I love irises. Which is dangerous, because I happen to live in one of the hottest spots in the country for iris breeding, growing, and sales. Within an hour, I can be at Schreiner’s, Mid-America Garden, or Mt. Pleasant Iris Farm. Or Aitken’s Salmon Creek Garden, which is where I went today. Here’s what I saw. Salmon Creek Garden is… Read more →
There are some choice gardens on the Association of Northwest Landscape Designers Garden Tour this Saturday, June 17, on Portland’s west side. How do I know? I got a sneak peek last week! Here’s what I saw, along with 15 great landscaping ideas. Stick around til the end, and you can enter to win a ticket to the tour yourself. #1 River… Read more →
“Nothing you see here is by accident,” said our tour guide, Rolland O’Dell, when I went to the Portland Japanese Garden last month. Japanese gardens are very deliberate. Every element has purpose and meaning. Taking a guided tour when you go to the Portland Japanese Garden—or any Japanese garden—is the way to go if you don’t already understand this style of… Read more →
“Our plants won’t croak!” If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you’ve probably seen Little Prince of Oregon plants with their trademarked frog tags at Fred Meyer and at your local garden center. I recently got the chance to go behind the scenes at this closed-to-the-public wholesale nursery in Aurora (30 minutes south of Portland) along with some of my… Read more →
Win a $40 gift certificate to Joy Creek Nursery! JCN opens for the 2017 season this Saturday, February 25. (They do mail order, too.) But first, a visit to this amazing nursery in Scappoose, Oregon, 20 miles northwest of Portland. I was invited to Joy Creek recently, along with some of my garden blogger friends, by co-owners Maurice Horn and… Read more →
Portland has had a horrendous winter. Multiple ice storms, lower than average temperatures, and a single freak snowstorm that dumped nearly a foot of snow have taken a toll, and not just on our spirits. Plants have been heaved out of the ground, broken in two, killed outright by cold. This is good news for nurseries, as people will be… Read more →
“That’s my favorite tree in the garden,” said Roger Gossler, as we gazed at a dazzling katsura tree in peak fall color at Gossler Farms Nursery in Springfield, Oregon. He said it was a Cercidiphyllum magnificum, not a Cercidiphyllum japonicum, as I had thought. I asked him what the difference was, and he said that C. magnificum stays smaller and has a more arching,… Read more →
If you’ll be in the Portland area this Saturday, June 18 from 10am to 4pm, mark your calendar for the ANLD’s (Association of Northwest Landscape Designers) 12th Annual Designers Garden Tour to get some great landscaping ideas. Here’s what I saw when I got a sneak peek of these seven fantastic eastside gardens last week. The Wagner garden is a lush… Read more →
This Saturday, June 11, garden lovers will get to visit five fabulous gardens in the annual Garden Conservancy/HPSO (Hardy Plant Society of Oregon) Open Days Tour. This year’s tour, “Northern Exposure: Glorious Gardens in Clark County,” is situated in the area of Vancouver and Battle Ground, Washington. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek Sunday with a couple… Read more →
McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon is a former poor farm turned restaurant/hotel/brewery/winery/theater/golf course. Heck, they even have a glass-blowing studio. Of course, my favorite attraction is the incredible landscaping! Here are a dozen interesting and unusual plants I saw there this year while exploring the grounds (in chronological order, more or less). Pretty sure I killed this as a houseplant… Read more →
