Leucadendron galpinii is Blooming

It's January, and I have one of the most unusual blooms in my garden as shown below. 

Leucadendron galpinii, Silver Cone Galpin's Conebush.  It can reach a good size (6-8' H X 4-6' W) if grown in the ground, but I have it in a terracotta container in front of the house where I can see its light-green foliage and these unusual silver-grey flower cones.

Bushy, healthy plant with upright stems and narrow soft needle-like leaves. And, it's evergreen!

This is a female plant. Male plants are said to have pom-pom flowerheads that are yellow in color.

At the Valley Nursery, where I bought it, it was marked as a border plant. We are in zone 8b. 

For some winter protection, I placed it close to the big fir tree and other plant containers, where it's easy to throw a cover on the plants if needed. Recent mild winters didn't pose any danger to it so far.

This is July 2019 picture:

Read more >>>

Garden Memories From Last Fall

I realized that if I don't post anything right now, I hurt this blog's feelings... Four months with no posts... it's bad!

So, let me post some garden pictures from last fall.

I am looking at September pictures and can't believe that this is my garden. I spent the whole day cleaning, pruning, weeding and raking the garden, and it's difficult to believe that it will be as lush as the pictures show.  Many plants are showing up from the ground, I see many buds and new growth, but oh, my, what a difference between the September and February garden!

There were several significant projects in the garden last season.

The major change in the front garden was removing one of our fir trees and two cedars belonging to our neighbors. Additional sunlight and less competition from the big trees' roots gave a push to the plants growth on the small hill. Previously, they had stunted growth. Aralia Sun King was a big winner! It bloomed for the first time since I planted it.

Click below to read more

My Summer Garden-2019

Blogging was not a priority during the summer for a very clear reason - gardening!
Fall is also busy, but at least I can choose some pictures of my summer garden, in chronological order.

 Poppies are my love.

Click below to read more

Front Plant Bed at Its Best in 2018

I'd like to share the views of my Front Plant Bed that I think was in its best shape ever last gardening season. And, I know exactly what gave this plant bed its luscious, best ever look.
Of course, many plants reached substantial size and several new important plants have been added (among them, Japanese maple 'Autumn Moon' and Hydrangea 'Oregon Pride').
But, there were two more important elements which I added to this central bed in 2018.

First, one of my potted Red Banana plants (Abyssinian bananas, Ensete ventricosum 'Maurelii') was placed here.
Starting from the spring when I got it out of the garage, tall Red Banana instantly added dramatic effect to the Plant Bed. In summer, when it unfurled its gorgeous dark leaves, it became a star of the Front Garden. What a gorgeous architectural plant it is!

Second, several containers with annuals were placed in the front of the Plant Bed. What's important, those were relatively tall containers, which allowed their flowers to 'float' and fill otherwise empty or dark spaces. For two of these tall pots, I bought hanging baskets and just plopped them into the pots (instant gratification!). From afar, the pots are almost invisible and the flowers look suspended in the air.

Only the central front bed is shown in this post, but the second Banana plant and several identical pots were located  further to the right, on the opposite side of the driveway. It provided a sense of unity and rhythm to the entire front garden.

Abyssinian Banana, big bush of Hydrangea macrophilla 'Oregon Pride', Phormium (New Zealand Flax) and Japanese Maple 'Autumn Moon' are striking plants defining the look of this Plant Bed

It's difficult to overestimate the impact of the Hydrangea macrophylla 'Oregon Pride' in this Plant Bed. 
It's not just the large bright flowerheads that can differ in color on the same bush, but its big leaves and striking burgundy stems that attract attention. 

Click below to read more

My July Garden in Pictures (Washington State, zone 8)

2014 Garden Memories and 'Picture This' Contest Update

Following Saxon Holt's suggestion, I spent several hours going through  my 2014 photo archive and selecting my favorite garden pictures. I then chose one image that is special to me.

The Gardening Gone Wild contest encouraged me to look again at my garden and recall some nice moments from the last year.

It was a good year. I had several new plants blooming for me for the first time. 

Actually, before  this assignment, I didn't realize how many new blooms were there!

Romneya trichocalyx (Matilija Poppy) liked loose sandy soil in the cutting garden:

Peony 'Green Lotus' gave only one bloom, but what a bloom it was!

Talking about peonies, the 'Coral Charm' was a nostalgic reminder of a peony nursery in Kingston, WA that we were lucky to visit right before its closure. 

We are so glad we bought several of these beautiful plants:

Salvia memorosa 'Sensation white', also new in the garden, liked its spot under the leaves of 

Red Banana ( Ensete ventricosum Maurelii):

Himalayan Honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa) was a valuable addition to the garden:

Japanese anemone from my friend's garden gave us a profusion of so simple but oh so elegant blooms:

Meconopsis blue flowers were not new, but they are always exciting:

My old favorite plants showed maturity and didn't disappoint in 2014 either.

As much as I like individual plant pictures, I also enjoy the wide views of my garden.

This shade corner pleases me with spreading groundcovers, tropical look of Tetrapanax and Aralia, neighboring with Rhododendron and grapevine.

The back garden with a small kitchen garden always pleases me with its minimalist color scheme:

In 2014, we continued to watch a growing friendship of Clematis montana and a huge fir tree, admiring how the clematis vine was making its way from the metal arch to the tree branch:

The cutting garden surprised us in 2014 with the height of its plants, such as Joe Pie Weed and Thalictrum rochebrunianum (Meadow rue):

Going through the pictures, I was thinking about my love for tall plants that give a vertical dimension to the garden and serve as exclamation marks:

The pictures reminded me again how important garden ornaments are for creating a mood in the garden. 

For example, the brand new pagoda looked good in summer, but when fall and winter came, it added so much to this corner of the garden:

The same is true about this fleur de lis:

And, animals are important for the garden atmosphere too!

My dog was following me during a clean-up after a windstorm, but looking at this picture, you can think that he was doing all the work and now he is having a break!

Now, at last, the picture I chose fot the contest.

The picture submitted for the Gardening Gone Wild  contest should be with a strong composition that uses the entire frame to tell a story.

'The Unexpected Snow'

I like this picture, which was not staged, and the story behind it. 

It is a story about an unexpected snow that came in late November and about a gardener who was late to hide the garden furniture and accessories in the garage for the winter. Those, who visited my garden, know that this chair belongs to my shade garden and stands in front of my potting bench. I moved it  here to  let it dry after a rain and forgot about it.

The picture doesn't only show the specific moment when the first early snow caught me off guard.  I also can see how much my garden grew and changed in the past ten years and how well it blends with our wooded lot. 

Fir trees create a good natural background for the garden. Garden plants, such as clematis, ligustrum, hydrangea, berberis, etc. coexist nicely with native salal and huckleberry. I also like how clipped boxwoods, which are spread through the garden, fringe the sidewalk and paths and serve as a uniting feature.

For me, it's also a story about the upcoming spring with its daffodils and crocuses as yellow as the chair's fabric and about the sun which we lack so much in the Pacific Northwest during winter.

The story related to this picture is ongoing inasmuch as the splash of bright yellow color serves as a harbinger of future sunny days.

Let's see if the picture follows the principles of a strong composition.

- Simplify the scene. Hmmmm...  I don't think this scene is simple. There are so many elements here: the chair, stepping stone path, plant beds, a curtain of trees in the background, shrubs, grasses, little sculpture in the middle of the potager, ceramic moon on one of the firs... No, the scene is not simple!

- The frame should be filled. Oh, yes! This frame is choke full!

- Place the main object not in the middle. Yes!

- Direct the look of the viewer. Yes! The stepping stones and a sidewalk are my helpers here. My blogging friends know where they lead: to the back patio with the clematis arch, a bird bath, palm trees in containers, through the piece of lawn to the cutting garden.

- Love diagonals! I clearly see diagonals here. Do you? From the chair to the cone boxwood in a terracotta pot, to the row of clipped boxwoods and to another cone boxwood in a terracotta container.

- Show the movement! Well, my eyes are certainly moving from the chair to the other parts of the garden.

- Attention to the background. Well, the background is not simple, but it doesn't consist from alien elements either. Everything in it relates to the same garden theme.

- Colors! Use them creatively. I like the monochrome colors of this shot. Green, white and yellow-brownish hues make the scene calm and peaceful. The yellow color of the chair's fabric, with the light shining through it,  makes the chair a focal point. The yellow pops up from the moment I look at the picture.

All in all, I'd say that the majority of the composition rules are followed in this picture.

Not all, but here comes one more rule:  Break the rules!

That's it. 

As for the snow, it was the only snow so far this winter, and it was nice to catch its short-lasting, fleeting charm (First Snow in My Garden Zone 8a).

A view from the cutting garden to the center of the backyard 

with a patio, bird bath, fir trees  and back border

Berberis thunbergii 'Maria' (Gold Barberry)

 Grapevine Gazebo and Ilex crenata (Japanese holly) hedge

Morning sun

Thanks for walking with me through my garden and thank you, Gardening Gone Wild, for restarting the Picture This photo contest!

***
Update, 2/11/2015:

'Picture This' Contest winners: PICTURE THIS WINNERS- BEST OF 2014

***Copyright 2015 TatyanaS

Autumn Colors In Yang's Nursery: Japanese Maples and Others

This is the time of year when even driving on a highway or in a residential area provides an opportunity to marvel at the colorful foliage palette.
But,  while driving we can't enjoy it to its fullest extent, right? To absorb all the beauty which the fall offers us we need to step on the ground and better yet - on the ground where the beauty is concentrated, isolated from the distractions of the road and this can be all yours for half an hour or around that.
I found such a place for myself, that offers a wonderful, breathtaking show twice a year - Yang's Nursery'.
Here, I can treat myself with a walk through the garden with hundreds of types of maples and other trees, with a talk to its knowledgeable and friendly owners, Mr. and Mrs Yang, and -yes -with a spotting a plant or two for my own garden.
Here are some pictures I took recently. They cover just a small portion of the garden, but there are hundreds of the pictures I posted previously, and there are links to some of them at the end of this post.

1

2

3

4

5

Please click 'Read more...' to see 54 pictures

Green October Hydrangea Bouquets

It's time to cut hydrangea bouquets. 

Some of them will stay in the house, and some will decorate my garden working table through the winter.

Almost all the blue flowers turned green in August.

The majority of the flowers for the bouquets shown below came from the bushes of Nicco Blue which grows in a shady northern border against a wall and in a more sunny back hedge:

What is interesting, is that one of the bushes produced several late blooms which are bright blue.

They look like aliens among dozens of green mop heads.

I believe the flowers that have a purplish hue were cut from an Endless Summer bush.
The whole bush is turning purple right now.
Thus, the Endless Summer plant went from blue to green to purple.
An interesting transformation!

I found some explanation of the green hydrangea heads here: Green Hydrangea Flowers

It is based on the facts that hydrangea blooms are not petals, but sepals.

Here is the abstract from the source:

"There is a cause of green hydrangea blooms. It’s Mother Nature herself with a little help from the French gardeners who hybridized the original hydrangeas from China. You see, those colorful flowers aren’t petals at all. They’re sepals, the part of the flower that protects the flower bud. Why do hydrangeas bloom green? Because that’s the natural color of the sepals. As the sepals age, the pink, blue or white pigments overpower the green so colored hydrangea blossoms often fade to green over time.

Many gardeners believe that color is controlled solely by the availability of aluminum in the soil. Aluminum gives you blue flowers. Bind up the aluminum and you get pink. Right? That’s only part of the story. Those green hydrangea flowers turn color with longer days of light. Light gives those colors the energy to dominate. The color can last for weeks and then you find your hydrangea flowers turning green again. The days are becoming shorter. The blue, pink and white pigments lose energy and fade away. Once again, green hydrangea flowers reign.

But if your hydrangea with green flowers is any of the other types and the blooms refuse to change, you’re the victim of one of Mother Nature’s occasional pranks and horticulturalists have no explanation for the condition. It may be a combination of unusual weather conditions, but no scientific reason has been found. Take heart. Your hydrangea with green flowers should only suffer the condition for a season or two before the plant returns to normal.Sometimes you’ll find a hydrangea with green flowers all season long. If you’re new to the garden or the plant is new to you, and the plant blooms later than its brethren, you might have a variety called “Limelight.” These relatively new plants have much smaller leaves than the big leaf varieties, although their blooms look similar to the mophead hydrangeas. Flowers turning green is natural to this beauty whose blooms begin and end in white but are bred to be green in between those times."

Whatever is the color of your hydrangea, I hope you cut some bouquets and enjoy them!

My garden helper is having a break from his garden duties, and I wish you a restful Sunday!

***Copyright 2014 TatyanaS