PLANTWISE

Terrariums

or, how I’ve spent the last 40 days and 40 nights!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 31, 2010 at 01:21PM 9 Comments

Amy Bryant-Aiello of Artemisia, using a stick to move stray pebbles around the terrarium until she likes how they’re sitting. Making a terrarium isn’t about making it “perfect” – it’s a process that is itself pleasurable, stimulating, and as creative as you allow it to be!

Followers of this blog have heard me referring here and there to an enthralling project I’ve been working on recently.

And what’s the project, you may ask? It’s a lushly-illustrated book on how to make captivating, contemporary terrariums from a combination of beautiful, organic materials and found objects. The book will be published in the spring of 2011 by my favorite publisher, Portland’s own Timber Press.

The terrariums I’m writing about were designed and created by Amy Bryant-Aiello of Artemisia Garden Nursery and photographed by Kate Baldwin, a Seattle photographer who has artfully captured the essence of Amy’s dreamy terrarium creations.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time at Artemisia, gazing at these fanciful hand-made terrariums and contemplating how to distill the essence of each delicious confection into an inspiring description – then provide instructions on how to make and care for them.

The shop is always brimming with the most beautiful materials… garnet, apricot, snowy white and shimmery black sand… crystal chunks, aragonite clusters, raw carnelian, smooth river rock from Japan, shards of clear and milky white stone… seashells, from tiny creamy clams to smooth, ruffled conch shells with pearly-pink and blue insides, scrubbed clean or encrusted with barnacles… native lichen on alder branches… clumps of reindeer moss… silk flowers… tiny mirrors… antique bottles… vintage jewelry… bones and feathers… printed/folded paper art… and of course, the plants themselves: air plants (Tillandsia sp.), native “Spanish” moss, funny little houseplants in Japanese moss-balls (kokedama) and dramatic succulent plants.

Visit the shop some time if you’re looking for inspiration. It’s a dreamy place to while away some time. And if Amy’s there, ask her to teach you how to make your own terrarium. Give yourself a bit of time to play with materials and make yourself something magical to take home. And keep an eye out in the spring for our little book. I think it’s going to be a good one!

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Planty, Gardeny Things to Do This Weekend

Swan Island Dahlia Festival, seed-saving class, plant your winter veges and score some good sale plants at your local retail nurseries!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 27, 2010 at 09:55AM 0 Comments

Japanese Bishop Dahlia. Photo courtesy of Swan Island Dahlias.

Looking for fun/interesting plant- and garden-related things to do this weekend? Here are some ideas:

Swan Island Dahlia Fest in Canby, OR
When: Saturday Aug 28, Sunday Aug 29 and Monday August 30 plus next weekend, too: September 4, 5, and 6 (Sat to Mon) – 10 am to 6 pm daily.
Where: here
Admission: Free
All variety of food, fun, clowns – hopefully not scary clowns. You can also order dahlia tubers for next year and go home with buckets of gorgeous cut flowers.
Phone: (800) 410-6540 OR (503) 266-7711

Take a class on seed Saving with Vern Nelson, The Hungry Gardener columnist, and garden consultant. Long-time vegetable gardening expert and cook will explain how to save seed of your favorite crops for next year. He’s a great teacher and most enjoyable speaker.
Where: Portland Nursery, 5050 SE STARK
When: Sunday August 29 at 1:00pm

Plant your fall and winter vegetables, if you haven’t already done so. I’ve been a slacker (working on a book – more on that soon!) so I have some seed-starting to do myself this weekend. There’s time to plant greens still and I might try carrots and beets, too, although it’s getting a bit late. But I’ll be stocking up on vegetable starts from my local nurseries, too – must get that purple-sprouting broccoli in the ground asap!!!

And while you’re out and about, scan nurseries’ sale tables now. This is the time of year when plants that suffered in the recent heat spells are showing up on the 50% off tables. I’ve seen some fantastic plants with minor cosmetic damage on sale tables lately. There are also lots of pots on sale (thanks for that tip, Lauren Hall-Behrens!). In short, it’s a great time to shop at retail plant nurseries, particularly if you’re looking for late summer/fall blooming plants like asters, salvias, and those tall, statuesque perennial lobelias. And within a matter of weeks, it will be an idyllic time to plant, as the fall rains are just around the corner.

Planning ahead: here’s a future weekend event (sign up now, as space is limited and it’s likely to sell out):

Chicken Coop Building Workshop.
When: Saturday, September 25 from 10am-3pm
Details: Learn how to build a secure, happy home for your hens in this hands-on workshop with John Carr of The Garden Coop. Participants will build The Garden Ark mobile chicken coop. At the end of the workshop there will be a drawing and one lucky participant will go home with the coop. All participants will go home with a copy of the plans and the hands-on know how to build a coop.

This workshop is in partnership between “Growing Gardens”: and Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply

The cost of the workshop is $40 and the deadline to sign up and pay is Monday, September 20. Proceeds from the workshop benefit Growing Gardens’ programs. For more information or to sign up contact Rodney Bender at 503-284-8420 or rodney@growing-gardens.org

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Tags: Gardening Events, Flowers, Chickens, Plant Sale

Garden by Cycle

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 25, 2010 at 04:57PM 4 Comments

Elizabeth’s own beautifully-tended community garden plot (background) is brimming with delicious produce. Zucchini, anyone?

Biking and gardening – they’re a natural together. So says Portlander Elizabeth Bryant, professional gardener and creator of Garden by Cycle, a sustainably-driven garden consulting and maintenance business. “It doesn’t logically make sense to burn fuel to beautify the planet,” she told me the other day when we met for coffee. I had button-holed her to talk business and check out her new cargo bike.

Her one-woman operation, Garden by Cycle was launched in July 2009 after she’d completed her OSU Master Gardener training, her Organic Gardening Certificate Program and, soon after, her Permaculture Design Certification program. Elizabeth’s work includes garden mentoring and education; restoration; planting; and maintenance including weeding, pruning, dead-heading and general plant care – all using organic methods.

When she started her business, she used a regular bike with a trailer to pull her tools and materials. But this spring, her busy schedule began to take its toll, between pedaling with heavy loads up steep hills, finishing up her Permaculture program, and rushing to her daughter’s school for drop-off and pick-up. She wondered whether she could get it all done. Her first thought: “maybe I need to buy a truck.” But half-way through the process of looking into a loan for a truck, she switched gears and decided to look for a fancy, tricked-out bike instead. “I wanted to keep that feeling I had of abundance, not get into the deprivation mode that feeds those kinds of decisions. And I can relax on a bike! Driving creates its own stress and you can be just as psychically exhausted when you arrive in a car as you’d be physically on a bike.”

To get the best of both worlds – the sense of calm that comes from pedaling while simultaneously not wearing herself out before even arriving at a gardening job – she converted to an awesome KONA electric cargo bike with an electric assist motor for steep climbs and heavy loads.

Another view of the bike, all set for work. While admiring her bike on the sidewalk, we chatted with a passer-by, Garth, who described the many options that exist for sharing extra produce with food kitchens for homeless and hungry people in Portland. Stay tuned for more information on that soon.

Apparently, it doesn’t really go faster than a regular bike because it’s “pedal-assist,” not a throttle. So you don’t really feel the power unless you’re turning it on going up a hill. But since Elizabeth often works all day, then rides to her daughter’s school to pick her up before finally heading home, that little extra oomph makes her job much easier – while saving gas, minimizing pollution, keeping her fit and helping her practice her principles.

She bought her lovely Kona Ute with an electric assist motor at Splendid Cycles.

Behind it, she pulls her gardening gear – sturdy but light-weight rakes, shovels, and hand-tools – in a roomy, handsome WIKE Park Pioneer Landscaping Trailer that can carry 150 pounds.

It’s a great combo, especially with the child seat and handlebars for her daughter to grip on to for the commutes to and from school.

“The past year or more has been a learning experience,” she says. “It’s not always easy to do it all by bike. But I’m just amazed with what can be done.” And her business has grown, too: “It started out with friends and neighbors and it’s just grown from there.”

Other links provided by Elizabeth, for those interested in learning more about gardening businesses run on bikes, both locally and internationally:

Portland:

Hand Made Gardens
Bike Portland Article
Sunroot Gardens

Other folks:
Bicycle Gardening
Brighton Cycling Gardener
The Cycling Gardener
Jardiniers a Bicyclette
Graceful Gardens

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Tags: Garden Stuff, Plant People, Good Ideas

Risen from the Dead

- good things come to those who wait!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 24, 2010 at 09:10AM 2 Comments

Corokia x virgata ‘Sunsplash’ – in recovery after a hard winter

I’ve often suggested waiting until mid-July before ripping out winter freeze-damaged plants. Because sometimes it takes that long for plants’ roots to push out new growth after a really damaging freeze.

This year, my tendency to procrastinate played in my favor: I never got around to tearing out many of my purportedly dead plants and in the past week, several plants I thought were total goners arose seemingly from the dead in my garden. In mid-August.

I was sure they were hopelessly shot back in February, when their foliage turned black and their stems shriveled up after the December 2009 freeze. From what I could tell, they were dead to the roots.

But some Zone 8 plants can still rally after a Zone 7 winter, if we are patient enough to give them time. Here’s what’s just emerged this past week – all had been cut back to stubs in about April and left in the ground:

Sunsplash wire netting bush (Corokia x virgata ‘Sunsplash’). Listed at USDA Zone 8a (10-15F), this is a cultivated variety of a fantastic and striking New Zealand native evergreen shrub with blackish-purple-tinted stems and bright gold-splashed green leaves that positively shine in the garden. This past winter knocked it to the ground – for good, I thought.

Pelargonium sidoides makes a comeback – slow but steady wins the race! But I’ll be lucky to see a flower this year. It was the excellent drainage that saved it, I’m sure.

Pelargonium sidoides With gorgeous, roundish, wavy-edged, soft silver leaves, this South African native geranium doesn’t even need flowers to look good. But the airy sprays of dark purple to burgundy flowers appearing all summer and fall happen to be just beautiful. How nice to see it returning from the roots. The geranium is rated hardy 10-15 F but it dipped down to 9 F one night in my garden and stayed well below freezing for days on end so I’d say this is a tough little geranium.

Last month, I was surprised to see my Chilean lantern tree (Crinodendron hookeriana) pushing up from the dead-looking sticks I’d mourned over earlier this spring. Often listed cold-hardy to 20F, it’s clearly tougher than that. This broadleaf evergreen shrub has dramatic, strawberry-like, red flowers that hang like lanterns from pretty red pedicels (stalks). It’s a striking plant with very handsome, dark green foliage that recovered quickly from the 2008-2009 cold spell but was cut to the ground this past winter. It was great to see it rise again.

Here’s the magnificent Fuchsia speciosa, still recovering from two consecutive harsh winters. But heck, it’s alive! This one will be flowering within 2 weeks, I am sure of it.

Fuchsia speciosa, reputedly barely hardy in our area, was late to emerge (July) but is now pushing a foot tall. Typically it’s in full flower by July. But at least it lived!

Here was the Fuchsia speciosa in her heyday, last summer. That was after a harsh winter of 2008/2009 – so it’s a pretty tough plant anyway. Planting fuchsias an extra 4-6 inches deeper than usual helps insulate the roots from extreme cold. That’s probably why this one survived the exceptionally cold temperatures last winter, in spite of a cold northern exposure.

Finally, I had torn out a big 10-gallon Stardust ribbonwood (Hoheria sexstylosa ‘Stardust’), a broadleaf evergreen tree from New Zealand whose starry little white flowers look so lovely in mid to late summer. It looked totally gone and the bark was split down to the base. But I couldn’t throw away the root ball with the 1-inch caliper chopped off tree trunk still attached. And it’s a good thing because within 2 weeks, it was sending up fresh shoots from the rootball – which was lying naked on a path in my side yard.. Another winner!

The moral of the story? Sometimes patience (or procrastination) is rewarded. Now this doesn’t mean all these plants will make a spectacular recovery – sometimes it takes a plant so long to recover that another unusually cold winter arrives before it can truly establish itself again.. But I have a soft spot for survivors. I’ll see if they can get through this next winter (hoping for a mild one) to make a real recovery in 2011.

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Seedheads and Self-Sowing Surprises

should they stay or should they go?

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 20, 2010 at 08:34AM 0 Comments

Some yellow flowers yet on this lettuce plant – but it’s already started to make little black seeds, which I can shake onto the garden now for early spring salads!

I’ve just gone on a garden rampage – my yard debris is picked up every other Friday morning and, at 6 this morning, I remembered today was the day. I tore out, clippers in hand, and started filling my big green bin with old, aphid-riddled cabbage, broccoli, kale and other cruciferous vegetables that I had failed to harvest over the course of this insanely busy spring and summer. Most of them were covered not only with aphids but fat green seed pods. But I didn’t care – I tossed them. I’ve never had any luck in my garden with self-sown kale or broccoli.

But as I went on my tearing-out spree, I did leave a scattered selection of bolted (flowering) vegetables standing rather than pulling them out. Why? Because I’ve learned from experience that some vegetable plants will reliably self-sow in my vegetable garden and come true from seed, producing a new generation of plants that tastes as good as the previous one.

Vegetable plants that self-sow easily include lettuce, mache, arugula, parsley, leafy mustard greens including mizuna and purple Osaka types.

These tasty cool-weather greens germinate in late winter, grow vigorously in early spring, and produce an abundance of delicious leaves from April through June or so. The best part is, they do this with scarcely any intervention from me. No need for me to harvest, clean or store the seeds -all I need to do is leave a few plants (sometimes even just one) to flower and set seed. Sometimes, when I see it’s ripe, I cut off the branches and deliberately shake the seed in the part of the garden where I hope it will grow; sometimes I just cut off all the messy side branches, leaving a tall, narrow plant with at least a few seed pods on top so the plant takes up minimal space while the seeds ripen – and then I leave it to do its own thing.

These pretty yellow flowers will lead to rafts of fantastically peppery, lacy-leafed wild arugula plants in my garden next spring. By far, this “Wild Italian” variety of arugula (originally from Wild Garden Seeds – correction: original seed from Botanical Interests Seed Co.) is the most prolifically self-sowing and, in my opinion, the tastiest.

Some plants are more challenging to grow from home-saved seed. These include melons, squash and cucumbers, chard, carrots and more. It isn’t impossible to get good seed from these plants – you just need to sow the right plant varieties in the first place, hand-pollinate them and sometimes isolate the plants from others like them so they don’t cross and produce weird-tasting progeny. And finally, you need to harvest, clean and store the seed over the winter. It’s interesting and fun but this year, I’m sticking to the easy method.

So the upshot is: pay attention to the possibilities in your garden – sometimes you can sit back and let Nature do what Nature does best: procreate. Think of yourself as your garden’s caretaker and shepherd and let some of the plants do their own thing. Watch for self-seeding opportunities with suitable plants and then keep an eye out for the seedlings come spring. You’ll find that self-sown plants are typically stronger and better adapted to your own garden over time.

If you’re hot to trot for any of these delicious greens, they can be sown in the garden now for autumn and possibly even winter enjoyment. As long as you keep them well watered during any hot weather we may have left, they should begin to produce for you within a month!

For more information about self-sowing food crops, read this from Wild Garden Seed, a Philomath company specializing in organic, locally adapted seed strains. Also, get more details here on saving seed for various vegetable varieties.

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Tags: Vegetables, Seeds

Plant Lust

…hopefully consummated, and often!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 17, 2010 at 10:05AM 1 Comments

I’ve been on the lookout for this rare, shade tolerant evergreen ground cover with gold-tinted leaves and pinkish new growth (among its many assets) since I first laid eyes on it last fall at the wholesale Hawksridge Nursery in Hickory, NC. No such luck – yet. Perhaps some day, Plant Lust will help people find a local source for this plant (Ardisia japonica ‘Houkan’).

It seems there’s always some new website launch in the plant world: one or another new on-line gardening “community” or resource where you can read about plants, comment, add content, review plants or garden products, get free design advice or what-have-you. So far, I’ve been unimpressed. There’s too much crud to slog through before you get to the juicy stuff – too much information that is inappropriate to our local climate or just plain incorrect, ugly formatting, no good searchability, and sometimes irrelevant comments.

Now there’s something brand-new and pretty cool-looking out there. The project is still in its infancy but I for one will be watching it with great interest.

It’s called Plant Lust. Conceived by Portland garden blogger Megan Hansen of Nestmaker, Plant Lust is basically an on-line resource for really interesting plants. It will provide searchable information about the plants, a diversity of photos, and links to the nurseries where they can be found. There are plans down the road to make it more interactive. But what it hopes to do in the near-future is perfectly fabulous as is.

The Plant Lust team – Megan, her savvy mother Tricia Cunningham and avid plant lover/garden blogger Loree Bohl of Danger Garden – has already rounded up one of the Willamette Valley’s best nurseries, Gossler Farms, for the launch. The Gossler Nursery catalog is currently in the Plant Lust system and can be searched using a wide set of criteria including plant names; plant features like peeling bark or fragrance; preferred conditions such as full sun or dry shade; type of plant like vine or ground cover; and even by hardiness zone.

For starters, the goal is to gather the best and most interesting of the Pacific Northwest’s smaller nurseries catalogs into one searchable site. Because sometimes you’re looking for a plant… but you just don’t know what it is yet! Other times, you need to know where to get the plant you’ve been lusting after for years. And sometimes, you just want to get several, authoritative perspectives on the plant. (“Will it even survive here? Well, four of seven highly respected plantspeople say yes so why not?”) Plant Lust could turn out to be an incredibly useful and fun-to-browse resource for those looking to learn about or shop for plants. There are a few glitches that are sure to be worked out but overall, I sure like the looks and function of it.

Poke around a little and let me know what you think. Potentially useful? Thumbs up or down?

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Tags: Plant People, Good Ideas

Fall Greens and Winter Veges

a weekend project

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 13, 2010 at 08:13AM 0 Comments

I’ve got a busy weekend ahead in the garden, I can see!

There’s plenty of good stuff to do in the vegetable garden this weekend. Apart from weeding, watering, harvesting (and hopefully eating!), there’s planting. After all, there are salads to be made this fall, and root veges to roast this winter, and tender broccoli florets to eat next spring, drizzled with lemon butter and fresh ground pepper. And the only way you’ll get them from your own garden is is you get out and plant some time soon.

Since it’s going to be a hot weekend, you might consider planting in pots and keeping them out of direct sun for a few days until they sprout. You could also use shade cloth if you sow them in the open garden… or just take your chances. Freshly planted seed are most vulnerable when they first germinate (sprout) and it will be a few days before they do that. So just keep your new seed bed watered and everything should be fine.

If you’re in a time crunch, start by planting greens. Sow seed for fast-growing, heat resistant lettuces (‘cause it looks like there’s more heat to come) and salad greens and herbs for snipping like kale, beet greens, mustard (many types), spinach, mache, arugula, parsley, cilantro and more fresh basil. Chard can be planted, as can many Asian greens including baby bok choi, joi choi and gai lan. These can be snipped and enjoyed as baby greens but those that aren’t eaten in fall will often keep going until the first frosts and beyond.

With an eye to the winter vegetable garden, head to the nursery soon: the racks are stocked with interesting winter vegetable starts: cold-hardy, over-wintering cole crops (cabbage, broccoli, broccoli raab, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collards etc) and many of the previously discussed greens actually grow best during the cool autumn months. Cole crops (plants in the cabbage family) even taste better after the first frost. In the next month, try planting cold hardy lettuce varieties. (Search catalogs like Renee’s Garden, Nichols Garden Nursery, Wild Garden Seed, Territorial Seed and The Cook’s Garden for seasonally specific varieties.) Just keep your scissors away from them this fall so they can do what they do best: keep slowly growing through the cold winter months to provide you with nutty, flavorful winter and early spring meals.

If you haven’t grown purple-sprouting broccoli: before, buy your starts now. It’s an heirloom variety with gorgeous purple florets and a nutty, indescribably delicious flavor! Plant now for harvest in March to April.

Oh, and you can still squeak in a planting of quick-growing radish and overwintering root vegetables including carrots and beets.

We’re still over a month from being able to plant garlic so stay tuned for that.

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Hot Summer Bloomers

no, not naughty Victorian undergarments – flowers, silly!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 09, 2010 at 10:22AM 0 Comments

Perhaps he’ll discuss this hot little number: Agastache ‘Apricot Sprite’

The talk I’m suggesting you attend is actually titled “Fanfare of Trumpets,” but I look for any excuse to mention “bloomers” – formative years spent watching Monty Python would do it to you, too!

Maurice Horn of Joy Creek Nursery is one of my favorite speakers on plant subjects. He’s charming, funny and well connected to the philosophical and sensual sides of gardening.

Tuesday August 10, he’ll be showing pictures of his favorite long-blooming, trumpet-shaped perennial flowers (think fuchsia, Penstemon, Phygelius and Zauschneria), describing their culture, answering questions and even selling an assortment of fine specimens for your garden.

The Genius Program is an informal lecture series put on by the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon. The topics are great, there are door prizes (you could win free plants!) and the talks are as cheap as can be: just $5, with tickets available at the door (cash or checks only). You do not need to be a member of the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon to attend. But attending might make you want to join up.

What: Fanfare of Trumpets talk by Maurice Horn of Joy Creek Nursery

When: Tuesday August 10 @ 7 pm

Where: Multnomah Center, 7688 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland 97219

Cost: $5

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Tags: Gardening Events, Flowers

Perennials That Flop

here’s what to do

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Aug 03, 2010 at 08:33AM 2 Comments

It was a great year to see shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum) fall apart – especially the old-fashioned, double-flowered types. Staking the plants in April or May would have helped, as would planting strong, upright neighboring plants around them. And pinching back the tips of daisy stems in May helps keep plants up on their “feet”, too.

Some perennials don’t stand up straight on their own.

It’s maddening but true. Many shasta daisies, tall Sedum, Baptisia and a host of other perennials get tipsy as the season progresses – stems elongate, flower buds become heavy and spindly stems bend to the ground. Either the outer stems fall or the whole plant splays out, squashing its neighbors and leaving a bald spot in the middle of the plant.

It’s usually brought on by a dry spell followed by rain (or over-watering), or wind + rain. And some plants are just prone to it even in the best of conditions.

Many seasoned gardeners simply avoid plants that splay, searching perennial tables for simliar-looking plants with sturdier stems. Other tricks to prevent perennials from flopping:

- provide plants with enough sun – most plants that lean are leaning towards the light they’re lacking.

- amend soil to improve drainage. Heavy clay soil can cause plants to root shallowly to avoid root suffocation. Adding organic matter or pumice can improve drainage so plants send roots down deep into the soil.

- don’t overdo fresh compost or fertilizer – overly rich soil (=high in Nitrogen) results in lush, squishy growth which topples easy.

- provide steady water – many perennials tip when they receive water after a significant dry spell. Cells plump up with water and weigh down stems, causing toppling. Water sitting on large flower heads can also weigh them down – use drip or hand-water roots.

- flopping can be a signal that it’s time to divide perennials. If the clump is starting to look intimidating, it’s probably time to divide.

- most importantly: when planting tippy plants, use nearby plants for scaffolding. If you have a tall daisy that flops every year, surround it with stiff, upright perennials like Aster divaricatus or erect ornamental grasses like Miscanthus sinensis that will help support the sides of the stems.

- most perennial plants can be pinched or cut back early in the season to encourage shorter, stronger stems. See “The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques” by Tracy DiSabato-Aust (Timber Press). This book provides detailed instructions on tip pruning perennial plants to prevent splaying and leaning. While the technique can sometimes delay flowering, it can be quite nice to enjoy flowers a little later in the summer.

And now, back to the present: what to do with floppy perennials now?

Sedum ’Postman’s Pride’ (dark purple) interplanted with Sedum telephium ssp. ruprechtii. See angled, slender bamboo stakes holding up stems.

For perennials under 2 feet, try making a lattice fence comprised of 2-foot long slender bamboo twigs pushed deeply at a 45 degree angle in the ground, criss-crossing each other. It usually suffices to hold up the first foot of stems. This is the least obtrusive solution and you can barely see it when done with care. You can just make the little lattice fence on the side that needs to be propped up.

From above, you don’t see the unobtrusive bamboo “fence” holding up the sedums.

A similar idea: pea stakes. Pea stakes are small, forked twigs about 1-2 feet tall that you push into the ground. I like to harvest branches from hazels, dogwoods, and manzanita – the gnarlier, the better. Pea stakes work great for lax, airy plants 2-3 feet high, like Clematis recta and low-growing sweet peas.

Need something taller or more sturdy? Try bamboo or 1×1 wood stakes and twine. Rather than circling the plant with twine (use green garden twine or brown jute), which can make the plant look strangled, criss-cross the twine through the stakes and stems to provide internal support, cat’s cradle style.

Don’t have time to fuss with stakes and twine? Buy commercial metal stakes – there are many kinds. For single flower stems of plants like lilies, try the single stake with a little loop at the top to capture the stem. (Plant in full sun, though, and your lilies will rarely flop.) For a leaning perennial clump,try the linking metal stakes, which allow you to encircle the plant section by section. (The peony cages and commercial “cat’s cradle” style supports are best set up in spring when plants are just a few inches high; trying to stuff bunches of foliage into the hoop is a challenge – and results in a pretty bad look – at this time of year.)

Staking “tips”

Part of the problem with using unobtrusive, thin stakes is that you might not see them while gardening. Poking one’s eye out on a sharp stick is not said to be fun and it happens more than you might think. Ask an eye surgeon! In England, you can buy all kinds of rounded stoneware and terra cotta safety tops for stakes, designed to prevent eye damage. I would suggest exploring all the cultural tips to prevent floppy perennials before resorting to stakes, especially metal ones.

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Tags: Gardening Tips

Flowering Maple

One of the most luscious plants of late summer. And fall. And winter.

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Jul 30, 2010 at 06:44AM 0 Comments

Abutilon megapotamicum. Image courtesy of Thompson & Morgan.

Flowering maples – members of the genus Abutilon – aren’t easy to categorize. They are perennial, semi-evergreen shrubs, sometimes acting like deciduous perennials, they are climbers, and some tender types are used as summer annuals… the diversity of Abutilon size, form and flower color makes them incredibly versatile.

Their striking flowers contribute greatly to the summer, fall and even winter garden and they bloom forever – often right up until the winter holidays if there isn’t a deep freeze. Their lantern-shaped flowers come in a vast range of colors, from pastels (pink, peach, cream, soft red, pale yellow) and white to sizzling oranges, yellows, blood red, and hot pink. Depending on their genetic inheritance (ie, which species are in their “bloodline”), they can range from little 2-foot cuties (like Abutilon ’Li’l Red’) to 8 foot wonders like Abutilon megapotamicum.

Did I mention they are a beloved nectar source for hummingbirds?

Flowers can be elongated, slender pendants (as with Abutilon megapotamicum) or more open and flattened – very tropical looking, in either case.

Abutilon ‘Canary Bird’. Photo courtesy of Plant Delights Nursery.

Foliage can be wide and palm-shaped, vaguely like our native vine maple leaf, or slender and elongated. Some forms (not cold-hardy) have gold or cream variegated leaves.

Flowering maples love sun, rich soil, and plenty of moisture in summer. Having said that, if you give them plenty of moisture and rich soil when young, you can get away with some neglect later, once its established.

Plant tall Abutilon types at the back of a bed, behind other sturdy shrubs. That way, you don’t have to look at the twigs in spring and other shrubs help protect the plants from winter cold. Although not technically a vine, Abutilon tend to clamber and weave through other shrubs and it creates a lovely effect when the bell-shaped flowers appear through the foliage of the support shrub. Abutilon are especially nice planted on the south or west side of a structure – they can flower right into December in a protected spot. Smaller types are fantastic in summer containers, as they flower continuously, like any annual plant.

Pick a reasonably cold-hardy, Zone 8a (10-15F) variety like Abutilon megapotamicum and its cultivars, get it through the first winter and you’ll enjoy your Abutilon for years to come. Or pick whichever one tickles your fancy – most are listed at Zone 8b (15-20F) or into Zone 9 – and relish the showy flowers all summer and fall. (It will be a bonus if it comes back next year.) Sometimes they come back even when by all rights they should have died! A few A. megapotamicum cultivars including the one called Red surprised me by returning hale and hearty this spring.

Abutilon ‘Ginger Bomb’. Photo courtesy of Xera Plants.

If planting an Abutilon you hope to overwinter, don’t fertilize it from mid-August on and mulch it well after the first frost of the season (usually late October/early November).

In the perfect world, you’d plant your Abutilon in spring so it has a full season to establish a strong root system. But it’s nearly impossible to find abutilons in the nurseries in the spring – they look like bundles of sticks in a pot in April and May so you’ll rarely even see them on nursery shelves. Shop for them now, while they’re in full bloom, mulch them well through their first winter, and cross your fingers for a sweeter winter than we had last year.

Sources:

Cistus Design Nursery, Sauvie Island
Garden Fever Nursery, NE Fremont & 24th Ave (along with the Portland Nursery on Stark Street, they carry the best selection of plants from wholesaler Xera Plants, which grows a great selection of Abutilon.
Plant Delights Nursery, Raleigh, North Carolina (mail order)

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Tags: Flowers, Plant of the Week

Design Tips from Dan Hinkley

notes from the 2010 PPA conference in Portland

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Jul 25, 2010 at 04:20AM 1 Comments

Plant explorer, gardener and witty fellow Dan Hinkley giving a talk at Cistus Design Nursery in 2009. I was so rapt listening to him talk the other day at the PPA conference that I forgot to pull out my camera.

I try to avoid joining groups and engaging in activities where I have to wait in lines, sit in chairs for hours at a time and dutifully clap between endless rounds of announcements.

But late last week, I got a call from the plant-savvy Dan Heims, owner of Terra Nova Nursery, breeder and wholesale producer of new perennial plants (especially famous for Heuchera and Echinacea). He was at the Doubletree Hotel at Lloyd Center where the Perennial Plant Association was holding its annual conference. “You need to get down here,” he said. “there are some really cool containers in the lobby that you should see…”

This is not the first time Mr. Heims has egged me into getting my sorry self to attend an official horticulture-related conference – and I must say, I’ve always been glad I went when all was said and done. So I huffed over to the Doubletree Hotel at Lloyd Center lobby on Thursday, only to learn that Dan Hinkley – superstar plant explorer and lecturer – would be speaking that afternoon. I had no option: I joined the PPA and forked over an additional $75 to hear the afternoon’s remaining lectures. All previous plans fell by the wayside.

As well as the containers designed by local nurseries on display in the lobby, there were several other lectures to attend before Dan Hinkley’s time at the lectern: I learned about the best performing garden bamboos from wholesaler Boo-Shoots owner Jackie Heinricher (good resources on that website, especially about good clumping bamboos) and about the complexities of fern nomenclature from the irresistible and outspoken Judith Jones of Fancy Fronds. (She’s the ultimate fern advocate and her website fern descriptions are enough to make even the most mediterranean-oriented gardener fall in love with ferns.) But I’m a sucker for Dan Hinkley’s talks because he always sneaks some crazily beautiful rare plants into his presentations and, well… he’s so funny!

His talk was titled “Plant Marriages: Exceptional Combinations Using Foliage Aspects”.

He opened his talk by asking: How do you place plants to make them sing?

He showed slides from his old garden at Heronswood: the first, what he called “a vomitous combination” of perennials in a border, with no structure or grace. It was, he said, “like a large whale had washed up on shore and rotted”. He showed an image of the same border a year later, when he’d made some improvements. It was okay but, as he pointed out, no great shakes. His third image, taken a few years later, demonstrated what he’d learned in the intervening years: to build balance, height differentials, foliar texture, and repetition (of color or plant form) into his gardens. So how did he do it?

His talk outlined three simple garden design principles he had used to make his borders “sing”:

- Punctuation (a bold-leafed plant)
Sometimes adding just one bold-leafed plant like a cardoon (Cynara sp., Gunnera sp., Darmera peltata, Nicotiana sylvestris, or Fatsia can completely shift the look from drab to dazzling. For his audience, he digitally altered the photo of the garden, adding and subtracting various large-leaved plants to show what a difference its presence made. Wow!

- Exclamation (a “statement” plant)
Whether used as a single statement (look at me!, says a dramatic clump of bright red, 5-foot tall Lobelia tupa) or a sustained conversation used throughout the garden to break up the sky (scattered Green Arrow Chamaecyparis nootkatensis or narrow holly (Ilex crenata‘Sky Pencil’), exclamation plants need breathing room and will lose their punch if crowded. But are brilliant at creating the sense of height and dimension in a space by drawing the eye upward. Again, he popped plants in and out digitally and the difference was extraordinary.

- Accentuation (repetition of particular plants or plant colors or textures)
This is the hardest principle to enact for those of us who are plant collectors. But it’s one of the best – and easiest – ways to tie a garden together by creating a common link and knitting the whole together. I liked his observation that you can actually borrow a color in a neighbor’s yard and build on it in your own yard. He also added that repetition doesn’t have to come from plants but can be created by placing similarly colored pots throughout a garden, hanging buoys or lanterns, stoneware balls, or other objects that are meaningful to you and the site. The digital appearance and disappearance of objects helped illustrate his point.

If you haven’t done it before, remember that the old-fashioned method of simply shifting potted plants in and out of your own garden to see how they look in various spots works perfectly well when designing. It’s nice to give yourself a few days to live with something in a particular spot to see if you like it there. Just remember to water it while you’re deciding!

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Tags: Gardening Events, Garden Design, Plant People

Waterlily Festival, Tour de Coops, Chicken Class and 40% Off Plants!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Jul 23, 2010 at 08:42AM 0 Comments

A (tiny) bucolic scene from Hughes Water Gardens

There’s a bunch going on in the gardening world, starting tonight.

This weekend, Hughes Water Gardens is holding their 8th Annual Waterlily Festival and Invitational Art Show. The artists’ reception is this evening from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Stroll through the water gardens, meet the artists, and enjoy music, wine and appetizers. Address: 25289 SW Stafford Rd., Tualatin OR 97062. Events continue on Saturday with talks, tours and sales and information booths devoted to garden restoration, on Sunday with artists’ demonstrations and more events, and into the week that follows.

The Tour de Coops is happening on Saturday July 24th from 11 am to 3 pm. Twenty-five chicken owners around Portland open their yards so you can see their coops and meet their chickens. This benefit event for Growing Gardens consists of a self-guided tour with stops all over East Portland – you can decide where to start and finish. Cost: $15 and there’s a raffle for two stylish chicken coops, as well as gift certificates donated by local nurseries and feed stores.

A happy chook at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply this spring

Buy your tickets today at Concentrates, Inc., Garden Fever!, Livingscape Nursery, Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply, People’s Co-Op, the Urban Farm Store, and Whole Foods Market in Hollywood. And 20% off if you have the 2010 Chinook Book and buy your ticket at one of the above retailers. On Saturday, head for the parking lot at Westminster Presbyterian Church at 1624 NE Hancock to buy your tickets, as well as chickeny books and resources, organic breakfast treats and such.

On the chicken theme, Naomi Montacre of Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply – along with Lisa Ewing of the Avian Medical Center – will be teaching a PCC class – Chickens 201 – from 9 – 11 am at the store. Issues tackled include predators, health and behavioral issues, introducing new birds to the flock, and other chicken challenges. Sign up here. Cost: $29.

Finally, if you’re just dying to go on a mad plant-shopping spree, you might want to stop by Ferguson’s Fragrant Garden Nursery this Saturday July 24. They are closing their Lake Oswego store and in the consolidation process, are putting everything on sale at their St. Paul store, all while throwing their annual Midsummer Night’s Dream Fragrance Festival. Forty percent off is nothing to sniff at. The sale runs all day on Saturday and from 5 pm on, there will be light appetizers and wine and “inspirational music” plus tours and talks on cultivating fragrance in the garden. Directions here.

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Tags: Chickens, Plant Sale