Gardening

Rare Plant Open House—and More Garden Inspiration

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:00:00 -0700

Alicanterea imperialis, a tropical bromeliad that is rarely seen in flower outside the tropics. See it at Rare Plant Research's Open House this weekend!

Garden tours, events and plant sales are ramping up in the Portland area as spring begins its slow, sweet unraveling. Take some time this weekend to enjoy the perfect planting weather and draw inspiration from some gardens that are rarely open to the public.

Rare Plant Research Annual Open House

Rare Plant Research is one of the Willamette Valley’s most tantalizing ornamental plant nurseries, with all variety of tropical and tender plants including succulents, perennials, unusual bulbs, bananas, and more.

There’s an added incentive to visit this year’s RPR Open House: one of the world’s largest bromeliads (pineapple relative) will be flowering—a rare event outside the tropics. Alcanterea imperialis, a native to the mountains around Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will be on display in its full glory. The plant grows five to six feet wide and, after growing for about 20 years, sends up an eight to 10-foot tall flower stalk. After flowering, the plant dies. See this spectacular plant in bloom this weekend only!

WHAT: Rare Plant Research’s Annual Open House
WHEN: Saturday May 18 and Sunday May 19, 2013, 10 am to 4 pm
WHERE: 11900 S. Criteser Rd, Oregon City, OR 97045
COST: free event but bring your checkbook - for plants, wine and food

Sundrops Eastside Garden Tour

This tour includes a scenic drive along the historic Columbia River Gorge Highway and a series of beautiful, established gardens including the Hutson, Shelman and Fortune gardens; Dancing Roots organic farm; a peaceful Franciscan convent set in front of a waterfall; McMenamin’s Edgefield garden; and more.

WHAT: “Sundrops” Eastside Garden Tour
WHEN: Saturday May 18 and Sunday May 19, 2013, 10 am to 4 pm
WHERE: Troutdale, Oregon 97060
COST: $20 (children free). Purchase tickets on line on pick them up in advance – see website for locations. Purchase tickets and pick up tour maps the day of the tour at the Harlow House – 726 East Historic Columbia River Highway, Troutdale

Tomatomania at Dennis' 7 Dees

Learn all about tomatoes, particularly those luscious heirloom tomatoes that we all crave, from heirloom tomato expert Steve Goto. In addition to talking about the cultivation and care of tomatoes in our tomato-challenged climate, he’ll answer questions. A large selection of heirloom tomato varieties will also be available. And while the weather is still marginal for planting tomatoes outdoors, Goto will offer tips on how to know when to plant them out and how to maximize the tomato growing season.

WHAT: Tomatomania
WHEN: Saturday May 18, 2013 (see times below)
WHERE: Dennis’ 7 Dees SE Portland (10 am to 12 noon) and Lake Oswego (2 to 4 pm)
COST: free

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Jane Platt Garden Tour

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:20:00 -0700

What better way to spend a perfect spring evening than to mosey the sloping pathways and savor the vistas of the idyllic Jane Platt Garden in Portland's Southwest hills? The garden is the backyard to the home of the Platt family, but what a backyard. The house itself is not too shabby: designed and built in 1942 by preeminent Northwest regional modernist architect Pietro Belluschi, it's a gem. But the garden is the star, as owners and architect alike intended.

John and Jane Kerr Platt created the garden from scratch starting in the early 1940s, eventually handing it over to their son David. The whole family – and many gardeners – have tended to its evolution through the decades. Both John and Jane have passed on (Jane a number of years ago, John in January 2013, at the age of 100). Now David and his family live in the modest main house and carry on the family traditions (including shooting woodpeckers who love a particular tree).

On a recent spring evening, a few of us amateur Portland gardeners were lucky enough to get a guided tour from gardener John Borowczak through the private garden. He's lovingly tended the 2 1/2 acres for the Platt family for “a long time.” (Nearing retirement age, he coyly declined to be more specific!)

John Platt was a young bachelor in 1937 when he bought the property, which had been an apple and cherry orchard since the 1880s. He planned to build a home and garden. Platt met and married Jane Kerr, who happened to know a bit about gardening herself. A daughter of Peter Kerr, a successful wheat exporter who was also a gardener, she grew up at what is now one of Portland's most incredible gardens, Elk Rock Garden at Bishop's Close. She (and her sister Anne) got the green gene from her father, who made sure that the ships he sent to the Orient, loaded up with his wheat harvest, would come back filled with Rhododendron and other exotic plants.

Like her father, she was interested in "specimen" plants – that is, unusual and unique plants. She never was a big traveler, but friends who traveled widely would ask her, "what should I bring back for you?" Now, people travel far and wide to see her garden. It is private, but open for occasional tours and special events.

Feel free to walk through the garden in our slide show (click at photo above); photos by Kristin Belz.

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Legendary Heronswood Garden Reopens

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:21:00 -0700

Longtime West Coast gardeners remember the erudite, witty and encyclopedic plant catalogs written by plant explorer, nurseryman, naturalist and garden designer Dan Hinkley in the late 80s/early 90s. (Some of us still treasure those original catalogs.) Hinkley and his partner Robert Jones' now-legendary Kingston, Washington nursery, Heronswood (no longer operating) and the display gardens that surrounded it comprised a true horticultural mecca for plantspeople world-wide.

To the delight of plant lovers all over, there will be a plant sale and open garden on May 18, 2013 featuring free talks, rare plant sales and garden tours. Garden tours occur throughout the day and cost $10, with all proceeds going towards the restoration and maintenance of the garden - a process that will likely take years.

The nursery went through difficult times in the past 12 years after being sold to seed giant, Burpee in 2000. Burpee struggled unsuccessfully to make this regional specialty nursery profitable by paring down its offerings, turning the idiosyncratic, text-rich and picture-poor plant list into a glossy catalog and going nation-wide. Burpee closed Heronswood in 2006 and the garden has been languishing ever since while Burpee tried to sell it. Fortunately, its acquisition last summer by a Native American tribe - the Port Gamble S'Kalallam - with a record of responsible land stewardship - bodes well for its future. The 15-acre garden also sits on historic S'Kalallam tribal land.

The Plant Sale and Garden Open on May 18, 2013 runs from 10 am to 5 pm. The last garden tour starts at 4 pm.

It may seem like a long trip to take just to visit a garden. But it's a mighty special garden! And if you're looking for garden inspiration or fascinating plants that can't be found just anywhere, this event shouldn't be missed. While trip could be done in one very long day (maybe 3.5 hours' drive each way), it would be a more relaxing overnight journey.

Scheduled events that day begin with Dan Hinkley's 11:30 am talk titled "Heronswood: Past, Present and Future" about the early days at Heronswood and the work being done today to restore the gardens. At 1 pm, Dodson and Milliken from Far Reaches Farms present "Plants Outside the Mainstream". And at 2 pm, Hinkley gives a second talk on foliage in the garden ("Foliage First"). Talks are first come, first served - arrive early.

Hinkley will have plants for sale from his current garden, Windcliff. There will also be plants from Dodson and Milliken's Far Reaches Farm,The Desert Northwest, Colvos Creek and many more superb regional nurseries.

The S'Klallam Singers will perform throughout the day and local vendors will sell food.

The garden is scheduled to be open a few more times this summer, including on May 18th, July 6th, and September 2, 2013.

To learn more about the garden, visit Heronswood's website or Heronswood's Facebook page. If you never had a chance to visit the garden in its prime - or even if you did, and want to see what is happening - do visit on Saturday May 18, 2013. It's a beautiful area, and there are plenty of other nurseries and gardens to visit while you're up there. Questions? Call 360-297-7410 or email them via their website. Address: 7530 NE 288th, Kingston WA 98346.

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Parking Strip-Perfect: Scilla Peruviana

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:41:00 -0700

Image: Kate Bryant

Scilla peruviana

Drought-tolerant plants are more and more important in Pacific Northwest gardens. Our climate is warming and natural resources like water are becoming increasingly precious. It's time to start planting trees – and gardens - with an eye towards the future.

Drought-tolerant gardens can make an aesthetic as well as a political statement. There's a trick to creating a garden that is climate-adapted but still lush with flowers and foliage. When it works, it's dazzling, with hallmark bright spring color, resinous-scented summer foliage and refreshed fall growth as the autumn rains arrive. Many drought-tolerant plants are evergreen, too, producing flowers or fresh new growth at the end of the wet season: drought-tolerant gardens can really shine in winter.

To create such an evocative, climate-appropriate garden, include drought-tolerant plants from a variety of categories: trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals and bulbs.

Scilla peruviana is one example of such a perfect climate-adapted bulb for a dry garden in our region. Growing from a fleshy white bulb, Scilla peruviana offers gorgeous, deep indigo blue buds opening to fireworks-like sprays of starry, cobalt blue florets with long, yellow anthers in mid-May. The flowers reach about 8-12" in height and the plant forms a hefty clump over time that works well beneath trees (half-shade is fine) or full sun, alongside perennials or beneath limbed-up shrubs.

When open, the flowers are cobalt blue, like our native camass (read more about our local camass preserves here). But unlike camass, which is found in damp meadows, Scilla peruviana thrives in baking hot, unirrigated spots like parking strips and dry gardens. They grow in winter and spring, so they don't do so well under conifers with long, sweeping branches and roots that suck up all the winter moisture. Instead, plant them in well-drained soil that still receives winter moisture.

Image: Kate Bryant

Scilla peruviana

The foliage is a bit floppy, appearing in winter and persisting through the flowering period until about July, when it dries up and withers away. It’s therefore great for suppressing those pesky winter-growing weeds like bitter cress, chickweed and oxalis.

Notwithstanding the species name, Scilla peruviana is actually native to Spain, Portugal and southern Italy – not Peru. Since it requires absolutely no water in summer, it should be paired with other drought-tolerant plants. In my parking strip, it grows beneath a Catalina ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus ssp. aspleniifolius) alongside Warren Roberts Manzanita (Arctostaphylos pajaroensis ‘Warren Roberts’), Salvia greggii, Stachys byzantium ‘Primrose Heron’, and Teucrium marum.

Drought-tolerant Scilla peruviana makes an invaluable contribution to the parking strip – a part of the yard that most people find hard to keep looking good year-round. Buy it in flower, in pots, in May, or buy the bulbs in early fall, while they are dormant.

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Sweet Mother's Day Garden Adventures

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:35:00 -0700

Image: Filip Fuxa

Whether your mama is an avid gardener or just loves flowers, treat her to a floral extravaganza this weekend. (All the better if you love plants too.)

Make a day or a half-day of it: one of these three charming garden events with brunch, a winery visit, or just good company is hard to improve on.

On Friday: pick up your heirloom tomatoes and other veggies, small fruit, annuals, perennials, and shrubs at Clackamas Community College annual plant sale. Plants are all grown by horticulture students at the college and proceeds go to horticulture student scholarships.

WHAT: Clackamas Community College Spring Plant Sale
WHEN: Friday May 10, 2013 from noon to 5 pm
WHERE: Clairmont Hall parking lot at Clackamas Community College Oregon City Campus, 19600 Molalla Ave, Oregon City OR 97045 / No website or details about the sale on line except via Facebook - see Horticulture at Clackamas Community College).
COST: free admission

Saturday or Sunday: take a trip to Southeast Portland's Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden Spring Plant Sale. A huge selection of Willamette Valley-grown rhodendrons and companion plants will be for sale, with experts from the Rhododendron Society and Master Gardeners on hand to answer questions. Wander around the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden and you'll be rewarded with spectacular views of the lake, ducks and the blazing color of blooming rhododenrons.

WHAT: Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden Spring Plant Sale and Show
WHEN: Saturday and Sunday May 11 and 12, 2013 from 9 am to 5 pm
WHERE: 5801 SE 28^th Ave, Portland OR, between Holgate and Woodstock / 503-267-7509
COST: $4 for garden admission

Up for a mini road trip - maybe with a winery stop along the way? Visit specialty nursery Dancing Oaks on Mother's Day Sunday - the gorgeous hillside garden and nursery of Fred Weisensee and Leonard Foltz in Monmouth. Dancing Oaks sells perennials, shrubs, vines and trees – wander around the gentle hillside display gardens and the surrounding fields with gorgeous views of the surrounding hills and valleys. There’s a free plant for every mom. (FYI: same deal at Dancing Oaks on Father’s Day!)

WHAT: Mother’s Day Garden Tours at Dancing Oaks
WHEN: Sunday May 12, 2013 from 10 am to 5 pm. Garden tours 1 pm and 3 pm
WHERE: Dancing Oaks Nursery
COST: free plant for every mom, with snacks and tea in the pavilion

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Xera Plants To Unveil New Retail Digs

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:57:00 -0700

Image: Xera Plants

Portland plant people, designers and daring dirt-diggers: in June, 2013, coveted wholesaler Xera Plants is opening a retail shop in Southeast Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District.

The new retail nursery will be located at 1114 SE Clay Street between SE 11th & 12th Avenues, just south of SE Hawthorne's food pod and will include space for designer Bob Hyland's new venture, Potted, which will carry a selection of modern-inspired containers and pre-planted pots with an emphasis on low-water use.

Xera Plants is a diminutive but power-packed Tualatin wholesale nursery that, for the past 13 years has sold adventurous and uncommon plants to designers and a small stable of regional retail nurseries. They will continue to grow in Tualatin and serve wholesale customers from the greenhouses, as well as sell plants to your favorite local nurseries. But starting June 6, 2013 will have their own Xera-only retail shop as well.

The nursery offers a curated, ever-changing selection of particular genera of design-worthy, climatically appropriate plants that do well in the warm to hot summers and cold, wet winters characteristic of our region. Specialties include manzanita (Arctostaphylos), bishop's hat (Epimedium), Pacific Coast iris, jasmines, crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia), poker plants (Kniphofia), and climatically-adapted and drought-tolerant plants in general including wild lilac (Ceanothus), rock rose (Cistus), california fuchsia (Zauschneria syn. Epilobium) and more.

Image: Bob Hyland, Potted

A cast stone planter based on an original design by Beatrix Farrand, planted with Phormium 'Flamingo', orangey Sedum nussbaumerianum, blue pencil-like Senecio 'Kilimanjaro' + Kalanchoe pumila 'Dwarf Blue'

Owners Paul Bonine and Greg Shepherd started business as Viva Plants in January of 2000, selling plants at the Beaverton Farmers Market and small plant sales. A few years later, they became Xera Plants, as the two began emphasizing more climate-appropriate gardens.

Keep an eye out on the space as Xera starts setting up. Stop by on June 6 for opening day and for the grand opening party on Saturday, June 8, 2013.

Xera Plants' future home: 1114 SE Clay, Portland, OR 97214

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Incredible Edibles and Handmade Gardens

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:59:00 -0700

Image: Lyudmila Suvorova

Hate to rain on anyone's parade, but there's no use planting your tomatoes and eggplants outside this weekend - warm, sunny days notwithstanding, the nights have been chilly and the soil hasn't warmed up enough to support these heat-loving plants. (Read this 2011 Plantwise post about how to know when it is the right time to plant tomatoes and summer veggies - and what you can do to speed things up.)

That said, it's a fabulous time to buy warm-weather starts and coddle them in a sunny window or under grow lights until planting time. Buy locally-grown, organic heirloom and hybrid vegetable starts at the Incredible Edibles plant sale 2013 - a plant sale that supports the important and under-funded Multnomah County Master Gardener program. OSU Extension-trained master gardener volunteers are on site all day to answer questions and edible gardening workshops are scheduled throughout the day (find schedule here, on the website). There are also raffle tickets on sale for prizes like a GreenBed raised garden bed system, a 2-night stay at Portland Urban Cottage, and gift certificates to local restaurants, garden gear, plants and more (raffle prizes details on the website).

WHAT: Incredible Edibles Plant Sale 2013
WHEN: Saturday May 2, 2013 from 10 am to 3 pm
WHERE: Our Lady of Sorrows Church, 5329 SE Woodstock Blvd. Portland
COST: Free admission
Questions? Call 503-445-4608

Image: Thicket

It may be too early for tomatoes but it's never too early for inspiration. There'll be inspiration aplenty on Sunday at Thicket, where author Lorene Edwards Forkner offers a show-and-tell of projects from her book, Handmade Garden Projects, with demos and time for Q&A afterwards. Some of the items you'll learn to make include wire plant supports, a galvanized gutter planted with succulents, flame-free canning jar lanters, homemade fireflies, and hairpin fencing chandeliers.

Lorene is editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine, a quarterly journal of West Coast gardening, design and environmentalism for passionate gardeners and curious naturalists. She is also the author of five garden titles including the bestselling Handmade Garden Projects (Timber Press, 2011), and the newly released Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening: Pacific Northwest.

WHAT: Handmade Garden Projects with author Lorene Edwards-Forkner
WHEN: Sunday May 5, 2013, 1 to 3 pm
WHERE: Thicket, 4933 NE 23rd Ave, Portland (just south of NE Alberta St.) / 503-318-0049
COST: Free

While you're there, check out the shop's selection of top-notch plants for dry shade. Owner Adria Sparhawk has made a study of plants that grow well in urban neighborhoods, finding that most city-dwellers face the challenge of at least one stubborn dry shade area, courtesy of large conifers, extra large eaves or old deciduous shade trees in the parking strip. Ask her what she recommends!

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World Naked Gardening Day 2013

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:09:00 -0700

Image: Diana Taliun

For those not already in-the-know, Saturday May 4, 2013 is the tenth annual World Naked Gardening Day. All over the world—but especially in Europe, not surprisingly—advocates of the bare naked lifestyle will be stripping off their skivvies and heading out into the garden to hoe the beds, plow the fields and clip the shrubbery.

In the words of the World Naked Gardening Day's organizers:

All that's involved is getting naked and making the world's gardens—whatever their size, public or private—healthier and more attractive.

For all our brazenness, Americans have an international reputation for prudery: are we too shy to try naked gardening? There may be some shrinking violets among us but with Portland's penchant for naked bike rides, naked gardening shouldn't be outside the comfort zone of a hardy Portlandian. We do, after all, have the largest naked bike ride in the world. And warm weather is predicted for Saturday.

But is it legal? According to Sergeant Pete Simpson, the Portland Police Bureau's Public Information Officer, there's a City code for that. City code 14A.40.030 (Indecent Exposure) states: "It is unlawful for any person to expose his or her genitalia while in a public place or place visible from a public place, if the public place is open or available to persons of the opposite sex."

He adds that if someone calls about a naked neighbor pulling weeds in their own yard, the police probably wouldn't get too worked up about it. Not that you couldn't get arrested under City code, he adds. But, he admits, "...we don't deal with it very much. Most indecent exposure arrests happen when people are urinating in public."

The Portland police force has some experience dealing with hordes of naked people, for many reasons, not the least being our annual Portland Naked Bike Ride—just one of many naked bike rides world-wide—coming right up on June 18, 2013. Last year, the Portland ride reputedly had nearly 4,200 riders (and thousands more entranced observers).

So how ready is Portland, home of the "Keep Portland Weird" movement, to adopt World Naked Gardening Day? An informal poll of my friends on Facebook indicates a certain enthusiasm among the gentlemen for the ladies to give it a go. As for me...you go first!

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Cram Your Way to Spring Gardening Success

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:24:00 -0700

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

Q: I want to grow my own flowers for bouquets, but I don’t want my yard to look like a U-pick farm! What can I plant?

A: The average 50-by-100-foot lot doesn’t leave much room for a separate garden for cut flowers. And most beloved seasonals— peony, daffodil, hyacinth, tulip, lily, and iris—don’t look so hot after their spectacular but fleeting bloom. The solution? Cramscaping!

Plant those froufrou one-hit wonders in between more versatile garden perennials that look great through the seasons. Cram-?scape skillfully, and everything that’s bloomed and faded will hide among taller summer- and fall-blooming bouquet flowers like zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, and dahlias. Basically, decide which bouquets you can’t live without and find a spot for those plants.

Otherwise, don’t be afraid to broaden your perspective on bouquet-worthy plants: consider seedheads from ornamental grasses, interesting foliage, and architectural stems like twiggy dogwood. Trees—magnolia, dogwood, flowering cherry, and even Japanese maple—yield branches that look fantastic in big vases when in bud. Consider yourself lucky if you already have old specimens in your yard, and get creative.

The Debut of Modern Farmer Magazine

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:36:00 -0700

Image: Modern Farmer

There isn't a lot that can wrench an avid Pacific Northwest gardener away from dirt-digging in her own garden patch during a gloriously warm, lush spring day. But Modern Farmer Magazine did it. Sadly, my own garden is weedier and more unkempt by the hour and my purple-sprouting broccoli is blossoming into a spray of yellow flowers in the warm spring weather. But here's what I'm learning, thanks to the magazine's pithy yet in-depth articles:

-How climate change is affecting the rice crop in Northern India

-Why two English farm sisters created an on-line dating site for farmers

-Why a fear of commitment could lead you to rent a chicken

-How a Boston-area farmer is growing everything from mushrooms to greens in shipping containers

-The surprising and wondrous science of soil

-What kind of animal slaughter is "humane enough"?

Not enough to tantalize you? Poke around the site and you'll find even more juicy food and farm news, from sane discussions of GMO labeling to a series of profiles on local foods throughout the world.

The first issue of Modern Farmer went on sale April 16, 2013 and the website launched two days prior. According to Jessie Cohen, the magazine's media relations manager, Editor-in-Chief Ann Marie Gardner conceived of the magazine as a way to instigate conversations about food and farming and even to unite the global farming community.

Working for many years as American bureau chief of Monacle Magazine and as a contributing editor for the New York Times, Gardner moved to upstate New York about ten years ago. Living in the farming community of Germantown, NY while reporting nationally and internationally, she observed that farmers all over the world were concerned with the same issues and problems. She envisioned a more unified platform for discussing what was happening all over the world with food and food culture - a way to provide the backstory to where food comes from, world-wide. Modern Farmer is based in the farming community where she lives but is devoutly global in perspective, providing a complex, nuanced picture of the people, places and stories behind our food. And this is just the first issue.

A paid subscription of $29.97 gets you either print or digital (pdf) version, sent directly to your email or mailing address. $39.97 gets you both print and digital versions. But start by checking Modern Farmer out on-line. New articles appear throughout the day, every day. The articles are succinct enough to just check out while you're taking a break from planting... but don't say I didn't warn you - there's a good chance you'll find yourself enraptured.

Thanks a lot, Modern Farmer Magazine. You've successfully distracted me from completing pressing work, cooking meals, and planting my own burgeoning springtime garden - all by being just too darn interesting!

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