I have bittersweet memories of this plant. About twenty years ago I harvested seed from the ground outside Amy Yee tennis center and started a few seedlings. They did well and I moved a group of them to a large bonsai pot where I grew them for about ten years. They grew as one plant that was very attractive, if not up to exacting bonsai standards. The plant even bloomed a few times and the flowers were surprisingly showy and sweetly fragrant. And it colored a purple maroon in the autumn before dropping its leaves.
But one year, the plant didn’t leaf out in spring. It was dead. I have no idea why. Sudden ash death syndrome. SADS.
Two years ago, I was at Amy Yee again and the same trees had shed seeds all over the sidewalk. How could I resist? Now I have about ten ash seedlings growing in small pots on the shelves outside the greenhouse.
These plants lend themselves to larger forms of bonsai since the leaves are rather large and coarse. I will keep them growing well and move some to training pots in the spring.
Most often called Japanese barberry, I can’t remember if the seeds for my plants came from the Washington Park Arboretum or, more likely, from some landscape I was wandering near or through. I am very drawn to barberry berries, as they are a brilliant reddish orange or red and they have a nice oval shape and are the perfect size for accidentally falling into pockets.
My seedlings are about three years old and they have been growing slowly. The leaves are a reddish-green most of the time, but now (November) is when they really make themselves known by coloring up in scarlet and orange tones.
My seedlings are destined for bonsai pots soon, as are most of my tree and shrub seedlings. I’ll prune them to maximize their leaves because come autumn, I’ll want them to light up the bonsai shelf with their true colors.
What an unusual and fun plant is duckweed. We found out from a friend that koi love to eat it, so we drove to local ponds and harvested some to feed them. They ate a LOT! We had to make a couple of trips a month in the warmest weather.
I was able to winter some duckweed over in the greenhouse last year in a dormant state and the plants leafed out in a bucket in the spring and then provided all the duckweed the koi could ever want through the summer. This plant is very prolific!
The lifecycle of this plant is fascinating. They have tiny flowers that humans rarely see, but that are visited by flies, mites, small spiders, and even bees. But they can also be pollinated just by bumping into each other on a windy day. Duckweed’s most common propagation technique is to form new chains of plants-and they are so prolific that scientists are find ways to use them to remediate polluted bodies of water and also to grow medicines, like synthetic insulin. And they can also produce “turions”–special buds that drop to the pond’s bottom, overwinter there, and then float back to the top and leaf out into duckweed plants.
Future plans for this plant are to move the full bucket of plantlets to the greenhouse and hope they winter over again so we have readily available fresh salads for the koi come late spring.
As I was wandering the autumn garden today, I realized we have quite a few Japanese maples, including this very red cultivar that is even more red this time of year.
We added this tree about 23 years ago when we added the woodland garden and it is getting tall–over twenty feet, and well-branched. It leafs out with a red tinge, turns a darkish red with just a hint of green in the summer, then flames brilliant scarlet as the leaves end their lives with a glorious flare.
My future plans for this tree are to enjoy its carefree beauty.
I realized that while this isn’t one species, these grasses take up a lot of space in the garden and deserve to be called out here. Since I am currently waging a war on lawns, it seems even more appropriate to call out these plants in a Plant-A-Day post.
Most of us find a healthy, clipped lawn to be attractive. Some of us also find a lawn essential to any home landscaping.
We inherited a mediocre lawn when we bought this house and my goal from day one was to eliminate it slowly to arrive at a zero-lawn landscape. First, we eliminated the lawn directly north of the house and added the woodland garden. Then, we added two raised vegetable beds on the south side of the yard, then two more. We added a sizeable raised bed around the Douglas fir tree. Then, I eliminated the lawn north of the driveway and added the orchard bed. I also have been widening the driveway bed on the south side of the driveway. And lastly, just this spring, we added the native plant garden, which covered up another huge chunk of the lawn.
Our lawn has suffered over the years from silly things, like the time Leon had to move a heavy sculpture and had to drive a forklift across the wet lawn. Early attempts at weed killing resulted in large bare patches that ultimately filled with more weeds. Fertilizing resulted in lush growth in the mowing season and more frequent mowing than usual.
The lessons I’ve learned from our lawn and my environmentally friendly gardening research is that lawns don’t need fertilizer–just leave the clippings on them. Removing weeds by hand is the best way to get ride of dandelions and others. It is fine to let the lawn turn brown in the summer–no need to irrigate a lawn in Seattle. All of our neighbors have brown lawns, too. Mowing is only needed from about the end of March to the middle of July in most years, with one last mowing in the fall–late October or early November.
My future plans for the lawn are to keep eating away at it every year until it is finally gone, replaced by more productive plantings that support local fauna and add more interest and beauty in all seasons.
My history with Hen & Chicks goes back to my childhood. My Mom had a small rock garden at our house in Burien and these plants were growing there. The plants I have now are not descended from those plants, sadly, but they are just as carefree and enjoyable. I have some in pots waiting to get planted into a suitable part of the memory garden next year.
My first attempt to grow these plants in that garden failed, as I planted them in an area with deep mulch. I knew this wasn’t ideal at the time, but thought I’d give these sturdy survivors a chance. They disappeared. So, I’ll plant them in a mulch-free and very sunny spot next spring and I’m sure they’ll do better.
Future plans include propagating more of them from offsets and spreading them around the street-side of the memory garden.
Pansies are another garden staple flower that don’t get their due because we all just take them for granted. Normally considered an annual, they provide multiple years of color in my Seattle garden in patio pots. Their strong seasons are spring and fall–they flag in hot weather and in winter they prepare to bloom and sometimes jump the gun a bit, throwing out flowers before a snow or hard freeze resulting in ruined blooms. This doesn’t slow them down much–they keep throwing flowers up until they get the timing right.
Future plans for these plants are to grow a few from seed each year to pop into pots where needed.
This fun cactus has large flowers for its size. I don’t remember where my original plant came from. I moved it to the greenhouse and it is surviving. This year, I transferred it to a trough garden with a few other succulents. Cactus tend to survive in my greenhouse but not thrive due to the lower light. There are a lot of big trees around that block direct sun.
I’m hoping this plant will bloom again in the near future and I can add some flower pics to this post.
An early garden memory for me is ordering seed for a specific type of nasturtium when I was probably thirteen years old and growing them on to flowering. It was the first time I remember noticing a clear difference between cultivars. The new seed strain held the flowers up above the leaves more than the old nasturtiums I had grown.
One of the very simple annuals that get taken for granted, nasturtiums have a charm all their own. They are extremely easy to start from seeds, which germinate quickly and the seedlings run to flower very quickly, too. The leaves are unusual and attractive, like land-locked mini waterlilies. The flowers come in vibrant colors and feature intricate, interesting forms.
Another charming feature in my garden and greenhouse is that volunteer seedlings pop up where I never planted them for years after the original plants were grown.
There is a dark side to growing these plants–black fly aphids. These pests will smother my nasturtiums and wear them down to nothing in the early summer. They can be controlled by spraying them off with a strong jet of water, but I often don’t get to that until it is too late. Luckily, the black fly season is a short one and I can start new nasturtiums after the initial aphid attack and get blooming plants from mid-summer on.
My future plans for nasturtiums are to enjoy any volunteers that appear and to order some seeds that I can sneak into my patio pots to fill in early before the slower plants get started.
It is time to plant spring-blooming bulbs here in Seattle now. Somehow I didn’t highlight crocus back in the spring. They are one of my favority spring blooms. They come earlier than almost any others and they have a cheery grace that reminds me that no matter how dreary the winter has been, spring is just a few weeks away.
Species crocus like C. tommasinianus seem to be more perennial in my garden. I’ve planted the larger-flowered hybrids and found that they disappear in a year or two. When it comes to photographing flowers, crocus make excellent models. There is something about their substance and the play of light on and through them that really lights them up.
I tried a few more types this last year. They struggled a bit with the weather and the rough ground they were planted in, but below is what they ended up looking like.
Future plans for these plants are simply to add more of them. I order bulbs pretty much every year and then its just a waiting game to see if they come back for a second year.
