Taylor’s Pink Perfection: Camellia or Lipstick Color?
Nature doles out some amazing colors. When my camellia Taylor’s Pink Perfection began to bloom for the first time, I found its blush exuberant, unapologetic and very reminiscent of a hue I’d come...
View ArticleFoxgloves: Towers of Flowers and Then Some
Foxglove (digitalis purpurea) is the flower of the hour in my Pacific Northwest garden, towering three feet above my close-to six-foot frame. (That’s height not width, for clarification and the time...
View ArticleHollyhocks Signal Summer’s Last Hurrah
As summer wanes, my hollyhocks mark its passage, each blossom a page in the season’s story. June finds an optimistic sprout fighting off the early advances of ravenous slugs and resident rust. July...
View ArticleRoyal Grevillea: Garden Dynamo from Down Under
Hi, my name is Tom and I’m a plantaholic, unable to leave a nursery without a plant, incapable of ignoring a nodding bud, lacy leaf or fancy frond. Adhere to a climate zonal chart? Nah, not me. One...
View ArticleOrienpet Lily: Garden Looker — Va Va Va Voom!
My two-year-old stand of Satisfaction Orienpet lilies in late July My days as a plant snob are over. There’s room in my garden for both the brash and the understated, for flowers the size of snowflakes...
View ArticleOne Green World Nursery Delivers the Goods
I read seed and nursery catalogs like dime-store novels. Will the characters within the dog-eared pages deliver on their promises. Will their potential be realized, or will some find their end in a...
View ArticleSalmonberry Flower: Pretty in Pink
I don’t have a whole lot to say this morning (now there’s a switch), but this blossom from a volunteer salmonberry bush (Rubus spectabilis) caught my attention, and I thought perhaps yours would like...
View ArticleListen Up Poppies: Time to Rise and Shine
For most of May my garden flowers languished in bed, hunkered down and hitting the snooze button thanks to an endless month of unseasonably cool, wet days. With the first week of June delivering...
View ArticleLilies: How to Make Lily Flowers Last Longer
Boz and I share a love of lilies; me for its beauty and perfume; Boz for its vertical nature. Lilies, Oh Won’t You Stay Just a Little Bit Longer… August is the month when my garden really goes full-on...
View ArticleSpreading the Chestnut Love
Autumn’s bounty: a bowlful of chestnuts, a tabletop of squash I have a thing for chestnut trees; let me count the ways. I love the tasty nut and the porcupine casing that protects it. I love the tree’s...
View ArticleLewisia: My Favorite Martian Flower
I have a theory, that the fleshy-leaf, flower-flashing Lewisia (aka bitterroot) is not of this world. Horticulturalists will tell you the diminutive beauty was discovered by and named after explorer...
View ArticleBonkers for Bluebells in Bloom
Bluebells (Spanish hyacinths) spoil me each spring with this dreamy view. Every late April and early May my garden is flooded by a sea of bluebells. Strolling through the garden seems more like wading...
View ArticleGarry Oak: Deep Roots in the Pacific Northwest
True confession: I’m a collector of plants. I can (and do) have a greenhouse of flora, weeds, seeds, bulbs and starts, with nary an inch of space to spare, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find room for...
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