Amazing color shots from skilled landscape designer / photographer Dan B:
In mild Seattle it is possible to have bloom and something of interest year round although it can be tunnel vision in mid winter if you want to have seasonal changes.
When I first arrived in Seattle in 1972 high end landscapers tried to look like coastal California. All plants kept their leaves year round. This resulted in what a horticulturist friend called, “A garden of plastic plants.” since only tough leaves would survive winter storms. That’s changed radically since.
Top photo: An off-schedule Hellebore (Lenten Rose) from Tuesday. Full bloom in December! Other things are budding, like Camellias, or blooming like Winter Flowering Cherries. Two months early!!! Anna’s Hummingbirds will be the only thing around to pollinate them.
It was a very dry summer here with 1 1/2 inch of rain from mid June to the end of September. And then very wet weeks since. Several plants are starting to bloom in mid December. They should be blooming in March. This Rhody has 30 buds and six in full bloom.
This Hellebore, or Lenten Rose, is one of the fantastic new doubles.
What causes plants to decide it’s Spring? It’s called Chilling Requirement. Every plant in temperate regions needs a certain number of hours between 32° F and 45° F. Below freezing and above 45° doesn’t count. Seattle had many weeks from late October to mid December in that range. Then we had several days in the mid 50’s to low 60’s. A couple rhodies and this Hellebore decided it was Spring.
In mid October several new additions to the garden came into Fall color. This Oxydendron, Sourwood, was brilliant for five weeks. We emptied our water storage ponds keeping it alive this summer. Usually they don’t need supplemental water.
We have some huge black plastic pots for heat loving plants like tomatoes and Okra, plus Tibouchina and Angel’s Trumpet (not shown). They’re wonderful from September to early December.
Also wonderful starting in June and continuing, albeit fitfully, through the winter is Gaura lindheimeri. This one is ‘Little Janey’ who is new to me. She’s supposed to be one foot tall. So… shes decided that two feet tall and partially blocking the front steps is what she aspires to.
Some Fuchias, especially small flowered forms, are prolific bloomers. This golden leaved form is in a big container at my partner’s house / garden. It’s got company with a Heuchera and dwarf Acorus gramineus.
Still going on December 12th is a Hydrangea relative Dichroa febrifuga. Say that fast three times. Or better yet just enjoy the blooms in peace and quiet.
A designer’s ‘not-so secret’ is color from things that are not blooms. This white flowered Crepe Myrtle, Lagerstroemeria indica (for those intrigued by botanical feats of elocution), has started to show its striated bark after ten years. They were marginally hardy until 15-20 years ago. Seattle got upgraded to Zone 9a this year, the same as central Louisiana and Central Georgia.
Also at my partners garden is this combination of Miscanthus gracillimus, a dwarf form, and a blue/ purple leaved Smoke Bush. Mid December color and texture from leaves.
One of the easiest mid winter tricks for color are Arums, Jack in the Pulpit. This is an Asian form Arum italicum that is a hybrid of a very vividly variegated form, marmoratum, and an unnamed form with black spots. It doesn’t have the vivid variegated or the mass of black spots but I really like it. It produces a large Jack in the Pulpit (spathe) that’s soft and clunky. Then a stem emerges covered with orange berries the size of Blueberries. And they sprout new hybrids that demonstrate their wanton (slutty?) ways.
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The garden catalogs are showing up here in New England — and we haven’t even gotten any snow yet! Plenty of rain, though — this was the rainiest December in meteorological memory — so maybe those of us on the opposite coast should start taking notes on PNW gardens…
What’s going on in your garden (overwintering / planning / indoor), this week?
Reader Interactions
20Comments
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mrmoshpotato
4:20 (imagine pot leaf or joint emoji)
Don
Terrific post and beautiful pictures. Thanks!
Jeffg166
If Philadelphia doesn’t get an inch or more of snow in the next week or so it will be two years since there has been that much snow. Works for me.
eclare
That crepe myrtle bark is striking.
satby
Dan, your attention to the small details in all the plants really makes the entire garden (both of them, really) a joy to view! I appreciate the chilling days explanation, that must be why my rhodie put out a few blooms in November. And that oxydendron, fantastic!
OzarkHillbilly
Wonderful pics of some beautiful plants. Thanx, Dan.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Steve in the ATL
I have a black thumb so I never comment on these posts. All I can add is a truly obscure song I posted a few days ago: “Strawberries Are Growing in My Garden” by the Dentists, a band none of us ever heard of.
satby
I have to move the three bins of canna tubers to a cooler part of my basement. They’re semi-tropical, so they don’t need chilling days but I don’t want them to break dormancy until February, and I noticed where I put them gets too much light on the rare days we have sun. It’s been a very rainy winter for us too, including today though it will turn into snow tonight and tomorrow morning.
Jeffg166
@satby: I break off piece in March and start them inside in pot on the windows sills to get them started. Move them to bigger pots or give them to neighbors in May.
MazeDancer
Such lovely photos!
Gvg
It’s finally cold here in my part of Florida and still the semester break, so I get to sleep late like my personal body clock prefers. The last 3 days have been spent helping my mother in her garden. Her Dutch ancestry is generations ago but she has a tulip obsession and hasn’t given it up after 61 years married to a Floridian. Every year she orders bulbs and chills them in two dorm fridges in the garage. As the daughter who gardens, she makes a very specific Christmas present demand every year. Labor. I get to dig holes and weed. This year her health has really failed a lot and this summer heat was unusually brutal. The weeding has been massive. She actually accepted my advice to not sow flower seed on top of one bed which has a couple of invasive weeds taking over. I want to be able to easily pull them out when the come up again. We are going with only perennials in that bed.
Much more fun is that the local Camellia show is next weekend. I shall take lots of pictures. Since my local club that I just joined is giving it I got to pre Order some more bushes that have arrived and I may plant them today.
kalakal
Great photos, love the arums, thank you
Here in Pinellas County, Fl, we’ve finally started to get some rain in the last few weeks ( officially we’re in a drought with heavily restricted watering ) so a lot of the plants are going boing! At a swift glance the only things that seem to be flowering are the Tibouchinas, Angels Trumpets, Kings Mantle, Blue Daze, and the Spider Lilies ( the last 2 are nearly always flowering)
Mousebumples
Beautiful flowers – thanks for sharing!
OzarkHillbilly
In garden news, it’s winter so not much to report.
Seasonal temps have finally arrived but it is still way too dry. We even got a dusting of snow the other night (not the 1-2″ they were predicting). I still have some more bulbs to get in the ground, 200 Glory of the Snow. Maybe I can finish them off today. If I do, my hands will be shot for at least the next 2 days. Things are popping in the greenhouse. Makes me happy for the winter greens I will be eating. I’ll need to get the small space heater set up for the cooler nights pretty soon. Or at least, I hope I’ll need to.
satby
@Jeffg166: I think that’s going to be my plan too. I have a ridiculous number of baby tubers off of the main ones I planted. Plus, I also saved seeds to start; supposedly slow growing but in the heat of two summers ago a seed started grew into a blooming plant by August, and gave me two eyes on the resulting root. I should sell them.
Got some tuberose bulbs to start early too. Swapped some canna roots for them 😃
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I have a small cabinet greenhouse I bought but haven’t assembled, was thinking of using it more as a cold frame when I start some stuff inside. I should get on that during the next couple of weeks I’m taking off at the market.
JAM
I have a bunch of winter-sown natives in milk jugs out on the back porch. It’s the first time I’ve tried winter sowing and I’m worried our weather in zone 7 might be too warm or changeable for it to work. I wish I had been able to clear the planting bed and plant some in the ground in the fall, but I didn’t, and it’s hard to keep the dogs out of new beds anyway. They seem to think I’m making paths for them to walk on. I’m going to try putting a lot of annual eryngo (prickly) in this summer to deter them until the perennials grow up.
Dan B
The Smoke Bush (Cotinus) is a blue / purple leaved form that is a prolific bloomer. The variety is no longer available, except it may have simply been renamed. There’s one called ‘The Velvet Fog’ that seems identical. I’ve planted it, or a similar one, for several clients and prefer it to the dark purple leaved form that is very common. The leaf color seems to play well with other plants. That’s a characteristic I’ve grown to highly appreciate.
Dan B
It’s a good thing there’s no looming Climate Crisis since it’s the last day of December and the sun feels warm (two cats confirm my observation) here in northerly Seattle. We’re north of Montreal and about 150 miles north of Minneapolis. El Nino is one culprit but we’ve been experiencing abnormal weather for years. It was 59° here yesterday, 56° officially at the usually cooler airport. The double Hellebore currently has three open blooms.