Return to the farm on Dairy Creek

Last fall I wrote about my visit to Craig Quirk and Larry Neill's new garden on Dairy Creek. I returned again last week, while my friend Kenton Seth was there building an absolutely epic series of crevice gardens with Chris Dixon and a local crew. I'll start my coverage at the entrance to the garden. Everything you see is surrounded by a deer fence. 

Looking to the right, there's a potting shed/out-building under construction below the plastic hoop house cover.

Looking to the left, there's a veggie/cutting garden.

And of course there is a greenhouse, an off-the-charts amazing Hartley Botanic greenhouse. But I was here for the rocks...

Specialized rock gardens known as crevice gardens—filled with different soil mixes and varying crevice widths—were built to surround the greenhouse on all sides. I'm going to direct you to a few Instagram accounts in this post, the first of which is that of Dale Hickey. He took at great video of Kenton walking on one of these rock gardens, which shows just how deep the rock is buried, and how tough they are. Click here and then through to the 10th and last image to see the video. 

Here's a section under construction. You can see the gravel/sand mound in the center into which more rocks will be placed.

Dale was just one of many folks I know who visited the site last week. That's one of the things that makes this project so wonderful, Craig and Larry are all about sharing it.

That's Kenton's partner in this rock garden project, Chris Dixon, at work below. He's got some great photos and stories about the build on his Instagram feed as well.

Here's a section with wider planting crevices.

One of my favorite things was how the rocks just slightly over shot the metal border here in this section.

Look at all those fabulous planting pockets!

Over on the far side of the greenhouse there was crevice valley...

It's gonna be fun to watch these spaces fill up with plants, Craig is in no hurry though, he's aware it's gonna take time.

As we were walking around Kenton suggested we go inside the greenhouse to check out the view from that vantage point.

Not bad, eh?

High summer isn't exactly prime greenhouse time, but it was nice inside thanks to the shade cloth.

I can only imagine what treasures will be on those shelves once the greenhouse is in full use.

Back outside there's Kenton to the right of the greenhouse door. His Spanish skills were called into play speaking with the support crew hired to assist Kenton and Chris (on the far left) with the build.

And while the crew did start out as hired help for moving rocks, gravel and sand, over the days they worked with Kenton and Chris they became versed in the methods, skill and thoughts behind building a crevice garden, eventually taking on sections of the garden as their own. This project has many ripples of creativity that will move outward into the community, it's pretty fabulous to think about.

After a walk around the building site Craig took me over to visit the creek, on the way I spotted some of the plants in waiting, destined for the crevices.

That magical creek...

And now we're back in the garden...

Glycyrrhiza uralensis

Seed grown (look at those seed heads!) from seed collected in Piet Oudolf's garden.

Greenhouse as seen from the surrounding garden.

You'd never know it once you're standing in the garden, but the public road one takes to get there cuts under those trees on the left.

To my way of thinking the crevice garden—and all of it's rocky severe shapes—is the perfect break/contrast/transition between the greenhouse and the surrounding garden.

Volunteer sunflowers from the previous year's planting.

Tomatoes, garden "shed" and cutting garden.

If you have a look at Chris Dixon's Instagram feed you'll see he specializes in creating small containerized crevice gardens, yet this was a new idea for him, including a piece of wood in the mix (the vertical element).

Here's another, built with sempervivum. How dreamy is this?

When I visited there were two large Agave ovatifolia waiting to be planted out in the finished crevice garden, later this image showed up on Craig's Instagram, I had to borrow it. Kenton looks like he's paying his respects to that agave, don't you think?

From a post on Kenton's feed I borrowed this image, both agaves are planted in place. If you're interested click though to a video he did here, then a super detailed post here (note the butterfly design) and and another here. I should also mention the garden at Dairy Creek was designed with Laura Crockett, aka Garden Diva Designs.

Oh and one more thing! Should you plan on attending the Hardy Plant Society Study Weekend next June, this garden will be on the itinerary!

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All material © 2009-2024 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

It's not looking good for the grassy pineapple (aka Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica')

When I shared my week of posts titled Eight months of Mondays in the garden a couple of commenters noticed just how good the Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica' looked throughout all the winter madness. That's it on the right, photo from January 17th.

Faithful commenter Chavli said "In the first two collections of today's post, there is a plant that stands out for me on the right hand side. I don't know it by name, I'll describe it as grassy pineapple (with apologies...), but it seems unfazed by the catastrophic weather around it. Definitely the winner in my book." tz garden added "the grassy pineapple really looks good ALL THE TIME." 

It definitely did, until all of a sudden it didn't. To give it a moment of glory, here's what it looked like when I did the annual garden tour post last October...

And here it is on July 17th. I took this photo right before I left for the Fling, just to track what I was seeing, a sort of record of how bad it was looking.

This photo dates to July 9th when I first realized the lower leaves were turning brown. I usually do a spring trim of the lower leaves, and I did, back in late May I think. Why were more browning up?

A pulled back shot, another from the 17th, that's more trunk than I've ever seen before.

Once home (this photo from July 24th), there was no denying the new growth was also turning brown. Not good. Not good at all.

So what happened? Was it our extreme winter? Plants can look great after a winter storm, the damage taking months to reveal itself. Or was it something else? This plant dates back to roughly 2010 in my garden. While things have gotten a little shadier around it nothing changed drastically this summer, it's been happy for years. 

The above photo from happier times, when the new growth was green.

There was a part of me that always feared what would happen when my plant grew as large as this one in the McMenamins Kennedy School gardens (in the back on the left). I guess that's not going to be a problem.

So, onward. What is a garden if not constant change? I'm very sad to lose my oldest, largest Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica', but also scheming on what to do with a fairly large (by my garden standards) chunk of real estate...

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All material © 2009-2024 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

Plants (and metal) I brought home from the Fling

Before I share any photos of the gardens we visited during the Puget Sound Fling, I have to share pics of the plants I bought, "the haul"...

Our first plant buying opportunity was on Saturday, at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden, and their onsite nursery. Since that day was also my birthday I felt duty-bound to buy a few things, first up Rhododendron 'Golfer' (another dumb plant name!).

I've admired this plant in the garden several times so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make it mine.

I regretted not buying Parthenocissus henryana "a relative of Virginia Creeper and Boston Ivy, this species hails from China and features blue-green leaflets in whorls of five with prominent silver veining – quite striking. A vigorous climber that will ascend a large tree with little effort on your part. This deciduous species typically has nice fall color. A feature in the RSBG Stumpery" on my last visit, this time I didn't hesitate.

A couple photos of it in the garden, the base (photo from this visit)...

And way up in the tree, photo from my late May visit.

The 3rd and final plant from the RSBG, a Dan Hinkley wild collected begonia species that goes by the catchy and informative name DJHAP#18003. Is it hardy? I have no idea. Why did I buy it? I blame my begonia crazy friends Ann and Heather. Also, it was on sale.

Moving on, we're now in Camille's garden (yes that Camille, the one that led the Fling org team AND opened her gorgeous garden to the group), where Fling sponsor Monrovia set up this plant display. The generous Kathleen Hennessy told me to pick out a birthday plant so of course I did! What did I chose?

A fern! Athyrium otophorum, Jurassic™ Pterodactyl Eared Lady Fern. I have a few Athyrium otophorum and love their coloring, I am excited to add this one to my garden.

Here's a close up of a frond—just because.

I'd be remiss to not share this stash of plants from Little Prince of Oregon, another Fling sponsor. I brought them up with me from Portland, they were raffle prizes during the Fling Banquet on Saturday night. Here they are hanging out in the shade at Camille's garden. 

Truth be told, there were so many plants to transport that a handful never even made it up to the Fling, they stayed behind in my garden. Yes I had the blessing of the fine folks at Little Prince to keep a few plants that caught my eye, like this Echeveria 'Trumpet Pinky' (isn't it crazy cool?)...

Eucomis ‘Freckles’

Syngonium wendlandii (a houseplant).

And this crazy business, Athyrium ‘Aubergine Lady’...

Moving on, now it's Sunday we're at Windcliff, Dan Hinkley and Robert Jones' home and nursery in Indianola, WA. There's a lot to love in this photo! The dramatic schefflera on the left, the collection of square planters, and the odd Pseudopanax ferox growing at the back.

We were allowed to shop the nursery during this visit and I was still thinking about the pseudopanax when picked out my purchases, the Pseudopanax crassifolius container on the left (with three seedlings in it!) and a native ginger (on the right).

You can see the mass of seedlings I had to chose from in the background of this photo...

There is very different foliage on the seedlings at this stage...

I hope I can successfully separate the three plants.

Here's a close-up of the ginger, Asarum hartwegii HSIS 20045: "There are few native evergreen groundcovers, this found in the Siskiyous of southern Oregon, I feel are as overlooked as this species, for striking heart-shaped leaves etched in pewter, forming dense mounds to 4”. Secretive flowers hidden beneath the leaves. Tolerant of shade but resentful of overwatering and heavy soils. Utterly superb."

I failed to capture the curious magic of this container grouping at Windcliff, but seeing it sent me back to crab another pseudopanax. You see I was recently given a stash of those tall rolled-lip terracotta pots and suddenly I could see a grouping like this in my garden.

This one is a little insurance in case one of the other three doesn't make it when I tease their roots apart.

Now for the metal. The Fling visited a sweet shop/restaurant for our lunch break on Saturday (VanLierop Garden Market—lots of photos to come) and I was quite taken with this pair of metal benches, aka plant tables. 

So taken in fact that I drove out of my way (to Sumner, WA) on my way back to Portland on Monday afternoon and bought one of them, this one actually. They're pretty much twins but this is the one that spoke to me. I've got plans for it and hope to be sharing a photo of it in my garden very soon...

I'll end this post with our 2024 Fling group photo taken at the Brindley garden, there are a few people missing, but this is a great representation of our fun group.

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All material © 2009-2024 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.