So where have I been since May? During the first week of June I traveled to Spokane, via Richland to visit family and Moses Lake to visit friend, Bruce Bailey (Heavy Petal Nursery), then speak to the Inland Empire Gardeners. The following week I took off for California to visit more family. On the way I stayed in Santa Rosa. From there I visited Cornerstone in Sonoma and then Annie’s Annuals in Richmond. I spent the rest of June frantically getting ready for an open garden.
Visitors wander through the garden past the crop circle.
When you have a large garden (ours is roughly 2/3 of an acre), getting your garden presentable is an exercise in patience as well as exhausting. This past winter killed nearly every zone 8 plant in my garden – and there were quite a few. Many had been in the garden for over 10 years, so were mature specimens. They left large holes. The Tetrapanax ‘snag’ I left because it is actually kind of interesting and the birds like to perch on it. (I’m finding new Tetrapanax popping up from the roots as of the first of July.) Our long, cold & wet spring meant waiting to get the dead plants replaced. Constrained by less time and diminishing budget meant that not all was perfect for the preview tour on June 30 even with many volunteers. I owe a HUGE thank you to all who helped get the garden ready for that day! I had until July 10 to complete the remaining garden tasks before the big ANLD (Assoc. of NW Landscape Designers) garden tour. It was open to the public for the price of a ticket to see 6 other gardens. The proceeds benefit the student scholarships that ANLD distributes each year.
A Lutyens style bench in red-orange says come and sit a spell.
A view towards the Sunset award-winning pebble mosaic and the garden beyond.
Growing Meconopsis betonicifolia
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Today I met with a new client to document the area in which I would be helping them – replacing their existing deck and the garden in the immediate vicinity. I followed the owner around on the deck as we noted what bad shape it is in. Then I found out just how bad the [...]
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Last Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of visiting the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA. Beyond the amazing plants I could see and photograph were considerable, as yet, winter-covered plants. Many plants still had their protective, plastic-covered frames over them, providing me with good ideas for how to do the same in my [...]
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Snowdrops and Cyclamen are heralding spring in the midst of winter. Today is the opening day of the NW Flower Show in Seattle. For me and my good friend, Bonnie, it means an annual pilgrimage to the show beginning early tomorrow morning. This is the shot across the bow of winter and our first fix [...]
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December 2009 was quite a month. Besides the usual holiday hustle, we had a week’s worth of freezing weather and then a couple of days of snow. Icy days I was prepared for. I covered things that needed covering out in the garden, except for the 8 foot tall Eucalyptus that died back to the [...]
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The front walk focal point project is at a standstill for a bit while I finish putting plants in the ground to stay ahead of Mother Nature. We are expecting our first hard freeze this coming weekend. So my attention has turned to assuring that plants that could be borderline hardy have their roots in [...]
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Yesterday’s 2 hour garden activity involved the movement of one tree, Albizia ‘Summer Chocolate’, and several columnar conifers: 2 Chamaecyparis ‘Wissel’s Saguaro’ and 2 Alberta Spruces (Picea glauca var. albertiana ‘Conica’. The tree is being located to spread its lovely branches and shield the view of a less-than-charming storage shed. The re-arrangement of the conifers [...]
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It’s hard to believe that today begins the month of November, but it’s undeniably here. In my own garden I am busily moving plants around that either did not perform well in their current sites or would look better somewhere else. This fall I am doing what I wanted to do last fall and spring, [...]
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Today is a Pacific NW stormy kind of day. Lots of wind and rain! When it’s pouring outside, it is an excellent time to see where the water is going (or staying) and plan how to change it, should you need to. Since developers put in new houses on the property behind us, we have [...]
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