We’re having such a mild December and yesterday was pretty glorious so I decided to finally make a couple of moves I’ve been thinking about for a while.
I didn’t take a “before” picture of Stachyurus salicifolius in place but if you look at my last post, you’ll see it in my list of “losers” in the game of summer drought tolerance. In this pic, I am pointing to where it was:
Way out by the street, where the hose doesn’t reach… and I hadn’t really noticed until my friend Paul Bonine (of Xera Plants, which is where I got this plant) pointed out that it’s been getting chomped by root weevils.
Here’s the plant after I dug it:
All those notches in the leaves are from adult root weevils feeding.
I read up a bit. From PNW Extension:
Adult weevils are night feeders that mostly remain in the soil or in debris at the base of the plant during the day, then climb up to feed on leaves at night. Look for ragged notches on the edges of leaves, or flower petals. Twigs of plants may die beyond where weevils have girdled the twig (salal, rockrose, yew, juniper, etc.). Larvae, found around roots, are C-shaped, legless, and white, or slightly reddish, with tan heads, up to 0.5 inch in size. All species are quite similar in appearance and habits of feeding on root hairs, larger roots and root crown.
Sounds like a job for some ducks, eh? To start, they help me dig the hole.
I put the plant near the chicken coop, but the chickens themselves actually don’t currently have access to the area (I can change that). Lots of benefits for Ms. Stachyurus in this location: WAY more water, higher soil nutrition, and ducks who will hopefully eradicate those weevils. It’s also in a spot where I will see it every day, and there’s plenty of room there for it to get ginormous.
In the spot where the Stachyurus was, I moved (yikes, I know) a young Arctostaphylos ‘Lester Roundtree.”
I had wanted a nice big evergreen shrub here, and this is definitely a better choice overall. The spot I had this plant in is right in the middle of the front yard and I had been feeling uneasy about that placement almost from the minute I planted it there. The new spot might be a bit shady, so I expect it to reach for the sun and get weird. I love it when they do that. We’ll see…
Here’s where the manzanita was:
Disturbed soil in foreground marks the spot.
This is a small berm which I intend to enlarge and use for things that really love good drainage. I was concerned that the smaller plants here would get overtaken by the manzanita. What’s in there is Helichrysum thianschanicum, Stipa barbata, some Dierama seedlings that probably won’t make it (I’ll plant more), a couple Agaves, Euphorbias and Hesperaloe parviflora, among other things.
What should I put here? I was thinking another Agave… I really love the contrast of fine-textured plants like Stipa and Helichrysum against the stoutness of Agaves.
When we first started gardening here, in 2014, the initial intention was something along the lines of “food forest” and/or to grow as much edible stuff as possible. I still love doing that and always will (I think?) but the more I get into botany and climate-adapted plants and cool stuff from Australia, the more I find myself edging toward “sustainable” rather than “edible” — and those two are often (but don’t have to be) mutually exclusive. I also just like growing weird plants.
My fellow garden blogger Lance has some really wonderful essays on what “sustainable” really means. I’ve been reading Lance’s writing for years and his impact on me is immeasurable. For any gardener in the west coast of North America, understanding of sustainability, as well as the distinction between “drought-tolerant” and “climate-adapted” are really important, notably because of summer drought, which, while it’s normal here, is a thing that can severely impact us and can and should influence our plant selections and garden designs.
In my northern Willamette Valley garden, growing vegetables in a home garden is generally terrifically unsustainable but also really fun because we have a long frost-free season and mostly excellent soil. Still, it’s a lot of work and uses a lot of water to grow plants that are not at all climate-adapted to a dry-summer Pacific Northwest climate (ok some are better than others, but it also depends on how you work with the seasons). I do it all anyway because I enjoy it, but I fully understand that this isn’t by any means about saving money, time, or water. It’s about my sanity, it’s about botanical experiments, and it’s very much about the immense joy that David and I get out of eating seasonally, preserving, and having our meals dictated at least in some part by what is available to eat in the garden on any given day.
All that said, my own focus in gardening has definitely shifted from “food forest.” I still want to grow things we can eat, but not only edibles. In 2015 we established two 4′ x 10′ vegetable gardening beds in the front yard, in areas that were previously lawn grass. We edged them with 2×6 cedar as we did with the 9 similar beds we have in the back. Mind you these are not, for the most part, raised beds. I’d call them “edged beds” because most of them aren’t raised at all – the cedar edging merely helps to keep grass and clover out. It works.
This year I decided to convert one of the beds in the front from an edged edible garden bed to an ornamental bed. A lot went into that, and now I want to show the whole entire process.
In August 2015, we began by making these two “edged” beds:
After this picture was taken, we sunk the 2x6s down a bit
The first year we planted brassicas and leeks. I recall some of those being collards – evidently before I realized you don’t need to grow collards if you grow all the others because you can use the leaves of any of them. Also apparently I thought you had to blanch leeks by planting them deep and backfilling. You don’t.
Cabbage and leeks. The board looks bent but it’s not.
One of those seedlings did this, the following March:
Good job, purple broccoli!
Eventually we also started the process of grass removal and establishing some paths through the front yard. That was done with a lot of wood chips and these ridiculous bricks to temporarily mark the paths (temporarily meaning, for like a year). In 2016 I also started planting non-grass plants in the front. May of 2017:
garlic on the right, planted the previous fall. Peppers will go in the middle. How did those chickens get out there?!
Another angle, same work session: leek in front, garlic, peppers added. All those bamboo sticks are to prevent our gigantic horse-dog from smashing through there.
A couple weeks later, same area:
Mulched the beds with wood chips, added more peppers
August 2017, and that leek is flowering and the peppers are going well:
Typical jumble of various edibles at different stages
Then, I found this at Pomarius Nursery while visiting with my friend Larienne who came down from Seattle for a day of nursery-hopping:
Agave parryi var. truncata
And did not plant it into the ground. Instead, I started to slowly re-imagine this scene with a more silver-blue-gray color scheme while the agave spent the winter in its pot under the eave, not getting much sun, nor water.
needs more silver-blue
My color fetish caused me to take a trip to Xera Plants for Cupressus glabra ‘Sulphurea’, which you can see here auditioning its spot, along with several other plants you can’t really make out. I also got a Caesalpinia gilliesii which ended up spending the winter in a big pot under the eave with the agave.
Caesalpinia gilliesii on left, Cupressus glabra ‘Sulphurea’ in little pot to the right behind the big cabbage
In late fall of 2017, Robb Sloan of NoName Nursery handed me a whole flat of Pulsatilla vulgaris ‘Rubra’ or is it var. rubra? Joy Creek calls it ‘Rubra’ and Far Reaches calls it var. rubra. Joy Creek is closer so we’ll go with ‘Rubra’. I briefly considered planting some of them here, and in this pic showing February 2018 snow dusting on my mess of a front yard you can see the flat in the lower left. That is one tough plant and I really put them to the test by leaving them out there all winter. None of the 50 of them died.
Pot ghetto begins
Pot ghettos at my house happen when I end up with plants I’m not sure what to do with yet, such as those Pulsatillas, or when I can’t plant them because I have to prepare the area (remove grass, usually). And that’s exactly what started accumulating here. I hated it. This is the most prominent part of my entire garden for us, it should be the most beautiful and interesting, not a stupid eyesore! I’m an idiot sometimes.
Finally after much thinking I decided to at least remove the wood bed edges. I did it to both beds but apparently only took a photo of this one. At this point I’d finally made the decision to keep the bed below for vegetables, but convert the other to ornamental.
cedar removed, March 2018. Here I’m about to put in a flat of lettuce and onions.
Still I wasn’t sure what to plant there. Sometimes I guess you just have to wait for inspiration. One day in about April of this year, it finally came, in the form of a small tree from Paul Bonine of Xera. It was labeled as Nothofagus antarctica ‘Variegata’, which apparently is synonymous with the cultivar ‘Chillan’. I immediately knew exactly what to do with it and planted it out right in the middle of the south end of that bed.
Turns out I took a picture from the roof. You can see the Nothofagus, barely, in the lower left near a big green blob which is a volunteer lemon balm I’ve since removed:
Now the pot ghetto starts to migrate, there are two agaves there
The brilliant chartreuse of the Nothofagus is just what’s needed to balance a bunch of silvery-blue desert plants. And I’m a sucker for microscopic leaves. This is the perfect specimen plant to anchor this area and get me to plant the rest of it. Nothofagus casts so little shade, I don’t think it will be a problem even when it gets taller.
Initially I wanted to plant the agaves (yeah I ended up with another one, from Little Prince) just to the south of the Nothofagus but that would be too close to the driveway. Rudy the dog would inevitably spear himself on them as he spills out of the car on that side usually. They need to be further away from heavily trafficked areas.
Once I decided on the spot, more plants materialized to accompany agaves. Euphorbia rigida and Euphorbia myrsinites which came from Amy Campion at the swap, a Hesperaloe parviflora from Xera, an Opuntia macrocentra which – don’t hate me – came from Home Depot, and a couple of Stipa barbata which also came from the swap but I’m not sure who brought them (please LMK if it was you!).
finally, a plan
In the above picture I’ve gathered up the two agaves and the various other plants that I think will compliment them and I’m about to dig in a couple bags of pumice which I got from Concentrates, Inc. I get my potting soil, fertilizer, and bird food there too. I love Concentrates!
First, though, a detour: directly under the Nothofagus, I threw down some Angelina sedum when I planted the tree, and I want this area to evolve and for plants to shift around a bit. So far, I have this combination which is a bit of an ode to Evan Bean of The Practical Plant Geek:
Papaver nudicaule, Angelina sedum, Plantago major ‘Rubrifolia’, and Cerinthe major.
I planted 6 Plantago major ‘Rubrifolia’ around here and I love them. They are a wonderful contrast to the sedum and the bright orange poppy. Evan grew the Plantago from seed, and I grew the poppy and the Cerinthe from seed (found Cerinthe seeds at Garden Fever). I also blame Evan for the poppy because the inspiration to grow them was sparked by a conversation with him about poppies back in March.
In addition to the above, I also sowed (whyyy?) Nicotiana sylvestris and after agonizing about where to put them for a long time, a few ended up here too. Here is the whole area:
Oh, hey, a california poppy ended up in here too. That is fine.
You can’t see it well, but in the above photo, flanked by two red plantains to the left of the poppy is a Grevillea australis. I’m hoping it will be a better choice than agaves for this area – dense, painless, floral scent can be experienced up close easily, etc. I’ll probably end up with more stuff like that along the driveway eventually. The rest of these I will allow to do whatever they want and just edit as needed. My favorite kind of gardening is these kinds of naturalization experiments.
I wish I’d taken this from the same angle as the previous photo – I was focusing on the tree. Too sunny today for a better pic!
The very beginnings of my little desert berm
Just to the right of this scene there is more chartreuse. It just ends up happening: the foliage color scheme in the front yard is decidedly silver/gray, chartreuse, and red/purple, and an even mix of all three. I can live with that.
Here is the very chartreuse little scene is just to the right of the view above of the newly planted “desert berm”:
Let’s see how long it takes that Cupressus to become a problem. Should be fun!
And just to the left:
Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that the way I seem to design the front garden is reactionary. These two plants absolutely a reaction to the Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ behind them – I find the color of the Santolina especially, and also the flowers of the x Halimiocistus, help me deal with the gaudiness of the red and white Salvia. Instead of removing the Salvia, I’m planting things around it to make it work. You can’t see it well but there’s a Callistemon viridiflorus in there too, to help satisfy my craving for light yellow/chartreuse next to red.
I’m doing that with the big red Japanese maple too. I may change my mind eventually and take it out, but for now, it’s really helping drive some design decisions. In fact, that tree dominates the entire front yard and affects almost every decision I make, whether it’s about foliage color, plant form, or plant placement. The venerable maple demands to be part of the conversation. For someone new to garden design such as myself, this isn’t just helpful but necessary.
This has been a “before” and “during” post for this part of the garden, formerly vegetable bed #10, and now it’s basically two zones – the immediate surrounds of the Nothofagus, and the desert berm. Hopefully they’ll mush together a bit as the reseeders migrate around and I’ll end up with something interesting that relates to the rest of the front yard at least somewhat. I should probably mulch the berm or add rocks? What would you do? Cram some more plants in there? All these plants are brand-new to me so I’m very interested in suggestions!
It’s only natural that after a few days out of town one must inspect one’s garden. Happily, I found lots of signs of spring!
Ok, ok, the daffodils aren’t in my garden – they’re across the street from the place where I get my coffee beans in downtown Milwaukie. By the way a big part of the point of this blog is to serve as a record of when things get planted, when they come up, when and how they die, etc. So some posts, like this one, are really more about recordkeeping than anything else.
Anyway back to the garden. I do have daffodils! But they are not as far along; I *think* these are ‘Salome’ so they’ll bloom later than the yellow guys above.
This next one is the very beginnings of the Macleya cordata/microcarpa. Look at those wee little veins!
Here comes Persicaria virginiana ‘Lance Corporal’ – turns out the ducks really like eating the seeds of these. That’s probably to my advantage as I don’t need this thing to spread all over the place.
And here’s ‘Painter’s Palette’:
This was one of the biggest suprises! The largest leaf here on the Tetrapanax never actually died/fell off over the winter. I really wish I had a photo of it from last week – it was really curled backwards and looking shivery. But now it’s grown and almost completely unfurled, AND those two new leaves! Those were just tiny little ideas last week!
My little Azara microphylla! Are they supposed to be fragrant? I couldn’t detect a scent. Maybe more plant volume is needed. Hold on I just figured out that these are not OPEN yet. Duh. Sorry, I’m new to this plant…
Not only did Hydrangea quercifolia (cv unknown) not lose its leaves, but it’s already pushing out new ones.
Tanacetum parthenium (feverfew) has been trying to bloom all winter. Finally! Apparently it’s a short-lived perennial but most gardeners probably consider it a self-seeding annual. I think they all got killed off last winter. This is one of a scant handful of plants my chickens won’t eat, but I still have to protect it from those jerks because they’ll scratch at the ground around the plants and dig them up.
Allium schoenoprasum – chives. Been going like this for a month now. Yeah that’s perlite. This is a raised bed we made last year for kitchen herbs that like excellent drainage. The soil is mostly Sunshine mix #3 which was left over from a friend’s indoor garden; it only gets used once because sanitation, you know, mites and the like. Turns out rosemary, basil, and thyme love it.
And while we’re on the subject of edibles LOOK my ornamental cauliflower did this! I’ll remind you so you don’t have to remember or scroll: this was started from seed in July 2016. I know! It’s crazy!
Ok let’s go to the front yard and see what’s going on.
Hamamelis ‘Jelena’ is finally finishing up. Two months of bloom: I am impressed. And then afterward these shiny wine-red sepals hang out for a while and look cool.
Underneath the Hamamelis is a pile of seedlings of Limnanthes douglasii, which actually first came up in the fall and had no problem with frosts or ice or anything. There was Nemophila maculata here too but I’m not sure it managed to reseed itself. I might help these move around a bit.
Grevillea victoriae is too young to flower but it has some very promising coppery new growth. Those dark wiry stems belong to ‘Hot Lips’ Salvia which lost almost no leaves this year and barely even suffered an interruption of flowering (it has flower buds on it now). Last year, it lost 90% of its leaves and stopped flowering from December through about April.
This is just cause I thought it looked really freakin cool. It’s a cabbage leaf (yeah I grow cabbage in the front yard shut up) that got eaten I guess a while ago? None of those holes look particularly new, I mean look at all the healing that has happened.
This isn’t pretty but I had to make a record of it. Snapdragons don’t get killed by zone niney winters.
And right along with cabbage I also love to not clear out leaves and dead stuff! My neighbors love me, I know it. Here’s Oenothera lindheimeri. Which has a new-to-me common name of Gaura, tyvm.
And look! It’s showing signs of life under all those oak leaves and dead sticks from last year!
This isn’t leafy growth but while I was looking at gaura this red color caught my eye. It’s roots of Lysimachia clethroides. Isn’t that rad?
And speaking of Lysimachia, you know what? Here’s yet another great reason to skip the fall/winter yard clean up with the die-back perennials: you can see how much they spread from year to year! Here’s Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’, coming up in easily twice the area it occupied last year.
Ugh, I gotta get that grass out of there.
The hellebores in the backyard are in a pot, looking amazing because they’re not getting eaten by anything, but these are experiencing the usual predation; still, a nice flush of bloom.
Sambucus is happening! This is one of the native ones. I don’t know which. Right behind it is Rosa nutkana, still sleeping.
Here’s Dicentra formosa – I don’t remember this ever completely disappearing this year, come to think of it.
Mahonia aquifolium is working toward flowers. See the spider?
Underneath/in front of it, some tulips are battling slugs and the Zauschneria/Epilobium I planted last fall never died off. This area was covered in daylilies and they always looked bloody awful by about July so I moved them and replaced them with these. I put sedum in here too so there will be something green when/if Zauchnerias die back. We’ll see how it goes.
Last one, then you get chicken pictures. This is Agastache, probably ‘Apache Sunset’ and it never fully died away either. I just cleared several handfuls of leaves off of it and look at this!
I wasn’t kidding about chickens! Just for fun, this is the mob I have to contend with. Well, four of the six anyway.
L-R Mochuela, Misha, and Sammy, with Pinky in the back.
As of now, finally, everyone’s done molting (they all molt annually, usually late fall/early winter, but Pinky started in December and just finished the Longest Molt Ever). We’re getting 2-5 eggs daily (in February! OMG) which includes at least one duck egg. Now that we have 8 birds total I have a feeling we’ll have some eggs available for sale this year.
And lastly, as promised I did sow 45 tomato seeds about 3 days ago. Early, yes, but I have a reason: I’m going to try grafting them this year and I wanted to allow a little extra time for what I expect will be an inevitable albeit temporary growth slowdown on the part of the tomatoes, due to getting chopped in half at an early age.
I hope you’re noticing signs of spring here and there too – in your garden, or even if it’s just freeway forsythias, new spring growth is always a welcome sight!
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