Plant Talk

Count On These Cheerful Flowers To Light Up the Garden More Reliably Than Sunshine

You know the weather is pretty bad when the local weather guru begins a blog post with "I think we communally must have sinned." On July 14, Cliff Mass went on to write "I have followed the weather around here for a long time and I can't remember such sustained cool, cloudy weather during the middle to end of July (including what is going to occur)."

Luckily, garden flowers are offering plenty of solace during this damp, off-and-on gloomy July. Soon enough, dahlias, hydrangeas and lilies will light up the garden, but for now these little yellow and orange flowers warm up the garden and our hearts... Here's what's in bloom and cheering me up in my garden today -

A marble-leafed nasturtium

These sweet-smelling wallflowers have been blooming since March and will continue dependably on, even though they compete for space in a raised bed with raspberries, through first frost.

These old-fashioned little Black-Eyed-Susans charm me today as they have generations of gardeners.

Witch Hazel Magic in Waterfall Garden Park

The heavenly, astringent scent of witch hazel is a no-fail anitdote to winter blues. If you get within a block of Waterfall Garden Park in Pioneer Square, you'll catch the fragrance of a magnificent specimen in full, bright yellow bloom.

What a sight, right in the middle of town. Outside the garden walls, all is  winter;  inside is flower and perfume. This is the magic of witch hazels. I suspect the one blooming in Waterfall Park is Hamalis X intermedia 'Pallida', which is an especially early bloomer, and richly fragrant due to its Chinese witch hazel parentage.  

Witch hazels are small trees or large shrubs. They bloom best in full sun, and need good drainage and plenty of room to stretch out to their full, vase-shaped breadth. You have to plant at least one to cut and bring inside in winter; they force easily and the spidery little flowers are best viewed close-up.  If you have more space, plant witch hazels as part of a mixed hedgerow, or against an evergreen backdrop, or espalier them against a wall - you can see this treatment, that controls their size and makes the most of the flowers, along the NHS Hall at the Center for Urban Horticulture (3501 NE 41st St.).

In the meantime, the sight and smell of this witch hazel alone is worth a trip down to Waterfall Garden Park, located at 219 2nd Avenue South in Pioneer Square.

 

 

Feed The Hummers All Winter

  It's easy to keep hummingbirds happy in the summer - it only takes a few lobelia, fuchsias, agastache, sage, or honeysuckle to have hummingbirds whirring madly around your garden. But it's now, in the bleakness of winter, that our native overwintering Anna's hummingbirds need help finding sustenance. 

Nix that sticky red sugar syrup and beautify your garden with winter-blooming plants beloved by hummers. Indian Plum and salmonberry are native plants that bloom in the first months of the year. Starting early in January, winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) brightens the garden while nourishing hummingbirds. The bold evergreen foliage of Mahonia x media 'Arthur Menzies' is topped with huge racemes of fragrant yellow flowers this month. When the mahonia flowers fade, winter flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) flowers through March. By that time, bleeding hearts, columbines, snowberry and elderberry are beginning to flower to carry the hummingbirds into spring.

Mahonia

 

Winter jasmine and red flowering currant

Go Outside

I'm grateful for the shelter of a warm house on these frosty winter days...and yet, I crave fresh air and being outdoors. The forecast is for a break in the weather over the weekend; here are some ideas for post-Christmas outings:

Visit the dignified and friendly camel at  Swanson's Nursery. I'm afraid he's stealing all the attention from the reindeer, who are beautiful, but uninterested. This camel seems to love people, and his long-lashed eyes and velvety nose, proffered for a pat, are enchanting. I've visited him a half-dozen times in the last couple of weeks, picking up pots of fragrant paperwhites and amaryllis while I'm at Swanson's..and, yes, a hellebore or two.

 
Stripped to its winter bones, the Japanese Garden  at the Washington Park Arboretum is beautiful right now. Its evergreens, bare-branched maples, teahouse and ponds come into their own in winter. A quiet stroll along its paths is a reminder of the season's elegant serenity. 

Don't forget the extravagant light show at the Bellevue Botanical Garden on these clear, starry nights. Even a blustery day, with the Olympic Mountain range on the horizon and ferry boats passing by, is a delightful time to visit the Olympic Sculpture Park for a blast of art, snowberry thickets and groves of wintery white aspen bark.

The Witt Winter Garden, also at the Washington Park Arboretum is exuberant with bloom; witch hazels are budding up, mahonia, sasanqua camellias and
heather are in flower. If you visit on a sunny day, the garden is full of birds, sleepy bees and the sweet vanilla scent of sarcococca in bloom.

My most favorite hike in any season is along the cliffs at Ebey's Landing on Whidbey Island - the photo below is of Bridget and me on a February morning at the top of the cliffside trail (taken by Alice Doyle of Loghouse Plants). My nieces are visiting from Edinburgh and Anchorage, my children home for Christmas, so I'll be taking a blog break until the new decade....if I don't see you at the camel cage at Swanson's, maybe we'll meet up strolling the paths of the sculpture museum, or hummingbird watching at the Witt Winter Garden (they crave the yellow flowers atop the mahonia this time of year). Enjoy...get outside...happy holidays..

Q&A - Yellow Flowers for an August Wedding

 Question:
What shades of yellow flowers will be available August 1?  My granddaughter has asked me to decorate 100 cupcakes (decorate, not bake and frost) with flowers "like you used to do for my birthdays when I was little."  Sounds simple, but in spite of having a lovely garden I'm not so sure about yellow blossoms.  Swanson's currently have loads of magnificent pansies in every shade of soft yellow, but I was told they would not be in bloom in August.  Annuals probably shouldn't be planted until late May. I usually avoid annuals, but this is a special event and I could honor the request by growing plants and arranging them on the cakes.  And cross my fingers for sun minus slugs and aphids!

I would appreciate your wise suggestions.  Thanks.

Helen T. Strickland

Answer: Hi Helen - I'm so glad you don't need to bake and frost a hundred cupcakes! But how sweet your granddaughter cherishes the memory of you decorating her birthday cakes with flowers from your garden. And you're in luck, because yellow is a summer color so you should have plenty of flower choices for an August 1 wedding.

It'd be easy to grow plenty of edible nasturtiums to top hundreds of cupcakes. As soon as the soil warms up a bit, plant seeds of fragrant 'Whirlybird Cream'; ruffled, butter-yellow 'Moongleam' or the paler 'Moonlight', and the showy 'Jewel Peach Melba' (right) which is primrose yellow with a raspberry splotch int he center, and you'll have a garden full of nasturtiums all summer long. All these kinds of nasturtiums are available from Nichols Garden Nursery and probably in the seed racks of your neighborhood nursery.

A little flower that would contrast well with the bolder nasturtiums is the charming bi-colored annual Nemesia 'Sunsatia Lemon'. I can't find any poison info on this one, so I'm assuming it's safe, but you might want to check with the librarians at the Miller Library to make sure.

How about the chocolate flower (Berlandiera lyrata) which has pale yellow flowers with a maroon and green center and smells strongly of chocolate? These are a specialty of Chocolate Flower Farm on Whidbey Island, and I've often seen them available in May and June in larger nurseries.

While most of the yellow daisy flowers of summer are too large for cupcakes, Coreopsis verticillata  'Moonbeam' is a perfect size, as well as being a long-blooming perennial you'll enjoy in your garden. It's on the safe list from poison control centers, so should be fine for garnishing cupcakes.

And while it's true that pansies don't like summer heat, you could probably find an assortment of violas in nurseries this summer that would work beautifully to round out your palette of yellow flowers.