My dispersed garden

I do the grocery pick-up once a week. Back in early June Andrew happened to be with me, I warned him that I planned to drive by a couple plants on the way, you know, as one does. I mean, you keep a running map in your head of the distinctive plants in your area, and if you're going to be near them then a detour of a few blocks is warranted, right? Right.

First stop that afternoon was a trunking Yucca rostrata that I'd noticed was sending up a bloom. My timing was perfect to see the flowers all open.

I was a little surprised at the (lack of) height of the bloom, for some reason I thought it would be taller, more clearance between the leaves and the flowers. Maybe because my Yucca filamentosa have such tall bloom stalks?

The blooming yucca is accompanied in the hellstrip planting with a fine Arctostaphylos and another Y. rostrata.

So what seemed perfectly natural to me, became a point of discussion that day. Andrew dubbed this visiting of plants around town my "dispersed garden". In addition to plants that I grow, but were behaving in a way that wanted to track (blooming for instance), there's also a collection of plants I visit that wish I were growing, but for one reason or another I am not. Like this Fremontodendron californicum...

It gets way too big to shoehorn into my garden, but since there's one growing at McMenamins Kennedy School (just 5 blocks from home) I feel like I don't have to grow it here, I can just visit it there.

Another example, I love Rhus typhina, the staghorn sumac and my next door neighbor grows it, so I can enjoy her plant(s) and don't need my own. Or Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica', which I no longer have growing in my garden, but Kennedy School to the rescue again. They have a couple of huge specimens I can admire any time I want to go for a short walk.

Photos from the next stop on my dispersed garden tour span the time frame of May 10th to June 14th. 

I first wrote about this fabulous garden back in 2021.

I was visiting again because I got a text from the garden owner (Scott) letting me know that his Agave ovatifolia in the hellstrip was blooming, and doing so with two bloom spikes. Perhaps it had been damaged (winter?) and had developed two growing points...

So nice with the orange poppies and orange truck...

I stopped back by on June 1st.

It was so hard to photograph only the blooming agave, of course my camera strayed again from focusing on just the star.

June 14th. This was the closest I got to actually seeing it in bloom.

The next time I drove by it was way past its prime so I took no photos that day.

This Agave ovatifolia is part of what once was a trio. The first one bloomed last summer, and now...

Doesn't that photo above look like the spike is coming from the grass? Here's a better shot.

Sadly I didn't make it back by this one to see any more of it's development.

This one however, it's been a regular stop on my drives about town. In fact it started to send up it's spike last fall, and then paused for the winter. Agave parrasana, photo taken June 1st.

And full bloom on July 22nd.

Wrapping up with a stop at what I call the desert on Ainsworth St. This is another hellstrip garden (a very wide hellstrip) that erupts in cactus flower every June.

It's a spectacle of beauty.

Back home I look at my large Agave ovatifolia 'Frosty Blue' and wonder how much longer I've got with them...

So do you have a dispersed garden? If not I highly recommend getting started...

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This roadway improved by sedum and conifers...

Driving around Portland you may encounter a few sections of unimproved roadway. No pavement, no sidewalks, no rhyme or reason as to why the pavement stops, just gravel. There is usually a sign that reads "this roadway unimproved." This garden is on one of those blocks.

I visited the garden at Jeffrey Bale's suggestion. He described it as having an assortment of conifers and at least one of every sedum, that it did! As I walked up I thought the light-colored gravel was a pathway...

But the fact it ended with tall rocks, and appeared to have lights sunk into the gravel at regular intervals, I decided it was a visual break, or maybe a maintenance pathway, rather than a sidewalk substitute. 

Let's look at the modified hellstrip along the paved road first...

Interesting how the plants are inside a wooden frame, giving them a sunken look. It should keep people from trampling over them, plus maybe it will decrease pets using the area as a toilet (both issues I've delt with in my hellstrip).

Cool cones.

I wonder if the rocks are purely decorative, or helping to keep the boards from flopping?

Cornus kousa fruit.

Curious. Multifamily? Why is there a key there?

Okay let's look at the garden proper.

While there are a few other plants this garden really is primarily conifers and sedum. I don't know if I've ever visited a garden with such an on point planting.

Inside the fence...

More cool cones...

So fluffy!

This is one of the nicest unimproved roadways I've encountered. Frequently they include car-swallowing potholes.   

So many sedum!

I really am curious about the tight planting palette, it's almost like a display garden for a nursery that specializes in sedum and conifers.

Oh! This was unexpected, an Agave geminiflora I believe (only hardy to 25-30F... an odd agave choice for our climate).

So densely planted too...

It sort of has the feel of being newly planted, yet patches of things like the delosperma (ice plant) have obviously been bulking up for awhile.

The elephant in the room that I haven't mentioned, the rocks! There's a small fortune here in rocks.

I was tempted to pull on the chain to see what happened. I did not.

What an interesting drive by!

The Bit at the End

A must watch garden video, it's only a little over 6 minutes, and it's so good! The Story of a Garden.

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All material © 2009-2026 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.