2023 Opening Plans & 10 Exciting Plants!

Spring is here and people are asking: Are we going to open the nursery sometime this year or what? The answer is yes, we are, so that’s something. However, we have had another hard winter, which means more work and more preparation to get everything looking presentable. Believe me, I have been very hard at work. I am optimistic that we will have a lot of great stuff looking good by mid-summer or so.

So we’re shooting for a serious opening day of June 17^th, with likely a “soft opening” on June 10^th. The only difference is that I probably will not yet have the mess in front of the greenhouses quite cleaned up by the 10^th, where I have an active work-station for cleaning plants, with tons of pots, soil, tools, etc. hanging about. I think by June 17^th I can make that all go away and mow down some tall grass in this area, and return to cleaning and repotting in the back of the nursery. Then by early to mid July—perhaps sooner, if we’re lucky—it is my hope that ALL the formerly “messy” or neglected areas in the retail space will be completely cleaned up. It just takes a long time for one person get it all done, although we also have had some occasional volunteer help which is much appreciated (you know who you are!).

So to start with, we will be open Saturdays through most of summer, but I’ll probably add a couple Fridays as well, and then maybe add more if people continue to actually show up. Also, the hours will be earlier than they used to—we’re going to close at 2:30 sharp every day we are open. More details to follow on that later.

The other thing people are asking is, am I ever going to update the web list or what? Well it sure looks like I need to, doesn’t it? However, I have been deliberately putting it off. Last year I produced a new list too early, trying to get a jump on the season, and regretted it. This, once again, has to do with the unusually hard winters we have had. I may have already said this last year, but it turns out that when the temperature drops to the low teens, there is quite a bit of damage in the greenhouses (when not heated); and this damage can often take a long time to manifest. In many cases, plants that would normally be hardy in the ground incur major damage in little pots. The top growth may look fine while the roots are dead, and then the whole thing collapses when the weather warms up. So it is really best not to produce a list until everything has sorted itself out. Further problems arise when the list doesn’t reflect what is available and in good health. I know I’m missing out on a lot of early and mid-spring sales when people are itching to buy, which is unfortunate. This summer I hope to look into some passive solar heat options that will hopefully boost overnight winter temperatures in those greenhouses by a few degrees. That could be a game-changer as far as avoiding plant damage in the winter. Maybe.

So, getting to the point here, yes, a new list will be available soon—at the latest, it definitely needs to be up before we open. I’m shooting for the first week of June. Watch this space for updates!

Now to the exciting plants. So I’ve started posting to Facebook—yes, that old dinosaur of a social media platform, but it still seems to be where many in my demographic remain active—one photo per day from our nursery of plants that we have available. Until I can get the web site updated in a more complete sense, people should know what exciting things are in the nursery. Also, it’s not out of the question we’re headed into an economic recession, so it seems prudent to try to sell as much as possible beforehand. So far, there have been no signs of interest in plants and gardening letting up.

Also, somehow over the months and years I have neglected to really pay attention to friend requests on the Facebook. So finally a couple weeks ago, I went through them all and added a bunch of plant people. I will try to add a few more each day. I plan to post mainly about plants and keep obnoxious political discussion to a minimum, even when baited into it. However you may have to tolerate the occasional silly meme or picking on examples of poor gardening taste seen in the wild.

So in this post you can view all photos of the first 10 plants, along with the attendant descriptive text, which I already posted to Facebook over the previous two weeks. It will be good to have a more permanent record here, and some of you plant enthusiasts may not use Facebook. But if you do want to follow along on Facebook and see these the instant they are posted, you can follow me either at my personal page [link] or at the Desert Northwest page [link], or both. If you opt to “like” the nursery page, be sure to also click “follow.”

Each plant picture includes a reminder that you can write to us at mail@desertnorthwest.com for a mail-order price quote, or to arrange an appointment to pick up plants or shop here on site. We also remind people that, for a minimum of $150 (prepaid), we will deliver the plants to any location in Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend, or Kitsap County. (Kitsap customers must accept Sunday delivery.) This gets repetitive but hey, it’s no secret that I’m out to promote our plants and make sure people know how to buy them. We don’t expect most people to want $150 worth of just one plant type, but we hope to tempt you with more and more plants over time as they are added.

Finally, we should remind you that plant sizes larger than the 4” pots are not really meant for mail-order, although we can sometimes also ship the 1-gallons if they are short enough to fit in our boxes without risking damage. Any size of plants are available for pick-up or delivery.

Even more finally, we should note that prices are subject to change, with the latest published prices being applicable, whether here on the blog, or on the web list.

We’ll kick things off with this fancy Ceanothus groundcover, C. gloriosus ‘Heart’s Desire’. It produces DEEP BLUE flowers in late spring and has glossy evergreen leaves. Not like some of the large, rangy Ceanothus groundcovers, its growth habit is low to the ground and it is not terribly aggressive. It should be planted in full sun and is adapted to the dry summers of the West Coast. Truly the groundcover your heart desires, right?

$18 / 4” pot

$22 / 6” square “gallon” pot

Today’s featured plant is Yucca elata subsp. verdiensis. It is a more dwarf form of the trunk-forming Yucca elata; though it does still form a trunk, it tops out at just 4 or 5′ tall with shorter leaves than the species. It is native to central Arizona but is completely hardy to at least -20F, and does fine in the Northwest. It’s also small enough to keep in a large pot. The seed was collected by our friend Jeff in Victoria BC. The second photo is of a mature specimen in habitat.

$22 / 1 gallon pot

It has occurred to me, although we are all about foliage/texture around here, perhaps I ought to post plants that are in bloom when possible. So this is Berberis x stenophylla, an evergreen shrub from Chile that makes an impressive show of bright yellow flowers every spring. It has tough, narrow leaves and is moderately spiny–ideal for a hedge, and deer don’t like it. Completely hardy west of the Cascades, bulletproof, and easy to grow.

$16 / 4” pot

$20 / 1 gallon pot

Today’s plant of the day, Borinda macclureana. It might not look impressive when young, but it matures into one of the more impressive bamboos we can grow in the Northwest. I’ll post a pic in the comments of a mature specimen. It is clumping, eventually forming a huge “fountain” shape of dense foliage. It always remains in a tight clump and is not invasive, however, as with many true clumping bamboos, it forms a rather large footprint through gradual expansion.

Unlike many of our plants, it performs best with some summer water, being native to the eastern Himalayas. It is pretty sun tolerant but is more likely to achieve its full size potential in a sheltered position. We do not recommend it for colder gardens as it may have trouble below 10F. Below 15F it starts to look a little stressed, although our in-ground specimen has survived the last two winters of 11F and 13F respectively, without serious harm. So it’s not TOO wimpy.

$36 / 1 gallon pot

$60 / 2 gallon pot

$72 / 3 gallon pot

$150 / 10 gallon pot (just one available)

Exciting plant of the day #5. This is Berberis darwinii, native to Chile, and the picture of this little 1 gallon plant doesn’t really do it justice. In spring it becomes covered with masses of bright orange flowers which can just about be seen from a mile away. It is evergreen, lightly spiny, and very easy to grow in sun or a little shade.

$16 / 4” pot

$20 / 1 gallon pot

Yesterday was too hot for any of the plants to be exciting. So today we have exciting plant #6, Arctostaphylos tomentosa. This California native plant is ideal for the dry and sunny Northwest garden, making a dense mound about 5′ tall with soft, woolly new growth. It is evergreen and produces clusters of white, bell shaped flowers in the spring, which are followed by red berries in the fall (not generally for human consumption). It has the characteristic red bark common to most manzanitas, and may form an appealing contorted shape over time.

$20 / 4” pot (only 2 available)

$24 / 1 gallon pot

Exciting plant of the day #7, Callistemon sp. ‘Violaceous’. This evergreen shrub has near-purple flowers in the shape of bottlebrushes (a photo is provided in the first comment). Hardy to 10 – 15 F, it takes full sun in stride but can also endure a little shade. It is deer proof and will survive on pretty much any kind of soil with or without irrigation – not at all fussy. There is some uncertainty about the taxonomic status of this plant, but all these seedlings are quite uniform.

$20 / 4” pot

$24 / 1 gallon pot

Exciting plant #8, today we bring you Leptospermum lanigerum, the woolly tea tree from Australia. It is an attractive evergreen shrub with small leaves which are aromatic when crushed, and great texture at all seasons. Small white flowers appear in late spring. It will tolerate any soil including waterlogged soil and heavy clay. It can be pruned to shape or allowed to grow to its eventual full height of 20′ after many years. Our selection is from Seattle area plants that have survived all the cold winters of 1989/90 and should be very hardy in the Northwest (west of the Cascades).

$20 / 6” square “gallon” pot

(Other sizes will be available later in the season)

Exciting plant of the day #9. Today we have not-the-greatest picture of a great plant, Ozothamnus hookeri ‘Sussex Silver’. This silvery plant has a soft texture that blends well with larger leafed plants. It also looks great in a xeric-themed garden although it does not require dry conditions. In fact it is remarkably versatile, tolerating any conditions from sun to part shade and wet or dry soil, even heavy, compacted clay soil. It is hardy to around 5 – 10 degrees and also does well in pots. Although it produces clusters of small, white flowers in spring; this plant is mainly about the foliage.

$16 / 4” pot

$20 / 1 gallon pot

$40 / 2 gallon pot (one available)

Exciting plant of the day #10, Vitis vinifera var. incana. This wine grape is mainly grown for its silky whitish new foliage, although we have had it produce fruit in the greenhouse, and it may also do so outdoors in a hot sunny spot. Looking very Mediterranean, it’s the perfect drought tolerant vine for covering something like an ugly fence – or plant it on something with colorful flowers for contrast. Best in sun.

$36 / 2 gallon pot

Watch this space for more exciting plants and more news!

2023 New Year Update!

At last, 2022, the second worst year after 2020, is drawing to a close. So it must be time for a blog post to describe some of the ostensibly positive things that have happened, or will happen, around our nursery. The original version of this post also included a lot of negative-sounding information, but I thought I would save all that stuff for a future post(s). It’s a new year! Who wants to talk about that? Also, the post was rambling and covered too many subjects at once. This is going to be long enough as it is, and we’ll save all that pessimistic stuff for another day.

The first bit of positive news: We are still here! With the amount of communication coming out of here lately, or the lack thereof, some of you may have been wondering. I still respond to e-mails (wouldn’t want to be that unprofessional), but I tend to be faster if the plants someone wants are available than if they are not. As for the blog, I seem to have gotten into the habit of going from writing blog posts which I never actually manage to publish, to just neglecting the blog for long periods. I do think the blog is worth keeping, however, and there is no need to just abandon it.

Some of those unpublished posts I may still revisit. Others were abandoned for good reason. For example, the December 2021 post-Christmas freeze saw us drop to a low of 11°F, which ties for the all-time low I have recorded since moving here (the old record was from November 24, 2010). It did a lot of damage, and I wrote a blog post at the time describing what a disaster it was and how I wasn’t even sure when I could resume selling plants, because it was just hard to tell how much was going to survive having its roots frozen solid in an unheated greenhouse. Turns out, it is just as well that I didn’t publish that post, as it was far too pessimistic, and I only lost about 10% of my nursery stock. Considering the kind of stuff I grow and how unprepared I was, I’d call that a major win. For a while there I was worried it might be more like 40 or 50%. While some nurseries might call a 10% loss a major blow, I really don’t. Unlike a large nursery, I am not under pressure to retain/pay a bunch of employees; as it’s just me, and I can always propagate and produce more plants!

However, the 2022 season still got off to such a slow start that there just wasn’t a whole lot of news to share. And I spent a lot of time away from the nursery doing other work—something I need to be more careful about this year. I seem to have built quite the reputation among locals as a skilled pruner of fruit trees in the winter. That’s great, but I really have to watch it about devoting time to the nursery first, especially in good weather. This winter I am being more strict about my schedule for out-of-nursery work.

Finally, in April 2022 I produced a new plant list and put it online. However, the rest of the year has still been challenging for the business. I will for the time being refrain from grumbling about the reasons why, because we are being positive now and looking forward. We are recovering and will have come out wiser from the experience. Right? Right? All the same, I will eventually have to make another blog post about things like how to rebuild a greenhouse that was crushed by snow (as some of you will have seen on Facebook), or how slow certain not-quite-hardy bamboos are to recover from a hard freeze.

Speaking of a hard freeze, I should also mention the big freeze we had just this last December when, as most of you will clearly remember, we had snow (about 7 inches here) and a relatively short-lived arctic blast, albeit with a low of 13°F (17 would be about the average low for an entire winter). That was stressful, but it didn’t seem to damage a whole lot that wasn’t already hammered last winter, and there were no more greenhouse cave-ins. It helped that it was a quick drop with not many hours spent below the mid 20s. And we were fortunate to completely miss the freezing rain that some of you “enjoyed.” So I’m feeling positive about coming through that relatively unscathed.

The only unfortunate aspect of the big freeze had to do with a rather large hole in the back end of our “tender plants” greenhouse (Greenhouse 2), which exists since the plastic was compromised and needs replacement. (It’s worse now, since the wind ripped it off even further.) I have the new plastic but haven’t got as far as replacing it yet: there is stuff in the way that needs to be cleaned up, which includes certain plants that are rooted to the ground and/or growing through the “roof.” So there’s another big job. The end result of this was that even with the heater running, it dropped a few degrees below freezing in there for the second winter in a row. Some of the wimpier plants which were not close to the heater are looking rough. There may not be a lot left of our Cyathea dealbata stock (I know, shame on me), or certain Leucadendrons. However, many of the plants which were not hardy to at least the mid 20s have been gradually “self-eliminating” from our collection over many years. They get left in the unheated greenhouse by accident, the heater malfunctions for one night, etc. It’s not really a big deal, as I now realize these would need a dedicated, smaller, heated hobby greenhouse to be properly sustained. Most of the stuff we are known for selling—the hardier Grevilleas, manzanitas, Agaves, etc.—are now pretty much “tried and true” with the wimpy ones having been discontinued or eliminated from production. What’s remains really is tough enough to live through a few days of below freezing weather, even in little pots.

Also notably, it’s not a big deal because I still have way more danged plants than I can keep on top of. It has to be “survival of the fittest” around here until things are down to a sustainable level. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t get too carried away with propagation this year. I could stand to be a bit more focused on sales and marketing!

Greenhouse 3 is also currently missing plastic because the wind blew it off, but I am not the least bit concerned about it. Nothing in there is particularly vulnerable to freezing, and I have a sheet of plastic for it too, which I will put on in a couple months, once again following some clean-up wherein I have already made considerable progress. So I’m not totally unprepared. Come to think of it, some of the plants in there would probably be better off if I put the shade cloth back on but no plastic. We’ll have to think about that option.

In any case, none of the above should be regarded as terrible news, because I was aware of the issues and have already made a considerable amount of progress to correct them, and I expect to have this place looking a lot better this season. I already did a whole lot of cleaning up last fall so I have a good head start!

Looking ahead to the coming season, I expect there will be more of an emphasis this year on local sales of 1 gallon and larger stock, with the mail-order selection evolving somewhat but not really expanding. This is because there was not an opportunity to take a lot of fall cuttings this year, since it was too hot (October) or because so much time got used up repairing Greenhouse 4 (November). However, there may be some interesting seed-grown items (more Eucalyptus especially) available for mail-order later in the season. I was not able to get out on any seed collecting expeditions last fall, as I sometimes have in the past, but there are still plenty of seeds I could plant from previous excursions that I expect will still germinate just fine.

So as time permits, I hope to add more information to the web site highlighting some of the larger stock we will have available. I don’t know what is in store for regional plant sales this year, and these may end up conflicting with my scheduled open days here at the nursery anyhow. So the goal is to hopefully create a more retail-friendly experience here at the nursery. I’ll have to take some before-and-after photos because right now things are looking admittedly rather unimpressive out there. Tentatively, we are shooting for an opening sometime in April this year, which is much earlier than the usual late May or June. With any luck, we may even manage to make some improvements to the labeling and pricing of nursery stock. Stay tuned! There are still a ton of great plants in the nursery that are perfect for the dry garden, for windy exposed sites, for deer resistance, for urban heat resistance, and more. There will be lots of cool stuff to check out at our nursery later this spring and summer.

That will have to do for now. Watch this space for more news as time allows!

Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I can still say that over a week in, right?

Ian

It was bound to happen someday. Snow-crushed greenhouse, 11/8/22. Now all repaired, however.

Planted this Thamnocalamus crassinodus ‘Mendocino’ last September. Unfortunately it is looking a bit rough after the freeze.

Fall 2021 Open Days and General Update!

Hey, we’re still alive! Who knew? You might think, seeing as how the last blog update was over a year ago, that we had vanished from the face of the earth. But no, we are still very much here, and we still have a whole lot of exciting and unique plants for your gardens. You didn’t think we would run out of plants, did you? I certainly can’t imagine that! No matter how many we sell, there always seem to be more.

So after being open by appointment only all spring and summer (and through a third party sign-up page that didn’t get a lot of use), we now have decided to go the other direction for the fall season and just open up–no appointment needed–for Saturdays in September and much of October, which for many people is a popular time to shop. We figure we might as well try to rake in a little cash before the impending zombie apocalypse sets in, and it will be good to get some space cleared out in the greenhouses. Who knows, to make things more customer friendly, I may even get really ambitious and knock back some of the grass in front of greenhouse 4.

Now as of this moment that I am typing, on September 8th, in the year of our Lord 2021, the availability list is still out of date. As such, many (not all!) of the plants on there have sold out, or have been moved up to a larger size. Also, new plants are available which are not listed. However, I have blocked out enough time to make a whole new list, which should be done by September 14th. It may take until late evening that day for me to upload it, but at least it will be done almost on time for the fall planting and shipping season.

So, how has this summer been on your garden? Some of us will have noticed how stressed many garden plants are this year, after a very dry spring and a hot summer. And I don’t have to tell you about our big heat wave which directly burned so many plants. Even if we have always had dry summers in this part of the world, weather like this reinforces why our plants just make sense. It is my hope that the selection of plants we promote will continue to catch on and enjoy wider use.

This summer has been so dry that we have noticed even some of the Australian plants we promote looking stressed out, in some situations. New Zealand plants still look good in cooler gardens and right at the coast, but the New Zealand garden at the University of Washington Arboretum is definitely looking a bit rough in places. Of course, New Zealand and southeast Australia tend to be rich in plants that are only moderately drought tolerant, and which are still adapted to more summer rainfall in nature than we have here. So what’s looking really great? Plants native to California and the Mediterranean region, where summers are truly hot and dry–and also, of course, many succulents (though in some cases, even these will respond to summer water). Things like Cistus and manzanita continue to take this weather in stride.

Now to some other housekeeping issues. Believe it or not, I have been working on re-vamping the website, but just not often enough to have anything worth uploading. It’s probably best not to say much about that until I have some results to show for it. It’s easy to make small changes (as I have just done today to announce our open days), but larger changes require a lot more time and input. Stay tuned for more on that.

Also if you scroll down the blog just a bit, you will see that I started a blog discussion about municipal street trees. A promised follow-up is mentioned, and then what happened? Well, believe it or not, I didn’t forget; I am just slow. In fact, I have a whole lot of content that is almost ready to go, including a new blog post and lengthy web site article. It’s just a matter of making time to find the photos I need and put the page together. But that will be coming soon, and it will be exciting.

Unless sales in September vastly exceed expectations, I am probably not going on any major trips this fall to collect seeds and/or cuttings. It doesn’t really make sense, because rental cars are expensive now, and it has been a drought year in the Southwest. It is more important for me to remain here at the nursery and get things cleaned up for winter. I will, however, do some local cuttings from a few locales in Washington. At minimum, I will probably revisit the upper Dungeness Canyon, Chelan County, and the Packwood area. I will also have the adventure of chopping through the back of greenhouses 2 and 3, where ample cutting material exists for many plants I have not been able to see or reach for years, and in some cases have probably forgotten about. That’s at least as exciting as a trip to Arizona, right? I can hardly wait!

We look forward to seeing you this fall. Pick a Saturday and come on out!

June 20th reopening and Covid protocol!

At last, we have landed on a reopening date, which will be on Saturday, June 20th, the first day of summer! Yay. We will also plan to be open Saturdays through at least early August. Later I’ll work out a schedule for late summer and fall. We can also be available by appointment during the week. Just shoot us an e-mail at mail@desertnorthwest.com and let us know if you need to schedule an appointment!

So what’s available, you’re wondering? As of June 17th, I have finished a current plant inventory with prices, which is now posted on the web site. Thus far it is just a list with no descriptions or photos, unfortunately; but for now we hope that an up-to-date list of everything we have available will help motivate at least keen gardeners with some plant knowledge to come out here and shop. You may also notice that mail-order will be restarting in mid-July. We’ll talk more about featured plants in the next update.

And now to talk Covid protocol. We are not oblivious to the fact that Coronavirus is still looming out there, and even if things are now opening up, we sure as heck don’t want to catch it and we don’t expect you do either. In my case I’m not only concerned about spreading the disease, but if I fall sick for two or three weeks the nursery can quickly fall apart. So we’re putting into place the following precautions:

#1 If you’re sick, don’t come! That should be obvious. Please wait until you are completely all better, and then come.

#2 Masks. We have decided not to make a big deal out of masks, especially since we ourselves are unlikely to wear them especially in hot weather. Visitors may wear masks, or not. I think the main point is just to be aware and considerate, and don’t breathe on people or their stuff. If you are uncomfortable with non-mask-wearing, we respect your choice to delay your visit, and mail-order will be available soon!

#3 Distancing. I don’t know why they call it “social distancing;” it should be just “distancing.” I can still practice distancing while being anti-social, and you could say it is easier. In any case we ask that you respect other people’s space, and ours, as much as possible, keeping at least six feet away or better yet ten feet. We don’t anticipate this to be a huge problem as there is plenty of space here at the nursery, and usually not a lot of people come through at once.

#4 Touchless sales. We’ll ask that you pick out your own plants. Most people do this anyway. But we hope you will make an effort not to handle plants you have not decided to purchase. We know this isn’t always realistic but let’s give it our best shot. If you’re trying to pick through a group of plants to select the best one, we will not pull them all out for you too look at. We will also not look at photos on your phone of a space you want to work with, or a plant you want to identify, or that sort of thing. We’re not hostile, only taking precautions.

#5 Carrying plants. Boxes will be available for you to put plants in. But for the present, we will not help you pack the plants into boxes as has been our custom. There should be no need to use a cart or wagon. If you purchase a lot of plants and don’t want to carry them all, you can just back your vehicle right up almost to the sales table, and load up.

#6 Labeling plants. In normal times, we typically label plants as they go out. If you don’t need labels, that’s fine and makes things easier. If you do that’s just fine also. We will have a box of disposable gloves and I will put on a new pair to write your plant labels while transacting with each customer.

#7 Transactions. I believe I have thought through how to do this very safely–much more safely than, say, Safeway (is that ironic or what?). We will have a box that you can drop your cash or check into without touching it. We think that payment by check is the most preferable at this time, followed by cash, with credit card being the least preferred option (but can still do it if necessary). My reasoning is that a check may be written out in the exact change with tax, whereas it can be difficult to predict in advance the exact amount with cash (unless you want to bring a lot of different types of bills). But if you want to do cash I can supply you with change while wearing disposable gloves. This also applies if you want a receipt, which we usually try to provide especially for large purchases–but if you don’t need one, that’s fine and makes things easier. For credit cards, we can process them by manually inserting the number, but will not swipe them. You could either read the number aloud (might not want to do that with other customers present), or set it down on a table and I could read it off, then let you pick it up and read off the security code.

That sounds like a lot of information, but we are all used to this sort of thing now, and I don’t really expect it to be that difficult. I am confident that our customers are the kind of people who excel and being mindful and considerate. I’ll look forward to seeing you this summer!

Ian

Reopening Plans!

So the question of the spring has been, are we ever going to reopen or what? And the other question has been, why can’t we see a list of your inventory online? As some of you may recall, we had already closed before the Coronavirus panic erupted. The answer to the first question is that we are shooting for right around the first day of summer, or about a month from now. This makes sense for a number of reasons, a big one being, our period of very low inventory over the winter will be coming to an end, and that is also about when I expect to finish cleaning certain places that need to be presentable, a time-consuming process.

To the second question, the low inventory situation will soon be behind us, as the stuff I have been potting on through late winter and early spring finally fills out enough to become available. Except for all the stuff that froze dead when it unexpectedly dropped to 23°F on March 15th. That was too bad. That is the latest 23 we have ever had, and I would certainly have done a few things differently if I had known it would happen. Weather in general was a bit rough on plants early this spring with periods of cold and wet alternating with periods of blazing sun, abnormally low humidity, and extreme dinural fluctuation. Freshly potted cuttings don’t like that too much. But in spite of that, inventory will overall be on the upswing soon, and thus will again be worth listing on the web site. So that stuff will all be back, even if it is taking us a while.

Then there’s mail-order. I think we can resume mail order just after we reopen, or about early July or so. That puts us a bit later than the spring mail-order rush (still ongoing for other nurseries), but we don’t really want to start off overwhelmed so that is fine. We will be well poised to have a great fall mail-order season.

What kinds of plants will be available? I think we’re looking at a good selection this summer of plants such as evergreen oaks, Hebe, Olearia, Grevillea (finally!), Leptospermum, and Opuntia cacti. And perhaps later, Eucalyptus. Things are still not moving too fast in the Agaves and Yuccas department, and Arctostaphylos will probably be a bit sparse this year, but we are working on all those. There may even be a few fancy things like Leucadendron and Protea species available later this summer if we’re lucky.

Then there’s the seed list. What happened to that idea? Well the seed list is ready to go. I just have to jump through a couple more hoops and get all my ducks in a row at this end. I might even get that done by the end of this week. As was the case years ago, the seed list will be heavy on Eucalyptus and large-scale succulents, with a few other random odds and ends.

The main point here is, just because it appears I am moving slowly, does not mean I am not moving. In fact the nursery is keeping me quite busy, with a lot of time still being dedicated to maintenance and cleaning. Put another way, I’m very goal-oriented, but it often takes longer than I expect to get where I want. Increasingly I see the value in “plodding along” at a couple hours per day per task, to ultimately fulfill multiple goals at once. By playing the long game you’re not as likely to get burned out. I know, I know, some of you figured this out long ago.

So there you have it, our reopening plans. As usual, watch this space for updates.

Oh, one final note, I haven’t forgotten that I promised to follow up on my post about street trees. I started on it but it’s fairly involved to come up with a good tree list. That will be a fun summer project.

A few current nursery photos, including new Grevillea cuttings that should be ready sometime in July, Leptospermums that are pretty much ready now, and some nice 1 gallon Opuntia cacti.

Problems with Municipal Street Tree Code

First off, a slightly late Merry Christmas to all! We hope no one’s grandma got run over by a reindeer this year.

Well with the holidays more or less behind us, I’m certain we must all have our mind on just one thing, which of course is street trees. Is there anything more enchanting than the silhouette of bare winter branches against a dark, rain-soaked sky? Come to think of it, perhaps there is.

I’m going to dive into what I think is wrong with municipal street tree code, and in so doing I’m sure this is going to sound like another one of those really negative posts. Am I just here to pick on municipalities for creating policy on this stuff? If we’re doing things so wrong, then what are my suggestions for positive change? Well, with the publication of this blog post comes my commitment to follow it up with something productive. That may take me a few weeks but we’ll get there.

Let’s start with an example of why I think this is necessary. Coincidentally, Lance Wright recently posted the following commentary, with photos, to Facebook:

“Portland has been planting Parrotia persica frequently as a street tree, probably the cultivar ’Vanessa’. The species is ‘decurrent’, with weak apical dominance, as it has a shrubby form with competing leaders. Often times these tend to sucker and sprout, even without pruning or damage, as does the tree pictured here forming a very congested silhouette down to the ground. These can also be quite broad relative to their height…making them a questionable choice for narrow parking strips such as this. As street trees are rarely pruned /trained this is what you can get. This one has been in place less than five years and is already encroaching into the street and taking over the sidewalk. Some Parrotia are better behaved, but I often see this in SE Portland. I do love these in the right place…I have a 30+ year old one in our garden!”

Photos by Lance Wright

So I’m just putting that out there as an example to introduce the topic. It is apparent that something has gone wrong in this instance, because the result is less than desirable. It is worth exploring what that might be.

Rather than Portland, however, my frame of reference here will be the Street Tree Guide for the City of Port Angeles, since it is the city closest to our nursery that has any kind of street tree code. This document is available online here.  (Parrotia is on their list as well! By the way, if any such document exists for Sequim, it is not online that I can find. Let us hope this means it is not too late to craft a more sensible policy!)

I want to begin by saying that I don’t think there is anything wrong with just having guidelines in general that concern street trees. One has to start somewhere, and something is better than nothing. No city, nor its residents, want street trees to rip up sidewalks, drop heavy cones on cars, or otherwise become a public hazard. I can also say this policy is not in any way consistently enforced, as one can tell just by looking around the city. Whether we think a high level of enforcement is good or bad, I would put forth that a city should have the goal of drawing up a plan that allows for easy and consistent enforcement with a minimum of ambiguity or exceptions. That way no one feels like they are being treated unfairly.

Unfortunately, however, a quick look at this document reveals some inconsistencies, which I will describe. One also finds quite a few errors of spelling, word spacing, underlining and layout that make it look a bit sloppy and unprofessional. I’m not saying I’m always perfect in that regard myself, but it jumps out at me. (I’d be glad to fix that!)

(Click images to enlarge)

I’ll skip over the first page, which I don’t consider to be the most controversial or problematic part of this document. Moving on to the second page, we have a set of guidelines which mostly make good sense and are fine, until we come to the part about minimum caliper requirements. After some consideration I’ve concluded that these requirements are a big part of the problem. Having looked into this topic a bit, I’m wondering if there’s something I’m missing, because the reasons I’ve unearthed so far for establishing minimum caliper requirements just aren’t great. Generally they seem to have more to do with project bids by landscaping firms, rather than individual homeowners: municipalities don’t want landscapers cutting corners on tree size to reduce their costs and appear more competitive. There is also the issue of tree replacement: if a large tree is lost there may be a perceived need to replace it with something immediately substantial. (Even this is debatable, as I hope to demonstrate later.)

The main problem with caliper standards is that they are far too limiting for everyday homeowners or gardeners. The homeowner is going to have a lot more tree options if not restricted to what is available in a large caliper. Also, if they are paying for the trees themselves, this could be the difference between buying a tree vs. not buying it at all, if they are on a tight budget. In my view the homeowner should be automatically exempted from this requirement except perhaps in instances where they are responsible for the loss of a large tree that is being replaced. There are other reasons why cities should be much more open minded about this as well, but I’ll get to that in the follow-up post.

So here we have the list of recommended large and medium trees for Port Angeles. First of all I notice that at least half of these trees are going to be difficult to find in any size. Suppose we classify trees three different ways: those recommended by municipal tree code of Northwest cities, those available in our local nurseries, and those that are actually the best performers in our region. We would have three very different lists, with some overlap, but a lot less than you might think. This discrepancy is unfortunate but there it is. For example, not once ever in my life have I seen Osage Orange in a nursery around here; it is exceptionally rare in the Northwest.

Then I notice that some of the medium trees grow larger than some of the large trees. So that’s interesting. In general some of the heights seem a bit “off” for what may be expected in our climate. But then others are accurate enough. This leads me to think parts of this list were assembled from a city or cities in a different climate, as some trees grow to a smaller or larger ultimate size in our climate than described by many popular references. A good regionally specific reference as to what ultimate sizes for trees we can truly expect in our climate is found in Trees of Seattle, by Arthur Lee Jacobson (2006). The reader will find some major surprises as to how certain tree species (commonly sold, and otherwise) have performed in the Northwest over time. However, even in that book, some gaps exist for species that haven’t been established in our region for very long.

I find it interesting that small trees are not preferable. This may be because they don’t cast as much shade or contribute as much canopy for wildlife habitat or sequestration of pollutants. There may be other reasons I haven’t thought of. I think we ought to regard this principle with a great deal of flexibility, as the homeowner may wish to use the space for something besides grass and one huge tree that shades out everything around it.

In general the selection here doesn’t excite me too much. The first thing I would take off the list of small trees is Prunus virginiana. It is ugly and suckers everywhere: I know this because I have been trying to eliminate it from our property for years. I would also note that Acer davidii (never have I seen this in a large caliper, BTW) certainly looks far better in about half shade than in full sun. Ideally a street tree should be adapted to mostly sunny and relatively dry conditions; species should be selected with this in mind.

So taking those lists together, here are the main things that stand out. I know it’s kind of buried down here, but the following issues are really the central point of this post:

1. All the recommended trees are deciduous.

2. The majority of these trees are native to climates where it rains all summer.

So to the first point, although I don’t automatically hate all deciduous trees, I am an advocate of using broad-leaf evergreens far more than we do around here. Some have been accused of looking “gloomy” in our winters, but for the most part I think they add interest by giving you something to look at in winter besides bare sticks. Many of them have interesting foliage, form, or bark that is very appealing when the winter sun hits it. There are literally hundreds of options for broadleaf evergreen trees that do well in the Northwest; many of which you can read about in books such as Trees for All Seasons. Even if you are not a huge fan of broadleaf evergreens, there can be no sensible reason why ALL the trees on the list need to be deciduous.

But I am sure this all comes back to the caliper requirement. Broadleaf evergreens are generally grown in containers, rather than produced in the field, and are thus seldom available in the large caliper desired. Put another way, because they are container-grown rather than field-grown, they are more expensive to produce to get the same size as a comparable deciduous tree, and thus are not produced because of the lack of demand for the more expensive option. Doubtless this is a major reason they have been largely overlooked.

Now to the second issue. I am aware that some planting areas are irrigated (at least until the irrigation system breaks), and there is a certain amount we can get away with as far as using trees native to climates with more rainfall during the growing season. In the follow-up post I will discuss what I believe makes the most sense as far as selecting and planting species that are well adapted to our region. But, taken together, tree species native to China, Japan, and the Eastern United States, all places where it rains all summer, make less sense here than species better adapted to dry summers. As my readers are well aware, we have a dry-summer climate here in the Northwest. Thus, I simply don’t think it makes sense to recommend continued planting of thirsty trees. It makes even less sense when we consider that our summers have been on a warming trend and water resources are likely to be increasingly strained over time.

Still, I’m not drawing too hard of a line: some tree species from wet-summer climates perform adequately here, and examples of them can be seen in cities all over the Northwest. Some perform well in Port Angeles but not Portland, since Portland is that much hotter and drier. Some of them perform well but only on good soil: in less than ideal soil conditions they languish and die. For example, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, a relatively popular/available selection from the list, really needs heavily amended or deep, fertile soil to do well here without irrigation in the long run. One could recommended it for, say, Mount Vernon, a city built on deep, alluvial soil. But for much of the Northwest this species isn’t a great choice.

Here is where more problems and inconsistencies pop up. But before getting into that I would say there are large parts of this list I certainly agree with. Many of these trees are inappropriate as street trees and ought not to be used, no doubt about it!

“Large Evergreens” – I can see why something like a 200′ tall douglas fir doesn’t make sense as a street tree. Still, I would think you’d want to allow for quite a few exceptions to this rule, especially for those species which develop dome-shaped canopies, have exceptional drought tolerance, and/or remain compact in stature. I can’t believe they forgot to mention Leyland cypress, the scourge of the Northwest. Also I find it interesting that deciduous conifers and true cypresses are not mentioned here; though obviously they are also not on the approved list. There are a few rather large Monterrey cypresses around Port Angeles, which are on the large side for a street tree but make quite a statement!

The next six things on there are certainly problem trees. However, I would question whether Platanus occidentalis is really so much better behaved than P. x acerifolia, which is on the approved list. My impression is that all Platanus have rather aggressive root systems, but perhaps there is some variation.

Then you get to “palm trees.” This is the part that tells me some snippets of this document were pulled from a completely different climate. I would like to know where in the Pacific Northwest anyone has seen palm trees cause the problems this document accuses them of: invasive root systems, damaging sidewalks, weak wood that breaks easily. In California, larger species of palm trees have moderately aggressive root systems but even these don’t have the capacity to crack sidewalks. Palm trees don’t even form a woody root system. Most problems with palms are associated with species that won’t even grow long-term in our climate (Washingtonia and Phoenix species, mainly). These problems include being messy, harboring rodents, dropping huge leaves and sticky fruit at random, and being a major fire hazard when the older leaves aren’t trimmed off. But none of these issues were mentioned in our document, so I’m just saying let’s be honest about what those problems are.

Most importantly, because we cannot grow those problematic species of palms in our climate, all the concerns about them that I described don’t mean much here in the Northwest. Our most popular hardy palm, Trachycarpus fortunei, is quite well behaved, has never been known to harbor rodents, possesses fruits that are small and not messy, and I’m darned if I’ve ever heard of one catching fire.

Now as far as using T. fortunei as a street tree in our climate, I think that it is too small-scale to be impressive, besides which it prefers summer water. There are some nice ones in Port Angeles (including some right along Eunice St. as street trees) but they can also look a bit weather-beaten with exposure. So to clarify, I’m not advocating its use as a street tree; I mainly want this document to make sense from a horticultural standpoint.

(Now Jubaea chilensis as a street tree, I could get behind! The Seattle Arboretum invested in some large ones a few years back, which so far has paid off as they are looking great [except for people stealing the fronds for Palm Sunday]. It has also proven hardy in Victoria. Notably, this species is native to a summer-dry climate. Of course, one may still complain about the fact that it may take decades for enough clear trunk to be produced that the fronds are above head height.)

So moving on from palm trees, I have no problems with the next bit, although I will say I have noticed quite a few of these being used as street trees in Port Angeles. I find it interesting that Fraxinus are prohibited generally; certain ash cultivars have been very popular street trees in other municipalities, especially in the interior West, and remain so even now with new plantings continuing. Three specific ashes are mentioned and it’s ambiguous as to whether the widely used types should be allowed. Also, as long as we’re considering birch, we may as well ban them all equally since they are all aggressive surface rooters that are greedy for water and can get significant pest problems when they get too dry (though I’ve seen less of this in Clallam County than in, say, Seattle or Olympia, no doubt because summers are cooler).

Moving on to horsechestnut—wait, didn’t we just see that on the recommended trees list? And it’s certainly more LARGE than medium. Also it reseeds itself. It does great here and is very well adapted, but if we are concerned about reseeding potential, we probably don’t want to recommend it.

Fruit bearing trees—mixed feelings here, since there is something to be said for planting fruit trees in publicly accessible places. However the problems with them are substantial: dropping fruit on cars, staining sidewalks, etc. There would need to be some assurance that they will be pruned annually and maintained to fit the space. I don’t expect that to be realistic in most instances.

Overplanted trees: YES! I’m on board with not using any more of these. But let’s add to the list virtually anything else native to a climate with wet summers that is reasonably common—perhaps granting exceptions for a few tough species that still do pretty well here (eastern US oaks, for example). As long as we’re telling people what not to plant, we might as well be consistent!

Ok, that is enough with the critical mindset for now. In a future installment, I promise to offer constructive thoughts on the topic in general, on what types of trees should be used, and will be so bold as to recommend at least a starter selection of appropriate species that would make great street trees in the Northwest.

2019: A Great Year for Bamboos and Ferns

So, a pleasantly mild summer here in Clallam County, Washington has come to a harsh and dreary end.  Who remembers the hot summer we had in 2009 when it reached 103 in Seattle?  We actually reached 103 here in Sequim on the day before that, but “only” made it to 100 on the following day (7/29, I think), which was hotter for Puget Sound.

I point this out only to remind myself that it can get hot here; because this summer, it did not.  We only squeaked out a grand total of five days above 80 degrees, with the hottest day being 84 (which was on June 12th).  Remarkably, we did not make it to 80 even once during the month of July.  Like most of the Northwest, we also experienced warmer than normal nighttime temperatures throughout much of summer this year.

We also had considerably more rain this summer than we have have been accustomed to lately, with the last few summers having been drier than average.  In particular, we had a very surprising, major soaking rain on June 27th which really helped tide things over.  We don’t usually expect that, especially here in the rainshadow.  And of course, if you live around here I don’t have to tell you that this September has been very wet.  Since the second week of September, I haven’t had to water much of anything at all outside of the greenhouses, and the grass that had looked parched a month ago is turning green again already.  I irrigated our lawn all summer (I always do this as a fire protection measure), but in the last couple weeks it has been out of control with hardly a dry day to mow it!

In general, the mild weather makes our job easier.  I said something like that way back in 2011 when we had a cool summer (see – here it is!), and it’s still true.  It is easier to get into the greenhouses and work when it isn’t so hot.  And most of what we grow is sufficiently adapted to our climate that it gets enough heat for growth, even in a cool year.  The only exception is some of the desert succulents and (non-opuntoid) cacti, which in many cases put on more growth the more heat they get, to a point.

Visitors to the nursery this year will have noticed that the snow last February crushed our shade house.  This could have been prevented had I not deliberately pulled the shade cloth back on (the wind having blown it off) to protect the plants inside from frost.  I am not too upset about this loss, since I needed to devote all my attention while it was snowing to clearing snow from the larger aluminum frame structures.  Losing one of these would have been a much more significant disaster.

The shade house was the first nursery structure we built at our Sequim location.  With help from family, it was built in haste in December 2008 when forecasts advertised a big freeze (which, of course, turned out to be significant indeed).  It sheltered many valuable plants through our first Sequim winter.  It existed for one winter as a greenhouse before I managed to finish the first aluminum frame greenhouse in December 2009.  By that time it had already become the shade house.  You can look back into the blog archives and read all about it, if interested.  But now, we bid farewell to this structure.  I am not going to replace it with the same sort of structure in the same place.  I have other plans for this space, though it will be a while before I get to them.

In any case, the shade house was destroyed beyond repair, and a large collection of bamboos was trapped underneath it for a long time while the snow slowly melted.  We have since dismantled what was left of the shade house and will repurpose the wood, most of which is in remarkably good condition.  I was amazed how well the bamboos did.  Although a few individual plants died, not one species was lost from the collection completely.  As they were buried under snow for almost a month, with numerous nights in the 20s and two nights down to the mid-teens, I call that rather miraculous.  (However, a few particularly vulnerable bamboos had been moved into the greenhouse in advance.)  We have since moved them over to a part of the property with some tree canopy and they are looking great (plus a few in the greenhouses to sell).

Bamboos are not desert plants, but we keep them around because they have so many other desirable features.  Admittedly they are a bit of a holdover from before I started the nursery with a water-wise theme.  A few years back I decided they were important enough to me to continue growing them, which is still the case.  With the cloudy, mild weather and relatively high humidity we have had most of the summer, they have been very happy.  We are continuing to gradually increase them, especially the clumping (non-invasive) types, for eventual sale.

Another “holdover” from an earlier era would be the tree ferns.  I would very much like to grow more of these, but I seem to have a problem with giving germinating treefern spore the attention it needs.  Nevertheless I will continue in my efforts until we can make more species available.  A modest crop of Cyathea dealbata we obtained from a friend is looking particularly lush as they enjoy the rain we have had this month.  We also have a number of Dicksonia antarctica in the nursery which I am rather tempted to just put in the ground.  Tree ferns are not at all drought tolerant, and certainly don’t fit the water-wise theme.  But I had a minor obsession with them for a few years of high school and college.  I still think they are intriguing plants and a lot of fun to grow.

Fortunately, I haven’t become completely distracted from water-wise plants.  I have been potting up a ton of Agave and Yucca seedlings this summer, for future sale.  Also, last year we were privileged to take some cuttings from a cactus collection in eastern Washington.  As they have rooted and grown, they are generating a lot of interest and selling pretty well.  So now, of course, we needed to go back and get even more!  Some of you will have noticed a photo of these on Facebook.  Don’t get too excited just yet though; they need the chance to grow some roots before they can be sold.

As you will have noticed from the web site, we have closed up the nursery early for the season, even suspending mail-order operations for a time.  I’ll attempt to quit whining about how difficult this year has been and just leave it at that.  We are now focusing on a list of tasks we need to get through to make 2020 a great year!  It’s no use looking back and it’s time to look forward.

A particular challenge is to get the plastic back on greenhouse 1 while it is full of plants.  It seems I was too busy complaining about snow to mention on this blog that my plastic sheeting blew off this greenhouse during a freak windstorm last December, and was never properly repaired.  (Yeah it was a heck of a winter!)  I’m now realizing it’s much easier to get plastic on a new greenhouse with nothing in it, and plenty of room to work, than on a greenhouse crammed with plants.  But at least we now have a new sheet of plastic, and I’m certain we will get the job done before cold weather arrives.  Another task on the list for this fall is to get the impenetrable jungle cleared from the back of greenhouse 3.  Wish us luck with that one because we will need it.  We still need to repair some snow damage to the wood framing in the back of greenhouse 3 that we can’t even reach.

Finally, we will soon be listing some seeds for sale on the web site.  But not right this minute, since I’m going down my task list in the best possible order of priorities.  This has been some time in coming, and I regret the delay.  Our goal is to have a seed list of at least 50 – 60 species posted to the web site by November 1st.  The list will look quite a bit like my list from many years ago: a combination of Agave and Yucca species along with a limited selection of Eucalyptus and Australian plants.  These are all fresh seeds that I myself collected (90% of the time) and use at the nursery.  I sow them and then I end up with so many seedlings that I never get around to potting them up.  Ha ha.  Well, you’ll want to check back for that!

More later.  We wish you a great fall.  You know, like Humpty Dumpty.  No, the other kind of fall.

Initially, we did make an effort to clear snow from the shade house.  It’s great when children get big enough to help!

Crushed shade house with bamboo collection under there somewhere.

Shade house tear-down.  Photo by Connie Barclay

Yushania (Borinda) boliana, giant blue bamboo.  Can you believe these were all in that shade house buried under snow for weeks?  Some sources call this not hardy, but not one of them that we left in the shade house died (or even died to the ground).  You’re going to need one of these in the spring.

Snow also put a lot of pressure on our aluminum frame houses.  Here, looking into greenhouse 4, you can see the snow line where there was no room left for it to collect between it and the next greenhouse (left side of photo).  Also this greenhouse has taken on a distinct lean to the right, because of the weight of snow on the left side.  There isn’t anything I can do to fix that, but it has gradually resumed its correct shape over time, and isn’t too bad now.  I think the occasional wind we get has actually helped push it back into shape.  There is also damage to the framing in two greenhouses, one of which we have repaired.

New cactus cuttings, which will be ready to sell in 2020!  If you liked this photo on Facebook, please try to maintain your level of excitement until then.

 

 

Summer 2019 Update and Nursery Open Days

So here it is, almost summer already, having our usual bit of cool June weather before it really kicks in. And what looked like it would be a great year for our nursery back in January has turned out to be, well, quite different from expectations. I’ll comment a little more on that at the end of this post, but the main thing to discuss for now is how we plan to proceed with summer sales. I’m getting a lot of emails asking are we open, and when? It would have helped to post that on the web site earlier, I know. But I’ll get there. And rest assured we will still be open this weekend (June 21-22) as originally planned. Also if you show up this weekend you’ll get to see some amazing Echinocereus cacti in bloom in our display bed!  (Sorry, none to sell right now.)

I’ll be very up front about the state of the nursery, which right now does not look much like I wanted it to. I can’t pretend it looks spectacular. But it doesn’t make sense to cancel anything, since there are still so many great plants out there! There isn’t everything I was hoping for by now, but there are still a LOT of cool plants. And there are a few new items. If anyone wants little plants of Eucalyptus neglecta or E. gunnii this is your chance! They are small but look perfect, and I’ve had the best success putting them out from little pots.

So the basic plan is, we are open this Friday and Saturday, then on top of that will be open every Saturday through August and perhaps beyond. We will also be open August 9^th and Sept 20-21 which was advertised earlier. But I’m not going to call it an “open house,” nor will I be sending out the usual e-mails in advance either. It’s just, show up on any Saturday you want, and we will be here. We will be potting up, cleaning up, and selling as the occasion arises. We will probably not be providing signage for the plants this time around as we have done in the past; I think there just isn’t going to be time. However, a deep discount is provided for quality-compromised plants, which has been the case for some time.

Speaking of TIME, I suppose that’s the big factor in what’s going on with the nursery. As in, there’s not enough of it to go around, and I’m having a lot of trouble keeping up. This could be attributed to poor planning on my part, but there are also factors beyond my control, such as the weather and me getting sick. I’ve been considering options to solve these problems, and doing some re-thinking on the direction of the nursery for the future. I may produce a longer blog post about that sometime. But at least, I think closing the nursery is not an option. When my greenhouses didn’t collapse in the snow, I took that as a sign that I had best continue. Also, gardeners’ interest in our plants and nursery concept continues to be very high. So I guess this means we’re not giving up!

But with that having been said, perhaps I’ll shoot for a little sympathy here. First, the weather hit us really hard in February. Did I EVER think I would see two feet of snow in Sequim? (Which was mostly in 24 hours.) Well, honestly, I should have, since it happened in 1996. As I was out there knocking snow off greenhouses all night, to the limit of physical exhaustion, I was thinking to myself, let’s suppose two feet of snow at once is a “20-year event.” Do I want to be out here doing this again when I’m 60? As an aside, it’s a good thing I started taking some steps last year to get in better overall physical health, or I certainly would have lost the greenhouses. As it was, I was pushed close to the limit of my physical endurance, and I’m certain the greenhouses were close to collapse. We ended up with 36” inches of snow for the month. Some of you folks back east are probably like “what’s the big deal?” But around here this almost never happens, and you sure as heck don’t see it coming.

Second, did I ever think snow could take so long to melt? The last patch of snow finally fizzled out on St. Patricks Day, which has to be some kind of record. But it’s a real problem when everything stays basically frozen for a month. I need that time to work on the nursery and clean up the plants for spring. I can’t get the weeds out of the plants when the plants are frozen and the potting soil is frozen. And this is one reason I am so far behind.

So in March, I managed to pull together enough plants for the Sequim Garden Show. And then of course I got the flu. It seems to take longer to recover every time I get it. That was just when we had that hot weather in March, and I didn’t feel well enough to adequately keep watered all my exciting cuttings from California the Southwest. Some will be fine but a lot of them died that week, sadly. I’m sure going from winter to summer in a matter of about a week was as much of a shock to the plants as to me.

April was more productive, and the Hortlandia sale may be considered a success given the circumstances. And I’m glad the weather was normal for the whole month.

Then I got the flu again in June and lost a bunch more work time. In fact I didn’t even feel good enough to produce this blog post yesterday or this morning, so here I am doing it in the evening. I think I’m on the mend and should be good enough for this weekend. But sheesh.

Do I have enough material yet for a Shakespearean tragedy? Now, I know there are solutions to any of the above problems. Much has to do simply with preparedness, given that it is impossible to know what the future holds. But it takes time to implement any of those solutions.

Finally, on a broader scale, I have come to a better understanding of reasons the nursery has been in a general state of “decline” (in terms of maintenance, not sales) since 2015. But the reasons for that are personal and complex; and I don’t want to go into detail here except to describe (again, in a future post) what I see as the best solutions going forward.

Before wrapping up this post, I wish to thank my current volunteers, Bob and Susan, for their help this year (and in the past). Sometimes it is easier to deal with someone else’s mess than your own, which seems like the only possible explanation for why they continue to return. I do greatly appreciate them.

Oh, one last announcement, I should mention that wholesale will not be offered in 2019. Last year was very successful, and we hope to do it again when we can. But this year the weather really screwed it all up, at a time when we needed to be potting all that stuff up, everything was frozen solid. Once again, more time, attention and planning could offset such challenges in the future. It’s all part of a learning experience!

So if you read this far, thanks for reading. I guess we’re not like those other businesses that make everything sound like lollipops and rainbows all the time. Apparently we’re all about honesty around here! Rest assured there is still a lot of cool stuff available, and we look forward to seeing you this summer at the nursery.  

(Here’s a scene we’d like to forget.  What happens when there isn’t enough space between the greenhouses for snow to collect?  Well it stacks up to 7′ high, that’s what.  At that point all I can do is try to keep snow off the center of the greenhouses.  Glad I had snowshoes or I wouldn’t have been able to climb up there!)

2019 Plant Sale schedule, starting with Sequim Garden Show this weekend!

Dear Readers,

Well it has been a heck of a winter, as you know if you live in the Pacific Northwest.  But, for better or worse, we have survived and are still here.  We’d be singing a different tune if I’d lost some of our large aluminum frame greenhouses from heavy snow, and it was a close call!  But finally, the last patch of snow melted off our driveway yesterday, and I’m starting to once again be able to see my Utah cactus collection that was sitting outside when multiple feet of snow got piled on top of it that I pulled off the greenhouses.  More about that later.  Amazingly, they still look fine.

So we’ve hit that time of the year where we frantically scramble to get ready for the Sequim Garden Show while planning for what the year ahead looks like in terms of sales and events.  Last year it was not so frantic, since we’re getting better at planning ahead and making advance preparations over time.  But this year it’s frantic.  I basically lost the entire month of February for productivity, due to not being able to work at night and with frozen potting soil.  We have a lot of catching up to do!

All the same, our nursery stock has, by and large, hung on to survive the winter.  So we’ll still have a respectable selection of cool stuff to bring to the Sequim Garden Show this weekend, which is Saturday and Sunday (see website for details).  This will be our 11th year of participation in the show.  We expect that a lot of people are feeling the same sense of enthusiasm about getting outside and planting, after not being able to do so for weeks.  We can also at this time assure you of the hardiness of the plants we are bringing, since nearly all of them were in an unheated greenhouse where it was well below freezing many nights in a row in February.

So that’s this weekend–wish us luck getting ready.  After that, we have the following events scheduled for this year:

April 20 – 21: Hortlandia, Portland, Oregon, the Northwest’s biggest and best plant sale at this time.

June 21 – 22: Open House, here at the nursery in Sequim.

August 9 – 10: Open House, here at the nursery in Sequim.

September 20 – 21: Open House, here at the nursery in Sequim.

That’s all we have planned so far.  Why so few events?  Well, as much as we’d really like to do the Rhododendron Species Foundation Sale in April, I don’t think we will have enough nursery stock to go around for both that and Hortlandia, following this weekend’s event.  I guess that’s what happens after a good sales year such as last year.  Of course, there’s a lot of new stuff I’ll be potting up, but it won’t be ready to sell by April.  I also think two consecutive weekends away from the nursery in April puts me at a major disadvantage for keeping on top of things here.  That is the reason I dropped the Grays Harbor Sale–although it was reasonably successful, that weekend (being mid May) my time is simply more valuable here at the nursery.

As for Heronswood, they changed their fee structure for vendors this year, in a way that causes me to wonder if we’ve been selling a lot less than the other nurseries who attend.  I’m going to wait to see how that pans out, but at this time I’m not feeling inspired to participate.  The other sales we have discontinued in the past have been discussed in earlier blog posts.  If anything changes, or if I add any more sales, I’ll try to remember to post it here!

Not committing to this yet, but one thing I might do is add another Open House in late May, which we have done in the past.  But I need to wait and see what I think the nursery will look like at that time.  In addition to giving the plants some time to bounce back, I also need to consider some damage to our infrastructure caused by the snow.  In the meantime, remember that you can always come out and shop from us by appointment!

So that’s how things look right now.  Stay tuned for more updates, and perhaps we’ll see you this weekend in Sequim.

Return to AZ

Nolina parryi subsp. wolfii in the Kingston Mountains

Who remembers way back when I first started the nursery—which, a few of you may recall, began as a seed business—and I did quite a bit of traveling to California and the Southwest to collect seeds of virtually any interesting plants I could find, that I thought I could sell? I know, it was a while ago. Until this year, my last trip to such far-off destinations was in 2005. Finally, in 2018, I have managed another excursion down that way, plus another shorter trip that I will tell you about also.

But before we get on to the important part of this post, we should pause to note that I have reminded myself of the need to watch “Return to Oz,” one of those great movies which I think didn’t do that well upon release, but is certain to actually be quite interesting. I probably saw it long ago but I’m darned if I can remember anything about it. We will also note that this is the first blog post I have produced in who-knows-how-long which does not have the sole purpose of announcing an upcoming open house or plant sale. So that’s special. What can I say, it’s a major challenge to make time for blogging at this time in my life.

However, lest anyone get the impression this post is entirely recreational, I must announce that seeds will be trickling back into our selection of offerings here at the Desert Northwest. It only makes sense that we should sell some of what we collect; if we have an excess there is no point of just letting it sit around until it loses viability. And excesses are inevitable for things like Agaves, which can yield tens of thousands of seeds from a single infructescence (I’ll be using that word a couple more times, so I hope you like it). In any case, watch this space for more news about seeds, including a selection of Agaves and similar exciting items. Some of them will be mentioned later in this post. Ok, commercial announcement over, now on to the fun part.

So what exactly have I been up to? Well, I don’t know if I’ll have time to write up a whole trip report and put it on the web site, like I used to, so we’ll give it the brief (but not too brief!) blog summary. But before we get to AZ and Agaves, I must tell of the earlier trip, which was shorter and less ambitious, but still worthwhile. In the last week of September I took off for a five day trip to southern Oregon and northern California, during which I tracked down things like manzanita cuttings (not that these are hard to find), and acorns of evergreen oaks.

Collecting acorns presented a new challenge. Since I failed to calculate into my plans the amount of time it takes to track down acorns of certain oak species, and then to actually collect them; I found myself running behind schedule the entire trip. This was because in past years I always seemed to miss my chance with the acorns due to being too early, too late, or choosing a bad year for seed set. This year, remarkably enough, I hit it just right. And once acorns are actually found, the amount of time it takes to collect them really adds up: hence being constantly behind. But all’s well that ends well, as the saying goes; and I ended up with a lot of good collections, such as this Quercus durata growing along a remote mountain road.

Q. durata. There were easier places to get to this, but hey. This is a wonderful evergreen shub with attractive leaves in all seasons, and conspicuous acorns! This deserves much wider use in gardens, and should be completely drought tolerant in the Northwest.

And some fun manzanitas like this one (A. manzanita subsp. weislandieri, I suppose) north of Chico with enormous leaves. I noticed everything was particularly crispy dry in this area. I was hoping for Heteromeles seeds but they apparently failed to mature, perhaps due to dry conditions. When I came through there in 2014 they had loads of red berries!)

For some reason I had never seen Woodwardia fimbriata in the wild before, until now. (I drove through here in 2014 and didn’t notice them, for some reason.)

Ran across a really, really nice blue form of Quercus douglasii near Platina with thick, deep blue leaves. Not a lot of seeds on it though.

Of course the trip would not be without a misadventure of some sort. It was Saturday night when I was driving “my” rental car up that Berry Summit between Willow Creek and Arcata, on a winding road in the dark and pouring rain, and my tire pressure light came on. Oh crap, I thought, why does it have to be now? I checked out the tires and none of them appeared to be flat enough to explode just yet. Thankfully the tire survived long enough to reach a Tractor Supply Co. in Arcata just before they closed, where I bought a pump to temporarily keep the tire going. I also discovered the problem, which was a screw stuck in the tire. It wasn’t until the next day that Ev’s High Tech Service in Gold Beach repaired the tire properly. They were great, and I’m really glad they were there when I needed them!

So after a drizzly morning excursion in which I discovered I was too late to collect seed of Notholithocarpus densiflorus var. echinoides, I stopped off and visited Ben Gardener in Pistol River, who may be known to some of my readers. He is a pioneer of Australian plant growing on the West Coast who really doesn’t get the credit he deserves. My main reason for visitng was that I had borrowed some books from him twelve years ago and felt I ought to return them, which I did. He said he would put them on the Rare Book Shelf, since a rare book is the one that gets returned. I was glad to find him still on his feet and living in the same spot at the spry age of 93. I told him I’ll be happy if I’m in half as good of shape at that age, although he may have been slowing down just slightly. He was kind enough to take me to his niece’s garden and welcomed me to take cuttings of Australian plants, which I did in such a way so that almost nothing would be noticed to be missing. So Rebecca (I don’t seem to have your contact details, sorry), if you’re reading this, thank you for the cuttings!

Then it was off to Gib Cooper’s place to check out Tradewinds Bamboo Nursery. This was highly anticipated not just because of my continuing interest in bamboo, but also because the last time I had been there was 16 years ago. So a lot had changed from before; some plants had grown much larger (Oldeania alpina, which wasn’t called that 16 years ago), some looked the same (Chusquea foliosa, which occasionally freezes to the ground), and certain remarkable specimens weren’t even there the first time, like the massive Borinda macclureana pictured below. I also bought six more bamboos I didn’t have, that being about what I could fit into the rental car with all the seeds, cooler full of cuttings, campling gear, and other travel essentials I had brought.

Borinda macclureana, at 10 years old, is a stunner of a plant! All the Borindas are great, but this one may take the cake for a tropical-looking, HARDY bamboo. It’s hard to get a feel for the scale in this photo but it’s easily 30′ tall and wide at the top; exponentially more impressive than any Fargesia.

I did not pass through Bandon or Yachats (places of botanical interest that you may read about elsewhere on the nursery web site), because at Gold Beach I cut east and headed towards Grants Pass via the “coastal route” where James Kim died a few weeks after I went through there in 2006. Sad to say this whole area was a major mess. As I progressed east, the going got slow because numerous large paved sections had been taken out of the road and replaced with gravel (new culverts, I guess, and who knows what other maintenance): this road used to be nice and smooth the whole way; I wonder if it will be repaved. I had been hoping for seeds of Quercus vaccinifolia and Chrysolepis chrysophylla, but with earlier delays (tire repair, road condition) it really got too dark by the time I made it east of the crest where they are found. I was also hoping for Q. sadleriana seeds; I was too late to get more than a small handful. (They had plenty of seeds the second week of October in 2012 when I came through there with Mike Lee and Vor Hostelter! I guess summers were cooler then.)

On the east side of the coastal route, the road was better, but fire camps were set up here and there as fire crews finished off the Klondike and Taylor Creek fires. They also “finished off” about every living thing within 20 yards of the road by cutting fire lines. It is incredible how much destruction can be caused by a motivated fire crew in a short amount of time. A lot of my favorite Arctostaphylos canescens plants that I had taken cuttings from before were razed completely to the ground. So the whole area looks ugly, but don’t read me wrong: I acknowledge the necessity of controlling wildfires, and appreciate firefighters very much. I’m glad this large fire was in a nearly unpopulated area. Anyway, perhaps out of the ashes will come a lot of interesting new manzanitas: I’ll have to go back in three years and check. Then after a quick stop off at Cistus Nursery, I returned home.

So after a week and a half to spend at home and sort through all that stuff, and process cuttings, I left once again in another rental car for a longer and more ambitious trip. This was a trip that really should have been done in at least 16 or better yet 20 days, but given the constraints of family life I figured I’d better limit it to 12. On this trip as well as the last, I spent probably far too much time hunting down Opuntia fragilis in the Shasta Valley. Remind me not to bother with that again. Then there was the hunt for modoc cypress (Cupressus bakeri) which I believe I saw but there were way too many darn junipers in there so as to confuse matter substantially, and none of the cypresses had any seeds. (But at least they were labeled—a rare treat for wild plants!) So the end result of that was that once again I started the trip off behind schedule. I did some real late night driving down to almost Bishop, CA to try to catch up.

I love it when wild plants are labeled! Why can’t they all be that easy?

Quercus chrysolepis growing above Devil’s Half Acre, a lava flow just east of Lassen Park. Who knew this attractive broadleaf evergreen could be found in such a high, cold, and snowy area? We’re in at least USDA zone 5 here if not 4. I expect the city of Spokane to be all over this to promote as a street tree.

I also visited some really interesting and rather ambiguous Opuntia basilaris and/or O. erinacea types along CA Hwy 168, which someone had posted to Facebook so I thought I’d better check them out. A long time ago someone didn’t want to tell me where to find hardy cacti in the Bishop area of California. But now I found them, so, ha.

The next day it took way longer than I thought to get all the way down to the Tecopa, California area to camp. I had really wanted to reach the Kingston Mountains that day, but it was too late in the afternoon. So I got up super early the following morning to do it, and had only been driving for 20 minutes when at 6:15 am it was of course time for the obligatory flat tire. This time it was so bad I had to put on the spare, but at least the weather was pleasant instead of raining. I ended up spending the rest of the morning in Pahrump (not really on my way) where I found the tire was beyond repair and I just had to get a new one. It was a Saturday and tire shops were busy, and I had to go around to a few places to come up with a matching tire, so I couldn’t get out of there until just after noon.

After that, since I had already been detoured to Pahrump, I figured I may as well attempt a different adventure than originally planned; in which I hiked two miles across the Mojave Desert in the sun to the Nopah Range, an environment that reminded me of the Mountains of Shadow bordering Mordor. The trek was harder than it looked from the road. I was hoping some of the Agave utahensis subsp. eborispina plants reported from this area might be found at the base of the mountains, but when I got up there I couldn’t see anything. So, not wanting to give up just yet, I started climbing into a canyon. I was just about to turn back, when I finally spotted one still pretty far ahead and high up. It took quite a bit more climbing to get even close to one with a spent infructescence. Finally after a 40’+ rock scramble I arrived at a nice one, only to find I was too late and all the seeds had blown away. So that won’t be on the seed list; sorry. It was only a two hour foray but I was sure glad I brought a lot of water!

Agave utahensis subsp. eborispina with no seeds, Nopah Range.

I made a new friend! This was the first time I had seen Echinocactus polycephalus in the wild before.

Finally it was back to the Kingston Mountains. The west approach was even more interesting than I remembered it (again, from 13 years ago) with tons of great cacti including a good variety of Opuntias, Echinocereus and Ferocactus. But the road was horrible. I kept asking myself, how did I actually drive the Volvo through here in 2005 and not get a flat? At the crest of the highway I found Agave utahensis subsp. nevadensis which I missed that year (seed set wasn’t impressive though). Of course, a major reason to go this way was to collect Nolina parryi subsp. wolfii at the northernmost place that it is found in nature. This magnificent plant with its huge rosette of stiff leaves and larger-than-life flower spike is basically the Puya raimondii of North America. And fortunately it is much easier to grow, albeit quite slow growing! So that will be available again—hooray. Note to self: next time approach and leave the Kingston Mountains from the south. The road isn’t great but it’s a lot better!

It was dark when I got out of there, making me basically a day behind. I drove three hours (including right through downtown Vegas) to northwest Arizona to camp in the Beaver Dam Mountains. I had contentedly settled down to what I thought would be a nice relaxing night, when the wind came up in a major way at about 2:30 am and about ripped my tent to shreds. I took it down hastily and managed to save it. I had to try to sleep in the car after that and was awfully tired the next day.

For the next several days I had generally terrible weather, including snow and ice at higher elevations and lots of wind almost anywhere I went. Although I was not unprepared, this made the trip a lot less fun. I had better weather when I went in December 2004! On one night (and I’m no longer relating the trip in chronological order) I wimped out and got a hotel. It snowed in Flagstaff the day after I passed through it stopping there for lunch, but snow in Flagstaff is none too uncommon. On another night I looked and looked for a campsite, but for various reasons all the ones on my route were closed and I ended up sleeping in the car yet again, which turned out to be just as well since it poured rain all night. In the morning I got up and there was a fresh coat of heavy snow in the New River Mountains and the Mogollon Rim. (Why didn’t I get a picture of that? Oh well.) On the same morning, I attempted to drive to the trailhead of the Barnhardt Trail to look for Arizona Fremontodendrons, but the mud on the road was so bad that I did not feel safe continuing and had to turn around, even with four wheel drive (which I was very glad to have!). I couldn’t believe how wet and almost swampy it could be in a place so heavily populated with cacti and Agave chrysantha.

Echinocereus swamp? South of Payson Arizona.

Arctostaphylos pungens northeast of Globe. There’s potential in central AZ for manzanitas that will tolerate summer water and heat, to a point, anyway. I made quite a few collections in various places (cuttings, not plants), and it will be interesting to try them all out, provided I can get them to root.

Unlike California, this was not a good year for seeds in Arizona. I could probably research this, and I know they had a wet summer, but I suspect winter and spring there were on the dry side. A lot of the plants I wanted to collect seeds from (especially Yuccas, but even some Agaves) appeared not to have bloomed that year at all, or very little. So hunting around for seeds was an involved process that took longer than I had hoped. Of course, I made the best of it. It took a long time but I eventually found a Nolina microcarpa with good seed set near Show Low, after passing thousands of them with no seeds nor evidence of having flowered this year. The furthest point of my trip was when I drove clear out to Cloudcroft, New Mexico to try to collect Agave neomexicana at 7,600′ where I collected it in 2005 with my friend Steve Smullen, formerly of Las Cruces. But despite an extensive search I found that none of them had any seeds. That was a heck of a lot of extra driving for no seeds, but oh well. The search for A. neomexicana caused me to run out of time to find A. gracilipes near Alamogordo. And I did not quite make it to Texas, so there will be no A. havardiana or A. lechuguilla collections this year.

Agave neomexicanas which annoyingly had no evidence of flowering and no seeds this year.

Not a great picture but this is ice on Quercus hypoleucoides at Emory Pass. Yes the weather was lovely.

This is the giant form of Agave parryi I have collected before near Mimbres, New Mexico. This year I took a moment to measure some rosettes, and made a point of getting seeds from the largest one possible. This rosette measured 54” across!

Although I had already been around Arizona quite a bit, it was only on the return pass when I finally found seeds on any Arizona oaks, in the Chiricahua Mountains. Agave palmeri in that area was easy to find seed of also, which was nice. What I was disappointed not to find any seeds on, despite looking at thousands of them, was Yucca schottii. That plant does great in the Northwest and is in high demand, but better luck next year, I guess. It didn’t help that it was so foggy up there I could hardly see 20′ off the road. A quick hunt for Agave parryi var huachucensis was also unsuccessful due to any of them that were easy to find with seeds being on (apparently) private property. And I did finally find a Yucca schottii near Canelo with two seed capsules on it, but they were heavily guarded by huge, ferocious looking wasps, so I opted to give them a pass. I was happy that day though that the weather finally changed for the better with sun and temperatures above 70; and that I made it to an actual, respectable campsite before dark, in the Catalina Mountains.

Here’s an oak in the Chiricahua Mountains that looks suspiciously like Q. greggii, which is not supposed to be found outside of Mexico.

Yucca schottii in the fog. It can be found as high as 8,000′ altitude in the Chiricahua Mountains.

Quercus oblongifolia near Canelo.

After a bit of poking around the Catalina Mountains, I drove north once again, making my way towards a good high altitude collection of Agave parryi from Mingus Mountain at 7,200′ that could only be reached by climbing up a short cliff. OK, the cliff had footholds, but it has been a while since I attempted anything like that, a bit out of my comfort zone! Well, how else was I supposed to get the seeds? Fortunately I survived and got a large batch of seeds that looks great.

Arbutus arizonica—had I been a few weeks later, the fruit would have been ripe. Oh well.

Arctostaphylos pringlei in the Catalina Mountains, growing out of rocks!

Agave parryi at Mingus Mountain, Arizona.

In the interest of not making this a book I’m skipping over some stuff, but I’ll note that the trip wouldn’t have felt complete without a pass through southern California and the San Jacinto Mountains. This is an area with a winter rainfall maximum and roughly the same amount of winter rain and cold as we get in Sequim. The east slopes of the San Jacinto Mts around 4,000′ is an Opuntia enthusiast’s paradise, with a confusing array of far more species and hyrids than one normally finds in proximity—not to mention Cylindropuntia, Echinocereus, Agave deserti at the highest elevation where it grows, Nolina parryi, Yucca schidigera, and a giant form of Hesperoyucca whipplei, which I again took a moment to measure. Seed hunting here went reasonably well though I once again underestimated how long it would take. I had to be pretty quick about getting up to Wrightwood before dark in the same day to hunt for Hesperoyucca whipplei subsp. caespitosa, where I located some good plants at a higher altitude than my previous collection. These ought to have respectable cold-hardiness, coming from higher than the base of the ski area.

7′ wide Hesperoyucca whipplei in the San Jacinto Mountains—yes, they really can get that big!

Agave deserti, a plant which I am convinced would be more popular if it didn’t have such a dumb name. It is an attractive species.

And from there of course it took two days to drive back, though I may have been a bit distracted along the way taking more manzanita cuttings (can one ever have enough?). It was fortunate that I passed through central California on a Sunday, though I still managed to get stuck in traffic for a bit; and that I did not have any more flat tires. As I said I skipped over a lot, but those are some of the important trip highlights. Then there was the adventure of spending most of the next day after I returned home getting the rental car cleaned out and wiping all the mud off places I have no idea how it even got into.

So, what’s next? Well, I am done processing all the cuttings, so that’s good; and I’m still in the middle of cleaning seeds. I need a bit more time to get through that, and then seed availability will be announced here soon. Even if it wasn’t everything I had hoped for, I’m happy to get a few good collections of Agave seed (and a couple Yuccas) so at least for certain species, I don’t have to worry about purchasing seed and wondering if they will come up. I don’t want to pick on any seed companies I mostly like, but I’ve had some issues with that in the last couple of years. It’s nice just to get my own seeds and know they are fresh, and that I can sow as many as I need.

I’m also rather excited for all the Arctostaphylos cuttings. Normally when hunting for Arctostaphylos, I don’t make it further south than the Redding area of California. Besides manzanita there are a few other interesting odds and ends in there as well. This year I will have a lot of new and different collections if I can just keep them all alive and growing. You’ll want to wish me luck with that!

So there you have it: my return to AZ and the Southwest. We’ll see if I decide to do this again sometime or what. After the weather I had, I might make it easier on myself and book some hotels in advance! And did I mention I missed 12 days of sunny, warm weather back home? At least we may all feel reassured that Agaves and cacti can handle nasty, cold and wet weather.

Selfie with the giant form of Agave chrysantha.