Plant Talk

Ornamental or Edible? Rainbow Swiss Chard Blurs the Lines in this University Village Planting

I've never thought of Swiss chard as a spring ornamental, let alone one that can hold its own with tulips.  But the talented University Village gardeners know better...check out this gorgeous planting of tulips, rainbow Swiss chard, ferns, heather, and heuchera.  I'd say the chard steals the show...the long, narrow, raised bed is a striking medley of tall skinny tulips, fluffy ferns, glossy-stemmed chard, dark-leafed purple heuchera, and bristly heather, as satisfying texturally as it is in its color play.

We're right in front of J. Crew here, along the walkway to the Apple store...

The planting borders a lawn on one side and is raised above the sidewalk on the other...

And here's your chard close-up. Remember how Rosalind Creasy's "The Complete Book Edible Landscaping" seemed quite revolutionary when it came out in 1982, suggesting that food plants can be beautiful in the garden, especially when integrated with more traditional ornamental plants? Well, now we even see her ideas illustrated in commercial landscapes....

 

Bouquet-Making Party Inspires Guests To Get Out In the Garden and Cut

Three moms of students at Lakeside school used my bouquet-making book, "Petal & Twig" to raise money for their kids' school.The April 21st event was oversubscribed - love that they billed it as a "BYOC". Here's the listing in the Lakeside auction catalog:
 
Petal & Twig: A Morning of Simple & Creative Flower Arranging
Please join Master Gardener and Lakeside parent Kelli Curtis in her Kirkland garden. Kelli and her apprentices, fellow Lakeside parents Lora Mason and Karen Summerville, have been inspired by Seattle garden writer Valerie Easton, whose book 'Petal and Twig: Seasonal Bouquets with Blossoms, Branches, and Grasses from Your Garden' shows how to create simple flower arrangements from your garden. Each participant will receive a copy of Easton's book at the auction. At the event itself - rain or shine - you will be treated to brunch and some time in Kelli's garden to clip to your heart's content, then create a few flower arrangements with vases/containers from the hosts' stash or with those you bring yourself. BYOC! (Bring Your Own Clippers!)

At $75.00 per person, they ended up oversubscribed, with twelve attending rather than the original 8 people they'd envisioned. And despite a rainy April Sunday, I hear from Lora that people had great fun, starting with pansy-bedecked mimosas at brunch, then a tour of Kelli's garden, followed by clipping and arranging flowers.  
 
"We had a collection of about 40 vases procured from our school rummage sale and from our own stash. Some people brought their own. Kelli’s big teak table under an awning on her patio was a great work space. A couple of guests of  were very hesitant about cutting from the garden, lest they hurt the plant or ruin the beauty, but then they saw that small cuttings hardly made a difference outside, but when placed in a pretty vase mixed with some other things, made a wonderful  arrangement to bring indoors," wrote Lora.

Which is exactly the message of "Petal & Twig" - experiment, play around, be creative, enjoy the textures, and colors of leaves and flowers up close, and your garden probably could use a little pruning anyway!

Lora kindly sent me the photos of the event below....and ended her email with "We really enjoyed this community-building event, bringing together a group of people from our school to practice what you have written about in your wonderful book! Thank you for the inspiration!"

I'm inspired by how these women not only came up with an original and effective fund-raising idea, but used "Petal & Twig" as the basis for a creative morning in the garden with friends...

Starting out with inspiration and mimosas...

Let the cutting begin...

Sheer creativity...looks so fun to have so many leaves and flowers to choose from...I'm sure the women inspired each other as they worked...

I bet if you'd asked these women before the party, they would have said they didn't know how to arrange flowers...and look at these beautiful bouquets....I think and hope that this innovative fund-raiser created a dozen new fearless flower arrangers....

Plant Nerd Night Moves to July - Tickets Go On Sale Tomorrow

Show biz has the red carpet, the fashion industry its Met Museum gala....and gardeners have Nerd Night. Thanks to the Northwest Horticulture Society for orchestrating this joyful mob-scene of a plant sale where botanical Latin is spoken freely and there's no embarrassment in showing your pure delight in new, unusual, rare, and covetable plants.

This year's sale is pushed back into July and will be an indoor/outdoor summer party as well as plant sale and auction. But tickets go on sale at 8 a.m. tomorrow, May 1st at Brown Paper Tickets

Last year was the first year, and tickets sold out quickly so reserve your place.

Nerd Night Details:

THURSDAY, July 25, 2013 - 6:00 PM

The Mountaineers Program Center
7700 Sand Point Way, Seattle 98115
INDOOR/OUTDOOR  SUMMER PARTY

HOT Plants presented by

CISTUS NURSERY
FAR REACHES FARM
KEEPING IT GREEN NURSERY
LEE FARM & NURSERY
ROBINWOOD NURSERY
T & L NURSERY


   
   
   

The Luxury of Lilacs - How To Coax Them Into Full Bloom Indoors

It's lilac time, and while these blooms weren't quite ready to cut, I couldn't resist going out in the rain this morning and clipping a few boughs. Can you think of a greater luxury than fresh-from-the garden lilacs, dripping with rain, just opening up and unfurling their scent around the house?

While most varieties aren't quite open yet (here in Langley, anyway), you can encourage their flowers along in the warmth of the house. Split the stems up a few inches, with a knife or sharp clippers,  and slightly flare the bottom of the wood, so the branches will soak up water. Then plunge them into a big vase of warm water.....you can almost watch the blossoms open. My plan is that they'll perfume the house, and the yoga studio, for at least a week, but of course the lilacs have their own plan....

There's nothing beautiful about lilac bushes themselves. But we put up with their ungainly shape, and nondescript leaves, whose only virtue is to show off the flowers when they appear, all year round, just for  these two to three springtime weeks when they flower so exquisitely....a hedge of lilacs in different colors is a wonderous thing during late April and first weeks of May...

White flowers aren't usually high on my list - except for white lilacs which are perfection....and so fragrant...

The Intense Colors of Spring......In a Teapot Bouquet

Spring isn't just pastel - you can play up the more intense colors of the season by gathering them together into a bouquet. In the garden they tend to get watered down by all the pale sweetness of springtime.

Two flame-colored tulips in a slim, matte-black vase is about as simple as you can get. Out in the garden, these tulips were just two of many...indoors they become as precious as the exotic butterflies they resemble when set off by the inky black of the vase.

I picked these violet lunaria flowers out in the alley where they grow like weeds. Few flowers are less precious, but a bunch in a vase look strikingly irridescent despite their weedy qualities. The teapot color matches the bronze tones of the bouquet. Spent hellebores (which last much longer cut than when they're first blooming), 'Magic Carpet' spirea, and orange tulips, along with a few sprigs of the lunaria, create a rich mix of shades and textures.

I

Out with the pussywillows I'd enjoyed in this vase since early-February, and in with branches of old-fashioned Japanese flowering quince (Chaenomeles Japonica). These gawky, thorny, awkward shrubs have such exquisitely beautiful flowers , they're at their best cut and brought indoors (or painted on a Japanese or Chinese screen, a popular Asian motif for centuries). I've always loved the old-fashioned coral quince blossoms the best, and gleaned these boughs out in the alley today too - it pays to take your long handled clippers along on your morning walk...

 

 

 

 

Beyond Peas and Poppies - The Miracle of Spring

Even in my very small garden, the unfolding of spring is a miracle. This fritillaria strikes the seasonal note of fantastical abundance

The garden never changes so quickly, burgeons so readily, as it does right now, when everything seems to happen at once (weeds included, unfortunately)  Maybe it's my color starved eyes after what seemed like a particulary long winter, but despite record rain and a bumper crop of snails and slugs, the garden is a delight right now.

Ragged, yes, with bare dirt showing and much spring work still to be done. And yet...the pear blossoms, the tulips, euphorbia and peony foliage bring such intense pleasure that there's nothing I'd rather do than be out in the garden, hard at work. Birdsong, little frogs everywhere, and sunshine (fleetingly) - spring reminds us that we garden to nourish and restore our senses, even though we tell ourselves we're just out there planting peas and poppies.

I grow very few perennials anymore, but couldn't resist the yellow-leafed bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis  'Gold Heart') Larger and floppier than our delicate native bleeding heart (D. formosa) true, but such a vivid color contrast between big, soft leaves and exquisitely detailed little pink hearts, both in the garden and cut for the house...

Here's my new orange snail (from Three Birds Home and Gifts shop on Queen Anne Ave.) sliming its way along the top of the herb bed. I at first thought it would be a totem to keep the snails away, kind of a snailcrow, but now I wonder if instead it draws snails from far and wide? Well, I love it anyway, that splash of orange and cartoon-like curly shape...

Tulips and lettuces in a round feed trough - The lettuces grow up as the tulips die down. The orange cage at the back holds dwarf snow peas, and the dead-looking little shrub in the center is a dwarf pomegranate that I think, despite how it looks, lived through the winter. Of course, spring always makes us optimistic...

Orange tulips and chartreuse euphorbia...a color combination that I play around with through the seasons with different plants...

Fresh peony foliage is a dark note to echo the color of purple/ruby hellebores and tone down the overly pastel sweetness of the garden in April and May...

A late-blooming poeticus-type narcissus, my most favorite for its sweet scent and perfection of center cup.

A mosaic egg by Vashon artist Clare Dohna with heuchera, spent hellebores, pulmonaria and the tiny orange flowers of epimedium, revealed when the old, tattered leaves are cut away.

The garden viewed through a haze of pear blossoms this morning. This willow-leafed weeping pear (Pyrus salicifolia 'Pendula') has silvery-gray foliage and is often mistaken for an olive tree, except when it's in flower. I'm not sure an olive would survive in the chill of my island garden...the pear is dependably hardy growing in a raised feed trough...

 

 

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...

Metal Garden Cages & Branches as Art Objects....Garnished With Porcelain

It's garden show month at Museo Gallery in Langley; 30-some artists, many of them from Whidbey Island, have contributed pieces from paintings to wire cages. Carl Ulmschneider has made the most beautiful big wire cage, perfect for growing plants up in summer and for decorating with little lights during the holidays, or simply for adding elegant height to the garden year-round.

Just ran out and took this photo of one of Carl's cages anchoring a raised bed in my garden -  those tiny sweet pea starts will cover it with leaf and scented flower by June...right now they're sulking in the cold, wet soil....

And here's a branch with Inge Roberts's porcelain stars, moons, little books - this branch rests atop the chandelier in my dining room. The branches in the show at Museo hold dogwood blossoms, children on swings, and moons for every month of the year. They're both organic and highly decorative, and are meant to be hung on walls or from the ceiling, or sit atop a table or counter...wherever you put them they cast dramatic shadows.

The Museo show will be gracing Langley's First Street through the end of April....come to see the gray whales in Saratoga Passage, and stay to enjoy the art...

Flowering Cherries and Native Plants Spruce Up Gig Harbor's Waterfront

I was in Gig Harbor last week to see a garden (and that's another story...which you can read in a few months in Pacific Northwest magazine...). and was so surprised by a beautiful building with glorious, mostly native plant garden along the waterfront. Have you seen the award-winning, green Threshold Building near the Tides Tavern?

The stone and glass building is elegant, welcoming, with Asian lines, waterfalls, and a mostly native plant garden open to the public. Take a look - it's worth a trip to Gig Harbor to check out the masterful mix of ornamentals and natives in a modern setting...

From the street, you see the Threshold Building behind mounds of azaleas, salal and mahonia growing beneath white flowering cherries.

An inspired tapestry of ornamentals and natives

Don't I love to see this kind of sign, especially in public landscapes. How good to know these hellebores are growing pesticide-free...and that such a beautiful, robust landscape is cared for organically.

Cherries at their peak...such gloriously beautiful trees when they're healthy like these are...

The green roof from the water side....

There are two waterfalls and a pond at the front of the building...

 

The Bird Chorus Begins, with Chickadees Singing "Hey Sweetie"

I love waking up to birdsong, the harbinger of springtime. It's worth leaving the window open all night, even when it's still dropping into the 30's, just to hear the birds begin stirring as the sun rises.

My friend Ellen Blackstone of BirdNote says that it's the Black-capped Chickadees that are singing that sweet series of notes that sounds like "Hey Sweetie".  It's the male mating call of springtime. I've been so enchanted by the evening frog chorus, I'd forgotten that the birds are in the midst of courting too.

If a string of "dees" follows the bird call, it might mean there's a predator nearby. Ellen writes "Chris Templeton, former researcher at the University of Washington, broke the chickadee code. He found that a relatively small threat, such as a slow-to-maneuver Great Horned Owl, warranted only two 'dee' notes. But a far greater threat, perhaps a small, agile Northern Pygmy-Owl, elicited an emphatic five 'dees'. Don't you just love it that someone is studying, and understanding "chickadee codes"?

Through the winter, chickadees call to one another as they move around the neighborhood, as a way of remaining in contact. It's as if they're saying, “Okay, I’m over here now.” You can learn more about chickadee songs and calls here.

Thanks to Mike Hamilton for the photo of black-and-white Chickadee set off by camellias...not only a beautiful composition, but a reminder of how tiny these garden sweethearts are...