PLANTWISE

Gifts for Gardeners, Part II (west side)

Shop local!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Dec 10, 2010 at 04:14PM 0 Comments

A wintry selection of shapely conifers in sweet pots at Pomarius Nursery

My first post on shopping local (Part I) listed Portland’s east-side garden and plant boutiques – here are west-side garden shops brimming with gifts worthy of any plant lover.

All of these nurseries and plant shops sell gift certificates – a wonderful solution if you can’t decide what your recipient would like best. What plant-lover can turn down plants for gifts?

SW, fairly close-in:

Pomarius
1920 NW 18th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
Tel: 503-490-6866
- gifts you can find there now: many beautiful plants with character including exquisite, hand-clipped works of topiary or mossy urns planted with unexpected plants. Sizes range from tiny, aged terra cotta pots with cute little plants in them to, of course, pots as big as a tree.

Oxalis (no website)
1824 N.W. 24th Ave., Portland OR 97210
Tel: 503-206-8568
- gifts you can find there now: Okatsune pruners

Dig Garden Shop
425 NW 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209
Tel: 503-223-4443
- gifts you can find there now: stylish containers, modern outdoor furniture, local art, and some small gardening items. There are a few plants, too.

The Audubon Society Gift Shop
5151 Northwest Cornell Rd, Portland, OR 97210
Tel: 503-292-9453
- gifts you can find there now: books on bird identification and supporting wildlife; excellent bird feeders and bird and bat houses; binoculars from inexpensive to extremely high-end; and quality bird feed.

Lan Su Chinese Garden Gift Shop
239 Northwest Everett Street
Portland, Oregon 97209
Tel: 503-228-8131
- gifts you can find there now: gardening books, gift memberships to the garden

SW, a little further out:

Cistus Design Nursery
22711 Northwest Gillihan Loop Road
Portland, OR 97231
503-621-2233
- gifts you can find there now: rare and unusual plants, winter-flowering plants including showy hellebores, gorgeous evergreens for winter displays. And, of course, gift certificates.

Joy Creek Nursery
20300 Northwest Watson Road
Scappoose, OR 97056
503-543-7474
- gifts you can find there now: rare and unusual plants, winter-flowering plants including winter-flowering clematis and hellebores, evergreens for winter displays… and of course, gift certificates.

What’s your favorite little plant nursery, garden boutique or nature- or garden-related non-profit gift shop on the west side? If there is a small, local shop full of interesting plant or garden-related treasures that I’ve missed, let us hear from you!

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Tags: Garden Stuff, Nurseries, gifts for gardeners

Gifts for Gardeners, Part I (east side)

this holiday season, support local shops when looking for gifts for gardeners and plant lovers

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Nov 30, 2010 at 05:00PM 0 Comments

The Wall o’ Tools at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply in Sellwood. Image courtesy of Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply.

This year, challenge yourself to give the most local holidays gifts you can manage to your Portland friends and family.

That’s pretty easy when it comes to gifts for gardeners. Nearly anything a Portland-area plant buff or gardener could possibly desire can be found nearby – and probably within just a few miles of where you live. If you think your prospective giftees would most relish plants, pure and simple, you can always give them a gift certificate, which will come in handy when the plants start pouring in to the nurseries in spring time.

To get you started, here are some of the city’s most accessible small plant nurseries and garden and nature shops on the east side of town – and my suggestions on some of the more delectable, gift-worthy treats they carry for people who love nature, gardening, the birds and the bees, and plants. (Next up: West side.)

SE, close-in:

Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply
2500 SE Tacoma St, Portland OR 97202
503-517-8551
- gifts you can find there now: a wide array of gardening and urban farming books, quality gardening tools, manure, compost and mineral mix (every serious gardener’s dream), chicken and goat supplies, hardy edible plants. (Dec 1 is their one-year anniversary sale.)

The Urban Farm Store
2100 SE Belmont St., Portland, OR
503-234-7733
- gifts you can find there now: canning materials, bee hives, cheese making kits and beer brewing supplies, books, chickens supplies.

A couple of handfuls of beautiful terrarium-making materials to be found at Artemisia on SE 28th Ave. Image courtesy of Artemisia.

Artemisia
110 SE 28th Avenue, Portland, OR 97214
503-232-8224
- gifts you can find there now: exquisitely made terrariums, hand-assembled kits and raw materials for making terrariums, unique houseplants, and nature-inspired art.

NE, close-in:

Buffalo Gardens
728 Northeast Dekum Street, Portland, OR 97211
503-288-0220
- gifts you can find there now: gloves, high quality Japanese tools including several models of my favorite hori hori, a variety of edible and ornamental plants.

Livingscape Nursery
3926 N. Vancouver Avenue, Portland, OR 97227
503-248-0104
- gifts you can find there now: useful and beautiful kitchenwares from old-fashioned moulis and metal counter-top compost bins to dehydrators, tools, camping and hiking gear, and ongoing classes like “cooking for dudes” (‘though everyone’s welcome!).

Pistils
3811 N. Mississippi Ave., Portland, OR 97227
503-288-4889
- gifts you can find there now: lovely houseplants and terrarium-making materials; garden art; worm composting set-ups, and a variety of ornamental and edible plants.

Garden Fever
3433 NE 24th Ave., Portland, OR
503-287-3200
- gifts you can find there now: a fine design and gardening book selection; tool belts; organic soil amendments; gorgeous winter-interest plants in small to large sizes; pots and planters; recycled outdoor rugs; colorful rubber boots.

Of course there are some far-out east side specialty nurseries, too – way far out… a conifer-lover might enjoy a trip to Porterhowse Farm in Sandy to pick out an unusual conifer. (Late winter is a great time to visit, when many conifers turn lovely hues of burgundy, orange or purple.) Many small nurseries sell gift certificates. If they don’t, you can make your own i-o-u for a nursery jaunt at the appropriate time of year. What plant-lover can turn down plants, especially when accompanied by a field-trip?

Am I missing your favorite little plant nursery, garden boutique or nature- or garden-related non-profit gift shop? If there is a small, local shop full of interesting plant or garden-related treasures, drop me a line. The next edition of local shops with gifts for gardeners will focus on Portland’s west side.

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Tags: Garden Stuff, Nurseries, gifts for gardeners

Busy as a Bee?

an entrancing bee calendar whose purchase will help support the Xerces Society’s valuable work

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Sep 30, 2010 at 05:19PM 1 Comments

Here’s a wonderful gift for your favorite bee-keeper or bee-lover (who might be yourself): it’s a 2011 calendar of native North American bee species (bumbles, honeys, and more), the sale of which will support an organization whose work lies at the core of every good gardener’s success: the Xerces Society.

Each month, the calendar will introduces you to a different bee genus, with full-page “bee pin-up,” accompanied by notes on preferred plants, nesting needs, and guidance on how to identify the genus—and, of course, a complete day-by-day calendar for each month.

Portland’s own Xerces Society is a scientific organization devoted to the study, preservation and legislative protection of invertebrates (“bugs,” to most of us). (Here are details on what they are all about.)

Invertebrates include worms, caterpillars (and their adult form, butterflies and moths), dragonflies, bees, flies, and myriad other wee creatures that populate the natural world, including our gardens, where they help create our compost, fluff up and enrich our soil, pollinate flowers, feed birds, weave webs, dig miniscule holes, creep around waving their antennae, pinch us from time to time, and give us the opportunity to marvel at their alternately exquisite and gruesome activities, if we can just take the time to observe them.

It goes without saying that invertebrates are one of the gardener’s best friends – even when they are incredibly annoying and loathsome, like aphids. Yet even aphids have a place in the garden, providing sustenance for birds and even helping indicate when a plant is weakened or over-fertilized.

Invertebrates are also a bit like the canaries of the coal mine on Planet Earth – the decline and disappearance of many species, including the beleaguered honeybees of North America, is telling us something about our stewardship of the Earth we inhabit. (As could be seen in the film Queen of the Sun, which recently played at the Hollywood Theater.) We have much to learn still about the long-term effects of our rampant use of chemicals and our lack of stewardship of farmland in recent decades.

Dig in here to learn more about their pollinator conservation program – only one of many things they do. And here to see lists of garden and native plants that will help support important pollinating insects. Or just poke around on their website, starting here.

Here is what to click upon to order the $15 calendar, all of which money will directly support the conservation work of the Xerces Society.

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Tags: Garden Stuff, insects

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

Things to Do – Plants to Buy

plant sales going on every day for the next week

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 12, 2010 at 10:29PM 1 Comments

Take your pick – or maybe go wild and pick both.

There are two great plant sales coming up – one running Monday through Friday this week and the other running Saturday and Sunday.

COMMUNITY TRANSITION CENTER’S SPRING PLANT SALE

When: Monday April 12th to Friday April 16th from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm daily. Where: 6801 SE 60th & Duke St. in Greenhouse #1

This plant sale features an array of perennial, annual and vegetable starts grown using organic methods, at fantastic prices (cash or check only) – for example:

- Canna lilies, chrystanthemum, gal. pot – $3
- Foxglove, oxalis, licorice fern – $1-3
- Daylilies, assorted colors – $2
- Flowers including sweet William, California poppy and phlox plus vege starts including broccoli, kale, lettuce, collards, chard, sorrel,
spinach – 6-pack tray $2

The Community Transition Center is a Portland Public Schools program for young adults focusing on vocational experience and life skills. Students in the program are responsible for starting, caring for, and maintaining the plant stock in the greenhouse. Purchases support the greenhouse program.

For more information, call 503-916-5817 or email sgoforth@pps.k12.or.us

HARDY PLANT SOCIETY OF OREGON SPRING PLANT SALE & GARDEN FESTIVAL
The other plant sale coming up takes place this weekend – it’s the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon’s wondrous and amazing Spring Plant Sale. Held at the Expo Center (readily accessible by light rail), this Queen of Oregon’s Spring Plant Sales runs from 10 am to 3 pm Saturday April 17 and Sunday April 18. It is the premier gathering of local specialty nurseries from all over Oregon and Western Washington. It’s also a marketplace for locally made garden art. And, this year, there’s a gardening book shop where you can find relevant, regionally-appropriate gardening books – some written by local authors.

If you take light rail, bring some of those fabric grocery bags. You’ll be amazed by how many plants you can fit into those things.

Details of Spring Plant Sale & Garden Festival:
When: April 17 & 18, 2010 from 10 am to 3 pm both days
Where: Portland EXPO Center – Hall C. The Interstate MAX Yellow Line goes right to EXPO. See TriMet web site

No wagons, strollers or carts in the sale – the aisles can be tight. There is a hold area, though, so you don’t have to stagger around loaded down with plants unless you have a particular need to wave your brilliant scores in front of other possibly covetous shoppers.

You can go to the website for a list of vendors at the sale (many, many!) and for a map of the site.

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Tags: Gardening Events, Flowers, Garden Stuff, Plant Sale

Chicken Shirts

- going viral?

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Mar 14, 2010 at 11:52AM 0 Comments

Karen Wolfgang and Isabel LaCourse, co-owners of Independence Gardens, LLC

If there’s anything a sluggish economy does, it’s make people crafty. By crafty, I mean arts-and-craftsy.

Take the Portland Chicken Shirt phenomenon. A couple of years ago, two women running a sustainable edible gardening business started screen printing some goofy chickens onto thrift-store t-shirts as holiday gifts for friends and family. Before long, other people wanted them and their creators realized they were on to a good thing. These shirts are fun, funky and come in great colors. I got one at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply – and received another as a gift soon afterward! (Fortunately, a different color.) Now they’re making them in toddler and children’s sizes, too.

I was wearing one of mine under several woolly layers at a meeting recently and was talking with some folks about chickens. Before long, I mentioned my lovely chicken shirt, only to discover I was chatting with the shirt’s creator!

Since we in Portland are up to our ears in urban farming movement mud, it only makes sense that we want to show our chicken-love to the world… after all, once you’ve experienced the beady little eyes of your own hen staring at your hand and insistently pecking it because she thinks you have something to eat, long after you’ve opened your hand and shown her that you don’t, you’ll never be the same! And let’s not forget how adorable chickens look when they run… and roost… and sit on their eggs… Chickens are quite possibly the most endearing creatures on Earth. I’m sure that chicken-people are at least as proud of their friendly, charming, slug-eating, egg-producing pets as dog-people. And we all know how much dog-people love their dogs.

As long as chicken-people don’t start looking like their chickens the way dog-people morph into their dogs, I’m cool.

Bella – the perfect dog for a chicken-person! Same size, weight and fluffiness but regrettably, no eggs and she doesn’t usually eat slugs. Of course, chickens don’t retrieve tennis balls.

Chicken Shirts are available in children’s sizes S, M, and L and adults’ XS, S, M, L, XL, and 2X, as well as long-sleeve S, M, and L (brown and black only). They have just started producing “Chicken Squirt” onesies and will soon add hoodies. Click here to see colors and styles or to order on-line. Or buy then at Linnton Feed & Seed, Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply, or Wichita Feed & Hardware at 6089 SE Johnson Creek Blvd., Portland (503-775-6767).

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Tags: Chickens, Garden Stuff

Grocery Gardening

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Mar 03, 2010 at 11:43PM 2 Comments

I recently received a review copy of Grocery Gardening, a hands-on guide to growing and enjoying fresh garden produce.

Portland author Jean Ann Van Krevelen wrote the book to help readers get started growing and preparing their own food. I liked the book and wanted to meet her so we went out for lunch after the Yard, Garden & Patio Show. I wanted to know what she feels is the “hook” that inspires people – especially young people – to garden – and eat from the garden. For both of us, gardening came to us through parents and grandparents who were avid gardeners. But not everyone has a family member who gardens and can model how simple it can be to grow your own food. That’s where an accessible how-to book like this comes in.

Think of Grocery Gardening like a substitute gardening grandma. An extra hip, fun-loving grandma who shows you how to start an organic food garden but never gets mad at you for not wiping your muddy shoes. And while the book doesn’t actually make delicious, home-cooked meals for you, it does offer inspiring recipes that will make you want to run to the kitchen yourself.

Grocery Gardening starts with “Gardening 101,” detailing the basic information needed to plan your food garden, amend your soil, start your seeds and deal with potential pests. Since part of the goal of growing vegetables and fruit is to eat all this delicious, organic produce, there’s a section on purchasing quality produce at the grocery store or farmers market. After all, you probably won’t be growing everything you eat the first year. I appreciate the list of the most and least contaminated foods – it’s worth growing your own or paying more for organics when buying peaches or bell peppers, for example.

The book then covers how to start and nurture 25 herbs, fruits and vegetables, with guidance on canning, freezing, dehydrating, and storing the produce. Several valuable recipes are provided for each herb, fruit and vegetable.

Now Jean Ann isn’t just a book author: she a veritable bundle of energy, writing blogs on food, on edible gardening, and on technology for entrepreneurs. The back-story to this book is that it was written in collaboration with three co-authors – none of whom had met in person. Instead, they were Facebook and Twitter friends and decided to see if they could put together a book about food and gardening in 60 days using recipes and ideas culled from their voluminous lists of social media contacts. This collaborative venture produced a lively, fresh book full of practical details that will help a total beginner get started – and inspire any food gardener with fun ideas and great recipes. A note to the computer-savvy – the authors are all still tapping away, writing informative gardening and cooking blogs – so the opportunities are there for continued interaction.

I was impressed by something Jean Ann said that afternoon when we plonked ourselves down for lunch (we hit one of my favorite quickie meal spots, Ole Ole on E. Burnside). When I asked her what really gets non-gardeners into gardening, particularly edible gardening, she said, “What it doesn’t take is an overblown idea of perfectionism. Gardening and cooking can be more relaxed, more accessible,” she said. “Gardening is too often presented as if it were an Olympic sport. It’s not that hard. We’re putting things in dirt, people!”

So let’s get past that all-or-nothing thinking. Don’t have the time or the space to dig a vegetable garden in your back yard this spring? Then plant some lettuce in a pot. Planting a seed is a metaphor for starting afresh, creating new life. It’s the easiest thing in the world and humans have been doing it for aeons. You can do it, too.

One pot with organic potting soil and a packet of seeds is all you need to start a vegetable garden. This pot’s big but you can start with almost any kind of container that has a hole in the bottom.

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Tags: Vegetables, Garden Stuff

Yard, Garden & Patio Show Redux

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Feb 14, 2010 at 04:00PM 2 Comments

One of the Cracked Pots artists made some lovely metal animals

View Slideshow » Illustration:

One of the Cracked Pots artists made some lovely metal animals

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Hughes Water Garden’s peaceful, realistic woodland pond scene (Sorry it’s so hard to see – the light was very dim and I’m learning to use a new camera.)

View Slideshow » Illustration:

A Cracked Pots artist (must get the name!) presented a metal menagerie including goats, rabbits, pigs and chickens.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

These plant labels at the Pane in the Glass booth were made of glass labels affixed to recycled cutlery. Ingenious!

In case you didn’t make it, the Portland Yard, Garden & Patio Show was a lot of fun this year. We’ll have the numbers soon enough and will know just how well it did… but after my sally around the show floor today, I’d say there was solid visitor turnout and clearly some vendors did very well. It will be interesting to see which types of businesses did best – post-show analysis always provides an interesting reading on current trends.

I was drawn to a few of the displays: particularly Hughes’ Water Gardens’ natural-looking pond garden (view slideshow!) The plants growing around the make-believe pond were well-suited to the (imaginary) water’s edge conditions – a great example of the principles of Right Plant, Right Place. Viewers could look at that display and glean real ideas about what to plant around their pond. That’s my idea of good service! Colorful red-twigged dogwoods grew in delicious clumps at the water’s edge, with sword ferns providing an understory to the silvery-trunked birch trees. Leaves carpeted the ground instead of bark dust. It was a look well worth replicating.

Large, trunked specimens of Yucca rostrata made a dramatic statement in Cistus Design Nursery’s display garden

Sean Hogan’s Cistus Design Nursery display was also memorable for its good looks – and for the good gardening principles it promoted. I loved that the plants were displayed in a layered fashion, with a ground-cover carpet and a “canopy” of drought-tolerant shrubs and trees, much like you’d find in a well-designed garden. No need for a thick layer of bark dust on the ground – plants provided the layering. I also appreciated that the plants on one side of the display were drought tolerant, requiring no supplemental summer water (manzanita, yucca, cypress and such) while on the other side were plants which thrive with only occasional summer water (New Zealand flax – Phormium – for instance). The “take-aways” in this display are that layering works to create a natural-looking garden and that, in a summer-dry climate such as ours, it’s smart to segregate water-needier plants from those that neither need nor want summer water.

This exemplifies the opposite aesthetic:

Primroses floating in a barkdust sea

Everyone I spoke with enjoyed the talks. Rose Marie Nichols McGee’s talks on growing vegetables in containers and new vegetable varieties were enjoyed by all attendees I spoke with.

And of course, there were fantastic plants available, from premium dahlia bulbs from local growers like Swan Island Dahlias to stunning hellebores and lots of sedums and hens-and-chicks (Sempervivum ). Everybody was talking about – and touching – the living walls. Some of the living walls on display were brimming with drought-tolerant succulents (nice ) and others (naughty ) were brimming with a strange combination of grasses and invasive plants like Vinca, which shouldn’t be planted anywhere, much less in a living wall where everyone can see it up close and personal.

So there you have it – my take on the show. Now, what about you – what did you think of the show this year? Did you see anything new? Did anything stick with you as particularly inspiring or motivating? Did you even go?

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Tags: Gardening Events, Slideshow, Places to Go, Garden Stuff, Plant Sale

Yard, Garden & Patio Show

this could be the best yet

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Feb 09, 2010 at 10:55AM 2 Comments

I’m not usually one to rave about garden shows. In fact, I’ve been a bit garden show-shy in recent years. In a previous post, I had a had a mini-rant about my frustration with the typical, old-fashioned garden show displays – chock full of plants that wouldn’t grow side-by-side in a real garden setting and inevitably buried under oceans of old-school “beauty bark”.

It might be oppositional-defiance or it might be generational, I don’t know. But I was determined to be open-minded this year and having spoken with the organizers and hearing that extra-special efforts were being made to update and “green” the show for 2010, I explored the website for the Yard, Garden & Patio Show taking place this weekend at the Oregon Convention Center.

And honestly, I’m blown away by the quality of the seminar speakers, by the vendors and by the interesting new additions to this year’s line-up. The OAN ’s organizers have gone to great lengths to focus on local products (even down to the booze!) and to bring sustainable products to the show floor. This is going to be a gem of a weekend for plant and garden lovers of all ages.

Here are some highlights:

*A full schedule each day of excellent talks by local favorites like Maurice Horn (Joy Creek Nursery), Mike Darcy (“In the Garden” radio program on KXL AM), and Lucy Hardiman (Principal, Perennial Partners Design) as well as national experts. Top billing goes to Heronswood founder and plant explorer Dan Hinkley, now gathering plants from the far reaches of the world for Monrovia Nursery. His talk on Friday from 12-1 will focus on his remarkable garden at Windcliff near Indianola, WA. I suspect long lines for this talk so get there early and stake out a seat. (Just save one for me!)

*Big display gardens, a group of smaller “vignettes” created by members of the ANLD, and container gardens to provide inspiration and ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing a full-on display garden created by Sean Hogan of Cistus Design Nursery, which will showcase a wide array of plants that are ideally suited to our winter wet-summer dry, mediterreanean climate. To my knowledge, this will be Sean’s first full-on garden show display garden at this event. Get ready – it will not be your typical display garden.

*Over 250 exhibitors ranging from the best of the WIllamette Valley’s specialty nurseries like Joy Creek Nursery, Dancing Oaks Nursery, Northwest Garden Nursery to local craftspeople making baskets, trugs, garden art and tools to various soils and contraptions designed to, well, make plants grow better.

*A brand-new partnership this year with Cracked Pots, an environmental non-profit supporting artists making garden art from recycled materials. Cracked Pots is a fantastic organization and I’m thrilled to see this lively new energy infusing the Show.

*Oregon wine and beer gardens (also selling local spirits this year), with wine tastings and wine sold by the bottle as well as by the glass. I’m told there will be a large-screen TV to watch the Olympics (perhaps if you need somewhere to park your non-gardeny partner while you breeze about on the Show floor) and listen to live music. Even the live music promises to be good this year – Brazilian Choro, Flamenco, Gypsy jazz, some Latin fusion, and more.

*A winter garden display created by the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon showing the diversity of winter-interest plants that grow in the Willamette Valley.

*A kids play area for all ages of children. Native plants, hiking safety and camping basics will be provided by the Cascade Pacific Council Boy Scouts of America. There will also be face painting fun learning activities and play structures for romping.

*Experts. There will be gardening experts milling about, eager to answer your gardening questions. Bring your questions, problems, and ideas. You’re bound to gain some insights or information.

*Give-aways – everybody likes give-aways! Apparently, prizes this year include a garden “make-over” valued at $7,500 by Dennis 7 Dees Landscaping and a pair of diamond earrings… for those of us that like to wear our diamonds in the garden. Also, the first 300 people to arrive at the Show each morning receive a free gift.

Details:

• When: Friday & Sat February 12-13 from 10 am to 7:30 pm. and Sun February 14 from 10 am to 5 pm
• Where: The Oregon Convention Center, 777 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Portland. Here are transportation details and maps. Note that the maximum payment for all-day parking at the Convention Center lot is $8.
• Admission: $11 for adults and free for kids 12 and younger accompanied by a paying adult.
• Advanced tickets $7 at Dennis’ 7 Dees locations through Feb. 11
• Advanced tickets $9 available at select retailers. See website for locations.
• $2 Off Coupons at www.ygpshow.com

For more information: Call 360-210-5275 or go to ygpshow.com

Look – it’s nearly spring!

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Tags: Gardening Events, Garden Stuff, Green

Seattle Flower Show Rundown

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Feb 06, 2010 at 01:00PM 0 Comments

Seattle garden shop Ravenna Gardens created this display titled ‘Urban Nest’

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Seattle garden shop Ravenna Gardens created this display titled ‘Urban Nest’

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Exteriorscapes ’Eye of the Beholder" display featured a salvaged claw foot tub and glass shade planters, among other antique objects. I especially like the bathmat!

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Titled “A Family’s Little Farm in the City,” this display by NW Bloom EcoLogical Landscapes and Seattle Tilth demonstrates a “closed loop” system employing composting, rain harvesting, and solar power as well as raised beds made from various recycled materials and urban livestock. It was sweet and quite a hit with the kids.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Seattle’s Urban Farm Company created “Crops for Clunkers,” an old truck re-purposed as a farm-on-wheels, with chickens up in the front of the cab, a fruit tree emerging from the hood and plenty of organic vegetables spilling from the bed and sides.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

The Skybridge area held a group of small-scale container and planter displays that were fun and silly.

I had a fleeting but action-packed trip North to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle on Thursday. We headed up before dawn and returned after midnight – a non-stop, 18-hour fiesta of total plant immersion. The show runs through Sunday evening so there’s still time to go if you’re inclined. The end of the final day of the show is actually a good time for bargains, as some vendors sell off their display plants at great prices.

My companions and I downed coffee at the nearby Bauhaus Cafe before hurrying back to the Convention Center for an 11:30 am talk by SF Bay Area landscape architect Andrea Cochran. Her gardens are sleek exemplars of modern design, characterized by large swathes of single species of ornamental grasses, shrubs or trees. Rectilinear lines, sweeps of plants (mostly shrubs and grasses or groups of diaphanous white Japanese anemone) and expanses of gravel or stone create planes against which a single shapely tree – often native evergreen oak – can shine. Her images were amazing; I was particularly smitten with her use of large Shoji-like screens that permit light through while blocking a view.

Next up, at 1 pm, was a talk by Fergus Garrett, head gardener at the renowned, very quirky and in some ways “un-English” English garden Great Dixter. I’d visited Great Dixter many years ago and have since often read Garrett’s garden articles in English gardening magazines. To my dismay, the tickets were gone two hours before his talk. We decided to wait at the door, in case there was standing room and – as luck would have it – there was. His talk focused on the ongoing, fruitful editing process that takes place when one maintains a garden over the years – and how valuable it is to rework plantings over time. “Editing is very important – that’s how gardens move ahead and improve,” he noted. Good advice in an era of TV garden make-over shows and insta- garden designs. He is a firm advocate of the idea of “Right Plant, Right Place” – in other words, it’s important to know what your plants need and position them correctly so that they are “not just happy but impressive”. In his words: “you must understand your plants and be creative”.

I liked how he explained his priorities when working new plants into the existing design at Great Dixter:

*Rule #1: Make sure plant is happy.
*Rule #2: Consider shape: contrasting forms of plants foliage and flower heads
*Rule #3: Consider flower/plant color.

It’s all too easy to do it in reverse order, though, prioritizing the look of the plants – particularly flower color – and considering the plants’ needs last. But as he tried to underscore, to avoid disappointment, we must not ignore “basic ecological rules” (ie, Right Plant, Right Place!)!

Garrett’s talk was funny and charming and the images were inspiring, with examples of both successful and unsuccessful plant combinations. It takes considerable gumption to show combinations that don’t work (particularly from your own design files) and I love that he did it.

By the time we got out of two seminars, we had to be extremely efficient to take in as much of the Show as possible in the time we had left. We speed-walked through the display gardens – most of which used far less bark dust than in days of yore and were, in fact, quite creative (click on the slide show for some photographic highlights). Next, the sales areas with suppliers of garden tools, garden art, some plant-themed clothing and jewelry, and – my favorite – plants. There were tons of summer bulb vendors and – a new thing – many vendors sold dormant perennial plants in bags rather than growing plants in pots.

Because the Yard, Garden & Patio Show is coming up next weekend in Portland (Friday Feb 12 to Sun Feb 14), I was restrained. All I bought were three gorgeous air plants (Tillandsia sp.) from Owens Nursery to grow in my bathroom and also a gorgeous little blackish-burgundy hardy garden bromeliad Dyckia (seedling from Burgundy Ice). That was enough to whet my appetite!

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Tags: Gardening Events, Slideshow, Places to Go, Flowers, Garden Stuff

The Northwest Flower & Garden Show 2010

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Feb 01, 2010 at 02:00PM 2 Comments

I have a confession to make: I haven’t gone to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle in at least ten years. I simply got turned off by all the garden shows at some point. The shows didn’t seem relevant to me or my garden. I’d find myself in dark, sterile, gloomy exhibition halls packed with people and products, smelling weird chemicals and eating icky hot dogs, when all I really wanted was to be was… well, in the garden, surrounded by my plants, animals (chickens, cats, dog) and trowel. I wanted to see something inspiring – not walk around looking at fake gardens arranged under a blanket of bark dust.

Having gotten that out of my system… I’m actually going this year with higher expectations. There are some speakers I want to hear, some container gardens I want to see, and (of course) some plants I want to buy. I’m feeling some energy around this event and I’m hoping it will turn out to be fun. I’m committing a whole, marathon day to the Show, in fact – leaving extremely early and returning very late – and there will be non-stop activity during those 12 hours or so that I’m wandering the Show.

So what is it all about? Why commit a day – or a weekend – to this garden show?

This year, there will be a strong emphasis on sustainable gardening. There will be a variety of plant nurseries, including some I haven’t visited before, like the fabled Fancy Fronds fern nursery. Plus, Fergus frigging Garrett will be speaking! He’s the clever and wise gardener who worked for many years at Great Dixter in England, a garden that is dear to my heart, in part because of the giant topiary squirrels dotted around the place. (I’ll never forget asking a distinguished elderly fellow working in the garden at Great Dixter what a certain tree was: he merely barked, “EUCRYPHIA!” It was my one and only conversation with the renowned owner of Great Dixter, Christopher Lloyd.) And I am interested to see what kinds of new products and tools will be showing up to make life easier and better for vegetable gardeners, organic gardeners, and people who want to start their own seeds. There will be over 200 nurseries and other exhibitors displaying their wares – and selling them, right then and there. I’ll be looking for unusual ferns, more winter-flowering shrubs, and anything drought-tolerant. I might pick up some new orchids. And I’m relieved to learn that the Show provides free package check locations for stashing your acquisitions while wandering the rest of the Show. Whew.

SHOW DETAILS:
WHAT: The Northwest Flower & Garden Show
WHEN: Wednesday, February 3 through Sunday, February 7, 2010
WHERE: Washington State Convention and Trade Center 7th & Pike, Seattle, WA 98101
HOURS: Wednesday – Saturday (February 3‐6) 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. & Sunday (February 7) 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

ADMISSION:
$20 Adult (regular admission at door)
$16 Early Bird (purchased at participating ticket outlets or online through February 2nd)
$15 Group (per ticket; minimum purchase of 20 tickets)
$10 Half‐Day (purchased online or at the door after 3:00 p.m. Wed. – Sat., 2:00 p.m. Sun.)
$5 Youth (ages 13 – 17)
Free Children (ages 12 and under)
Multi‐day tickets will also available
Buy tickets here!

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Tags: Gardening Events, Garden Stuff

Lighten the Load

container gardeners rejoice!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Jan 19, 2010 at 05:00PM 2 Comments

For years, I have battled with the lightweight packing peanuts and Styrofoam chips used as filler in the bottom of large pots on condominium terrace gardens. Weight restrictions often limit how much soil can go in containers on rooftop/terrace gardens – but there were no good commercial, gardening-specific alternative to these lightweight materials. And it goes without saying that the biodegradable corn-based, eco-packing peanuts are completely unsuited to wet use in a pot! Yet in addition to being toxic, regular peanuts are notoriously difficult to handle, blowing around on breezy rooftops and being hard to corral when wet. Plus, they become impossible to clean for reuse or recycling. Once dirty from gardening, they must be thrown in the landfill. The re-use ends there. I particularly balked at the idea of growing food in pots full of these junky, sometimes toxic materials.

So it was a happy day when I met entrepreneur Joanna Guzzetta, President of Portland-based Four Seasons Container Gardens and creator of Packing Pearls – a product that could make my container garden projects a good deal easier – and more environmentally friendly.

The system is comprised of three parts:

*air-permeable, heavy-duty fabric liner that separates plant roots and soil from the packing pearls below and can be cut to fit.

*appropriate quantities of 2.5-inch diameter, expanded polystyrene balls (FDA approved safe for edibles)

*a drain shield which sticks to the bottom or side of the pot to keep the drainage holes clear but air-permeable

Invented here in Portland, Oregon by a professional gardener and made and assembled in the US, Packing Pearls are composed of 1/3 recycled material. They are recyclable (can be formed into new products) – and reusable (because they do not themselves break down). Because they do not break down, it is important to save and reuse them indefinitely. Did I mention that they are round – and definitely cleanable?

According to the company literature, Packing Pearls’ 3-part system creates a good drainage system in the pot by keeping the soil contained and separate from the pearls, by allowing air and water to move through the spaces between the pearls, and by keeping the drainage holes clear.

In addition to establishing good drainage in pots, the Packing Pearls system minimizes potting soil use, is simple to assemble and disassemble, and is made of non-toxic products. They are also a great solution to square or unusually shaped containers and troughs, since the pearls and fabric liner can be custom-fitted. These are good reasons to try it, even if weight isn’t an issue for your containers.

Packing Pearls starter kits come in two sizes: small/medium (for pots up to 16" wide), including 1 drain shield, 1 piece 18×18″ pot liner, and 50 pearls, $19.99) and medium/large (for pots up to 22" wide including 1 drain shield, 1 piece 24×24″ pot liner and 80 pearls, $29.99). Parts can be purchased separately as well.

Joanna came by my home office earlier today to explain the system and left me a sample to try in a large planter. I guess this is one of the perks of my job, huh? Stay tuned – at some point in late spring, I’ll report back.

I’m also testing out a system called Ups-A-Daisy planter inserts. I got a sample pack of these from Kianga, Inc., a company in Illinois, and set them up in five small to medium planters last fall.

As with the Packing Pearls, the Ups-A-Daisy products reduce the amount of soil you need to add to a pot – especially useful when you’re creating temporary/seasonal plantings, which don’t usually need as much soil as they’re in anyway. By minimizing the possibility of excess soil sitting below the plants’ roots in a container, they can minimize the likelihood of root rot. They also reduce planter weight, and eliminate the need for toxic or aggravating chips, peanuts, used water bottles, rocks, or other detritus. They can be re-used year after year.

The Ups-A-Daisies were drop-dead simple to install – I just lowered them into the pot, right way up, and added potting soil. I did use a cut piece of landscape fabric over the center hole to prevent soil crumbling through it, although the company says this is not necessary.

Of course, being round, they only work in round pots with a wide enough top opening to accommodate the disk. They have a good drainage system comprised of a center hole and many smaller holes in the indented groove running around the edge. So far, I have appreciated the ease of installation and I certainly used less potting soil in the containers. I’ll know more when I take the winter planters apart in May to install the summer plantings.

Ups-A-Daisy Pot Inserts range from 10-18 inches in diameter, running from $4.99 for the 10" disk to $12.99 for the 18" disk.

Both companies are relatively new but their products can be found in some local garden shops including Cornell Farms Nursery on SW Barnes Road – and, of course, may be ordered directly.

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Tags: Garden Stuff, Container Gardening