Plant Talk

2011 Gardening Trends - What Do You Think Is New/Noteworthy?

I've been thinking about garden trends ever since a reporter from a local magazine called me last week to ask about what's new in gardening. I was tempted to say "Who cares? Just get out there and dig..." Gardening is such an age-old practice it's weird to think about trends. Yet environmental pressures, new products, changing weather patterns and our own evolving tastes and interests keep gardening fresh.

Each generation discovers for themselves what appeals about gardening, whether that be hunting down cool new perennials from remote countries, or raising radishes in the back yard.

So before the list appears in...I think it was Seattle Magazine...here it is on "Plant Talk" in the hopes you'll join the discussion about what you see going on in gardening this spring:

1. Growing your own groceries - vegetables, herbs and fruit. Most of us don't have room, time or inclination for a separate vegetable patch so we're mixing edibles in with ornamentals...the trend is spurred on by multi-tasking plants like blueberries, strawberries, artichokes, sage, and lettuces that look great in the garden, are easy to grow and delicious.

2. Bringing the garden indoors - cutting flowers, branches and leaves for simple, handmade bouquets. Fashioning arrangements from your own garden is satisfyingly fun and expressive, and you can be sure the flowers on your nightstand or dining room table are organic, fresh and local. The bouquet above is in a vase called "carrot top" from Whidbey artist Johanna Marquis, the fowers are a spring assortment from my garden.

3. Easy-care small shrubs like spireas and daphnes that look good year round, and don't need pruning or dividing. Ditto with small grasses like hakonechloa and carexes.

4. Gardening to attract and nurture wildlife - plants for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds

5. Succulents are drought-tolerant, low-maintenance, tough and handsome - surely succulents are the most modern of 21st century plants. Nurseries now stock an exciting selection of hardy succulents in a wide range of colors and textures. 

So what am I missing? Please comment below and let me know what you think is driving gardening these days...

This Saturday Learn Pruning From a Master in a Japanese-Inspired Garden on Whidbey Island

For a one-of-a-kind horticultural event in an inspiring setting, consider spending this coming Saturday on Whidbey Island to learn about pruning from a master.

Osaka native Masa Mizuno has designed and installed public and private Japanese gardens around the world; he's best known in the Northwest as the former landscape director of the Japanese Garden in Portland. On Saturday, April 30th, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., he'll demonstrate Japanese pruning techniques, answer questions, and lead a tour of the Bodine Japanese Gardens in Clinton at the south end of Whidbey Island. All this garden activity will be capped off by an authentic Japanese luncheon in this beautiful waterfront house and garden....cost is $75.00 to benefit the Northwest Language Academy's scholarship fund.

Mizuno has worked on the Bodine garden for years, and this is a chance to see his work at a residential scale. Stroll the paths past mature trees and mossy boulders, cross bridges over ponds and a stream while admiring the view of salt water and mountains from this private garden high on a bluff above the sea. And the Bodine's are wonderful and enthusiastic hosts... how many horticultural events are this unique, let alone delicious?

Reserve your place ... Call 360-321-2101, or email info@nwlanguageacademy.com. And while you're on Whidbey Island, check out the fabulous Cultus Bay Nursery which is close to the Bodine garden, the Bayview Farmer's Market opening April 30 for the season, neighboring Bayview Farm and Garden with its exciting new greenhouses, and Chocolate Flower Farm for a fun selection of dark-toned plants.

The Bodine Japanese Gardens at the height of spring - look how elegantly pruned that cherry tree is....

 

Photo Shoot Fun in Georgetown - Clippers, Flowers, Vases, Branches and Light

It's only when I have a brand new and unusual experience that I remember how exciting it is to come to something for the first time and marvel over it. Which is how I felt last week at the shoot staged by Sasquatch Books to photograph the cover for my new book on arranging flowers fresh from the garden.

For my previous books, the publisher chose an image from the book to use on the cover. So I was intrigued when Sasquatch decided to shoot a deconstructed bouquet for the front of the book and a finished one for the back. I was told to show up at Georgetown Studios with vases and plenty of fodder for the shoot.

You can imagine my indecision over vases - big, small, simple, colorful, sophisticated, minimal? - I arrived with a boxful - and armloads of branches, feathery pulsatilla, pussy willows, fritillaria, narcissus, quince, just-leafing-out branches of coral bark maple, and freshly cut boughs of yellow magnolia. Photographer Kathryn Barnard had the perfect surface - a scarred up old farmhouse table that showed off the fresh spring foliage without looking too rustic. She played around with the materials, building shots with layers of shape and texture. It was absolutely fascinating to see how different it all looked on camera than it did there in the studio....

Georgetown Studios are in an old brick building with huge windows that let in enough natural light that we could do without artifical ones - perfect for photographing flowers. After Kathryn and the Sasquatch Books staff were satisfied that we'd nailed the cover shot, it was my turn to pull together a bouquet using the chosen vase, flowers and branches ...no pressure there. Everyone tinkered with the bouquet- by the end of the session I was using the scissors on my Swiss army knife to touch up here and there as the foliage and flowers started to droop from hours of handling.

You'll have to wait until the end of the year when the book comes out to see what we accomplished on this pouring down rain April day....but in the meantime, here are a couple of iPhone shots  that capture the feel of the place....do you think if I work on my karma I can come back as a professional photographer in my next life??

Photographer Kathryn Barnard and Sasquatch Books people checking out one of the shots...

A few of the flowers, branches and vases that didn't make the cut...

The Garden Comes Alive for Easter Despite Record Cold Weather

In a recent blog post entitled "Are Northwest Springs Getting Worse?" Cliff Mass confirms they are, and spring of 2011 is  the coldest in years.

But while we humans are griping and longing for warmth, the garden is coming alive on its own reassuring schedule. The soil may be wet and cold, and baby slugs ravenous (check out the perforated ligularia leaves below), but narcissus are in bloom, fat lily snouts are pushing their way up into the fresh air, Japanese maples, peonies and spireas are leafing out. The garden reminds us spring is here and it's unfolding like always, if a couple of weeks later than usual...

The crown imperials (Fritillaria imperialis) particularly cheered me up with their exotic, parrot-like looks - if such beauties are in full, orange bloom, can spring weather be far behind? These bulbs are much tougher than they look, blooming at Easter year-after-year - I love how their elegance contrasts with the hogwire fencing and feed troughs (they like the good drainage of raised beds) in my back garden....

This Ligularia dentata 'Othello' is prey to slugs, yet its leaves are already luxuriantly colonizing this corner of the garden. The mosaic egg is by Vashon Island artist Claire Dohna.

The bronzy new foliage of Spirea 'Magic Carpet' looks its best right now, above a purple hellebore and the strappy foliage of Allium 'Globemaster' that'll shoot up flower stalks taller than the spirea to bloom in May.

The golden foliage of bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis 'Aurea') brightens the shed garden, and soon enough pink flowers will emerge. If you keep cutting the flowers and foliage of this old-fashioned perennial it'll stay full, lush and blooming for months.

All the energy and potential of spring seems concentrated in these hefty lily stalks which have seemingly grown taller every time I look at them. By late July, this stand of lilies will be six feet high and topped with huge, fragrant, peach-colored flowers. And maybe the sun will be out.....Happy Easter....

 

More Sun In Your Days - How To Deal With the Non-Spring of 2011

I was working at my desk, looked up, saw the sun, and bolted out the door for a walk. Bridget and I were rained out at Greenlake this morning, and it was just as well because even the dog was shivering in the cold. But by now you've heard all the record cold statistics. Cliff Mass is like a pied piper declaring what we all know too well from the moment we put our feet onto the cold floor in the morning until we pull on a woolly hat to venture out into the garden to hunt slugs...........spring hasn't arrived yet.

 But a guy leaning back on a bench with his face in the sun this afternoon reminded me of the wisdom in what Henry Mitchell once wrote in response to a comment that peony bloom is so fleeting that there's no point in growing them. Mitchell loved peonies and he was outraged. He explained you simply need to re-arrange your life around peony bloom - during that brief week or 10 days when the peonies open, stay in your garden and admire them. Drink in their beauty from sunrise to sunset. Eat all your meals in the garden near the peonies. It's not the number of days a peony flower lives, it's how many days you give to your peony that count ...and if you have a peony that looks anything like the 'Kopper Kettle' in the photo above, it'll be time well spent.

Mitchell gave this heartfelt advice with all the fervor and conviction with which Sara Teasdale wrote her poem "Barter" - here's the last stanza:

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

I'm pretty sure she was talking about sunshine and peonies.

So this is the moment to reprioritize our lives, don't you think? Take time off work when the sun comes out, forget about cleaning your house or cooking a meal. Don't go near a mall or run errands - all that will be waiting for you when it starts raining again.

Whenever you see a bit of sunshine just put down what you're doing and go outside, pull some weeds, go for a walk, or just sit there like the guy on the bench, or a turtle on a log, and soak up the sun. Make the most of every minute of light and warmth.

Or, as a prescient clerk at the Star Store said to me on a recent rainy day "Pretty soon it'll be the longest day of the year and we won't even know it."

Garden Touring Made Easy - 2011 Open Days Directory from the Garden Conservancy

I'm longing to stroll through the garden on the cover of this year's Open Days Directory: The 2011 Guide to Visiting America's Gardens (The Garden Conservancy, $16.95). Rectangles of puffy lime green moss sprout between identically sized and shaped pavers to create a well-groomed patchwork effect. This hopscotch-inducing terrace is bordered by fountains of ornamental grasses, spears of yews and various burgundy-leafed plants. Unfortunately (for me) this gem of a garden is in Massachusetts, but there are plenty of good possibilities closer to home.

There's no better way to learn about garden design in your particular climate than by seeing it up close, personal, and in 3-D by visiting nearby gardens. And the Open Days Directory encourages you to do just that by offering an invitation to visit the region's best private gardens while helping to raise money to conserve treasured gardens.

Tuck the directory into your luggage whenever you travel so you can get your garden fix while on the road. But for us stay-at-homes, the Washington state chapter is satisfyingly fat - the first tour day is of the South Sound on May 22. Public gardens of note are included, too, which gives you a wider option of dates and times. Tours are self-guided and flexible so you can set your own pace, the hosts are warm and welcoming, and there's no better way to get an intimate peek inside a tempting garden gate than to participate in the Open Days Program. To buy your guide to the best gardens or learn more about the program, check out www.gardenconservancy.org

April Showers Bring May Weeds....Strategies to Help You Deal With the Marauders

If you don't get out there and pull the weeds now, your summer garden will be filled with more than roses and raspberries.  It takes persistence and work - there's no quick fix - but you can rid your garden of interlopers efficiently and organically by consistently following these simple strategies:

 - Self-seeding annuals like chickweed and shotweed pop up everywhere seemingly overnight, and are hell bent on reproducing. Practice weed birth control by using a sharp trowel or weeder to dig the entire plant out before it goes to seed. 

 -Perennial weeds like dandelion and dockweed send down long, tenacious tap roots. Key here is to work all around the plant with a garden fork, loosen the soil, then wiggle the root until you can pull the whole thing out. Breaking off the root stimulates new growth – get that entire sucker out of there. 

-Queens of the nasty are bindweed and blackberry, with long roots that over-winter. Loosen the plant, dig down a bit and follow along the root getting every bit out that you can.

If you have huge areas blanketed in weeds, the best solution is layers of cardboard or newspapers, piles of mulch and four to six months of time for the weeds to suffocate. You can find all the details on the "no-dig" method in The New Low Maintenance Garden and no doubt on line.

As with most things in life, timing is everything. Weed early, thoroughly, and after rain when the earth is softened with moisture. Bag up the weed corpses and toss in the garbage – home compost rarely gets hot enough to reliably kill off weed seeds. Remember that nature loves a void, so mulch, gravel,or plant all areas of bare soil after weeding. Think of the work as green meditation, and reclaim your garden from intruders so you can relax and enjoy being outside this summer.

 

Thomas C. Wales Park Dedication on Saturday April 16th - Check Out Gabion Walls for Wildlife

At 10 a.m. this Saturday, this very cool new urban park on Queen Anne hill will be formally dedicated. The John Hay Chorus will perform at the dedication, and Seattle Audubon members will be on hand to talk about birding.

Thomas C. Wales Park is just above Dexter Avenue at 2401 6th Ave North, a perfect rest spot as you walk or bike between Fremont and Queen Anne or South Lake Union.

Check out the innovative use of gabion walls (wire cages filled with rock). Portland artist Adam Kuby designed five tall "Quarry Rings", in consultation with Seattle Audubon, to provide habitat for birds and bats. Between native trees, shrubs and grasses, a big boggy area, and nesting areas, this very urban park will become a wildlife sanctuary in contrast to its gravel pit past.

 

 

 

 

 

A European-Style Flower Shop in the Melrose Market - Get Your Spring Fix at Marigold and Mint

I stopped into Marigold and Mint today because there was no other flower shop I could think of that would have the fresh-out-of-local-gardens flowers and branches I need for a photo shoot tomorrow. Sasquatch Books is staging a special shoot for the cover of my new book Petal + Twig (due out before Christmas, I hope) tomorrow morning, and along with vases and clippers I'm tasked with supplying a variety of materials for the photographer to work with. This is so fun! If a little nerve-wracking, because I'm in Seattle this week, and my garden is on Whidbey Island.

The very cool Marigold and Mint came to the rescue with branches of sweet-smelling Korean spice viburnum, deepest purple hyacinths, wispy fritillaria and an assortment of fragrant little narcissus. I could choose a branch of this, five stems of that, and put it all together just as if I'd picked it out of my garden a few minutes ago. And everything is organic and just that fresh, because much of the material comes from owner Katherine Anderson's farm on the Snoqualmie River. The shop is inviting, filled with an assortment of vases, jewelry, soaps, fine chocolates and flowers, some of which you're very likely to see on the cover of my new book.....

Marigold and Mint is at 1531 Melrose Avenue, Seattle, on Capitol Hill in the Melrose Market, next to Sitka and Spruce....it's an enchanting place to spend a wet and chilly April morning. Yes, those are parsnips in one of the buckets - Katherine stocks edibles as well as flowers...

 

 

1531 Melrose Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 682-3111
Website

At Marigold & Mint, Katherine Anderson sells organically grown flowers and edibles harvested from her farm by the same name, which is a half-hour away from Seattle on the Snoqualmie River.

Hours: Tues-Sat 10 am-7 pm, Sun noon-6 pm

 

Vertical Gardening from Succulent Walls to Sub-Irrigated Planters - A New Book Shows the Possibilities

Vertical gardening is the new, new thing, not only because it's such an effective use of space but also because it's still a novelty. A new book Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces (Cool Springs Press, 2010, $19.95) is trying to take the novelty out of living walls by showing, through photos and text, how easy it can be to grow lettuces in hanging pockets or herbs in stacked planters.

Most successful living walls I've seen have been on big, commercial properties, like the one at Goodwill in Tacoma designed by Patrick Blanc, and the many living walls on musems and hotels I admired last fall in Paris. But this book shows many simpler, smaller scale vertical gardens...so if you're intrigued at the idea of moving beyond beds and borders to grow plants on a whole new plane, it's worth a look.

From densely planted screens of sedum to old-fashioned rock walls sprouting English daisies, the authors explain how to water plants growing sideways, how to grow with a minimum of soil, and how to create privacy and maximize space in urban gardens.

I question the suggestion of native plants being a reasonable choice for living walls; my favorite idea is to plant a wall of ornamental grasses, especially little carexes in varying textures and colors for a massed effect. A few photos even illustrate that over time those hanging Woolly Pocket walls, when planted densely enough, can grow in to look pretty good....Perhaps the most useful chapter is the one on the best succulents for living walls, which encouragingly includes many that are hardy in our climate.