Dissecting my Hover Dish plant remains; there is life

When things turned cold last December I completely forgot about taking down the Hover Dish planter over the front porch. 

Once I remembered and commented on it Andrew offered to take it down, but by then I could see it was full of ice and figured it was too late anyway. 

Fast forward several months, and last week I finally got around to asking him to take it down so I could replant it. He's tall enough it's not too difficult for him, I'd be risking life and limb to do it myself. I was surprised to see signs of life. This planting has been through extreme heat with no water (broken ankle and I didn't  look up), and then 72 hours below freezing, filled with frozen water. How could anything growing in 5" of soil suspended in the air live through that?

Opuntia polyacantha x cymochila 'Peter Pan' 

I don't know what possessed me to plant these low-growing cactus in this planter, but I did... and they're still alive. Amazing.

Equally amazing, this small Agave bracteosa is still alive.

Ditto for the larger one!

Sempervivum struggling but alive, not so for whatever agave those used to be...

This poor opuntia qualifies as alive, but I'm so tired of looking at its scarred and oddly colored back-side (the view from inside the house) that I'm going to retire it to the great compost pile in the sky. Bye-bye.

A weed blew in and was quite happy, and the purple leaves of the Yucca aloifolia 'Blue Boy' were only pretending to be alive.

Why did I put this agave in the hover dish? It looks to have been a beauty. Of course it fell apart in my hands as I tried to remove it.

Have you ever seen such a black leaf? It looks like charcoal.

I don't know why I needed to share all of these images, who wants to look at dead plants, right? I found it interesting though. Maybe you did too.

Here's what I replanted with, going in a completely different direction! Super tall black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens'), Lonicera nitida 'Lemon Beauty'  (completely inappropriate long term, but I thought it would be fun for awhile), Muehlenbeckia complexa ‘Big Leaf’ and Sedum confusum.

It's nice to see lots of life up there again!

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The garden at the O'Byrne's Northwest Garden Nursery

We're back in Eugene, OR, at Northwest Garden Nursery—Marietta and Ernie O'Byrne's place. Wednesday I shared some hellebore photos (here) from the greenhouses, today we wander the garden...

This is my second visit to the O'Byrne's, the first was way back in 2014. That was also an early March visit—blog post here—back then I made the trek during their Hellebore Open Garden Days, this year I visited after the hellebore madness. 

I can't remember if it was Marietta or Ernie that pointed out they'd let the opuntia lounge out across the pathway (rather than cutting it back) knowing I was going to be visiting—spiky plants and "danger" of course.

The foliage on that Helleborus foetidus is pretty fabulous...

My photos are all kind of jumbled, I snapped as I wandered...

The sun came and went as the clouds passed overhead. 

It really was a delightful day to be outside walking garden paths, especially contrasted against the day before when it rained hard during my visit to Gossler Farms Nursery (photos from that visit coming up for Monday's post).

There were even fancy creatures milling about, peafowl. Both the traditional blue/green coloration and one that was all white. Sadly I didn't get a photo of the white bird.

On Monday I shared photos of two other gardens I visited in Eugene, both with pebble mosaic designs. There were more elaborate versions here at the O'Byrne's garden, these built by Oregon craftsman Jeffrey Bale.

I was glad to see the elevated container with bronze grass was still a garden feature. I loved it when I saw it on my previous visit.

Close up...

I suddenly need to plant yellow/green hellebores mixed with black mondo grass!

Can you make out the elevated platform on the left? It's built on the stump of a tree that was removed and provides a great place to sleep on a summer's night.

Another angle...

Bamboo!

Schefflera delavayi

Looking towards the backside of the O'Byrne's home, with a guest house on the right.

Quercus alnifolia, planted in 2017 and now at a height where the tawny undersides of the leaves can be appreciated from the pathway.

That's a wrap! Since both of my visits to this garden have been in the very early spring I do hope to return in the summer. Fingers crossed!

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