Plant Talk

Art?.... Check. Hedging?... Check. Vegetables?.... Check. Langley City Hall Garden Launched...

When metal artists Nick Lyle and Jean Whitesavage drove up with the new screen for the City Hall garden sticking up impressively out of the back of their truck, I knew we were finally getting somewhere in our quest to turn Langley into a garden town.

These Whidbey artists,  known for their botanically themed work, were about to install the screen along the side of City Hall. It'll support a riot of flowering vines to form the Pollinator Pathway Promenade that will run between First and Second Streets in Langley. The hope is that the living, growing, buzzing beauty of the promenade will inspire people to plant more flowers in their own gardens to attract and nourish pollinators. Expect the promenade to be full of butterflies and hummingbirds as the vines grow and the days grow warmer.

Under the auspices of the Langley Main Street Program, with support from the Whidbey Island Garden Tour, Log House Plants, and Renee's Garden Seeds, as well as the weeding talents and hard work of volunteers, the new, public garden at Langley City Hall is nearly finished. It's just the first garden of many we hope to bring to life with flowers, shrubs, fruit and vegetables to enliven and beautify Langley for both its residents and visitors. Vegetable tourism? We hope so.

See below the changes that have taken place in the garden in the last few weeks. Still to come is a nine foot tall bean teepee laced with scarlet runner beans, scads of sunflowers, and a big metal sphere, courtesy of Langley artist Dave Gignac....

One coat of primer and three coats of chartreuse paint later, an old wooden bench has been transformed into a focal point, as well as an invitation to sit and enjoy the garden and passersby.

Here's Jean Whitesavage welding the leafy tops of the screen in her Whidbey Island studio...

And here's the full length of the screen, outlining what will be the Pollinator Pathway Promenade. The narrow bed along City Hall will be filled with purple, white and peach-colored sweet alyssum, an easy to grow little annual that has proven to attract more pollinators than any other plant. The vines will be planted at the base of the screen this week....have you ever seen a building more in need of plant adornment? I love the simple shape of the sturdy old City Hall, a perfect backdrop for flowering vines. And we hope to espalier a fig in that blank space between the windows....

Two new feed troughs are planted with peas, tomatoes, herbs and flowers, with more tomatoes and chives planted around and in front of them...

For evergreen structure ( inspired by the layered hedging in the Curator's Garden at Dunn Gardens), we've planted rows of sturdy little evergreen hedges, interplanted with dahlias and kale. Yellow-leafed alpine strawberries are newly planted along the sidewalk.

 

A New Garden is Coming Alive on 2nd Street in Langley...Watch the Transformation Post #3

Last week my co-horts and I set to work pulling out spent plants, prying up pavers, and preparing Langley's City Hall garden for spring planting. The work is part of the Langley Main Street Garden Initiative, the first step in building on Langley's floriferousness to turn our Village by the Sea into a garden destination.

Tulips, Korean spice viburnum and fragrant exbury azaleas are in bloom all over town....we're just adding in some structure, more vegetables, and flowers for passersby to enjoy. And pass by they do - as we dug in the soil at City Hall last week, dozens of people stopped to make suggestions, chat, join in the work, and tote away plants they hoped to rejuvenate. It was a delight to see how invested people are in their public gardens here in Langley. It's a good place to hang out - the public library is next door, a bustling and delicious coffee shop, UBCC, right across the street, and the mayor stopped to thank us, the police chief suggested we move a rhody, and public works backed their truck up to haul our clippings away....

Stay tuned - we'll be installing feed troughs in the next week and planting them up with snow peas, herbs, sweet peas. Layers of hedging will definine the garden edges, there's a chartreuse bench in the scheme, a place to stop, rest and enjoy the garden. Soon enough hanging baskets with herbs and vegetables as well as flowers will line the downtown streets, and we'll be planting beans, sunflowers, and our new Pollinator Pathway Promenade.

Read more about the Langley Main Street program and future garden plans here, and be sure and make it up to Langley this spring and summer to keep track of our progress. We hope you'll stop by the new City Hall Garden on 2nd Street, pull a weed, and tell us what you think. Soon enough there'll be blueberries and snow peas to snack on while we chat...

A pole apple hedge behind the first feed trough (we found it on drewslist, Whidbey's own version of craigslist) - the 2nd feed trough is a bit bigger and will hold tomatoes when the weather warms up.

Our jaunty leader and volunteer extraordinaire, Janet Ploof, hard at work...

Vegetables and Flowers Arrive and Langley's On Its Way to Becoming A Blooming Garden Town

It's official, with a drop off in my driveway. The very generous folks at Log House Plants (wholesale plant grower, grafter extraordinaires in Cottage Grove Oregon) backed their big delivery truck up to my little driveway in Langley and dropped off their contribution to the Langley Main Street Garden Initiative. Along with the Whidbey Island Garden Tour, Log House Plants is helping with the greening of Langley, a project of the Langley Main Street Association.

We're starting with sprucing up, adding infrastructure, and planting vegetables, fruit and flowers, at the garden at the City Hall on 2nd Street. Raised beds, an arbor, bean teepee, and pollinator pathway prominade will invite visitors and locals in to enjoy the little space next door to the public library and across the street from Useless Bay Coffee Company, the hottest spot in town, with its own beautiful gardens.

Many thanks to Log House Plants for this exciting assortment of plants that includes 'Flamingo Pink' Swiss chard, 'Golden Sweet' edible snow peas, 'Tom Thumb' dwarf snow peas, and herbs from rosemary through parsley and Greek oregano. The new garden will be fragrant - there are sweet peas involved. And it'll be showy, with those golden snow peas, and lots of sunflowers. Log House sent us 'Golden Alexandria' alpine strawberries to trim out the beds...can't you picture kids poking through the sunny yellow leaves of these little berry plants to find the intensely tasty little berries? That'll be summer in Langley...

Here's the lovely mix of edibles and flowers from Log House Plants (all are available in area nurseries - their truck had many  more deliveries to make around the island and in Seattle...)

Bridget standing guard over the artichokes, lettuces, kale and chard....on a sunny day in the driveway...

Turning Langley Into a Garden Town Post #1 - We're Just Getting Going...Want to Help?

  Langley, on the south end of Whidbey Island, is such a charming little town....with spectacular water and mountain views, and historic buildings so graphic and simple they might have been drawn with a child's crayon. I remember when we were house-hunting here, our realtor commented that Langley would be Sausalito if it didn't face north!

Well, luckily it doesn't and isn't; and now Langley is busy transforming itself into a garden town where vegetables, fruit and flowers fill both public and private landscapes with food, bloom and fragrance. 

Inspired by Pam Warhurst's TED talk on how the town of Todmorden in West Yorkshire became an "Incredible Edible" food-filled landscape,  the Langley Main Street Association has launched a garden initiative.

We're starting with the gardens around Langley's City Hall (left), where volunteers had improved the plantings in recent years, but never had budget enough or a plan to pull it all together. We'll be installing work by year-round structure and interest, and planting food and flowers to attract visitors and enrich the lives of residents.

This summer, when the town is celebrating its Centennial, hanging baskets will overflow with cherry tomatoes, herbs, and round little lemon cucumbers as well as flowers. The plan is to include native plants, and ones that attract bees and birds. From blueberry hedging to raised beds that invite you to linger, pick and taste, the Langley Main Street Garden Initiative is about creating vibrant, lively gardens full of food and flowers for people and creatures alike. Stay tuned for the construction and planting of a Pollinator Pathway Promenade (hint: flowering vines and sweet alyssum are involved) and a bean teepee, among other elements.

I'll chronicle our progress here on the blog - please let me know if you have ideas for us, would like to share plants or experience, time or expertise. We plan to form partnerships with growers, seed companies, local designers and urban agriculturists. Of course we hope Langley becomes a case study of how plants and food can build community. The Whidbey Island Garden Tour has already joined with the Langley Main Street Association to kick off the initiative....take a look at where we're starting...and stay tuned...

Here's Tim Leonard of Heavy Metal Works contemplating the existing City Hall garden, which now is a motley collection of donated plants.  Tim is one of the metal artist giving us a bid on work to provide height and structure in winter, and to support plants in summer...

Here's what we're starting with - window boxes and a never-hooked-up rain barrel. The pole apples will stay, and the decrepit wooden raised bed will be replaced by galvanized metal feed troughs.

Maybe the conifer, quickly outgrowing its space, should be replaced with winter-fragrant Azara microphylla, or a hedge of golden yew? City Hall is in a prominent location on 2nd street, next to the public library, across from the Post Office and Useless Bay Coffee Company, a popular gathering spot.

Committee members Cathy Rooks and Janet Ploof, discussing ideas for a new, vine-bedecked promenade along the side of City Hall.

Tim walking beneath an arbor we plan to link to the new promenade and arbor at the far end of the walkway with metal screening.