PLANTWISE

Festival of Fragrance

Portland’s Classical Chinese Garden’s spring plant sale

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Mar 17, 2010 at 08:41AM 0 Comments

Not a fragrant Camellia (pictured). But there are some sweetly scented species and hybrids worth hunting for. If you see the winter-flowering Camellia transnokoensis at the sale, snap it up! It’s gorgeous. Check it out in person (hopefully still in flower) inside the NW corner of the garden.

This weekend, the Portland Classical Chinese Garden begins a two-week celebration, now dubbed the Festival of Fragrance, with a plant sale and Camellia display from the Oregon Camellia Society kicking things off this weekend, and talks and workshops during the week.

Featuring more than 20 local specialty nurseries, the sale itself will take place outside the walls of the Garden (at the corner of NW 3rd & Flanders) this coming weekend. There is no admission fee for the sale. Inside the Garden walls, plant enthusiasts from the Oregon Camellia Society will be on-hand to discuss and showcase their camellias, as well as providing information for self-guided tours of the Garden’s camellia collection.

Some of the events over the next two weeks include aromatherapy talks, flower arranging workshops with fragrant plants, and tours with the Garden’s horticulture staff of fragrant plants inside the Garden. Go here for the schedule of events.

Plant Sale (& Camellia Society events): Sat and Sun March 20 – 21 from 10 – 3
Members First Pick: Saturday, March 20, 9 – 10 am

The sale focuses on plants of Chinese origin including orchids, rhododendrons, camellias, Edgeworthia, daphne, and bamboo – many found within the Garden’s own collection. The new format (with outside vendors) means there will no longer be member discounts but members get first pick on Saturday morning from 9 – 10 am. The sale is a benefit to support the plant collections at the Garden.

Arisaema candidissimum. Can’t guarantee you’ll find this there. But it is a Chinese plant. And there are sure to be Arisaema for sale. So, you might! If you don’t you can always order it later from Plant Delights Nursery (where I found this lovely image)

Vendors include some of the Willamette Valley and Southern Washington’s finest including Collectors Nursery, the Bamboo Garden, Dancing Oaks Nursery and more. I was excited to see that Woodland Way nursery will be in attendance (specialty Arisaema and woodland orchid growers). Ferguson’s Fragrant Nursery will be there (naturally), as will the magical Pomarius Nursery located in the NW Industrial District. There are some fantastic organizations offering plants as well including the American Rhododendron Society and the Oregon Camellia Society. For a full schedule of events and list of plant sale vendors, visit the Garden’s website.

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Tags: Gardening Events, Places to Go, Flowers, Plant Sale

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

All About Fruit Show

The Home Orchard Society’s Annual Fruit Fest

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Oct 02, 2009 at 10:00AM 5 Comments

Many are familiar with the shrubby quince (Chaenomeles sp.), the early blooming shrub with coral, red, pale pink or white flowers and small, hard fruit that are sometimes made into jelly. This is a world apart from the edible quince tree (Cydonia oblonga), with large, intensely fragrant yellow fruit that are much used in Middle Eastern/Mediterranean cooking. The fruit pictured are from the Smyrna quince, one of my favorite edible quince varieties, available from Raintree Nursery

Every fall, the Home Orchard Society holds its All About Fruit show. If you have fruit trees – or are considering planting some – this event ought to be on your calendar. It runs Saturday October 10 and Sunday October 11 from 10 am to 4 pm. Here’s what you’ll find there:

• 100s of apple, pear, & other fruit varieties to taste
• Custom-made (grafted) fruit trees – order at only $12 each
• Publications on research, disease & insect control
• Unknown apple varieties identified (bring 5-6 samples of each)
• Speakers
• Sales of delicious, home-grown fruit & fruit pastries
• Vendors of edible trees and shrubs
• Contests: 2-crust apple pie; largest tree fruit; & longest apple peel

The Ultimate Plant Sale

It Only Happens Twice a Year

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Sep 15, 2009 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

This unusual Rhododendron auriculatum is a tall species with bluish foliage and huge trusses of frilly, green-throated white flowers that appear in late July and early August. The new growth is smouldering pink. The flowers are also intensely fragrant, like lilies. Nice, huh? Well, I found it at the HPSO sale one year.

It’s been a busy few weeks in Portland’s plant world – there has been an endless round of fundraiser dinners, garden tours, and plant sales. But of them all, the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon (HPSO) Fall Plant Sale and Garden Festival, coming up this weekend, is the ne plus ultra – the ultimate confluence of regional horticultural knowledge and wisdom. At this much-beloved plant sale, shoppers can find an amazing selection of interesting and garden-worthy plants from nurseries far and wide.

This twice-yearly event (spring and fall) brings together about 65 specialty nursery vendors from southern Oregon all the way up to south-central Washington, selling a wild diversity of plants. A quick scan of the vendor list turns up growers of ornamental grasses, succulents, rock garden plants, medicinal and culinary herbs, iris, Columbia Gorge natives, Pacific Northwest natives, heathers, ferns, primulas, lilies… as well as growers who just “specialize” in growing rare or fascinating plants like, say, wild selections of high-elevations palms or broad-leaf evergreens that survive our sneaky cold snaps.

I liken the HPSO plant sales to the Portland Farmers Markets: you need only visit one place to gather your “produce” and, by buying directly, you have access to the advice and wisdom of generations of growers and propagators who have worked through all seasons – like any farmer does – to bring these plants to a state of delicious garden-readiness.

Having this opportunity to chat with the specialty nursery owners and growers themselves is what makes this twice-a-year sale special. Not that the neighborhood nurseries aren’t wonderful. But talking with the person who actually stuck the cuttings or sowed the seed back in January adds so much to the experience. Not only can you learn exactly what this plant you’re about to buy needs but you have the pleasure of knowing that your dollars are going directly to the genuine enthusiasts who grew the plants from scratch – and sometimes even collected the seed of the plants from the wilds of some mountaintop in Asia or New Zealand.

In recent years, the HPSO committee has added a garden art fair to the plant sale. I think I remember seeing some swell recycled wood lawn furniture last year, which I hope will be there this year.

So visit the sale and take the time to enjoy the best efforts of our Oregon and Southwest Washington plant growers and garden art creators. They put a tremendous amount of effort into these sales. There’s just nothing quite like it, anywhere else in the country – or maybe anywhere, period.

Hardy Plant Society of Oregon’s Fall Plant Sale

When:
Saturday Sept 19th and Sunday Sept 20th from 10 to 3

Where:
The Portland Expo Center, Hall C
2060 North Marine Drive
Portland, Oregon 97217

Directions here if you wish to drive or bike. If you bike there but can’t fit everything for the return trip, there is a hold area so you can pay for your plants and return for them later, for as long as the sale is open. Or, take TriMet – since car parking costs $7 per car.

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Tags: Plant Sale