Plant Talk

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.

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. .

Q&A: Crunchy Cold Soil

Dear Ms. Easton,
Maybe I'm just echoing what a lot of gardeners have on their minds right now in this cold snap...I went and bought several potted plants at Swanson's last week using my Swan Dollars and lo and behold, now the soil is crunchy and cold and it's fr-r-r-r-reezing outside. Is it better to leave those plants in their pots, or stick them in the cold soil and mulch them? I feel like I want to put mufflers around them and serve them tea...
Thanks for any insights,
Best,
Christina Wilsdon
in the slanting rays of winter sunlight on frozen Phinney Hill

 Hi Christina, This photo is the windshield of my car coated in ice crystals yesterday morning. Last night was predicted to be equally cold - down to 18 degrees in the city. I'm sure many other gardeners are worrying about their plants tonight too, especially potted ones. While plants do suffer more from the cold when they're in pots (less insulating soil, more cold air circulating around closer to their roots), your question is moot - the ground is frozen too solidly to plant anything right now. And it would harm the brittle, cold roots on your new plants to disturb them.

So the best you can do for now is to top the pots off with mulch, bring your plants into a garage or basement at night, or put them right up against the house in as sheltered a spot as you can find, and maybe even wrap the pots with a blanket or towel. And hope for a thaw so you can get your new plants into the (relatively) warmer ground...hopefully we aren't talking about any semi-tender plants or I'm afraid they're history, for borderline plants in the ground are suffering, and perhaps dying, this week when it dips below 20 degrees night after night....

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.

Autumn Potting

Planting up practical autumn pots is about more than texture and color....our palette of plants is limited by what really can hold up through the worst winter has to offer. When I was out and about in Bellevue recently I found some great examples of pretty pots planted with tough stalwarts that will (mostly) endure freezes, wind and rain....take a look....

All the pots, including the planted pumpkin shells, are on display at Wells-Medina nursery, except for the last one. I was impressed by how creative the designer has been despite a limited range of plants... kale, euphorbia, rainbow chard, autumn fern, carex, heuchera, winter pansies.....all tough "good-doers" that are widely available and easy to care for. 

This huge terra cotta bowl is one of many at the new upscale Bravern shopping center; it holds heuchera, grasses, ajuga, mosses and a few pansies....

 

Hip Feed Troughs

If hip feed troughs strike you as an oxymoron, visit the new 1111 E. Pike Street condos. Designed by Tom Kundig, they'e 27 units of boutique cool, topped off by a rooftop deck. The plantings are mostly drought-tolerant rosemary, phormium and small conifers, growing in round and bullet-shaped feed troughs, painted matte black. It totally changes the look, from shiny to flat and most of all from rural to urban. Smaller plants like sarcococca are growing in galvanized tubs painted the same deep, dark shade.

Galvanized feed troughs must be the most inexpensive large containers (you can buy them at feed stores); just be sure and drill plenty of holes in the bottom so the soil drains freely. I'm wondering now about how feed troughs would look painted.....say, rusty orange, pine green or a dusky shade of eggplant purple?

Winter Lettuce Bowl

Foggy dawns and even a little drizzle in Seattle this morning are telling us autumn is fast approaching, even if we haven't yet turned our calendars to the reality of September 1. While some summer pleasures are over, like sweet peas and strawberries (mostly), a useful book called "The Bountiful Container" (McGee & Stuckey, Workman Publishing, 2002 ) reminds us that salad greens thrive in cooler weather. Even if you garden on a deck, balcony, or in a window box, you have plenty of space for the "Winter Salad Bowl" suggested in the book.

Now is the time to sow seeds or set out transplants, and you'll be harvesting fresh, tender lettuces until Thanksgiving. Alternate red and green lettuces in a variety of textures for a container as lovely as the salads you'll make from it. Radicchio, arugula, winter purslane, and romaine lettuce are all good choices; the authors also suggest 'Lolo Rossa' lettuce for its frilly, bronze leaves.

Author Rose Marie Nicols McGee is the proprietor of  Nicols Garden Nursery, south of Portland, Oregon. check out her blog for ideas on how to serve, cook and preserve what you grow. 

Trash Can Gardening Take 2

I'm still pondering what it is about garbage cans that make them such effective containers, besides the fact there's no less expensive big pots....is it the contrast between shiny, hard, man-made metal and soft, organic plants?  There's great visual satisfaction in the high-low mix of sumptuous plantings played off  galvanized garbage cans. And it doesn't hurt that plants thrive in the deep root run and reflected heat. Whatever it is, garbage cans make great containers for trees, sophisticated mixes of foliage plants, vegetables, or big bouquet-like compositions.

Garbage cans read neutral, yet they're also visually strong enough to work with hugely contrasting bunches of plants like these two cottage-gardens-in-a-can at Bayview Farm and Garden on Whidbey Island:

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: