Plant Talk

Horticultural Legend Frank Cabot Dies at Age 86

Frank Cabot was one of the most inspiring garden speakers I've ever heard - he spoke at the Miller Lecture here in Seattle a few years ago to a sold out crowd. Cabot, who founded the Garden Conservancy, an organization dedicated to preserving treasured American gardens, died peacefully at home in Quebec on November 19.

A scion of a distinguished and wealthy Boston family, Cabot adored gardens and created two spectacularly ambitious private gardens. Stonecrop in Cold Spring, New York is a 12 acre estate open to the public most of the year. In recent years, Cabot focused his attention on his 20 acre garden Les Quatre Vents (the Four Winds) in La Malbaie alongside the St. Lawrence River in Quebec.  It opens a few days every summer to the public, and for special tours...Cabot's book "The Greater Perfection" is heart-felt and beautiful book about the development of his last and most ambitious garden.

Hearing Cabot speak made me happy to be a gardener, while lending a glimpse of greater gardening world which he nurtured, promoted and embodied all of his long life....learn more about a true horticultural legend in his New York Times obituary here.

Photo of Stonecrop Gardens, from the New York Times....

Inspiring Asian Landscapes at Downtown SAM through January 8

Want to avoid malls and holiday hooplah?  If, like  me, you need an escape from the intensity of the season, enrich your spirit with an afternoon to stroll through the Seattle Art Museum's exhibit Luminous: The Art of Asia.

The range of SAM's permanent collections is flabbergasting (don't you love that word? It's hard to find a place to use it...) with art from so many centuries and countries. I loved the buddhas, the graceful mudras of fingers, expressive feet, serene faces. But the landscapes on screens, scrolls, in paintings and even animated (you have to see it....) will enchant gardeners starved for color, life, greenery this time of year. Luminous runs through January 8 at the downtown SAM.

Q&A: Is Our Garden Best Left as a Dying Banquet for the Birds?

Question:
Usually, by this time of year, I have cut back all but a few perennials I know birds feed on/like during the winter, and the garden is mulched and put to bed. Always followed this practice when we lived in Pennsylvania and am slowing learning about the unique conditions in the Pacific Northwest.
 
For some reason, this year, life has gotten in the way and we just haven't had time.
 
What we have noticed is an unusual numbers of bird congregating in the perennial garden behind the house. We have several families of pheasants and quail, as well as many of the migratory birds. We wonder if having left the perennials up for their "use" is the reason.
 
If there is no good horticultural reason to cut them back, then I am more than happy to leave all these perennials for a spring clean up and keep these birds happy and fed.
 
I know one reason to cut perennials back is to prevent the spread of soil based disease, but as far as I know, all our plants are healthy. Are there any perennials that should be cut back in this climate for reasons unique to this climate and the particular perennial/bulb/tuber?
 
Thanx in advance for any advice,
 
Babette

Dear Babette,

I think you've answered your own question - there is no need to tidy up the garden much at this time of year, and many benefits to leaving perennials and grasses alone until early spring. No doubt your garden is alive with quail and pheasants because you've left food and shelter for them.

Many perennials and shrubs, like hardy fuchsias and hydrangeas, benefit from not being cut back, for the old blossoms and stems help protect the plant from cold. Once plants collapse in a slimy heap, which happens sooner to hostas and later to perennials like coneflowers and helenium, it's time to clear them away. But as long as perennials and ornamental grasses are standing upright they offer structure and movement to the eye, as well as benefit for creatures. Right now I'm enjoying the tawny (well, okay, brown) but still upright stems of Oriental lilies for the height they add to the garden. Yesterday several stands of lilies were aquiver with flocks of little chickadees.

My own way of working with this is to get outside on any winter afternoon that offers a glimpse of sunshine, and clear up whatever looks so bad I can't stand it. Or better yet, work on tidying up whatever messy sight is in the sunshine at the moment. We have a very forgiving climate, and except for cleaning up any diseased leaves (especially from roses) and mulching more tender plants, there isn't too much that absolutely needs to be taken care of right now. Take your time, and leave that dying plant banquet for the birds to enjoy....

The leftover flower pods on the ligularia (right foreground) are special bird favorites...

Muses and Familiars....A Dog On the Desk

Here's how Bridget spends her days, at work in my Seattle study....as long as I'm at my computer she rests happily, looking out the window for hours on end, keeping me company.

People who do creative work usually work alone, and the days can be long and solitary. Which is why there's a tradition of writers and artists, gardeners and architects keeping company with animals, especially dogs and cats. Long ago I came across a sweet little book with photos of writers from Amy Tan to Stephen King hard at work in the company of their familiars, which made me feel that perhaps a dog on the desk isn't so weird after all.

I'm in the thick of writing the themed Flower and Garden Show issue of Pacific Northwest magazine, and I'm grateful for Bridgey's warm, furry, placid presence, even though she's shameless about taking up more than her share of the desktop....

Happy Thanksgiving, I hope your holiday is happy, relaxing and filled with family and friends.

Classy, Colorful Container Plantings To Get You Through the Winter

Are your containers looking pretty sad about now? Recent frosts killed off the annuals, meaning that  pots clustered on porches, decks and patios might be looking a little bleak and bare right now. Ravenna Gardens at University Village offers some great ideas for winter potting beyond the cliche of cabbages and pansies.

Steal a little inspiration from these colorful, textural combinations that'll last through the darkest days of winter..well, not the cyclamen, but they're worth replacing or bringing in when freezes threaten.

Shiny, dark ajuga planted with cyclamen and a bristly little conifer, with one of the bronze carexes at the foot of the pot

A tightly knit grouping of conifers, flax, ajuga, sedum and dwarf hinoki garnished with red cyclamens. I love how it looks almost as if the plants are cascading down and out of the pots and onto the ground around them.

Isn't it amazing how the clean marbled leaves and vivid red flowers of the cyclamen so effectively perk up the rest of the plants and meld them into coherent and effective planting scheme?

Deep Freeze with Frosted Cabbages Signals the End of Gardening Season

It was 24 degrees in my garden in Langley when I got up this morning, and no surprise after the brightness of myriad stars in the clear sky overnight. Red leaves fluttered down this morning as we crunched our way into town for coffee, even though there's not a breath of wind - the thick frost  has finished off this year's leaves even in more sheltered places. The sheep in the pastures look dusted in glitter as, well insulated in their woolly coats, they contentedly munch their way across the gilded, grassy hillside.

Frost is a great magician that can make even ornamental cabbages look breathtaking on such a frigid, sunny morning. No matter what the calendar says, winter is here. Yet the garden is bustling this morning with chickadees flitting through, clinging to the remains of perennials and grasses, keeping the garden alive through the deep freeze.

The gardens at Useless Bay Coffee Company in Langley on a frosty November morning....

Flame Bouquet - A Mix of Home-Grown and Store-Bought

Just a small bunch of deep amber, red throated calla lilies make all the difference. As painful as it is after a long season of gathering from the garden, it's time to break down and buy some flowers to perk up what's left out there in the garden. After the frost, rain and wind the pickings are skimpy. Here's a bouquet I made for a recent opening at Museo Gallery in Langley.

I bought five calla lilies at Metropolitan Market on the top of Queen Anne hill, which always has something tempting. Tulips were cheaper, but I just can't buy tulips yet....I'll save them to perk up bleak January. Don't you love how the calla's curl like seashells? At least their deep, autumnal colors look as if they might have been growing in the garden this late in the season....

I wanted the bouquet to look pure November, so added some leafless rose hips, coral bark maple leaves turned golden, purple hydrangea leaves, and the drama of fluffy chocolate mimosa foliage. A few Chinese lanterns dangle over the edge of the cylindrical raku vase for their hot orange autumn color as well as their appealing puffy shape.

Aren't those skinny dark mimosa twigs gorgeous against the round, red rose hips?  I picked it literally two days before the whole mimosa tree dropped every last leaf...

Ask Dan Hinkley - When Will That New Hydrangea Be Available Anyway?

Dear Valerie,

Ever since I first read about Hydrangea angustipetala, the Dan Hinkley/Monrovia introduction a couple of years ago, I have been anticipating planting this hydrangea in my garden. Do you know how much longer we will have to wait for this "precocious" fragrant 'Golden Crane' hydrangea? (Molbaks doesn't know when it is due in the nursery.)
Thanks so much,
Jamie Calhoun, KC Master Gardener in Redmond WA

Answer: Hi Jamie - I haven't yet seen 'Golden Crane' in the nurseries either, so I tracked down Dan Hinkley, just returned from China, to answer your question. Here's Dan's answer:

"'Golden Crane' is in the Monrovia 2012 'book' so I presume they are now taking orders for it.  I was very impressed with its performance this year after the big freeze.  I had relatively few blossoms on many of the hydrangeas here (meaning his home, Windcliff, near Indianola) however it blossomed beautifully, albeit later than usual. 

Photo of Hydrangea angustipetala 'Golden Crane' below, courtesy of Dan...

 

Magical Mystery Garden in Michael Ondaatje's New Novel

Perhaps the most captivating, unexpected and darkly romantic garden ever imagined lives in the pages of the elegant, stirring new novel The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient.

Eleven year old Michael has set sail alone aboard a steamship, leaving his home in Colombo (Sri Lanka) for England via the Suez canal. So how can a garden come into such a tale?  Mr. Daniels, a botanist, is aboard, and he shows Michael and his friends the garden he tends deep in the windowless hold of the vast ship. Mr. Daniels is taking thousands of medicinal and poisonous plants to England.

The boys run wildly up and down the aisles between rows of weird ferns and palms, fragrant brugmansias, never grasping the size of the gardens because the lights that keep the plants alive go off in some areas, then come on in others, never illuminating all the plants at once. Mist sprays out every few minutes, and the boys raise their faces to the soft spray. Mr. Daniels warns them not to touch this or that, tells them stories of how one plant can keep your hair dark, while many more are intoxicating or deadly....all are growing together at the very bottom of the huge ship.

I'm listening to the book on CD's from the library, and the reader has the most beautiful voice, both deep and gentle and with a hard-to-place, pitch-perfect accent. The language is mesmerizing, as is Ondaatje's ability to capture the wonder and confusion, the collision between reality and make-believe that is childhood.The assortment of characters, including entertainers, musicians, a cursed aristocrat, and a shackled, heavily-guarded prisoner add to the intrigue.

I haven't heard enough of the story to know if the garden plays a further role in the plot, but it doesn't matter...I'll never forget the picture Ondaatje draws of a huge ship plowing through the sea, while deep in its hold a botanist patiently tends a garden of exotic, potent plants bound for England.

 

What To Plant? Award-Winning and Recommended Daffodils and Tulips

The garden's biomass is finally dying down enough to make room for bulb planting.. Hostas, asters, and annuals are collapsing into a sodden mass, ready to be cleared away to reveal bare soil. That bit of soil is pure potential for a fragrant spring display...

The basics: Plant bulbs in multiples of 7,9,11....or  even better in masses, spaced as if you'd just tossed a handful in a random pattern and then dug holes where the bulbs landed. Never, ever plant in lines...taller bulbs like tulips and narcissus are rigid-looking enough without adding to the military effect by lining them up. Most bulbs do best in full sun; all need really good drainage. If you have heavy soil, plant bulbs in raised beds or pots.....

  I always buy bulbs - and nearly everything else for my garden - at local nurseries, not big-box stores. If we don't support our neighborhood nurseries, we won't have them...that said, if your local nursery is out of the bulbs you're looking for, Brent and Becky's Bulbs is a great mail order source.

A couple of suggestions - Narcissus 'Thalia' (left) is a pale, fragrant daffodil from Victorian times. And it just won the 2011 Spring Flowering Bulb of the Year award because it's a good cut flower that happy naturalizes and spreads about the garden.

I love the amber colored, supremely sweet-smelling hyacinth 'Gypsy Queen' and also the navy blue 'Crystal Palace'.

How about this combination of the bright, warm little narcissus 'Falconet' and my favorite orange tulip 'Princess Irene'?....All bulb photos courtesy of Brent and Becky's Bulbs..