In conjunction with the garden open, some of the Northwest’s best specialty nurseries will be present selling their coolest and most exciting plants in typical multi-nursery-sale fashion. As usual we are glad to accommodate special requests but you’ll have to get yours in by about 7:30 tomorrow morning!

There will also be the opportunity to hear Mr Hinkley talk about the past and future of Heronswood, and Kelly Dodson and Sue Milliken of Far Reaches will be giving a presentation as well.

This event is getting a lot of press, including the following:
Seattle Times – Ciscoe Morris
Kitsap Sun

After your Hersonwood visit, don’t forget to leave time to stop off at Dragonfly Farms Nursery where you can shop not only from their inventory of unusual stuff, but also from Phocas Farms who will be selling all kinds of exciting hardy succulents this weekend!

If that isn’t enough incentive to visit, this weekend is also Viking fest in Poulsbo. How much more excitement can you possibly ask for? But come to Heronswood first.

Looks like it’s going to be big, so hopefully we will see you there!

So first, we have the Bloedel Reserve sale. This did not go as well for us as last year did, for a variety of reasons. I think the rain part of Saturday and most of Sunday certainly didn’t help – and it was very cold – nor did being in a corner rather than the middle of the sale. However I think the main problem was that there were several high-value items that sold “like hotcakes” (now there’s a worn-out expression) last year, that we simply did not have available this year. For example, last year we sold over $500 worth of Grevillea victoriae subsp. nivalis ‘Murray Valley Queen’ at this sale: this year we only have 4” pots of it which were scarcely noticed.

That non-availability of our most popular plants was our main problem, was confirmed in my mind when Hortlandia, the sale in Portland, was also down from last year. Although we brought a ton of cool stuff, much of it was apparently too obscure for shoppers to get excited about, and/or too small to look impressive. In general we have been kind of low on 1 gallon plants lately, which are generally our best value for those shopping on-site or at these plant sales. (Never fear though: we’ve been potting up all through the spring and many more will be in the pipeline soon!) Everyone else I talked to said they did about the same as last year or better, so there is no blaming sale attendees for our performance. Not that I ever would, of course!

The Rhododendron Species Foundation sale was also down for us, but up for everyone else. I had more competition this year than last from vendors offering similar items, and the weather was bad on the first day of the sale when the real plant nerds came out. Actually, I really liked the combination of vendors we had, since so many cool plants were available. But ultimately I had the same problem: I could not supply enough of the really “hot” plants people want.

We think our 4” pot size (and band pots) is certainly great for mail-order. They are easy to pack and ship in a box and we make sure they are well-rooted before they go out, so they will take right off once they are planted. The only problem is they just don’t make that much of an impression when you see a bunch of tiny little things on a table.

So what lesson, if any, have I learned? Well, two things. First of all, don’t try to build a greenhouse in the spring, which was what I did in 2012. Building a greenhouse while maintaining the rest of the nursery last spring was bad news, because it sucked so much time away from all the other work I needed to be doing – including, of course, potting up plants. That is probably the main reason we have been generally short on 1 gallon plants this spring. So I won’t let that happen again. The next greenhouse I build will be in the fall, which is what I always used to do anyway.

The other thing I have learned is that people definitely go for particular plants at these sales, and it does not always work so well to bring just anything. I guess that might seem like a no-brainer at first, but you have to keep in mind that all of our plants are cool. It is not like we are growing stuff that isn’t worth having. But some plants sell better simply because they are better known, or because they appeal to impulsive shoppers.

I have had the idea for a year or so that I ought to actually produce – as in, propagate and grow – a particular set of plants in advance just for each sale (or for a “cluster” of sales, such as the one I just survived). I wonder if any other nurseries ever do this. The standard practice, I think, is just to grab whatever looks good at the time and try to sell it as fast as possible. I’m starting to think it can’t hurt to be more calculated. A couple of caveats may be the potential for crop failures, and limitations of greenhouse space set aside for such plants. And how do I know months in advance what’s going to be hot? I’ll have to think on this for a while.

So, that was April. I’m glad for the opportunity to stay focused on the nursery at home for a while. The nursery is looking pretty good, and I think will only get better as open house time approaches. The hot weather is certainly causing things to burst into growth. It was 86 degrees yesterday in Sequim, which must be some kind of record for early May! On the other hand quite a bit of time is getting sucked away on watering and mowing when I need to be potting up. But we still have most of the plants under sprinklers so it’s not too bad. All in all, I’m feeling pretty good about this spring vs. last year. More later!

Bloedel Sale – staying dry!

Hordes of plant-crazed people at Hortlandia. Indoors, so not raining – yay.

Rhododendron Species Foundation sale – cloudy, but no longer raining.

Greenhouse full of manzanitas at Cistus Nursery. We are about 1/3 of the way towards our goal of having something like this here. LOL.

Many of you will know Laine and Duane at Steamboat Island Nursery, having purchased some of the unusual and exotic plants they have offered over the years from their small specialty nursery in Olympia. The sad news is that Duane has passed away last week from injuries incurred when he was struck by a Sound Transit train on his way to the Mariner’s season opener on April 8. I have been asked to pass along this news to anyone in the local horticulture/gardening community who knows them or is interested in helping in some way. They are hoping to be able to provide some much needed financial assistance for Laine, and are accepting donations to this end to the nursery address, 8424 Steamboat Island Road, Olympia, WA 98502. Quoting the article linked below (which see), “An account to cover funeral costs was created at Twin Star Credit Union, P.O. Box 718, Olympia, WA 98507-0718. Checks should be made to “Laine McLaughlin” and the memo line should say “Duane Heier” and account #411133-00.” If you want to talk donations, or donate cash, talk to Jay Higgins at 3heartsas1@gmail.com You can also send messages to Laine directly to the nursery email: steamboat@olywa.net

If donating money isn’t your thing, you can support the nursery (and hence Laine) by buying their plants. I am not entirely certain which regional plant sales they will be at in the near future – they are not on the list of vendors for Florabundance, which is this weekend, but if I find out any more sales where they will be represented, I will post it here. You can also seek out Steamboat Island Nursery Plants available from this list of nurseries, thus supporting them indirectly.

This article from the Seattle Times provides more details about what happened and how you can help cover expenses related to the accident.

So let’s remember Duane and keep Laine and the Steamboat Island Nursery staff in our thoughts through this difficult time. I may have to make some editions/corrections to this post as I find out more. Thanks for reading.

Steamboat Island Nursery at my last visit, September 2008.

This weekend, you can find us at the Bloedel Reserve Premier Plant Sale and Open House. Not only will all the best nurseries of the Olympic/Kitsap Peninsulas represented (as well as some farther afield), but there will be a rare plant auction, numerous lectures, and the chance to see the Reserve and its gardens for free. The dedicated Bloedel folks are putting out so much publicity about this, it is certain to be huge! I should mention that, since this sale has been very good for all involved, the participating nurseries here tend to bring a LOT of stock, including all the coolest and rarest treasures! For more information see http://www.bloedelreserve.org/event-calendar/premier-plant-sale

Then, the following weekend, we will be in Portland for Hortlandia on April 13 – 14. This sale is probably now the biggest and best in the Northwest. With over 100 (!) nurseries present it is well worth the drive from the Seattle area. In fact, in our first year of participation in this sale last year, I met people from as far away as Bellingham, Boise and Sacramento who came to this sale because they thought it was the best one, period! And I would agree – it’s a whole expo hall full of plants! And if you’re in Portland, well, you’re just lucky to have this event in your home town. Let us know what you want, and we’ll bring it! http://www.hardyplantsociety.org/hortlandia

Finally, on April 19 – 20, we will be in Federal Way for the Rhododendron Species Foundation Sale. This would be a great chance for those of you in the South Sound area to come and say hi or pick up certain plants you might be wanting. There are lots of other great vendors here as well in what we think is an excellent combination that cannot usually be found in one place at any of the other sales. http://rhodygarden.org/cms/2013-spring-plant-sale/

This weekend I will be giving a talk during the Bloedel Reserve sale; it is on Sunday at 1 pm and will be about Southern Hemisphere plants. I will attempt to sort out which are hardy and which are not. Since I have killed so many of them I feel well qualified to talk about this! Bring your questions, and I’ll bring lots of cool plants!

Then when that’s over, we can get back to our usual spring frenzy of potting up stuff as fast as possible and never leaving the nursery – ha ha.

Thanks for reading! If you can’t make it to any of these events, you’ll hear from us again in May some time before our first open house of the year, at the end of the month. Until then,

Ian & Co.
The Desert Northwest

And one slight addendum if you will. Those of you with an interest in Heronswood and current happenings there will want to be aware of an event this Saturday being hosted by the Port Gamble S’Klallam Foundation. Their description of the event is as follows.

Heronswood: Past, Present and Future
Saturday, April 6th from 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

The Port Gamble S’Klallam Foundation has announced a multi-media presentation by plantsman Dan Hinkley, together with Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribal Chair, Jeromy Sullivan. Hinkley, one of the co-founders of Heronswood, will talk about the past and what’s happening currently to restore the gardens that are treasured by so many people around the world. Sullivan will talk about plans for the future, including the formation of a steering committee and some exciting garden events happening this year.

Before the presentation, visitors will be able to experience a performance by the S’Klallam Singers. Coffee, tea and pastries will be available. There’s a suggested donation of $5 per person, which will benefit the garden fund.

This event will be held at the House of Knowledge Longhouse on the Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation, 31964 Little Boston Road NE, Kingston, WA 98346.

So, while we welcome you to follow us on Facebook if you’re not already doing so – we would ask that you modify your settings for our page, and any other you wish to follow in any serious way, by hovering over the “Like” button at upper right of The Desert Northwest Facebook page and selecting “Show in News Feed.” Otherwise there isn’t much point, since you will miss most of our posts.

Now as long as I’m doing this, I may as well repost the Facebook posts onto my blog to reach the broadest possible audience. Anyway, I should be talking more about our plants on this blog in general, since they are all so cool. I’ll do several at a time so things don’t get too hard to keep up with.

My current theme is confiers. All of the following are currently in stock with plenty of plants available, and you can find them described here.

Last week the glossy purple-ish color of Podocarpus lawrencei ‘Purple King’ caught my eye – I say “purple-ish” because the purple undertones of this plant are always very pronounced but it would be misleading to say it is really purple. This is a great plant and is easy to grow in sun or part shade, and is hardy to at least the single digits. It is more vigorous than a lot of the other small-needled Podocarpus and can compete with established tree roots. With dark purplish winter color and soft, pale purplish new growth, it’s pretty different, and pretty cool!

Sticking with the Podocarpus theme here, Podocarpus salignus is a real gem of a plant. The beautiful weeping foliage is appealing at all seasons, but especially in late spring when the new growth emerges a soft light green. It looks every bit as exotic as the (relatively) tender Afrocarpus (Podocarpus) gracilior, but it is native to central Chile which has a similar climate to the Pacific Northwest. (We also have a report of it performing well in the Southeast, unlike many Chilean plants.) And, it doesn’t get too big – though it can reach tree size in many years in the wild, it will remain shrub-sized for many years in gardens. Hardy to about 10 degrees, it is probably not suited to really cold frost pockets in the Northwest, but well worth the effort elsewhere.

What’s one of the best-known distinctive trees in the Northwest yet still quite hard to find in nurseries? (not to mention expensive) Monkey puzzle tree, of course. I’m not sure what this tree has to do with monkeys, since it is native to Chile and Argentina. Monkey dinosaurs perhaps. But I digress. It’s also quite a bit hardier than people think (-15F?), as evidenced by a 20+’ tall specimen in Kennewick, and this old tree in Weed, CA. We have plenty of these available now at a reasonable price – get ‘em before we bump them up to larger pots!!

The Tasmanian Huon Pine, Lagarostrobos franklinii, is one of the most elegant of the temperate Southern Hemisphere conifers. It takes centuries to reach tree size in the wild, and perhaps almost never does in gardens, where it is usually seen as an irregular shrub to perhaps 5 – 7′ tall and wide, with plumes of soft, hanging, deep green, scaly foliage. A distinctive and slightly odd beauty, it is certainly hardy in sheltered Northwest gardens, though it appreciates some summer water.

Was that exciting or what? Really though… when the plants offered by normal nurseries continue to become increasingly homogenous, it is fun to grow something different.

OK, final note on the web update that was supposed to happen by mid-February. I think I have figured out that I need to try something different this year; namely, to update the web site little by little instead of shooting for all at once (I can hear some of you saying “DUH”… OK, I’m slow!). So that is the new plan. And perhaps it will actually work. After all, that is pretty much how I do everything else, or else I could never do it. I’ll start making some little changes in the next few days and post back here soon! At the very least, I need to make the web site look less outdated, even if it is not, in fact, outdated – there is not much on our list from last year that we are not still able to supply. Which is a long way of saying we still have almost all this stuff in stock. But if you’re wondering about any specific items before you place your order, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Sequim Garden Show – March 16, 17 – Sequim, Washington

Bloedel Reserve Premier Plant Sale and Open House – April 6, 7 – Bainbridge Island, Washington (Directions)

HORTLANDIA (Hardy Plant Society of Oregon) – April 13, 14 – Portland, Oregon

Rhododendron Species Foundation Spring Plant Sale – April 19, 20 – Federal Way, Washington

Heronswood Open House – May 18 – Kingston, Washington (still waiting on an official announcement for that one)

(First ever) Spring Open House! – May 31st, June 1st ONLY! – here at the nursery in Sequim.

Sorticulture – June 7 – 9 – Everett, Washington. We are now confirmed to participate in this sale, a new one for us this year.

Summer Open House! – July 26 – 28 – here at the nursery in Sequim.

Fronderosa Frolic – August 10 – Gold Bar, Washington

September Open House! – September 6 – 8 – here at the nursery in Sequim.

Salem Hardy Plant Society Fall Sale – September 14 – Salem, Oregon. I have not absolutely confirmed this sale yet, but as it is the only regional fall plant sale of its kind in western Oregon, chances are excellent that we will do it.

Northwest Horticultural Society Fall Sale – September 20, 21 – Seattle, Washington – also not confirmed, but we have done it every year in the past.

On our open house dates, we regret having to make a couple changes – especially the September one – since it would be nice to have had these really finalized from the get-go. However one other regional plant sale made a late change forcing us to work around it. Hopefully nothing else will change, but if anything does we will be sure to post it here!

Of course, remember, these are not your only opportunities to shop for our plants, since you can also make an appointment to visit any time we are available. We will be glad to have you.

So as long as I’m typing, I’ll get in my plug for the Sequim Garden Show, which is now just a week away. This sale is good for me since it helps me to get my butt in gear and get a little more focused for the upcoming season. It is a fun and easy going atmosphere and the folks are always so nice. The horticultural interest here is pretty impressive for a small town show, I might add. In addition to the exciting selection of plants we will be bringing (lots of Chilean and New Zealand plants this year), you won’t want to miss all the cool Sedums and succulents from Phocas Farms, and many other nurseries will be representing at the show.

Finally – and I will announce this again later – I will be giving a presentation at the Bloedel Reserve during their open house on April 7th at 1 pm. You can come and hear me talk about “Southern Hemisphere Plants: Discerning the Hardy from the Tender” – so bring all your hardiness questions about your favorite Southern Hemisphere Plants! I probably have your answer, since I have killed hundreds of them, and kept excellent records.

Organic Gardening magazine has just produced a splendid article featuring six “young horticulturists” who are each pursuing their passions in their own special ways. This article was fun and I really enjoyed reading it – I hope you will too. I think out of the six I most identify with Brienne, especially when she said “I have found nothing else to be as satisfying as seeing newly formed roots on a cutting.” Yeah I am kind of weird that way myself, no doubt about it! I suppose, however, I am older than all these people, so I hope I can still get away with considering them my peers and calling myself “young.”

Then we have Riz Reyes (featured in the above article, BTW), for whom congratulations are in order for pretty much stealing the show at the 2013 Northwest Flower and Garden Show. His ‘The Lost Gardener’ garden (is that redundant? sorry) was so well executed that it won numerous awards including the founders award. We are honored to have been able to contribute a few plants to this garden. It appears Riz really went out of his way to get the coolest and best plants, lending credence to my personal theory that 2/3 of the secret to a great garden is to avoid boring plants. Sounds like a no-brainer but some people who design gardens (including some of the ones at the show) still don’t get it. Anyway, enough about that – we wish to publicly congratulate Riz on his success! Way to go Riz!

(Update 3/7: Check out more pics of ‘The Lost Gardener’ and a great write-up at Danger Garden!)

To follow up on my last post, I ought to say a little bit about what’s going on at the nursery. I still have not done anything with the web site, but I have actually been working extra hard outside getting geared up for spring. Most years it seems like spring always gets away from me before I can get on top of things, so this year I am determined not to let that happen. Last year at this time I injured my shoulder snowboarding and couldn’t do much lifting for a month. Two years ago it snowed about this time, plus I was committed to the Flower and Garden Show which sucked away a bunch of my time. (This year I did not even attend – oops.) So this year I am going to get done what I need to get done here at the nursery to make it look awesome for summer open houses and sales, with tons of cool plants available and looking sharp earlier than last year. Hopefully I’ll do the web site soon enough as well. Wish me luck!

I should also mention that almost all the plants on the mail-order list are still available. And please don’t hesitate to ask if you want to check availability of something in particular.

Finally, on a sad note, we wish to lament the passing (about a week and a half ago) of retired King County extension agent George Pinyuh. He was a pioneer of cold hardy cactus and succulent gardening west of the Cascades, having attempted at least a couple hundred species; and was also an avid enthusiast of broadleaf evergreens. To others I don’t doubt he was much more, but I will remember him for his enthusiasm about under-appreciated plants and generosity in sharing them. We hope to honor his memory by getting a lot of the plants we have from his collection into general production (mostly from small cuttings… so it will be a while) with the promotion and recognition they deserve.

I think that will be all for now!

Here’s a pic that I don’t think has seen the light of day (I can’t imagine why not) – George Pinyuh talking to some weird long-haired dude, his cactus garden in the foreground, October 2006.

But no, it’s nothing that interesting. For as crazy as I was for starting a nursery, there are still times when I must confess to having the limitations of being a real person. So from about October through early December or so I went through a period of mild, shall we say, “burn out.” Like I felt like I just needed to give myself a little break for once.

It was, as I said, quite mild, and not too serious. And I think it is over now (maybe… LOL) or else I would probably not be admitting to it. Rather than leaving everything in a state of complete abandonment, I have still been working on the nursery, and it is still looking pretty good, other than the wind throwing empty pots all over the place on Christmas Day (I’m actually glad I wasn’t here when that happened—that must have been some serious wind!). I have frequently been busy in the greenhouses sticking cuttings, weeding, and moving plants. I am nearly on schedule with all my “fall” propagation projects (it’s still fall right?), though I will admit there are a few other projects I have been putting off. We continued to fill orders for fall shipping until Hurricane Sandy and the elections brought an abrupt, early end to the shipping season. However I have suddenly gotten swamped with orders this week, which is inspiring. (If it takes us a week or two to send your order, that is because it is supposed to get cold this weekend.)

What I have not been doing is diligently is following the blogs, forums, and facecrack, I mean spacebook groups that I had been checking regularly up till a few months ago. So, without worrying about it too much, I apologize for that.

So in theory, I hope to be back to my regular schedule of 2 – 4 blog posts per month. But for the moment we are just shooting for one occurrence!

What’s next, you ask? Well, I hope to provide an updated list to the web site in the future, but I had better not promise just when, since it always takes longer than I expect. Let’s shoot for mid-February. That is a nice goal. I also have a couple of plant expeditions to report on. Briefly, we went back to the Columbia Gorge area again (I think I said that earlier) the last weekend of September. I also got to go on a trip with Mike Lee and Vor Hostetler of Colvos Creek Nursery the weekend after that, in which we explored the Siskyou/Klamath region of southwest Oregon and Northern California. I had not been there in six years so that was exciting.

So I will, of course, provide full reports on both these trips soon, but I got a bit hung up on it because I did not know the manzanitas of that region well enough to positively identify most of the plants I saw. Fortunately for me, Sean Hogan of Cistus Nursery came to the rescue and took some time to look through a bunch of my Arctostaphylos pictures from our trip. He may be one of the few people in the world besides me for whom that would not be boring. We definitely found some interesting things on that trip and I learned much about Arctostaphylos taxonomy.

We also re-visited Far Reaches Farm, Colvos Creek Nursery (full-post feature to come soon), and a place that I had not been to in years, Xera Plants. Xera sells wholesale only but you can find their plants at retail outlets throughout the Northwest who know what is cool. It was inspiring to see how clean their nursery looked. Kelly and Sue at Far Reaches returned from a plant hunting trip to China recently, which you can read about here.

Sometimes exciting things crop up right in your own backyard. We finally got around to visiting a nursery called Phocas Farms. They specialize in Sedums and Sempervivums and are only 20 minutes away from us. Of course these plants are not hard to find in general (particularly if you want common types), but it is hard to find a nursery that grows a large variety of them including many rare species and varieties, and actually knows the names for all their plants! As there are about 12,000 kinds of Sedum (I exaggerate only slightly) this is no small feat, but owners Jim and Kathy Robinson have managed to do it. Phocas Farms sells at a handful of regional plant sales, and at certain farmers markets in season, including the Port Townsend and Port Angeles farmers markets. They can be contacted at luddite@olypen.com.

But wait, there’s more! We also had the privilege of visiting Derek Clausen, a first class plant geek with an amazing collection of rare conifers, southern Hemisphere plants, and other super obscure, rare things in his garden in Snohomish. We are grateful to him for his generosity in sharing plant material and for being one of the favorite customers of not only our nursery but other specialty nurseries both locally and throughout the country as well. His garden is living proof that doing business with specialty nurseries can result in an amazing yard!

I will also be providing a list of this year’s regional plant sale and open house dates before the end of the month. A few things aren’t quite finalized yet. But we have decided we are moving the open house events all to “regular” weekends and away from holiday weekends. We now think that trying to do one on Lavender Festival weekend was probably (on balance) a bad idea, despite the potential to catch more traffic.

In more miscellaneous news, Sean also tells us that the Arctostaphylos patula discussed in my previous post (of course I’m back to talking about manzanita… it had to happen) was originally sourced from Underwood Mountain, just on the Washington side of the gorge. This is significant as it means that a large, reasonably-pure-appearing version of A. patula can be said to be native to Washington State. This area is now quite heavily developed (the part I visited in 2011, at least) but it might pay to look higher up the mountain in the future. He was able to learn this from one of his employees who knows the person who planted it – wow, small world.

Finally, I have it that the two impressive specimens of Nolina nelsoni at the Center for Urban Horticulture are to be moved, and one (perhaps both?) already has. This is a special plant that is super-rare in Seattle, yet appears to be perfectly hardy; growing into a blue-colored, Dr.-Seuss-esque tree with a round head of stiff pointy leaves atop a very slow growing, but eventually tall, trunk. It can certainly survive transplanting at a large size: I have seen growers do it in the Southwest. My concern is that early winter is the worst possible time to do it. I hope they survive!! They are not going far, I hear – just to another part of the CUH campus.

That may be all the news that’s fit to print. Thanks for reading and for your continued interest.

A very mysterious manzanita we found near Orleans, California. It looks an awful lot like A. densiflora (which is not supposed to occur that far north), but is it? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out!

Xera Plants looking sharp.

Flats of Sedums and Sempervivums at Phocas Farms.

Derek’s Garden – just one little part of it, of course.

Nolina nelsoni, Center for Urban Horticulture, from a photo I took way back on February 9, 2005. The cool plant at left with big fuzzy leaves is Pachystegia insignis, which froze out in (I think) 2008, sadly.

What’s so special about that, you ask? Well, I should provide a little background information.

Greenleaf manzanita is considered to be native to Washington State, but we have learned that it is not at all easy to find and must be considered very rare here. Across the border in Oregon it becomes much more common, where huge specimens are all over the place in eastern Hood River County and western Wasco County, their range extending south from there. In Washington, it has been recorded from Klickitat County and Chelan County.

So far as we have seen, though, these plants occurring in these counties are mostly hybrids with pinemat manzanita (A. nevadensis) or kinnikkinnik (A. uva-ursi), and not clearly, genetically pure A. patula. How do we know? Well, the best we can answer is that we have been looking at them long enough to get a feel for the morphological “center” of these species – as far as key characters such as leaf size and color, plant size, fruit color, and more. With an expectation of “what they are supposed to look like,” we feel like it is possible to make judgments on when something is more or less genetically pure and when it shows evidence of hybridization. Of course, it would take a serious genetic study of these plants to truly sort them out, but we have to do this the old fashioned way basing our judgments on morphology.

An important source of information regarding the distribution of native plants is the WTU Herbarium website, on which we find only a few records of A. patula from Klickitat County. Four of these are from the town of Bingen. (The other one is from near Glenwood: more on that in a moment.) However, we have done quite a bit of driving around Bingen and never managed to find one. So have Mark and Lila at Fairmeadow Nursery. These records are all very old so there is a good chance someone built a house on top of it/them. On the other hand a little more searching the hills around town just might turn up some plants. I have done a little of that on each of my two visits to the area, and I have not found anything yet, but I have still not really devoted enough time to it.

So this is why the plant in White Salmon – just up the hill from Bingen – was an exciting find. Could this be a remnant of the “Bingen population” of A. patula? That is certainly a possibility. But there is a catch. It is worth noting that this plant looks very different from the Glenwood plants. The Glenwood plants are low growing, show evidence of hybridization with A. nevadensis, and very scattered within a population of even lower, clearly hybrid plants: in fact, I think these are all hybrids, since none of them is taller than about 2′ or have leaves as dark as the White Salmon plant. By contrast, the White Salmon plant looks very much like the Mt. Hood area forms of A. patula across the river in Oregon.

So the question remains: did someone plant this, or did it grow here by itself as the last remnant of a now lost population of A. patula in the White Salmon/Bingen area? It is very unlikely that this plant was purchased at a nursery, since nurseries almost never offer it; but it may have been dug from the wild in Oregon and replanted (which usually doesn’t work, but it might have survived as a seedling). The fact that this plant looks so different from the Glenwood plants, and similiar to Mt. Hood plants, might lead me to suspect that possibility. But on the other hand, Glenwood isn’t all that close to White Salmon, so why shouldn’t an A. patula in White Salmon (or Bingen) look like the ones across the river in Oregon? (Although… to complicate things further… we have never seen it at such a low altitude in Oregon. The White Salmon plant is at just 700′ while in the Mt. Hood area it seems to occur pretty much above 2,000′. The Glenwood plants are all at about 1,400′.)

I guess the thing to do would be to talk to the property owner. We didn’t really have time to pursue that over the weekend, but perhaps if I go back next year…

To start with, some of you might be wondering by now, what’s a dryland plant? Is that different from a native plant? Had I been giving myself a little more time to proofread and edit these posts for clarity, I would have been more careful to define terms first. Oh well, better late than never.

Furthermore, it may have sounded like I contradicted myself by stating (essentially) most native plants like shade, “and thus make poor choices for urban gardens” and then going on to allude to all these exciting native plants that are out there that people “should be growing.” Huh? – am I making sense at all? What are all these supposedly great plants that are out there; and if they’re so great, why don’t we know about them already? This post is to clear up some of these questions, and to hopefully get gardeners a little more excited about some of our lesser-known native species.

So, here is the deal with native plants, and dryland plants. It is easy to look at an undisturbed native forest and be overawed at the grandeur of giant trees. We think, wow, here nature is at its climax! – and rightly so. Where it is easy to go wrong is when we conclude that this “climax” supports the widest possible selection of native species. We often have a seemingly inherent tendency to associate lushness with diversity. Perhaps that is because we have all been taught that the amazon rainforest contains tens of thousands of species per acre, or something. Which may be true, but things are different in the tropics.

In reality, in the Pacific Northwest, as well as many other temperate regions of the world (one might make an exception for China, but I have never been there), a mature native forest supports only a relatively limited number of plant species. They represent a climax of successional maturity, but not of diversity. To find the greatest diversity of plants, you have to look elsewhere than our lowland forests. Plant diversity increases as you go up in altitude (exposed subalpine and alpine areas), and east (rainshadows and deserts), as well as south. Basically, the more trees you leave behind, the more room you have for a diverse range of sun-loving dryland species. That is why it is easily possible to “get out in nature” in western Washington and not see much of horticultural interest, until you venture away from the lowlands.

So, if we’re looking for interesting native plants to add to our gardens, we need to look up (alpine natives) and east (dryland natives). Now some of you might be thinking, “But I don’t want a rock garden!” (I can’t imagine why not, but we won’t go there for now.) Ok, so skip the alpines, and just go with dryland natives. There are still hundreds from which to choose (well, potentially, if nurseries start growing them).

Dryland native plants are those that occur in the open forests and deserts on the east slope of the Cascade range and beyond, and in a few localized drier places on the west side, especially within the Olympic Rainshadow. That means west of the Cascades, these plants are not common in the wild, nor are they as diverse as on the east side. The important thing characterizing all of them is their ability to tolerate sun, and our period of summer drought. (More broadly, dryland plants can those be from anywhere in the world that occur in similar dry open forests, deserts, or scrub: think of the Mediterranean region, for example. But that goes beyond the topic of this post.)

Now fortunately for us, urban gardens offer the perfect situation for many dryland plants (native or otherwise). Sometimes older neighborhoods are heavily treed; but many are not: there are large areas of the city with plenty of sun. It is in the city that rockeries to provide drainage, walls to reflect heat, and pavement abound. Also, water tends to be expensive: why plant stuff that is going to need a lot of water for its whole life? Dryland plants and urban gardens really are a match made in heaven, if not in a “hell strip.”

What kind of plants am I talking about? Well, when was the last time you saw a Ribes aureum or Artemisia tridentata in a Seattle garden? How about never? Because when you go to a nursery specializing in native plants, they mostly sell the usual limited palette of boring, lowland forest plants, and maybe a few of the easiest and most common alpines (Potentilla fruticosa, Artemisia ludoviciana). This, I suppose, is largely from a lack of awareness that so many other great native plants exist; and to the extent that nurseries are aware of them, they haven’t figured out how to grow them yet, and/or recognized the potential market for such plants.

So, what to do if you want to learn more about these plants? We Northwesterners seem to be somewhat lacking in resources for people interested in exploring and growing our native plants. There are some field guides available of varying quality, and there may be some books about our native alpines or other web sites devoted to this topic that I am not aware of. (Let me know, please!) The only really noteworthy reference I know of specifically dedicated to the cultivation of Northwest Native Plants is Arthur Kruckeberg’s Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest. Now before continuing on to discuss a couple of books, I must firmly establish that these are, in fact, excellent and very valuable works, authored by true experts in their field. It’s going to sound like I’m complaining about their shortcomings with nothing positive to say. That is not the case at all: I simply wish to make a point that there is a lot about these plants that we don’t know. The dilemma is, how can a noted author or expert speak with authority on a topic when the knowledge isn’t available in the first place? How do we know whether or not Krascheninnikovia lanata thrives in a sunny Seattle garden until someone has tried it?

So in Kruckeberg’s book, numerous dryland natives are mentioned, but with a lot of talk of “this is really happier east of the Cascades” as if we don’t dare try to grow them on the west side. I cannot help but wonder how many of these have actually been attempted west of the Cascades in the kind of conditions they prefer (i.e. sun, and no summer water once established). The much shorter commentary on these compared to well-known forest natives leads me to suspect that some of these plants may have been attempted once without success and then given up on, or not tried at all. I don’t really know that for a fact, and I may well be entirely wrong; but I do note that some of the comments in this book do not agree with my personal experience. Penstemons, for example, are accused of being “spectacular” but also “short-lived.” “Short-lived” has not been the case for me: they lived for years and years, even when I grew them in rainy Olympia, on heavy clay soil. (Heck, they’re probably still there!) My conclusion: if you want Penstemons to live longer, just don’t water them so much!

And why can’t we extend this principle to most of our other dryland native plants as well? Let’s be sure to give plants a fair chance before we dismiss them. Once again, I don’t know how extensively some of the plants described by Kruckeberg were tried, so I acknowledge the possibility that I may be quite incorrect. Or maybe I’m just halfway incorrect: perhaps half of them will grow here under drier conditions, and half of them still won’t no matter what you try. (Like I said, I have a lot of work to do!) Maybe Kruckeberg’s perspective on dryland plants is reflective of a time when there were still a lot more undeveloped/wooded pockets in the greater Seattle area than there are today: perhaps the region in general felt a little more forested and less urban than it is today, when the book was first authored.

In what is probably my favorite native plant book right now, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest by Mark Turner and Phyllis Gustafson, the authors note that they “put particular emphasis on central and eastern Washington and Oregon and on the Klamath-Siskyou region in southern Oregon and northern California because most other field guides have glossed over these areas.” Wonderful, hooray for them, I say. Now if only gardening references would do the same! Even they, however, admit the shortcomings of their book. It is quite comprehensive, but not quite complete. Some plants are not pictured, only described briefly under the headings for related species; others are skipped over entirely. And of course, since it is not a gardening book, it only describes what the plants look like and where they can be found, not how to cultivate them. (Of course that’s perfectly appropriate for a field guide.) They also exclude any plants that don’t fall under the category of “Wildflowers,” such as our native trees and ferns. And finally, the photography is outstanding and more than worth the price of the book even if it lacked descriptions; but when you only see a close-up flower photo of Purshia tridentata or Luina hypoleuca, you are likely to think “what an ugly little flower” without knowing how cool the plant is when you see a whole one. So that’s not a complaint against the book itself, just an inherent shortcoming of a book of its nature and scope: you can’t get a feel for what many of these plants will look like in their entirety, or how they could potentially be used in the garden, from a book of this type. This book is excellent, and a valuable reference: get it anyways!

So, as far as I can tell, there is not really any one reference that brings it all together, communicating the exciting world of Northwest native plants in its entirety to a broad audience. While Kruckeberg’s book is excellent, I am daring to question whether some of the statements presented are not worthy of challenge. (Also, the book might have achieved broader appeal with more color pictures, especially of more obscure and interesting species. Having color pictures alongside the plants always helps make a book more accessible too, but I know that also makes it more expensive – oh well.) Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest is superb, but it is a field guide, with its inherent limitations. Plants of Western Oregon, Washington and British Columbia by Eugene N. Kozloff contains an excellent collection of photos in the center section, but again most of these are close-up, and the text of the book is primarily botanical in nature with few tips for gardeners. (I won’t comment further on that one, because I haven’t looked at it very much, except for the photos.) And of course Hitchcock and Cronquist are great, but 98% of people, in other words most normal people, are not going to get excited about native plants from reading that!

Anyway, if you want to see more than eight species of garden-worthy native plants, you may need to get off the beaten path. Forget about looking in nurseries. Go explore for them in the wild. Go east! Go up! Follow the field guides and wildflower hike books, but don’t forget to look at everything – the ferns, trees, and plants that may have nondescript flowers but excellent foliage and form. And then recall that they’re perhaps not so difficult to grow as commonly believed. Maybe someday people will figure this out and we will see more of them in our nurseries and gardens.

Ceanothus integerrimus, a dryland naitve that is very showy and easy to grow.

Lomatium utriculatum, “Fine-leaf desert parsley” is a neat little dryland plant that even occurs west of the Cascades. I photographed it here in the Olympic Mountain foothills not far from our nursery.