the Center for Urban Horticulture. In early autumn, Cornelian cherries sport edible red fruit used in jams and jellies; a little later in the season, its foliage turns a deep reddish-purple.

You can grow Cornus mas in sun or part shade, it's drought tolerant once established, and grows ten feet high and wide. This is a practical little tree, well worth growing it for its surprising burst of yellow long before most trees even bud up.

An aged Cornus mas growing at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Free Design Help from a Pro

Gillian Mathews, owner of Ravenna Gardens, has a great design eye, and this spring called the shots on what's hot in color trends. The photo is of "Urban Nest",  Ravenna Garden's 6' x 8' prize-winning container display at the 2010 Northwest Flower and Garden show. Such harmony of aqua, marine and metal tones in pots, furniture, flowers and foliage. That was the first time I'd seen such a range of azures, but not the last, as blues are all over the cover of Elle Decor and other design mags as well as fashion runways and Banana Republic ads this spring.

And here's the best deal in town....Ravenna Gardens at University Village is offering free - yes, free - consultations with their very talented container designer Barbara Libner. Barbara's pots are featured in my new book "The New Low Maintenance Garden" and no one is better at combining edibles and ornamentals in containers.

On Saturdays in March and April, you can snag a half hour of Barbara's time by calling 206-729-7388 to schedule an appointment. Bring photos of your garden, and questions about patio, container, or small space design.

Of course a tempting assortment of the raw material for glorious containers will be on hand - you'll find plenty of small shrubs, beautiful vegetables and flowers in stock at the U. Village store - I was just browsing around there last week trying to talk myself into waiting a few more weeks before taking the plunge. But now's the moment to call for your free consultation on how best to use all those delicious pots and plants.

New Book on Bouquets

If you're considering what flowers to plant for spring and summer (and what gardener isn't so occupied at the moment? ), you'll be inspired by Suzy Bales' brand new book from Rodale, "Garden Bouquets and Beyond". Suzy flower arrangements are full of familiar flowers and foliage like roses, hosta, tulips, daffodils.....some of the bouqets are as simple as sticking some red roses into a chartreuse haze of euphorbia, others are more "built" with floral foam, wire, even plaster of Paris to make mock topiaries. Suzy's love of flowers spills from the pages of book, along with tips and techniques for making the garden an integral part of your life in every season.

Here's an excerpt from my blurb on the back of the book: "We've learned that fresh, local, organic food is best, so why are we still buying hothouse flowers, shipped halfway around the world, for our homes?....Suzy Bales not only opens our eyes to the bounty of foliage, flowers, seeds and pods right outside our own back doors, but also shares her joy and expertise on fashioning what we grow..."

The book is arranged seasonally; here are a couple of April arrangments from Suzy's Long Island garden:

Micro & Macro Views....

When I was cleaning up my garden this weekend, I pondered how best to go about it. Now I've long since given up trying to be efficient when I garden. I try to think of it like any other art, which means there's plenty of waste along the way, and that usually means my own time.

I think we succumb, depending on our natures, to looking at the garden very closely as we work, fiddling around with minutia when larger tasks might be more important. Or we tend to take the long view and neglect the details which make the garden so satisfying. It's so easy this time of year to be drawn into picking up every twig, tidying every plant (which reveals my nature, I'm afraid).....Or if we stand back and take the macro view, to simply gloss through the garden, cutting back the raspberry canes, piling on some mulch, whittling away at the big jobs.

If there was one thing I learned from writing "Artists In Their Gardens", it was that the artists were remarkably skilled at looking closely and getting the details right, but also seeing the garden as a whole and creating masterful atmospheres and settings. They could alternate between micro and macro views of their garden, which makes the work more fun and productive, and the result more enchanting.

So on this cold, sunny morning, I tried to look at my garden closely enough to tend to the plants that needed the most help right now, without getting wrapped up in any idea of a final spring clean up. I also tried to step back enough to make some real progress toward general tidiness. After all, it's nearly time to plant sweet peas and lettuces....

Micro view - there's so much to be done even in this single square foot of garden space....

 

Bridget contemplates the macro view of the garden in late winter...

On the Cusp of Spring

Despite last night's dash of frost and a month to go until the equinox, we must surely be teetering on the cusp of springtime. Today may be 60 degrees and sunny...but didn't it snow last March...or was it early April??? We're right at that delicious point where the weather can go either way. This moment is seasonal change boiled down to its essence, slapping us in the face with its unpredictability....

Our weather limbo is captured in these two new bouquets I made today.  The little arrangement is colorful springtime, the taller one silvery winter.
They both show off the benefits of scavenging....I picked up the magnolia branches with their furry buds when they were torn from a street tree in our Queen Anne neighborhood by an errant moving van, the transparent white pods of the money plant pods (Lunaria annua) were gathered growing wild along an alleyway here in Langley.

For the spring bouquet in the "carrot top" vase, I cut the twigs of purple-leafed flowering plum off a neighbor's tree that hangs over our Langley fence (fair game); the fragrant Daphne odora, crocus, tiny Tete-a-tete narcissus are from my garden.

When else could you create two arrangements so evocative of different seasons, on the same day? Only when we're on the cusp, with one muddy boot still mired in winter, our other boot feeling more firmly planted in springtime every day....

 

What's New in Spikes

Nope, we're not talking about gladiator sandals for spring, but architecturally-shaped plants to punctuate your garden. I know it's a little early to fan the flames of plant fever, but the weather is warm, with sun predicted the rest of the week. And we're aren't the unfortunate Olympic officials up in Vancouver fretting about the lack of snow. We're down here in the lowlands, enjoying the mild weather and dreaming of new plants for spring.

Here's a freshly introduced focal-point plant, with a winning combination of strong shape and dark foliage adding up to big dose of drama:

Phormium 'Black Adder' is a burgundy-black New Zealand flax , with glossy,  sword-like leaves to three feet tall. It's hardy to zone 8, so plant it in a protected spot, although the marketer's make claims for wind tolerance. It's drought tolerant, would look fabulous in a container, and needs lean, well-drained soil and full sun. Time will tell how much winter protection 'Black Adder' requires....but it's so beautiful it's worth a try....

Blirthday or would it be Blogiversary?

Whatever you call it out here in the blogosphere, today is the first birthday of this blog.

205 posts and 332 comments later, I've learned that a blog takes on a life of its own. I'm grateful for every one (well, nearly every one) of your comments, your support, your questions and participation in what for me remains a new adventure. Most special thanks to my son Spencer who has been my technical adviser and repairman, frequently called upon, in matters large and small...

While posting regularly is a bit like housework (you finish and then begin again....) "Plant Talk" continues to engage my attention, and I love learning from, and hearing from all of you......thanks for encouraging me to write about more than just plants and more plants. Please comment, comment, comment...and I'll try to answer every one...

In that vein, here's a little birthday gift for you, a quote in the new Gardens Illustrated from garden designer Arne Maynard on the hottest new design trends.  I love the images it evokes, and the possibilities for an earthworks approach in even the smallest gardens:

"Rather than everything being hard landscaping there's a craving for a more subtle approach inspired by nature - such as earth sculpture. A lawn is an artificial but often necessary space, so why not try replicating the ridge and furrow of a field, or create a shallow spiral down to a fire pit, or even something as simple as a turf maze cut or mown into the lawn?"

Happy Heart Day

What better way to warm your heart on Valentine's Day than with a full-on, affordable bouquet of red, red tulips?  These long-lasting beauties are from Tulips.com in the Skagit Valley....

Q&A - Soil & Pruning

Question: I have a very large galvanized livestock trough that I want to use as a planter at our property in Cashmere, WA. It's about 6' long and about 3' high and deep. My question is this - Do I fill the planter with potting soil (that is A LOT of potting soil!), or do I fill bottom with something like bagged styrofoam (already have saved a bunch that I haven't run down to Ikea)/netting/something earth-friendlier and then top with potting soil? Since it is so large, can I put regular garden soil in bottom perhaps and potting soil on top layer? How did you do yours?

Thanks,

Julie MacGillis

Answer:  I hate to tell you, but to facilitate drainage you should use good potting soil - and only good potting soil - to fill your trough. And yes, it's a lot of soil, and it'll shrink some over the first few winters so be prepared to top off with a few more inches of soil each spring.

Here's the thing - if you use styrofoam noodles, or even pebbles or crummy old soil towards the bottom of your trough, when the water filters down through the soil on top and reaches a different medium it'll puddle up.   It's like you've constructed a water barrier where the two mediums meet. And soggy soil means decline and even death for most plants. I use potting soil the full depth of every one of my raised beds and troughs, on advice from WSU horticulturists, and it makes all the difference for plant health. Wish I could recommend a less expensive solution, but no go...

Question: After a January that Cliff Mass says was the warmest ever, and continuing El Nino weather, can I prune roses and hydrangeas yet? I'm itching to finish cleaning up my garden, as the bulbs are all coming up and the hellebores are in bloom. 

Thanks,

Ralph

Answer: The weather is seductive, but try to leave your hydrangeas, roses and hardy fuchsias alone for a few more weeks. They could suffer a setback if  temperatures plunged after you pruned them. Chances are the balmy weather will carry us on into spring, but why take the chance? It's isn't unusual to have a hard freeze toward the end of February, and the last frost date isn't until the second or third week of March, depending on just where you live. Take a look at photos of the snowbound east coast to remember there's more than a month of unpredictable Old Man Winter left to weather. .

Winter Bouquet and a Question for You....

Dear Readers - Coming up on the first anniversary of launching this blog, I'm giving content some thought, and would love a little feedback from you...

Would you like to see a fresh, local, handmade bouquet every week of the year? I've often posted photos of little bouquets just picked from my garden. There's no foristry, no wiring involved, just the intimate experience of picking what's fragrant, what's at its best, loosely arranging the flowers and foliage (usually in one hand) then plunking them into a vase. I think of it as a wabi sabi take on flower arranging.

The wonder of it is that even my tiny garden (less than 2500 square feet) provides bouquet fodder year-round...you just have to think of every tree, groundcover and everything in-between as a possibility for cutting. 

Can you please comment right here on the blog and let me know if enjoying these bouquets? Please tell me what you think... If you're keen, I'll try to give you a bouquet a week...

Here's a winter bouquet, picked yesterday, with three colors of hellebore hybrids, euphorbia for texture, and several twigs of Daphne odora (in bloom amazingly early).. The  hellebores hold up well if you cut several slits up their stems, and the daphne perfumes my entire little house with its sweet scent.