Garden Chats

 
Gifted gardener / photographer Dan B:

Top photo: By early August the Daylilies were finishing up. The ‘Sunday Gloves’ was one of the last. Behind the big pot is a mix of variegated Sambuccus (Elderberry) that is on the property line. After fourteen years it’s grown from a two foot tall twig to an effective privacy screen. I like screening that’s not flat. It fools the eye into feeling you’re not as hemmed in.

From the spare bedroom there’s a good view of the rectangular pond and the rip rap wall that holds the soil that was dug out to make the pond. On the left is the tool shed that replaced the one that was almost completely rotted away. My partner has fitted it with a TV, woodstove, chaise lounges, parabolic heaters, and having tossed out the tools it’s now his Clubhouse!

To the north are the sawn Columnar Basalt steps that go to the raised terrace where we sit on warm summer evenings. It’s got a view to Mount Baker, a ten thousand foot tall, glacier clad volcano, 90 air miles north. Jay can probably see it from his city.

Looking back towards the house over the last of the Alstroemeria ‘Aztec Gold’ to the red Wall O Waters that keep our tomatoes warm at night. They’re loaded with big green tomatoes. We’re hopeful for ripening.

We had a dry spell for flowers but great foliage contrast tides us over. The purple foliage plants were a present for my partner. He is responsible for lots of big leaved plants like the giant Gunnera, which we saw growing wild at 9,000 feet in Costa Rica, and there are ten Calocasias, plus Cannas, and others with leaves up to five feet across.

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Sweetness in SeattlePost + Comments (29)

 
I’ve been hoarding a trove of orchid close-ups from the New York Botanical Garden 2024 show, and this seemed like a good weekend to share some. Thank you, Ema!

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Botanical GemsPost + Comments (31)

From commentor JeffG166:

The heavy rain turned the crape myrtle into a weeping crape myrtle in the first photo.

The second photo is the butternut squash vine that started in the compost pile. I moved it to the present location. The rain has spurred it on to eat the backyard.

Not sure I will get any squash. The squirrels have tried eating a few of the green ones. They don’t like them but it doesn’t stop them from trying.

 
======
Our ever-helpful OzarkHillbilly sent along this article from the Guardian. The species mentioned are not quite specific for most of us, but I found it encouraging regardless… “The frogs may be gone, but life goes on: how I regained my faith in gardening for wildlife”:

More than two decades ago, I had the honour of running the world’s last (possibly only) frog telephone helpline. No, this is not a set-up for a punchline. It was a real service. Gardeners would grab the Yellow Pages, dial the frog helpline number and physically manifest, using their voice, sentences most of us would type into Google today: “If I dig a pond, will frogs come?” callers would ask, or: “How can I make my garden more attractive to amphibians?”

My role was simple. I was to fire these callers into action, offering realistic guidance on how gardens could be made more suitable for wildlife, especially frogs. Froglife, the charity that owned the helpline, saw in gardens a way for more amphibian habitats to be secured, away from the countryside which was then (and is still) being ravaged by pollution, land-use changes and more. And so, paid a minimum-wage salary, I spoke to 9,000 callers over a period of about three years.

It was perhaps the best job I ever had. In my spare time, I turned our small concrete backyard into a nature oasis, with two ponds for amphibians. In the years that followed, barely a day would go by when I wouldn’t see a frog stirring or hear the distinctive “plop” of one diving for cover as I walked past the pond. Some years, we had 15 frogs at a time; in spring, the bigger pond became a theatre for raucous, slimy sex. It was like a seasonal soap opera.

Until it wasn’t. Because, as of 2024, all the frogs are gone and no frog helpline can save me from despair. As far as I can tell, the cause of this mass-mortality event was twofold: first, many frogs locally were hit by the heatwave of 2022, which saw temperatures soar to 40C; then came Storm Noa in April 2023, which washed countless blobs of neighbourhood spawn, pairs of frogs still coupling, downstream in a deluge of broiling turbidity. The frogs are gone. And so, naturally, I find myself in a reflective mood. Bluntly, I wonder, was it all worth it? Did my little wildlife garden ever really help, in the long term, frogs and other local wildlife? Were my efforts futile?

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Urban GardeningPost + Comments (36)

 
One of my minor grievances concerning climate change is that our daylily season has shifted at least three weeks forward in the last 25 years… and I really miss having their exuberant colors brighten up early August! Thank you for these mementos, Satby:

After the spring tulips and daffodils, and also after the spring peonies and iris, come the summer daylily blooms. Dan B and I have been trading pictures. I can’t name them though, I bought an assortment of “lost tag” daylily fans from a supplier and so they’re all surprises.

I love surprises!

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Daylilies!Post + Comments (40)

 
Thank you, Paul B:

I recently took a vacation, traveling on “Washington’s Ultimate Road Trip,” the Cascade Loop. The trip is being covered in a series of On the Road posts, but I reached out to Anne Laurie to ask her if I could supply some garden pictures from one of the stops on the tour, Meerkerk Gardens on Whidbey Island.

It really is a gorgeous place, with a truly amazing variety of colors and styles of rhododendrons. My visit to Meerkerk was a couple of weeks after the peak blooming of these flowers, and it was still stunning. Even after supplying the pictures for the On the Road posts, I had over a dozen pictures that I really wanted to share.

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Meerkerk Gardens RhododendronsPost + Comments (24)

 
High summer at its best! From commentor HinTN:

I had a zinnia and tithonia garden for ten years but last year the deer decided they just loooooved them some newly sprouting seedlings. I tilled the whole mess under and planted wildflowers.

The first rush of blooms was pink poppies. This is the second wave.

Hidden among the mass of bright-eyed susans are some sweet and striking sneaker fleurs.

More bright color within the big mass yellow.

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Color FieldsPost + Comments (22)

 
From staunch master gardener OpieJeanne:

We used to have a big rose garden before we moved to the Seattle area, but it’s so wet and cold here that we’ve gradually lost most of the ones we planted here. We used to be involved in the local rose society in the late 70s/early 80s.

Playboy (top photo) is a floribunda hybridized by a Scot named Alex Cocker.
 
Below is Eden, a big sprawling climber hybridized by Marie-Louise Meilland in France, similar to an old-fashioned “cabbage” rose. It was introduced in 1985 under another name, Pierre de Ronsard, on the 400th anniversary of his death.

We planted it 8 years ago against the old fence that divides the lawn area from the vegetable beds. The fence was old when we bought this house and we’re allowing it to fall down as it pleases, but I think this rose and the Blushing Lucy are holding it up. (Blushing Lucy has not yet graced us with an appearance this year.)

The next rose is Queen Elizabeth. She is a grandiflora hybridized by Dr Walter Lammert and the sole survivor of a group of five, the rest of whom have succumbed to the high water table.

Last is Sally Holmes, hybridized by Robert Holmes and named for his wife. It’s sometimes sold as a climber but she’s really a very vigorous shrub rose. The canes are tall and very thick, and require more supervision than less aggressive plants. You can see that she’s not climbing in this photo, because I haven’t waded into the undergrowth yet to tie her up to the arbor. The flowers have a single row of petals, a style called a single. Playboy is also a single.

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Roses & PeoniesPost + Comments (38)