Red, Blue and . . .

Blue catmint (Nepeta 'Walker's Low') swirling around red Asiatic lilies. (A white peony is nearby....)

Happy Fourth of July !

Rosemary Before

I suppose I should give us one last look at this rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis 'Tuscan Blue') in its current state, as it's scheduled for radical surgery Thursday of next week. It's another one of those plants bought cheaply in a one-gallon pot that grew in four years to about its current size, which is about 7 feet high by 10 feet wide. That's after I whack the heck out of it twice a year. I mean about a pickup-load's worth.

Lots of gardeners grow rosemary here, and lavender too, and we're all amazed at how magnificent they are. This plant is on the west-north side of the garden, so gets pummeled by winds and colds -- and doesn't care a bit. Every year luscious growth over and down to the sidewalk, sweet clear-blue flowers, and a deep aromatic scent.

Jessica told me three years ago that I should prune it heavily before it got out of hand, but I've hardly ever listened to anybody and I suppose I'm too old to start now. The biggest problem, which you can barely see in the third photo, is that it's taking over the Rosa glauca -- in fact has stunted its growth for a couple years now -- and I LOVE the Rosa glauca and want it to flourish.

So, major surgery it is. Tuscan Blue won't mind at all; it's one of those land starfish. Lost a limb? No problem! It'll grow back!

The only thing rosemary needs is excellent drainage, which everything on the West Bank gets.

Which reminds me: I need to finish watering.

Graham Thomas

This gorgeous black pussy willow (Salix gracilistyla v. melanostachys) started out eight years ago as a one-gallon multi-branched twig and now look at it: about 20 feet wide by maybe 12 feet high. It sweeps out over the sidewalk, with the lowest branches kept pruned to stay about 5-1/2 feet off the ground. The younger kids love to walk underneath it, "like an umbrella," they say, and run their hands on the soft golden oregano (Oreganum vulgare 'Aureum') that carpets its feet.

In this photo you are looking east, which means the willow and the oregano face west, and the drainage is superb because the area behind the foundation wall is filled nearly to the brim with rocks. Even so, this willow, which I'll write more about in the winter when you can see why it's called the black pussy willow and when I'll really need something to write about, doesn't need much additional water when the rains stop. What does need water is the plant that grows within it (one of the flowers just barely shows within the white square).

It is THIS:::::

Rosa Graham Thomas, named after the horticulturalist and former Gardens Advisor to the British (minus Scotland, which has its own) National Trust. Mr. Thomas was planted here when the willow was a wee twig and I didn't believe things that started that small would ever get this big in my garden. Three or four years ago Mr. Thomas got completely lost in the willow and I figured that was it. The next year I was hauling something down those steps to the garage and -- whoa! -- lookat that!

The chance encounter with the willow has saved Mr. Thomas. Mr. Thomas is otherwise rather spindly and has trouble holding up his apricot-flesh-colored flowers. (The buds open an even deeper apricot and the flowers eventually fade to a buttery yellow. A proper gentleman, Mr. Thomas never shows any harshness in color.) The willow acts a bit like an umbrella for Mr. Thomas, too, otherwise his 30+ petals would turn to mush like every other. And the willow hides the lousy foliage that'll be coming along soon. As Mr. Thomas is a David Austin rose, it has a terrific (fresh tea) scent but gets blackspot as soon as you say the word out loud.

This is the only rose left in my garden that didn't come from Heirloom Nursery, but you can find it there and grow it through something of your own. It blooms continuously from mid/late June through frost here and I give it a prune just to get rid of any dead parts after the leaves fall from the willow. Otherwise, regular water and the usual treatment of organic 5-5-5 a couple times a year plus an inch or two of soil-building compost.

Do you believe that plants just get lucky, as Mr. Thomas did in being overtaken by the willow? Or, look at the question another way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences? (Hat tip to M. Night Shyamalan.)

I hear voices

And furthermore about weeds::::



I hear Berta saying, "When that ol' long grass gets goin' you just about never can get rid of it."













And John saying, "I just try to get my ten square feet in every day. Five if it's bad."

Bunch o' five-feet days coming up.

Underplants

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking (1) I would've slept better if I hadn't sampled those candies last night; and (2) In the future I'll try to include pictures of the foot of a tree or shrub so that we can see their underplants.

First up is a Ribes sanguineum "Porky's Pink" underplanted with morning glory, blackberry, long grasses of several sorts, sheep sorrel, and buttercups.

Sheep sorrel is used in alternative medicine in many ways, including as a tumor-reducing anti-cancer agent. It spreads both by seeds and by long, trendril-ly red roots, and can be very hard to eradicate. It is rampant underneath the old azaleas on the north side of the house, a sure sign of soil infertility, which would explain the sorry state of the azalea foliage, about which more later. After I dig up as many of its roots as I can, I'll fertilize, add several inches of Gardner & Bloome's soil-building compost -- you can get it locally from the very nice folks at Brim's -- and water.

Ooo, there's a lovely border of long grass growing atop the West Bank. Look how graceful and tall it grows.

Next, a gorgeous yellow twig dogwood with underplants that include every kind of weed and some lovely calla lily.

And finally, shyly hiding her ragged head behind a Japanese maple, a tall sow thistle that's reached five feet. I guess you could say she's gotten too big for her underplants. (Not to mention that she's toxic.)

Some years (okay, maybe 3 out of 7) I'm the Perfect Gardener and have the whole yard weeded by the first week of March, then spend the rest of the year plucking out whatever I see as I pass, la de dah, so that nothing much ever gets started. Well, I just didn't get out front -- or side -- much this year. As the geologist said about the creek bed: Silt Happens.

I tackle weeds, when I get a round tuit, with a good bit of stretching, Fiskars cushy kneepads, 5-gallon buckets and a bonsai root hook that looks kind of like this (purchased at Portland Nursery.)

And, afterwards, Ultra Soft Plus Doux Kleenex, Loratadine and white wine.

Why-gee!-la

Here is a basic, old-fashioned plant, Weigela florida "Carnival," and there truly is nothing more beautiful in my garden now. It's been on the east side of my house for maybe six years, just peaking out to the south side, so I guess you could say it gets partial sun. Its spreading, arching habit has always been a bit of a problem because it needed something. A wrought-iron arch, say, to be draped upon.

Some people never do anything to these shrubs and they can get honking big (the plants, not the people). Because mine is on the narrow side of the garden I've kept it pruned. Just a few weeks ago I moved the wrought iron arch that you can barely see to this spot, which is just at the entrance to the backyard, and am SO GLAD that for whatever reason I didn't cut the weigela way back earlier this year, as I had thought to do after the December storm. I've woven some of its long, flexible branches through the arch and now I have this gorgeous bower. When the weigela is finished blooming a couple clematis will come along. I've rarely been happier with the way a spot is turning out.

There are at least a dozen weigela varieties, some of them growing only a couple feet tall (like "Minuet" and "Wine and Roses." They're all terrific, I think, it just depends on what you need in what space. They're two-season plants, with no fall color and no great structure to recommend them in winter. But they're just so easy, requiring no more care than you care to give them; and Carnival in particular is so pretty, with its tubular flowers of many shades of pink. It's the ultimate girly-girl shrub.

Geranium x. oxonianum "Hollywood"

It really is amazing what people will say on the internet. For instance: "I bought 13 of these at 8 bucks a piece!"

Yes, I did. I couldn't resist Dan Hinkley's description in the 2000 Heronswood catalog:

"Extremely floriferous flowing flowers of pale pink, perfectly formed with overlapping petals, and strikingly veined with magenta, we have used this to remarkable effect as a groundcover at the base of a newly planted hedge outside my office. It was stupendous this year."

Stupendous, by which Dan clearly meant definitions 1. and 2.: "marvelous" and "amazingly large." Obviously I didn't consult the A to Z Encyclopedia which very clearly says that Hollywood grows to 3-1/2 feet by 2-1/2 feet. Sure enough, it does. See first photo.

I started giving Hollywood away the day after it arrived, and I haven't stopped. I have maybe three of the original plants, but there are more in the yard. Have you ever met a geranium that didn't love to be divided?

These photos, which I took at 9:00 at night without flash, don't show the sweet, pale ballet pink of the flowers, though the veining shows nicely in the lower photo.

No pinching is required to keep the plants in full bloom from mid-June until August; that's about when I'll cut them back to the ground -- there'll be some new growth lurking there -- and in about 3 weeks I'll get a second flush of lush foliage and flowers before the November or December frosts. Then I'll cut them back again and wait until spring. The plant in this photo is next to the front walk; after I cut it back I'll tuck a pot of whatever strikes my fancy beside it until it grows again.

These geraniums, like the others, aren't picky about their requirements. They grow and flower equally well in sun and shade -- the pink is a little darker in the shade -- and tolerate drought well. Don't water them overhead just before you have company because the water knocks them back; they'll recover in a couple hours.

The foliage of the "true" geraniums doesn't have the wonderful smell of the more tropical zonal pelargoniums that we all call geraniums. There are many, many different varieties and colors, some of them quite deep and striking but none particularly tropical. Joy Creek Nursery has a wide selection; the now-Burpee-owned Heronswood has a few too, though I haven't ordered from them since the buy-out. Pick one or two -- or even three, but certainly not thirteen, unless you have a STUPENDOUS yard.

Viburnum plicatum f. plicatum

In other words: Japanese snowball bush tree. It's not so crazy to think about snowball trees in June this year, when it actually did snow in May. A farmer at the Sunday Market told me last weekend that he's lost a full growing season -- four or five weeks -- because of the cool weather and lack of sunshine this year. "You never get it back," he said. And, "That's farming!"

This is the very first tree that was planted in the Gaza Strip, on the far end from "Stellar Pink." My old gardening buddy John gave it to me; he dug up a chunk from his own massive specimen and brought it over in his pickup. Ten years ago I could easily put my arms around her and she wasn't much taller than I am. Now she's about 8 feet wide and 10 feet tall. She won't get much taller but I am her personal gastric bypass surgeon: me, my shovel & my loppers will keep her from getting wider.

My friend Lisa, who lives across the river on the Peninsula, said her snowball wasn't doing so well. I wonder if it's because the water table is so high over there and it got a bit overly damp this year. Like maybe a 100 inches damp.

Snowballs can look a little scruffy after they bloom, just a big ol' hulk of a shrub tree; and they're deciduous so they're a mass of empty branches for the winter. Not something you'd want in your front yard or as a privacy screen. (You're not going to mention how I managed to plant the entire Gaza Strip with DECIDUOUS trees, are you? So that in winter there's not much more between me and my neighbors than between Brooke Shields and her Calvin Kleins?)

I tried a couple times to grow a clematis through the Snowball. I'm pretty sure the first one died from thirst; the second one must have gotten lost in the crowd -- of roots or branches.

I hope you can find a good size for a cheap price, or you have a good neighbor-friend to give you a chunk. The blooming season is at least a month long and you can see the blooms go gangbusters. The blooms start out a very pale chartreuse and become pure, pure -- yep, snow white.

Then they just disappear. At least I think they do. At least I don't remember having a tree full of ugly brown balls. Just that one fact recommends Viburnum plicatum f. plicatum.

Cornus

I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan; Part I is about the hyper-adaptive relationship between man and corn. (Did you know that the silk is the female sex organ and the tassel is the male?) If we have dinner anytime soon, I'll be having the falafel, thanks.

So, here's Cornus kousa 'Stellar Pink.' There's nothing at all stellar about the pink; in fact, it hardly shows at all.

I'm surprised at how fast this tree has grown given the generally slow growth rate of the Chinese dogwoods. This one started about 7 years ago at the basic size you'd normally get at a nursery and now it's at least 10 feet tall (it's 6' to the top of the fence).

The Gaza Strip is maybe 4' wide by 50 feet long, is parallel and about 20 feet from the back of our house, and abuts our neighbors uphill. Their yard is about six feet higher than our own; it's retained by the first rock wall I built. (Hard to believe it hasn't caved in, it was really badly built.) It gets the most southern exposure of the garden, which isn't much.

Stellar Pink is planted there and so far has grown into a graceful vase-like shape without much care. I'm lazy about watering up there and I bet I don't throw a handful of organic 5-5-5 in that direction even once a year. If I remember it right, I've cut at least one low branch off each year for the past three years. If I can remember, I'll let you know if I do it again this year.

I bought it because I thought its name meant the pink color was stellar. (I really wanted a "Satomi" but couldn't find one because Ketzel Levine had been swooning about it and there had been a run on the nursery stock.) Like most second choices it was disappointing at first -- the flowers are charming and can look like stars (or like little handkerchiefs), but they bloom above my head. I usually don't even think about it except on days like this one, when the limbs are bowed low from a soaking rain. "Hey, look: the dogwood," I say to myself. Now that I've walked into my neighbors' backyard to take a good look at it, Stellar Pink is one of the most outstanding performers in the garden. The neighbors really enjoy her act.

If you're looking to plant a dogwood, be sure to get a kousa. The so-called "Flowering Dogwood", or Cornus florida, is succumbing to anthracnose, a fungal infection that is prevalent in moist, shaded areas; it causes dieback, which at best will be cause for some nasty-looking pruning and at worst (which is usual), kill enough of the tree so that you have to cut it down. The kousas are not only a smaller tree, good for our 50x100-feet town lots, but are very disease resistant. Some are . . . okay, Stellar, and slightly Pink.

Laburnum x watereri "Alford's Weeping"

I have two lumps on my head from this "Golden Chain" tree, one on my forehead and one atop my head. These are not strong-growing trees. They should be well-staked when young, so they'll grow upright, and then pruned regularly, to keep their branches from getting too lanky.

This one got none of that attention, even though I planted it in the narrow space on the east side of the house where it -- and I -- could have got along without the leaning and the head-bonking. The idea was for it to grow in front of the two large double-hung windows in the library, a shield from the neighbors. Which it did for a year or three, and was mighty pretty. Then the "hurricane" of December 2007 blew it over. I should cut it down -- and I will -- but not until it stops looking like THIS.

You might take a look at a gorgeous closeup of one of its flowers, from flickr.

Laburnums grow wonderfully well here on the North Coast, where everything is in partial sun unless it's in shade. (You can't really call any aspect "full sun" when you get about 20 days of that a year.) They have all the characteristics of sweet peas in giant size: fast growth, great flowers, unpicky about soil and fertilizer. Its relatively modest size makes it a good tree for our small city lots where we are trying to preserve views for ourselves and our neighbors. It begins to flower in early- to mid-May and goes along for at least a month. Then the sweet-pea-like flowers are followed by seed pods.

By all means, if you have space, make yourself a laburnum walk. Stop drooling!

The Friday Question

What the heck is this weed?

The dry spots in the garden got Israeli names: the West Bank, the Gaza Strip. The Weed completely took over a patch about 5 feet x 4 feet on the West Bank that I had left totally weed-free only two weeks (okay, maybe three weeks) ago. I had to pull out most of the accidental Love-in-a-Mist patch to get rid of The Weed and I see it's spreading underneath the azaleas too.

At least it's very easy to pull out, has the tiniest little roots, doesn't sting or poke or smell bad. What can I do to avoid another rampage? Would I have to go nuclear (I wouldn't)? Can I eat it? I've got two five-gallon buckets so far. Can I sell it? Make a craft item with it?

Chinese jasmine

The first blooms of this jasmine, which I grow in a pot on the south side of the house, showed up on May 29th.

It doesn't grow like mad, like other jasmines, and it also doesn't have the awesome scent. I fell in lust with it during a visit to Portland's Chinese Garden, hunted it down, then treated it with all the respect a fickle young man treats a girl who's finally said "Yes." I couldn't say I treated it like dirt, or like bad dirt, because I treat bad dirt good! I brought this girl home, put her in a big black nursery pot for lack of anything better, and shoveled basic untreated garden dirt on top, planning to do something better soon. There she sat for four years, in a windy spot on the patio atop the garage.

She's been in this warm, protected spot, in a decent pot with great dirt, on the south side of the house, for a little over a year now, and I'd say she's doubled in size.



"What are you gonna do with those pots by the jasmine?" you ask. Well, first, let me tell you where I got them: Rite-Aid! For $4.49 apiece! They're made in Thailand of a hollow-sounding terra cotta (so bring them in for winter). The price sticker includes a five-line warning to USE AS DECORATION ONLY because the paints are "known to contain lead . . . ."

Yep, Rite-Aid drug stores. One of the formerly best-kept garden pottery secrets in town.

Moving maples

The south side of the house is the perfect, and only, place for roses and jasmine. Much of the small space (perhaps 15' x 4') is taken up by an Acer palmatum dissectum, perhaps "Burgundy Lace," in the middle of this photo. Japanese maples mostly grow quite slowly. This one hasn't put on much height in the 10 years I've known it, but its weeping branches grow like Rapunzel's hair. I tip-pruned it two years ago and now it's completely shaggy and hanging to the ground again. I'd love to move it but am not sure where.

The last time I moved a Japanese maple -- a "Hogyoku" that had been in the ground only three years -- it took some manly help, an hour, two spades, a shovel and – it would have been a lot harder without this – a crowbar. Also, a pair of pruners and a pair of loppers. And several compromising positions on my part, pulling hard around the bottom of the trunk while Rob pushed up the rootball with the crowbar. It was the farthest thing from a gentle upheaving. “Hogyoku” was left with a rootball the size of a very large pumpkin. We spoke to it kindly, encouraged it to flourish, amended its new home with soil from its old spot and a bag of steer compost, watered it in well with just a hint of Miracle Grow, spread our fingers and urged it to "Live long and prosper." That was in early February, 2004, and here it is today:

Clematis "Niobe"

Can you believe this is one of my better rock walls? The first one I built was twice this high and, when it was done and I was about dead, the friend who got me started on the darn thing said, "Yeah, looks pretty good. Usually the flat side of the rock faces out." Makes sense, but then how do you stack 'em?

The vinyl-coated chain-link fence, the rock wall and the plantings are new, except for the big Solanum crispum 'Glasnevin' that you can see about half of on the right. This whole area was wiped out by our neighbors' picket fence when it blew into our yard during the December 2007 "hurricane". I had to cut the Glasnevin back to nothing but a structure, a gorgeous structure at that, and didn't know until about three weeks ago whether it had survived.

That's a Pieris 'Forest Flame' in the middle, flanked by red snapdragons and scarved with a clematis 'Niobe'. There are maybe 50 types of Pieris, aka lily-of-the-valley shrub because of the look of their unscented flowers. Forest Flame may be one of the best for this area because it grows tall and narrow compared to most other Pieris. It's also gorgeous in winter and early spring, with glossy leaves in four separate colors -- bright red, white, medium green and salmon -- and then the pendulous racemes of white flowers. They'd make a good Christmas tree for a rich family. This one, which is maybe 2-1/2 feet high, was $45.00 at Portland Nursery. (Am I drooling? Sometimes I drool when I think about Portland Nursery.)

Joy Creek Nursery, in Scappoose, Oregon, has the best collection of clematis I've ever seen or heard of outside of the speciality nursery Chalk Hill Clematis, which is your best bet for mail order.

Look at how red 'Niobe' is in my picture. It is supposed to be red, Barry Fretwell thinks it's one of the best reds (outside of the texensis varieties), because it doesn't fade to a nondescript color; and it's just what I wanted. But through my naked eyes I don't think it looks much different from the purple 'Gipsy Queen'. The picture from Chalk Hill Nursery is much more the way I see it. But here it is, red as all get-out, and the other colors in the photo are true.

Roses

In the late afternoon on May 28th, the sun peeked out from these stubborn gray skies and that's all the light Cornelia needed to put on her first blooms.









Planted in front of her is a white shrub rose, Dr. Robert F. Korns, named after the man who directed the nationwide field trials of the Salk polio vaccine. Dr. Korns has white flowers, in clusters like Cornelia, and is listed as growing to 3' tall; it is at least 4-1/2. He'll be blooming in another week or less, depending on the sun.


Here they are together, with a red laceleaf maple on the left and Oriental lilies in between; at their feet is galloping Gallium odoratum, Iceland poppies and geranium. This is the south side of the house.







Many roses have come and gone from various parts of this garden. Whether I put them in the ground or in a pot, they all looked awful after a couple years and eventually I pulled them out. One was sent to live with a relative in southern California but most went to the dump.

I first saw Cornelia in full bloom at Huntington Gardens, in Pasadena, California, growing on a pillar in bed 26. The Rose Garden isn't my favorite (a toss-up between the Japanese Garden and the Desert Garden), but it's a central place to sit and rest your hips while your friend takes another look around. I was drawn from my seat by the delicate apricot-pink that completely covered the pillar and smelled like the height of summer.

For our climate I think the smaller the flowers, the fewer the petals, the better the rose, whether climbing or not. Look for shrub roses, polyanthas and singles. Forget hybrid teas; they get every disease there is. The gobs of petals on "old" roses will turn into wet mush. Single roses usually have very little fragrance but otherwise do very well. Rugosas also do well almost anywhere and can be very fragrant, but need lots of room to ramble. Rosa glauca, aka Rosa rubrifolia, is very pretty, with its blue-tinted ("glaucous") leaves, its deep-pink flowers (no scent) and lots of purplish-red hips in the fall. It is very thorny and will get 6-7 feet tall and gracefully droopy. It also self-sows, so you'll get babies to give to friends.

You can get Cornelia and just about any other rose from Heirloom Roses, in St. Paul, Oregon, where I also bought Dr. Robert F. Korns. I'll never buy a rose anywhere else, unless there's another own-root nursery in Oregon. I recommended their roses for our local community radio's plant sale a few years ago, thinking they'd sell like grande frappuccinos, and Heirloom graciously donated a couple dozen plants. But people didn't understand why they should pay $15.00 for a rose "bush" no taller than the palm of their hand. Unless I stood by the rose table and talked them up, they were passed by like the Frog Prince.

The love they need is little more than a kiss. Transplant one of those small plants to a medium-sized pot, a tallish one with lots of room for long roots if you have one, and the next year the plant will be twice the size of the hybrids you can buy at your local garden center. It will be virus-free and almost entirely resistant to the blackspot that denudes every other rose I've grown. Then put it in the ground and watch it explode into healthy, lush foliage; gorgeous, prolific flower; and fabulous scent.

Clematis Mrs. N. Thompson (see also Joy Creek Nursery, in Scappoose, Oregon) grows fairly low and stays mostly with Dr. Korns. Another Clematis whose name I can't remember now grows through Cornelia. Every year, usually around February, I shovel about an inch of steer or other compost, mixed with a few handfuls of Whitney Farms' 5-5-5 organic fertilizer, around the group. (What happened to the big bags of Whitney Farms? I can only find the boxes, which don't cover much and which are expensive.) A little more Whitney Farms in May, before the soaking rains stop. Once a summer, in a spate of coolish days, I water the whole garden with a Miracle Gro feeder attached to the hose (best to do this in May if you live in warmer climates); and then another handful of Whitney Farms in early September. I'm not rigorous about any of that: I tell you what I've done in the year or two when I think I've taken very good care of this group of plants.

Cornelia and Dr. Korns have been in the ground for about five years, and so far, so beautiful. But I've been optimistic about roses before. In a journal entry dated February 23, 2003, I wrote:

I’m planning the whole bed around “Royal Sunset” because it’s such an incredibly beautiful rose, always met with oohs and aahs, always in bloom and relatively disease free.

The next year, Royal Sunset, bought at a local garden center, was sent to the dump for poor performance.