Garden Border 5/16/2012

Allium giganteum

Allium 'Purple Sensation'

Deciduous Azalea sp

Yellow Rose

Yellow Rose

Native Camasia Bulb

Pacific Coast Iris 1

Pacific Coast Iris 2

While I am fortunate enough to be spending Mother’s Day with my Mom, Mother-in-Law and my Wife, my Step Mom is recovering from a knee replacement. So these last few pics are to Iris, on this Mother’s Day morning. I can’t wait to go on a Garden Tour with you once again!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Rhododendron and Magnolia in Woodland Garden

Rhododendron ramapo and 'Queen of the Night' Tulip

Rhododendron ramapo, 'Queen of the Night' Tulip, Deschampsia ceaspitosa'Northern Lights' planted with a mix of Allium that will open in about a month.

Backlighting: Rhododendron ramapo, 'Queen of the Night' Tulip, Deschampsia ceaspitosa 'Northern Lights' planted with a mix of Allium that will open in about a month.

Anemone nemerosa and Rhododendron ramapo planted in "drifts" in the Malo Garden

#1:  In the garden bed below we: moved the Euonymus shrub over about 12 inches; dug out two very large Miscanthus, grasses, divided them into manageable pieces and replanted three pieces (out of approximately 12) to anchor the corner of the bed and create a backdrop for the rose;  divided clumps of Daffodils and Snow Drops, bulbs, to have them spread out further and encircle the rose; divided two of three Salvia, perennials, and spread them out, away from the Spirea and flowing through the length of the bed; divided Phlox, perennials, and spaced them drifting within the bed; dug out Geranium, groundcover, from within 12 inches of the lawn and replanted in the back of the bed to create a consistent flow of colors throughout the bed.

Mulch with a light layer of compost and a bit of organic fertilizer and your ready to go!

Perennial Border

Option #2:  We dug up a few perennials that are in “that area” that’s being overrun by bindweed. We divided them and rinsed off all of the soil in the root ball so we were sure all the bind weed roots were out. Then we potted up the new plants for eventual relocation in our garden or off to a friends garden.

Dividing Brunnera

Dividing Brunnera- A nice size for a 1 gallon pot

Bindweed Root/Runner-easy to spot, in with the other roots

New Brunnera divisions- 12 plants from 3 plants. Once they root in they are off to other gardens.

Option #3: Weed, weed, weed. Then head to the nursery and buy something to crowd out those pesty little plants.

And no matter what: be sure to watch the leaves beginning to show on the trees; admire the spring ephemerals and enjoy the longer days!

It is once again coming into spring.  I’ve been trying to point out to Lila, now 3 years and 10 months old, how the leaves are starting to come out again on the shrubs.  Yesterday she rewarded my efforts by stopping by a Spirea ‘Magic Carpet’ and exclaiming, ” Look, Look, all the flowers are out!!” She was super excited to see all of the little leaf buds showing color and starting to grow, she thought they were flowers.

I have been parking my truck and trailer in my driveway now for over a year. I would love to find another spot for it. I can’t quite figure out how to make it work though.  It definitely blocks visual and physical access to the garden. Although yesterday I produced a brand new tub of sidewalk chalk from my truck and got to brag, “See, some pretty cool stuff comes out of Daddy’s truck!”

Lila is having a great time on her play set now. Finally! She gets herself up in the swing and pumps super high! She helps push May in the baby swing too. Perhaps she is a little too excited about that: May is a little sensitive to Lila’s high swingin’ style.

I can’t wait for more days in the garden with them. It is so sweet. Lila loves to dig for worms with her friends. I have one end of a vegetable bed that is left open for their digging. As soon as we get the garden ready we will be planting seeds. Lila is very excited to plant things.

Now that the bulbs are coming up we are going on frequent garden tours. We walk the short trail in our border and up around the garage back to the driveway. Any time you can make something a circular path it double the interest for kids. I stop and point out out a few plants and bulbs that Lila is familiar with and show her the spring growth. Then she begins asking me what every plants name is and I’m more than happy to respond (even though she is doing it as more of a joke than anything else!) The more often I can speak Latin and horticulture the better for her I think.

Today I started explaining to Lila that the greatest thing about gardening is you can do it anywhere. If we ever had to move, I told her, we would just start a new garden somewhere else and this one would be for someone else to enjoy. Lila’s response, “Yeah, they can plant our seeds in the vegetable box, and they can do other things too.”  That’s my girl, sweet little thing that she is!

Sandbox Histarics

9 Month old May

A beatiful sight. Little grubby hands excited to hold an earthworm!

Wormys!

A spot for digging in the Vegetable garden.

Being the creative creature that I am I noticed the sign on the way out of the show one night (after 13+hours on my feet, skateboard in hand, on my way to the light rail station) next year’s Garden Show- the silver screen; Gardens go to Hollywood and my mind has been working on something ever since, Doh!

Thank you to everyone who came by and enjoyed the garden. It was an incredible amount of work and a minute amount of sleep for ten plus days during and around the show! I still loved the process. I can talk gardens all day and apparently I did, for five days 10-13 hours per day. It was great.

I had a blast working with all of the volunteers from WSNLA. I think I learned enough just in the management of the garden to make the whole project a viable expense.  Here it is from the convention center floor to the completed garden at show time!

Winter’s Come and Gone- A Lullaby

Based on a song by Gillian Welch. I designed three gates, one for each verse of the song, with three subgardens all part of one garden “scene”. The lyrics were written in each section.

Clean Slate

Garden Installation

Ready for Judges?

3 Versus, 3 Gates, 1 Garden

Red Bird

Blue Bird

Blue Bird Mosaic

Permeable Patio

Black Bird

Pallet, Grass and Glass

Black Bird Lyrics

Arbor- Framed veiw

I started off with two pallets left over from a patio project. They are heavy duty two sided with 4×4 side posts.

Pallet Planters 01

I removed one or two planks to open the exposed face and so the pallets would match and  hammered in or removed any nail heads or tips that were sticking out. Using a common landscape fabric I inserted it in between the two sides of the pallet so that it created a “U” along the inside front and back faces.  Then with a staple gun, and 1/2 inch staples, I reached inside and stapled up the 4×4 post and the middle 2×4 post attaching the fabric securely to the pallet. I made sure to fold the top edges  enough to take up any slack in the fabric to prevent sagging out the bottom once it was to be hung. That also allowed me to staple through many layers of the fabric just in case some of the other staples pulled lose.

Pallet Planters

I filled the “pockets” of fabric with high quality potting soil and made horizontal cuts in the fabric where we were to plant. It is easier to add the potting soil as you go, planting from the bottom up.  For the taller and more top heavy plants I pushed them in pretty deep so they would be anchored securely until the roots can take hold. We planted the pallets with Carex trifida ‘Rekohu Sunrise’, primerose, Moss and Heuchera.

We hung the Pallet Gardens from the timber frame arbor using 1″ poly rope and very secure knots. To finalize the leveling process we shimmed under the rope above the beams so that it won’t be visible ( although now I see it still is!)

Watering the Pallet Gardens will be easy since there are two vertical soil pockets that are open on top. A drip system or a watering wand would due the trick. The water will percolate through the whole root zone.

Enjoy!!

Pallet Garden

Pallet Garden 02

I am so excited about it.  At this point I can’t get any better of an idea what it will look like until we are there with the plants and materials!

I just heard from Plum Projects about the arbor and they are starting in on the very complicated and precise timber frame joinery.  It is going to be made from rough sawn doug fir, 8×8 inch posts and 6×6 inch beams.

M & M irrigation is building the playhouse and I am looking at paint samples for the different walls.

Hand carving the lyrics to the song on old fence boards, rough and weathered. They are coming along great.

Lyric boards

Mosaic by Seattle Mosaic Arts. 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall. Will be for sale at the show!

"Oh little Bluebird, pearly feather breast..."

Witch Hazel

Old Allium (for the birds!)

Tracks on the trail

A peek in at the planted Pallet!

Golden Yew looks great in the snow!

Less than a month before the show and here’s where we stand!!
Below are some of the projects underway for “Winter’s Come and Gone- A Lullaby”.  A garden I am designing/creating for the Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show 2012.
Mosaic by Seattle Mosaic Arts. It measures five feet in length and three feet in height.  It’s depicting the Blue Bird with a “pearly feathered breast” from the song.

a pallet being tranformed into a green wall.

Pallet 1

Pallet 2

Here is a light sculpture that is built entirely from reused steel by Ray Hammer, Blue Collar Artworks. He will also be making our benches and fountain.

Finally, an updated image of the garden.

"Winter's Come and Gone- A Lullaby"

On other news, The timber frame arbor is under way and I’m meeting up with Fred Moore to see the model playhouse today!

Hope you all make it out to see the show!

More info at:

Facebook.com/NativeRootDesigns

WSNLA.org

gardenshow.com

With the help of Kirsten Lints, Gardens Alive Design, Megan Pulkkinen, Megan Pulkkinen Landscape Design, and the extremely generous  contributions from a handful of local nurseries, we are getting the plants collected and stowed away for the Northwest Flower and Garden Show (taking place February 8-12, 2012).

We have collected plants from around the Puget Sound and stored them at Sunnyside Nursery in Marysville, and at Windmill Gardens in Sumner.  Thus far the plants have come from Van Klavern’s Nursery, Vibrant Plants, T&L Nursery, Dragonfly Farms Nursery, Valley Nursery.

We still have a few plants to track down however as you can see we’ve been busy driving and collecting the majority of the list plus a few bonus plants we couldn’t resist!

Other news on the show; Ray Hammer, Blue Collar Artwork, is contributing to the fountain and the bench design with his highly creative and artistic steel sculptures.  The talented team at Seattle Mosiac Arts is creating a custom 5′x3′ mosaic for the bluebird garden (which I can’t wait to see!).  Pacific Stone Company is suppling the permeable pavers for the patio!  Plum Projects ((206) 819-0536 plumprojectsllc@gmail.com) is building the Arbor.  I just sat down and discussed the final design prior to them ordering the lumber, it is very exciting and will be a treasured piece at the show!

It is coming together wonderfully. I am looking forward to seeing all of the amazing art combine with the beautiful plants.  More than anything I am so grateful to be part of the garden show and to be working on it with WSNLA.

Browse the pictures and enjoy!

Don’t forget, Northwest Flower and Garden Show, February 8-12, 2012!

Kirsten Lints, making it happen.

Sunnyside Nursery stash

Enough Sarcococca?

A hedge in the making.

The Windmill Gardens stash: Magnolia, Cryptomeria, Malus and Cedar

Dragonfly Farms Nursery

Magnolia collection

Arbor

A recent family trip out to Descanso Gardens in Southern CA.
It was a beautiful day and we all enjoyed the gardens. We were rolling four generations deep for the first time. I was surprised by the amount of time we were able to stay and enjoy the space. They call themselves “A place for the generations” and I could not agree more. From edible gardens to fun sitting stones and stone spirals to lovely benches of all sorts around every corner. My three year old daughter and my 90 year old Grandmother were comfortable and happy the whole day through. We never even made it to the miniature train!

I see the seasons and the temperatures in the western US much like the geography that defines it. Let me explain:  The western US is composed of a series of mountains and valleys that run North and South that are called the Basin and Range system.  This is illustrated most dramatically in California where the highest point in the continental US (Mt. Whitney at 14,491′) sits just 135 miles away from the lowest point in the Northern Hemisphere (Badwater in Death Valley at -288).  This system continues north into Washington state and east to the east side of the Rockies.

The ranges in this system are all similar in the way they are slow to build (West to East) with foothills rising to the ridges and suddenly drop off on the east side creating some spectacular vistas from the high deserts that consistently follow them.

In Seattle the average high temperatures sit below 60 degrees F from November to April. The lowest temperature is in December meaning it takes four months to build over 60 degrees and that it only takes two months to go from 60 to the coldest times.(http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USWA0395)

I just find it fascinating.  Looking at the graph of average temperatures looks the same as a cross section of the topography in our region.

I have been spending some time pulling the vegetables out of the Potager garden and planting Garlic, Shallots and Onions.  A perfect job for a 3 1/2 year old; I used the butt end of a long handled spade and made planting holes about 2-4 inches for the Shallots and the Garlic and my daughter tossed in the cloves.  She quickly learned that the shallots would right themselves in the hole if she got them anywhere near right side up.

Planting Shallots!

I love the lighting in Autumn.  It brings so much brilliance and magic to the garden.  Earlier this year I wrote in the trade magazine, B&B (Washington Nursery and Landscape Association) about different ways of using Fall color.  My favorite thing to consider with a particularly stunning fall specimen is to place it in the landscape in such a way that it will be back lit when it is changing colors. This Sango Kaku Japanese Maple is a glowing example.  It catches the light from the side and illuminates the whole courtyard, which is completely shaded by this time, enhancing the contrast and adding to the lighting effect.

Lighting up the courtyard

In Front of my house I have three Red Maple (Acer rubrum ‘October Glory’) trees planted by the previous owner.  Our house and lot are south west facing so every year for a good month these trees glow a brilliant ghostly red from anywhere on our lot.

Red Maple and trumpet vine

May has been developing a nice sense of humor.  She recently discover that if she squawks while she throws herself backwards we go giggly.  It’s a pretty funny scene all around I think.  Her and I go for evening garden strolls and inevitably visit with a few neighbors.  They instantly see the pace of my walk and the teary eyes of May and understand that we both needed a breather from our busy little house!  A shout out to our neighbors for entertaining and understanding the dramatic temperament of a five month old!  Almost every time we go out the front door, regardless of her state, she stops fusing and becomes immersed in her surroundings.

May at 5 months

A contemporary American folk song that spans time and generations. Follow the verses beyond the rain and snow, sing your sorrows to the birds and receive their reassurance that, “Winter’s come and gone, a little bird told me so.”

Our innovative design utilizes a regionally sensitive plant palette, permeable paving, recycled glass, and living walls. It embraces the dream of spring from the window sill of a child’s playhouse through the timber framed arbor and themed gates. It would be a welcome sight anywhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Winters Come and Gone- A Lullaby; Elevation view

Winter's Come and Gone- A Lullaby; Layout view